Saturday Rockpile: How Dan O'Dowd's Past Year is Stacking Up Thus Far

The Rockies’ Wretched Pitching | FanGraphs Baseball
Fangraphs' Paul Swydan rips into the Rockies, namely Jim Tracy and Dan O'Dowd, for compounding the already-big pitching problem. In addition to Tracy's curious decisions, such as the mishandling of Rex Brothers (on which I'm not sure I agree with the writer 100%), Swydan also lists all of the players dealt from, and traded to, the Rockies, and compares their WAR from the time of the trade. Felipe Paulino is killing EVERYONE on both lists, while Mark Ellis (whose time with the Rockies is shown) and Jason Hammel are tied for a distant second. A couple of other interesting nuggets from that chart...

• Drew Pomeranz and Alex White's cumulative WAR since the trade is equal to that of Ubaldo Jimenez.

• Guillermo Moscoso and Josh Outman's cumulative WAR is only .1 less than that of Seth Smith.

• Tyler Colvin's WAR is .2 greater than Ian Stewart's.

• Marco Scutaro and Clayton Mortensen both have contributed .2 WAR.

• Kevin Slowey appears on both lists.

The only trade that stands out as terrible right now is the Jeremy Guthrie for Hammel/Matt Lindstrom deal, as I'm refusing to call letting go of Paulino a 'deal.' The rest will take some time to sort out. I'm not going to be as rough on the Rockies as Swydan was, but I do fully agree with him on one thing - the Rockies should REALLY be examining how things got to the point where Jamie Moyer made the starting rotation out of spring training.

Rockies pitcher Jhoulys Chacin dealing with nerve issue in pectoral muscle - The Denver Post
Swydan also blames the team for not staying on top of Chacin's injury, and I'm not so sure I agree with that either. Regardless, the issue seems to have finally been pinpointed, as the result of the dead arm that he had been experiencing is due to a nerve issue. The club is unable to, at this point, place a timetable on his return.

A couple more links after the jump...

Rockies' prospect Dickerson enjoying solid success in California League - The Denver Post
Irv Moss profiles Corey Dickerson, who has mashed at every level so far in his pro career. Be warned, though; the only thing separating him from guys like Joe Koshansky and Jeff Salazar is lack of failure at the big league level. We'll see how Dickerson adjusts to AA next year. Moss also has quotes from Asheville manager Joe Mikulik on Tyler Anderson's solid start to the season.

Sources -- Catcher Miguel Montero, Arizona Diamondbacks agree to $60 million extension - ESPN
At least the Rockies will have some time to finally figure out how to pitch to him.