Unlike some of the other positions I've audited before in this series, the Rockies' left field position had a bunch of people plying their trade in Coors' spacious outfield. Six to be exact. In order of most games started at the position: Seth Smith (59), Carlos Gonzalez (51), Ryan Spilborghs (32), Eric Young Jr. (9), Jay Payton (7), and the unfortunate Melvin Mora outfield experience (4). Of these players, two (Smith and Payton) started more games in left field than at any other position, so they (mostly Smith) will be evaluated in this column. Mora and Young have already been covered, while Gonzalez will get his recognition in the CF audit and Spilborghs will be looked at in the RF audit.

Left Field, according to Tom Tango's positional adjustment scale, is given a rank of -7.5, meaning that left field is an easier position to play defensively relative to short stop or center field. The main responsibility of left fielders is not only to catch fly balls but also to deny baserunners advancing to an extra base. Therefore, arm strength and accuracy are desired traits of left fielders.

However, since left field in a ball park is usually the area that requires the shortest throws (and the smallest area to cover) of all the outfield positions, arm strength, accuracy, and range (speed, often) is usually placed on the back burner and offense (particularly power) is emphasized in the major leagues. Coors is a bit of an oddity in this regard, as the left fielder is expected to cover quite a bit more territory than usual.

In this vein, Smith defended better on the road in LF (2.5 UZR) than he did at Coors (-0.5 UZR), though counter to what Jim Tracy would have you believe, he was actually slightly better in RF (0.3 away, 2.8 home).

For those of you who missed it, here is the premise and methodology of this series. These links will help you if you have questions about statistics that I reference: sOPS+, wOBA, WAR (and wRAA), and wRC+.

Previous Sessions: H/R I C I 1B I 2B I 3B I SS

Left Field

Expectations

Smith was coming off of a breakout 2009 season in which he'd compiled a .293/.378/.510 (.383 wOBA, 128 wRC+) line with 15 HRs and 55 RBIs in only 387 PAs, good for 2.9 fWAR. As a result, many (myself included) were clamoring for the Rockies to give Smith a starting position and trade Brad Hawpe. In fact, Bill James' projection system had projected Smith to be a 3 WAR player. However, others held the firm belief that Smith was aptly suited to be an ace pinch-hitter. Either way, expectations were relatively high for a player who had yet to get a full season's worth of PAs.

As far as expectations for Jay Payton, there really weren't any. The 37 year old outfielder, who didn't play for anyone in 2009, was signed to a minor league deal prior to the start of the season and was promptly forgotten about by most Rockies fans as he toiled in Colorado Springs.

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With the World Series recently completed, it's that time of year again baseball fans -- hot stove season. That means that it is time for another State of the Rockies offseason series! To begin, let's go over the 2010 portion of the offseason calendar briefly (I'll write about 2011 and salary arbitration when it comes closer).

The clock for Colorado and the rest of MLB started ticking when the Fall Classic concluded on Monday, as teams have until today to pick up option years and until November 7th to exclusively negotiate with their prospective free agents. November 23rd is the last day for teams to offer salary arbitration to free agents (in Colorado's case, Jorge De La Rosa) in order to preserve their right to draft-pick compensation. The free agents then have until November 30th to accept those arbitration offers.

For players who have less than six years of MLB service time and fail to qualify for free agency (like Clint Barmes), their teams control their rights, but must tender the player a contract offer or salary arbitration, by December 2nd--with the player needing to make a decision by the Winter Meetings (held December 6-9) so that teams will have some idea as to where the market stands. At the end of the Winter Meetings, teams that haven't filled up their 40 man rosters at the contract tender deadline will be able to participate in the Rule 5 draft.

For more information on the offseason calendar, check out WolfMarauder's articles on free agency declaration and the offseason meetings. In addition, to learn a little bit more about some of the topics I'll be touching on in this series, please check out the following sessions of my MLB Transaction series of Purple Row Academy:

Salary Arbitration

40 Man Roster

MLB Service Time

Free Agency

Trades and Contract Tenders

Rule 5 Draft

Fangraphs Win Values

Now that you understand a little better the timeline that Dan O'Dowd and the Rockies are working with, I'll break down the Rockies' contract situations extensively (and I do mean extensively) after the jump.

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So far, I've discussed the chaotic situations the Rockies had in 2010 (and will likely continue to have in 2011) at catcher, first base, second base, and third base (there's hope for that last one). This time, it's nice to write about a successful this year, stable going forward position in shortstop. That's because one of the Rockies' two primary offensive studs, Troy Tulowitzki, manned the position at which defense usually comes at the expense of offense.

Shortstop, according to Tom Tango's positional adjustment scale, is given a +7.5 adjustment when calculating WAR. This is due to the fact that shortstops receive the most fielding chances, by and large, requiring excellent fielding technique, quickness, speed, and a strong, accurate arm. In other words, it is a physically demanding fielding position that his historically been manned by weak Punch and Judy hitters. Several Rockies' shortstops have fit this mold (Walt Weiss and Neifi Perez come to mind). Troy Tulowitzki is certainly not one of them (a weak hitter, that is).

Tulowitzki's fielding technique is a little unorthodox but has thus far proven to be exceptionally effective. He won his second Fielding Bible Award this year and it looks like he's in good shape for his first Gold Glove Award. His great 7.9 UZR in 2010 supports the eye test that Tulo possesses great range and an excellent arm.

As for Tulowitzki's hitting, much has already been written about it. I've already written a little about his season this year, so the results and analysis sections will be a little shorter than usual. In addition, Clint Barmes was Tulo's injury replacement this year, so I'll touch on his stats as a SS too.

For those of you who missed it, here is the premise and methodology of this series. These links will help you if you have questions about statistics that I reference: sOPS+, wOBA, WAR (and wRAA), and wRC+.

Shortstop

Expectations

Coming into 2010 it was clear that Troy Tulowitzki had the potential to be a MVP-type player, posting two separate seasons of 5+ WAR before the age of 25. The problem was that wedged in between those two excellent seasons was an injury-plagued 0.9 WAR disaster of a 2008. In addition, Tulo had started 2009 slowly offensively, waiting until the second half of the season to erupt (.344/.421/.622, 174 sOPS+, and a wOBA well north of .400 with 16 HRs and 55 RBIs in 297 PAs).

So while the Rockies were pretty sure that Tulowitzki was going to be a big contributor for them going into 2010, there was certainly some doubt as to whether he could replicate his great power/speed numbers from 2009 (32 HRs, 20 SBs). In addition, UZR had rated Tulo as only a slightly above average defender (2.4) in 2009, while other metrics had rated his defense as sublime.

In any case, Tulo was entering the third year of a 6 year, $31 million contract signed after 2007, making $3.5 million. Colorado had thus far received quite a return on its investment: a middle of the order bat who also played excellent defense at a premium position. That's what almost everybody expected of Tulo going into 2010.

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The Rockies received below average offensive production when compared to their peers using sOPS+ at four positions (including an 82 for pitchers). Third base was not one of those positions -- Rockies third basemen hit at a 115 sOPS+ clip, 15% better than other third basemen around the league. This might be surprising to you--and no wonder, as there has been a lot written about the failures of Ian Stewart in particular written on this site and elsewhere around the internet.

Perhaps it is because our expectations for Stewart are viewed through a distorted lens. The great success of young players like Tulo, CarGo, and Ubaldo have perhaps subconsciously affected the way that we as Rockies fans view the development of young players like Stewart or Dexter Fowler (whose performance will be audited soon). Here's what I wrote a fortnight ago about Stewart's 2010 season (more detail after the jump):

What I'm trying to convey is that Stewart was essentially a league-average hitter in 2010 given his playing time (1.6 WAR in 121 games, 441 PAs), which for a 25 year old with less than three years of MLB service time is quite impressive really. Are there some warts here? Sure. Stewart's strikeout rate (28.5%) is still high, even though it's down 4% from 2009, he has problems making adjustments at the plate, and his perceived lack of focus on baseball may rub many the wrong way. However, you can't ignore that Stewart has a ceiling of much greater than a league-average player. He's still got star potential. Maybe that's why people have been so hard on him. The fact remains that the Rockies aren't going to acquire a better third baseman in free agency than Ian Stewart.

...

League-average production as a floor (and really, that's what I view Ian Stewart's 2010 season as) shows that there is a lot of room for improvement for Rockies third basemen next year as Stewart enters his prime. I say let him play every day and see if he can take advantage of the opportunity.

 Stewart has his faults, sure (perceived and otherwise), but he remains a promising young player with huge potential offensively.

Now that I've written all that about Stewart, I should probably mention that as a third baseman Melvin Mora outperformed the younger player, posting a 117 sOPS+ at 3B compared to Stewart's 111. In terms of weighted runs above average (explained here), Mora also bested Stewart, 3.1 to 1.3. Obviously this is a far cry from CarGo and Tulo's offensive excellence, but the 3B platoon at least kept their heads above water.

Keeping that fact in mind, let's begin the 3B audit in earnest. For those of you who missed it, here is the premise and methodology of this series.

Third Base

Expectations

As I alluded to above,  the expectations of most people this year for Ian Stewart were very high, as he was coming off of a 25 HR season as a 24 year old in his first full season as a starter in MLB, with some (myself included) projecting a breakout year of well over 3 WAR for him in 2010 (from 1.1 in 2009). There was hope that in 2010 Stewart would become the middle of the order force that he had shown glimpses of, but had not yet consistently proved he could be.

Meanwhile, some raised valid concerns about Stewart's approach at the plate (and lack of ability or desire to adjust it), which had led to a sky-high 32.5% K rate, and his low batting average (.228) while others railed against Stewart's perceived lack of commitment to his job.

Given this confluence of high expectations and grave concerns, Stewart was one of, if the not the player about which the Purple Row community disagreed the most.

As for Melvin Mora, he was an afterthought for many of us, having been signed to a one year deal as a 38 year-old veteran free agent to be the Rockies' utility infielder. In fact, most of us thought he'd be playing quite a bit of second rather than third, as Stewart had been penciled in as the top guy there. Few had any real expectations of Mora coming into 2010.

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Despite their respectable conventional stats (3rd in the NL in runs, T-2nd in average), the dirty secret of 2010 is that the Colorado Rockies' offense just wasn't very good this year. This is especially true when you look at everyone not named Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki. While CarGo (42.1 weighted runs above average) and Tulo (31.9 wRAA) were studs, the next best offensive player on the Rockies in 2010 was either fifth outfielder Ryan Spilborghs (5.0 wRAA) or utility infielder Melvin Mora (3.1 wRAA). As I wrote two weeks ago, that's not the formula for a playoff team, no matter how good your top two hitters are.

In fact, the position players outside of CarGo and Tulo were 25.9 runs below average (with pitchers included, they were -80.7 wRAA). Even with CarGo and Tulo, the offense was still below average (-6.7 wRAA). In other words, the 2010 Rockies were a two man show on offense. If those two weren't hitting well, by and large the team wasn't winning. To refresh your memory, wRAA is the counting stat batting component of WAR. I explain how it is calculated here. 

Who was the biggest single culprit for this offensive ineptitude? Anyone who played second base, really. More so even than the Rockies' woeful contributions from first base, Colorado's second sackers dragged the whole team down offensively. When compared to all other MLB second basemen, Colorado's 2B were 23% worse than average (77 sOPS+). The three worst position players in terms of wRAA for the Rockies in 2010 all played the majority of their time at second (Jonathan Herrera -4.7, Eric Young Jr -7.9, Clint Barmes -17.1 -- worst of any Colorado player).

So with that ugly truth in mind, it's time to audit Colorado's second basemen. For those of you who missed it, here is the premise and methodology of this series.

Second Base

Expectations

Second base has long been a problem spot for the Rockies. As such, going into 2010 Rockies fans were not expecting that much from de facto starter Clint Barmes. Barmes had come back from the dead to return to roughly league average status in 2008 (1.9 WAR) and had followed that performance up with a very streaky 2009 that ended up around where 2008 left off (1.7 WAR). Last year Barmes stroked 23 homers and played very good defense (8.7 UZR), so we were somewhat willing to overlook the fact that he was pretty terrible offensively (-14.8 wRAA, .312 wOBA, 80 wRC+).

However, there were certainly calls for Barmes to be replaced by a better player (Orlando Hudson or Kelly Johnson anyone?) and there was plenty of concern when the Rockies' front office talked about a multi-year contract for Barmes during the offseason. After talks broke down, Barmes settled for a one year $3.35 million contract to avoid his second year of arbitration.

Most fans were probably hoping for Barmes' power surge and great defense to continue, but they probably knew that he was due for some offensive regression.

As for other players, Melvin Mora was brought in to back up Barmes at 2nd and 3rd base. Expectations were low for the 38 year-old reserve, though he had proven to be a valuable player in the past. Since Mora didn't actually play much at second this year, I'll only touch briefly on him today.

Meanwhile, Eric Young Jr. had shown off his speed in a September callup in 2009 and was expected to play a role off the bench when he was called up. Jonathan Herrera was completely off the radar, as well he should have been given his pathetic 39 wRC+ in 66 PAs in 2008. Chris Nelson was a former first round pick coming off an injury-shortened 2009 and was trying to prove himself in his first season at AAA Colorado Springs.

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For those of you who missed it, here is the premise and methodology of this series. To recap though:

The primary metrics I'll use to evaluate performance will be Fangraphs WAR (the calculation of which I explained last year), sOPS+ (which I wrote about last week), and wRC+ (explained by Andrew Martin here, but it's basically applying park factors to wOBA, the hitting stat used in WAR, and placing it on a scale with 100 as average) among others. Most every stat referenced here can be easily found either on Fangraphs or Baseball Reference. That's not to say that I'll only be looking at stats when evaluating players. Contracts, for one thing, help to define expectations and can color the lens through which we observe performance, as do the presence of injuries. I'll do my best to consider these factors in my analysis.

 I plan on cranking these out at a rate of greater than once per week beginning next week, after the full unveiling of the PR Awards. Today, let's look at one of the hot topics of discussion this week at Purple Row, a topic that will surely continue throughout the offseason, the state of first base.

It's a position that's near and dear to my heart as I played there in high school, and it has historically been the model of stability for the Rockies. No other position comes close, in fact. Colorado has had only two Opening Day first basemen in their history, Andres Galarraga (El Gato Supremo) and Todd Helton (The Toddfather). While Helton is signed through 2013 for over $40 million (Andrew Fisher broke it down on Tuesday), his job as the Opening Day first baseman might not last long given his 2010 performance.

First Base

Expectations

To understand the expectations for first base going into 2010, we must first go back to 2008. Helton's power had been slipping since age 31 season (2005), in which he reached only 20 home runs (though his OBP skills remained). One cause that had been brought up for this was his aching back.

In 2008, this pain finally culminated in Helton getting surgery and missing half of the season. Not only did he miss almost 80 games, but Helton had his worst offensive season by far, hitting .264/.391/.388 (which was still good enough for an above-average .347 wOBA). So, in other words Helton in an injury-plagued year still was an asset at first base because of his great OBP skills.

The newly-healthy Helton's resurgence in 2009 was one of the major reasons that Colorado returned to the postseason. Every month he posted an above-average sOPS+ en route to a great bounce back season (.325/.416/.489, .392 wOBA, 134 wRC+, 3.7 WAR). Though Helton was aging and it was obvious that he was never going to hit for a lot of power, it seemed reasonable to consider his relatively poor 2008 an outlier and to expect at least a league-average season (2+ WAR) from him in 2010.

As for Helton's back-up, the Rockies' late August pick-up of a jobless Jason Giambi worked wonders for them in 2009, as Giambi mashed in a 31 PA sample size (.292/.452/.583, .445 wOBA, 162 OPS+). Colorado re-upped with the 39 year-old Giambi for 1 year, $1.75 million, expecting him to spell Helton on his off-days, be a fearsome left-handed pinch hitter, and to serve as DH during Interleague play.

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Here is the premise of this series:

Going into the 2010 season, Rockies fans were expecting a lot out of this team. On paper, they were the most talented team in the NL West, they had no obvious holes and boasted superior depth. Several pundits even picked for them to win the World Series before the season. I certainly bought in to Colorado's chances to win the West, going so far as to guarantee a title for them. At the very least, I said, the Rockies should beat the preseason O/U win line set by Vegas at 84. Obviously, none of those things occurred. I've taken it upon myself to understand why.

Last week, I discussed Colorado's dramatic home/road splits and the effect they had on the Rockies' underperformance this year. In Tuesday's Rockpile, Andrew Fisher wrote about Colorado's injury troubles in 2010, another big reason for underperformance. Outside the loss of Troy Tulowitzki for 39 days on the DL, most of Colorado's underperformance due to injury came on the pitching staff and not with the position players (though Ian Stewart and Todd Helton missed 28 and 29 days respectively). As such, I'll leave that topic until I examine the pitching staff to delve into further.

Instead, I'll go position by position through Colorado's hitters and look at the expectations going into the season for each spot. Then I will look at the results, trying to analyze where the disconnect between the performance of those positions and their expectations coming in stemmed from. Finally, I will briefly touch on some potential solutions for those issues and what the future of each position looks like. In order to evaluate each position properly (and to stop you from reading well over 6000 words in one post), I'll examine one position a day (not necessarily every day, but almost every day).

The primary metrics I'll use to evaluate performance will be Fangraphs WAR (the calculation of which I explained last year), sOPS+ (which I wrote about last week), and wRC+ (explained by Andrew Martin here, but it's basically applying park factors to wOBA, the hitting stat used in WAR, and placing it on a scale with 100 as average) among others. Most every stat referenced here can be easily found either on Fangraphs or Baseball Reference. That's not to say that I'll only be looking at stats when evaluating players. Contracts, for one thing, help to define expectations and can color the lens through which we observe performance, as do the presence of injuries. I'll do my best to consider these factors in my analysis.

Without further ado, let's begin this audit with the catcher position...

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Going into the 2010 season, Rockies fans were expecting a lot out of this team. On paper, they were the most talented team in the NL West, they had no obvious holes and boasted superior depth. Several pundits even picked for them to win the World Series before the season. I certainly bought in to Colorado's chances to win the West, going so far as to guarantee a title for them. At the very least, I said, the Rockies should beat the preseason O/U win line set by Vegas at 84. Obviously, none of those things occurred. I've taken it upon myself to understand why.

While there have certainly been some great memories to take away from the 2010 season (thanks PIP), this 83-79 season by and large has to be looked at as a failure from a baseball standpoint (though as I'll touch on in the future, it was a successful season financially) given the massive expectations entering 2010.

In future installments, I'll go position by position and look at the expectations going into the season for that spot. Then I will look at the results, trying to analyze where the disconnect between the performance of those positions and their expectations coming in stemmed from. Finally, I will briefly touch on some potential solutions for those issues and what the future of each position looks like. I will repeat this process for the pitching staff  in a different installment, then I will evaluate the performance of the front office and coaching staff based on my findings.

But before I do that, I feel I need to discuss a prominent topic that most certainly shaped the poor outcome of the 2010 season, the Rockies' poor performance on the road. My methods when evaluating performance are primarily based in statistics (the majority of which can be easily referenced at Fangraphs or Baseball Reference), but I've done my best to take potential psychological effects into account. In some cases, it's difficult to separate psychology from physics. Nowhere is this effect more stark than in the home/road splits of the Rockies.

I'll get this out of the way right now: nobody can explain why the Rockies' road troubles have reached the extent they have. Due to this fact, the purpose of this article is not to answer that question, but merely to provide some discussion points. There's a lot of great research out there (notably this Fanpost at SBN blog Athletics Nation and this ESPN Insider piece by Ben Jedlovec of Baseball Information Solutions) that helps explain why the Rockies' hitters are so effective at Coors Field.

Unfortunately, nobody has yet been able to discover why the Rockies (through September 18th, before Operation Shutdown commenced) had scored 6.35 runs per 27 outs at home but only a pathetic 3.46 runs per 27 outs on the road (from the ESPN article). Colorado's pitching splits make sense: the Rockies allowed 4.51 R/27 at home and a slightly smaller 4.22 R/27 on the road. It's strange that the offense is so much more affected. Furthermore, it's strange that this year Colorado's H/R offensive difference is much more pronounced than it was in the two previous years (1.84 times more runs at home in 2010 vs. 1.46 times more runs in 2009 and only 1.30 times more runs in 2008) while the pitching difference remained fairly constant (1.07 in 2010, 1.07 in 2009, 0.98 in 2008).

I wish I could tell you why Colorado hit only .226 on the road vs. .298 at home (.303 vs. .368 OBP, .351 vs. .498 SLG, etc). Basically, it was like the Rockies were Willy Taveras on the road and good Brad Hawpe at home. Some of that can be accounted for by the fact that Coors is such a great place to hit in and that the Rockies have really learned to maximize that advantage. Some of it can't. For example, the Rockies' sOPS+ at home was 130 while on the road it was 85. Why is this significant? In order to understand that, it's important to understand what sOPS+ is.

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