De La Rosa continues to be erratic at best, but should the Rockies be looking to replace him? I mean if a better starter falls into the team's lap, sure, but let's take a close look at what De La Rosa has done to see how good that starter would have to be to be an improvement. Listed below are JDLR's game scores from each start this season. Game Score is one of Bill James' inventions that center a start around 50, with positive pitching events such as outs, innings, K's, pushing the number higher, negative events, such as hits and runs, pushing the score lower. Keeping it at 50 is actually an accomplishment for Rockies pitchers, and it says something to the strength of our starters this year that the team is averaging exactly 50 for their starts. JDLR's a bit under that at 47, but a close look shows that what's really happening is that he's either being good or on sporadic occasions, he's being very, very bad.
- April 11: 33
- April 17: 59
- April 22: 56
- April 28: 62
- May 4: 43
- May 9: 77
- May 15: 69
- May 20: 19
- May 25: 22
- May 31: 41
- June 5: 53
- June 10: 60
- June 16: 16
On the one hand, May 20, May 25, and his last start against Tampa Bay qualify as absolute disasters, giving him three of his last six that he has basically given the Rockies very little chance to come out with a win in. On the other hand, in seven of his thirteen starts this year, better than 50%, he's given the Rockies a better than average chance to win and a couple more that he didn't let get out of control. Since joining the Rockies in May 2008, De La Rosa has had 20 out of 36 starts with game scores over 50, or 56% of his total starts have left the team in a solid position to win. Aaron Cook in that time has had starts with scores over 50 in only 18 out of his 40 (45%). Ubaldo Jimenez has gone 29 for 42 (69%) to lead the Rockies staff.
The real issue with JDLR is that those blowups come suddenly and unexpectedly, and as such leave a particularly bitter taste in the mouths of fans, who are quick to forget when he's good, he leaves the team in as good of shape as anybody on the staff save Jimenez. As long as he continues to do this at a better than 50% rate, he's a solid asset for the club, despite the blowups. If he starts drifting below that threshold, then we'll need to see what we can do about an upgrade.
Probably not going to be this guy, despite his rumored availablity:
Go Rockies!