For years now we have known & appreciated the great competitor & future HOF'er : # 2 ... Derek Jeter ... # 2. It is w/no disrespect that I introduce you to another great competitor & possible future HOF'er: # 2 Troy ''Tulo'' Tulowitzke ...

I live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado & so I have not only been blessed w/the beauty of these mountains, I have been blessed as well to watch Troy Tulowitzke work his oft times absolutely incredible magic at shortstop. His two Gold Gloves truly do not do justice to what he does almost nightly w/his glove, his range, his arm & his mind. [ should be 3 Gold Gloves - no offense to Jimmy Rollins ] While I have seen many great fielding shortstops, most notably Ozzie Smith & Omar Visquel, I don't know that I have seen a better one past these two greats. Tulo can put 3 Fielding Bible Awards, 2 Heart & Hustle Awards, and an ESPN Web Gem Champion Award, next to his 2 Gold Gloves. While it doesn't necessarily speak to his fielding prowess, Tulowitzke is one of only eight shortstops in the history of the game to complete an unassisted triple play.

Troy Tulowitzke has been plagued thus far in his career by injury, but begins to show promise of getting past that. Nonetheless his offensive stats have begun to accrue & show the promise of a future HOF'er. Tulo has a lifetime batting average of .293 & a lifetime on base percentage of .364. He has hit 89 home runs in the last three years despite missing 70 games in that time. Given that he has stolen 20 bases in a season, I believe the potential is there for a 30/30 season. Tulo has 2 Silver Slugger awards & 2 All Star appearances to his credit. I believe that many more such awards are headed his way, even as this 27 year old heads towards a HOF career.

Troy Tulowitzke is known in Colorado for his different hair styles aimed at raising money for charity as well as other community involvements. He is known for his leadership & for his intensity on the field. Having married his high school sweetheart & every day playing the game he loves, Tulo is living the dream. I hope that he lives it all the way to a World Championship & all the way to the HALL. Thanks Tulo for all that you bring to the great game of baseball here in Colorado ...

Until next time, so long everybody ...

Lee [ Cowboy ]

Tragic news has struck the Colorado Rockies community. According to an obituary in the Boulder Daily Camera; Thomas Harding's son passed away on Super Bowl Sunday. Isaac Harding was the son of Rockies MLB.com reporter Thomas and his wife Cindy. Isaac was a sports fanatic who loved playing football, basketball and wrestling. In lieu of flowers the family is asking for donations in Isaac's name to a youth sports program. Purple Row Cares still has $70 left and I believe this would be the perfect time to donate that money. I've listed a couple of choices down below, but I encourage Rowbots to add their own ideas and I will make a poll question out of the submissions. Those of us in the Purple Row community are saddened by Thomas and Cindy's loss and offer our heartfelt prayers and condolences.

Broomfield Little League

YMCA of Metro Denver

Recently, Josh Hamilton had a relapse in his battle with drug addiction. The story has been out there for a few days now and you've probably read all about it, so I'll spare the details. As the story broke, many different writers had many different things to say. Some were critical of Hamilton, thinking him foolish for even setting foot in the bar. Some were compassionate and forgiving. Some praised his candid press conference. The reaction from non-media types (aka, my friends) has been even more varied. A scroll through my Facebook news feed the day the story broke had people questioning whether he meant his faith, as well as some who were going to support him no matter what (many of my friends are Christians, so their comments were mostly directed towards his very public faith).

Having read many of these different viewpoints has helped me to better understand the issue. It has always been a personal issue for me; my father was an addict for the early part of my life. I knew that he was an addict, but I didn't know the extent. A little over a year ago, my father died in a car accident, and I learned some things about his struggle with addiction that he had kept secret. After the jump, I'll share a little about that and why I think Josh Hamilton's battle with drug addiction can be a wonderful thing for public understanding. (Oh, and this isn't exactly Rockies-related, other than a passing Neifi Perez reference. Sorry.)

Continue reading this post »

Hello fellow PRMLBers. I was tired of loading our monstrous January thread, so I decided to use my Executive Committee powers to make a new thread. The trading deadline is coming up, and then pennant races, so if you're the Rockies or Giants, or any other team in the NL Wild Card race, please remember to DFA all of your good players.

Thanks!

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE COMMISH:

There will be no sim this Thursday (2/2).

The Trade Deadline is Sunday (2/5).

The trade deadline is the only time in which I will trade players in the middle of sim. All trades must be finalized by 7PM on Sunday. I will then sim Saturday 7/30 and all Sunday games on 7/31. After that I will make the deadline trades, then sim Monday 8/1.

Make sure that your trade is acceptable and, if you are taking on salary, that you have the budget to accommodate the new players. Trades that do not go through will not be resubmitted after the deadline.

Relevant Links:

The PRMLB Homepage: http://ootp.petrocw.com

The last OOTP thread: http://www.purplerow.com/2012/1/2/2677412/prmlb-the-january-thread

The OOTP Setup questions thread: http://www.purplerow.com/2011/11/20/2575115/prmlb-preseason-thread

Obligatory music link: Michel Camilo playing piano reasonably well.

The goal of this FanPost is to highlight the different levels at which we can view a baseball game. Since music is my primary background, many of the analogies are from music theory, but I will try to explain them so you don't have to have taken 5 years of college classes to understand them. So, here goes!

Continue reading this post »

As promised, this is what we are looking at for this years opening day payroll. A few notes to begin with.

Continue reading this post »

Well folks, it's that time of year again. The Colorado Rockies have run a random number generator and selected people for Opening Day and Fireworks game tickets. This thread should be used to discuss the possibility of having an extra ticket code or even extra tickets. If you would like tickets because you were unlucky and got rejected comment below and hopefully someone can pick you up. I got a code and I know I will be buying four tickets (hopefully in the Pavillion), but I think I might only be using two of them. I will post more details about my ticket information later but until then happy Opening Day Ticket thread.

BASEBALL IS COMING!!!!!!!!!!

I once dated a girl named January White. No joke.

Continue reading this post »

I lurked around Purple Row for quite sometime before joining up and commenting. One of the things that really pushed me to become a member was the sense of community. Through our common bond of the Rockies and Baseball we are able to overlook so many other things in life that would normally keep us from becoming friends.

That first year that I started posting we had an offseason picture thread. A chance for us to put a face to the screen names. I really think it is helped keep things civil around here.

I count so many of you as my good friends, including some of you who I have never met or only met once or twice (Looking at you Russ and Andrews).

So to kick off this thread, I will share a couple of pictures of me.

Me holding a giant bunch of balloons:

Me celebrating my 30th Birthday:

I would like to invite all of you to share some pics of you!

There’s good news and there’s bad news today.

The Bad News: The Rockies have in all likelihood overpaid for Michael Cuddyer's services.

I’m not altering my stance on that; however, I am willing to turn my focus away from the ugliness of this deal for a moment as I can only stay sane for so long being a "Negative Nancy". So while this post is going to come off sounding as though I support the Cuddyer signing scores more times than I actually do, it’ll probably ruin far fewer people’s weekends than me talking about how much of a mistake it was in the Rockpile. So with that…..

The Good News: The addition of Michael Cuddyer will make the Rockies a better team in 2012, especially offensively.

Now to prove this, we unfortunately have to delve into some of last year’s repulsive numbers. So if you want to take this journey, it’s probably a good idea to have a barf bag on hand. You have been warned: Now take the plunge.

*******************************

"Why were the Rockies so bad offensively last season?"

Stop!!! Take a moment and really think about this question. Why were the Rockies so bad offensively last season? In the Spring, most thought the bats would be a strength of this team. And why not? – The Rockies had Cargo and Tulo anchoring their lineup, a distinction that makes them enviable in the eyes of most in the National League. Think about it - Is there another 3-4 combo in N.L. that you’d rather have going into 2012 than Cargo and Tulo?

Yet last season, the Rockies (with a score of 90) ranked a disappointing 11th (out of 16 teams) in the N.L. in the OPS+ category; just barely beating out a three way tie for 12th between the Astros, Giants, and Nationals at 89.

(Note: OPS + is a metric that park adjusts the OPS stat and then adjusts it above or below 100 depending on if the performance was above or below average – Higher than 100 = good, Lower than 100 = bad)

Now, along these same lines, take the two following pieces of information and then try to answer our original question of "Why were the Rockies so bad offensively last season?"

1)Cargo and Tulo combined for 1,148 plate appearances last season and averaged an OPS+ of 130

2)The Rockies as a team had 6,275 plate appearances and had an OPS+ of 90.

The answer is nothing new: There was a colossal pile of trash in the Rockies lineup last season. There simply had to be to end up 10% below average offensively when nearly 20% of our total plate appearances were taken by two guys who together averaged 30% above league average.

Now for the really fun part. We get to dive straight into this garbage dump and pick out the stinkiest, most rancid, foul smelling trash of the season. Namely those who posted an OPS+ lower than 70, also defined as more than 30% below league average. Why less than 70? That’s the point at which each of the following collection of Rockie plate appearances was more of a choke hold on our offense than an equal number of Cargo/Tulo plate appearances was a boon to our offense. (Remember, Cargo and Tulo gave us 1,148 PA’s of 30% above average offense) Here's what we find.

Notice that the 1,506 number for total PA’s of garbage far exceeds the 1,148 PA’s Cargo and Tulo managed. What’s even scarier however is that these 1,506 PA’s don’t even include the 446 Ty Wigginton had in 2011. Granted he did post an OPS+ of 87, but when you consider that it came attached with utterly horrendous defense and some of the most astonishingly inept numbers you’ll ever see with RISP, it’s fair to note that we’re not far from adding this to the towering pile of junk listed above. So while in reality the true number of trash PA’s that need to be taken out is probably closer to 1,952 (The 1,506 PA’s listed above + the 446 Wigginton had), we’ll stick with 1,506 for now so we can perform the next step in our exercise.

Listed below are the total number of PA’s and percentage of PA’s that were taken by players with an OPS+ below 70 for each team in the N.L. (Note: These percentages do not include PA’s from pitchers for any team. They have been eliminated. If they were included, the 368 PA’s from Rockies pitchers for instance would push the total to 30%)

There’s some very interesting numbers here. As expected, all the playoff teams are on the correct side of the board. The Cubs and Mets may a bit of a surprise but once you remember how atrocious their pitch was last season, it’s easier to see how things ended up the way they did. It doesn’t paint a perfect picture, but it certainly reveals some interesting nuggets – Most notably, the best explanation I’ve seen yet as to why the Arizona Diamondbacks won the division so easily last season. Despite having only one real superstar in their lineup (Justin Upton), they didn’t have the glaring holes that the other N.L. West teams did. I guess the lesson here (while it all seems painfully obvious) is minimizing the number of automatic outs in the batting order makes life much tougher on your opponents. Recent Rockies history reflects this as well…..(Below are the percentage of PA’s each of these Rockies teams had taken by players with an OPS+ below 70)…..

.

2007, 2009, and 2010 all stick out as better years in this category, and probably not coincidentally, they all turned out better in the standings too. While 2007 and 2009 produced playoff berths, 2010 had other problems that included Ryan Spilborghs ranking third on the team in OPS+ at 102 – In fact, had Helton, Smith, and Iannetta had their 2011 season in 2010, there’s a very good chance that the Rockies would have won the division that season since they were able to hold their garbage PA’s in check around 10%.

So now the obvious question is how do the Rockies get their 2012 numbers in this category down to a reasonable number? – Let’s say 700 PA’s / 12%. To see if this is possible, we need to separate our trash into categories. (I’ll include Ty Wigginton’s 446 PA’s here as even though they were not part of the under 70 OPS+ group, they were clearly 446 PA’s that had to go)

Category #1 (Trash that’s been taken out)

1) Ty Wigginton (446 PA’s) – Traded to Philadelphia

2) Ryan Spilborghs (223 PA’s) – Non-tendered

3) Ian Stewart (136 PA’s) – Traded to the Cubs

4) Jose Lopez (129 PA’s) – DFA last June

5) Eliezer Alfonzo (79 PA’s) - Not gone yet but I’m very hopeful he doesn’t get any PA’s with the Rockies next season.

6) Alfredo Amezaga (38 PA’s) – DFA last May

7) Cole Garner (10 PA’s) – Non-tendered

Total = 1,061 PA’s (54% of the trash)

Category #2 (Trash that could become treasure)

1) Charlie Blackmon (102 PA’s) – I would expect improvement this season

2) Thomas Field ( 51 PA’s) – Not as sure as I am with Blackmon but I could see an acceptable performance with improvement here too (He’s just not a starter)

Total = 153 PA’s (8% of the trash)

Category #3 (Trash that still needs to be taken care of)

1) Jonathan Herrera (320 PA’s)

2) Eric Young (229 PA’s)

3) Chris Nelson (189 PA’s)

Total = 738 PA’s (38% of the trash)

This is where the problem with the 2012 offense surfaces. None of these players have career numbers that give me any hope that there’s a realistic chance to see dramatic improvement in their performance this season. All are at least 26, and all have a career OPS + below 70. As far as I’m concerned, the fewer PA’s these men have in 2012, the better things will be for the Rockies.

***************

So how does Michael Cuddyer fit into this puzzle? Well the last six years, Cuddyer has averaged 574 PA’s a season with an OPS+ of 115. Since he can play all over the diamond, his 574 PA’s could eat a significant chunk of the garbage PA’s we saw last season.

1) He could end up taking some of Wigginton’s PA’s. An OPS+ of 115 is significantly better than Wiggy’s 87 that came attached with a boatload of other issues.

2) The Rockies have a solid bat they can stick wherever they need in order to improve other holes in the lineup. Taking a combination of the PA’s from players that were below an OPS+ of 70 could be a large first step to curing what ailed this offense most in 2011.

3) There’s also the possibility, if not probability now, that Cuddyer allows us to shop Seth Smith and get return value somewhere else on the field. If this turns out to be the case, we’ll have to wait and see the details of the move before passing judgment but it should also improve the team. The drawback on the surface here would seem to be that Cuddyer is just taking Smith’s spot, but even that provides additional value for two reasons

A) The Rockies can have Cuddyer in the lineup regardless of what hand the opposing starter uses to throw the ball

B) Cuddyer still gives the Rockies options to fill infield holes if Charlie Blackmon and/or Tim Wheeler surprise.

Source: baseballreference.com