{ 0 comments }
It's been a slow offseason so far. Apologies for the slowness in getting the 2009 review done.
One of the main items of interest so far from the Rockies' perspective is that the team declined Yorvit Torrealba's 2010 option. The Rockies may still bring Torrealba back, but the team evidently didn't want to pay the $4 million that Yorvit was owed on the option. That signals that the team at least has some confidence in Chris Iannetta going forward; the Rockies aren't so completely spooked by his weak second half that they're willing to pay Torrealba more than he's worth. And, since they're now exposing Torrealba to free agency, it also means that they're willing to live with Paul Phillips or his ilk as a backup catcher. The two points I've made concerning Torrealba is that, first, Torrealba's unlikely to hit .290 again; more than likely, he'll experience regression to the mean in 2010 and deliver his usual .250 season -- and considering his power seems to have declined, that's not a good thing. Second, the Rockies might get similar production from somebody like Phillips playing roughly once a week. Iannetta still has a chance to be a good player, so it's good to see the Rockies not pressing the panic button and overpaying Torrealba.
The more important things are just rumors at this point: what will the Rockies do with Garrett Atkins and Brad Hawpe? In Atkins's case, the Rockies can expect to get better production out of Ian Stewart at a fraction of the cost, so there's little need to bring Atkins back. As for Hawpe, the Rockies probably can't expect equal production out of Seth Smith (who, we would assume, would get more playing time should Hawpe be traded.) But they shouldn't expect that big of a dropoff. Players of Hawpe's type (good hitter, bad glove, slow on the basepaths) usually don't have that great of a shelf life, and it's not unreasonable to think Hawpe's second-half slowdown isn't the start of a trend. He's an old-player skills guy who's now hit 30. And, personally, I think the Rockies can live with an outfield of Gonzalez, Smith, and Fowler -- much like they were able to live with an outfield of Smith, Fowler, and Hawpe (and later Gonzalez) after Holliday was traded.
Continuing along with our review of the Rockies players in 2009, we get to the left side of the infield today.
Troy Tulowitzki: Tulo had an MVP-caliber season in 2009, though he obviously won't be so honored with the season that Albert Pujols had. Actually, from June on, he may well have been the best player in baseball, though until that time he was struggling.
Tulowitzki, through May 31: .226/.319/.396, 5 HR, 16 RBI
Tulowitzki, June 1 on: .325/.402/.616, 27 HR, 76 RBI
That latter line would be a strong line for an entire season, much less four months. Seriously, Tulo homered about every 14 at bats from June on, drew walks, and provided his usual excellent defense; the slow start dragged down his season stats, but overall it was a strong year. The one real quibble with Tulo is that he seems to struggle in clutch situations: he had just a .707 OPS with 2 outs and runners in scoring position; this is also evidenced by the fact that he had just 92 RBI despite 32 homers while hitting (mostly) in the middle of the order. 21 of his 32 homers were solo shots. But that's nitpicking; the fact is that the Rockies have an excellent shortstop for several years to come. Now, if he could just get rolling in April instead of June... Grade: A.
Garrett Atkins: Uhhh... yeah. The regression in Atkins' skills has been terrible: from 2006 to 2009, he's gone from getting MVP votes, to borderline All-Star, to league average, to awful. .226/.308/.342 would be bad even for a top-notch defensive catcher or shortstop, much less a third baseman whose one real major league skill is his ability to hit. There's just no way to slice this: Atkins isn't a major leaguer with this level of production, and he needs to show some real improvement in spring training if he doesn't want to ride the shuttle to AAA in 2010. With Ian Stewart in the fold, the Rockies will probably cut bait with Atkins.
And again, I ask... why was Jeff Baker traded? Grade: D-.
Ian Stewart: A bad May holds down Stewart's overall stats, but there's no denying that Stewart has more than earned a starting job entering 2010. The average sucked, but Stewart's bad luck on balls in play (.270 BABIP, including .237 at Coors) had something to do with that. Like Iannetta, I think Stewart is a guy who swings for the fences too often (also like Iannetta, he does a good job of it) and while that results in a considerable number of home runs, it also results in a considerable number of strikeouts and flyouts. Stewart could be a more effective hitter if he learned to accept a few line-drive singles and doubles rather than trying to pull everything.
But on the whole, he's an effective hitter, and a better defensive third baseman than Atkins. While he'll probably never be a .300 hitter, he could hit around .250-.260 and still be a very good piece due to his power. Extrapolated out to 600 AB, Stewart would have hit 35 homers this season, so it's not a stretch for him to develop into a 40-homer hitter. Grade: B.
That's all for today. We'll move on to the outfield next.
{ 0 comments }
It's been a busy couple of weeks, which explains all the delays in our offseason coverage. Plus, with the World Series going on (even without the Rockies), can we really say it's the offseason yet?
Back to the player reviews.
Todd Helton: Todd's .325/.416/.489 line shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone. It's about in line with what he did the last time he played a full season (2007), and it's what he is still capable of doing when healthy. That last phrase -- "when healthy" -- is the key, because Todd wasn't close to healthy in 2008. He missed nearly half the season, and even when he played, he wasn't the same player, posting the worst OPS of his distinguished career.
With that in mind, the Rockies had initially planned to ease Helton back, giving him more days off than normal and monitoring his playing time. As it turns out, though, there was no need for that, as Todd had a great spring and then played in 151 games, making a total of 645 plate appearances. While his power isn't what it used to be, this isn't exactly a recent development; he hasn't had a 30-homer season since 2004 (and hasn't even cracked 20 since 2005.) But his batting average and exceptional ability to draw walks make him very valuable, and his health was a big reason why the Rockies improved so much from 2008 to 2009. And good thing, too, because an unhealthy Todd would have meant more appearances by Garrett Atkins, who had a terrible year. Grade: A-.
Clint Barmes: What can be said about Barmes? The Rockies like his power and glove at second base, and there's a lot to be said about the former: he hit a career-high 23 homers in 2009. As for the glove, while he's above average at second, he's not great.
And then there's that whole OBP thing. Barmes doesn't draw walks, which means that when his average sucks (which it did this year), he doesn't get on base much. It weighed down his OPS enough that it was below the league average even for second basemen. I hesitate to wonder if the Rockies have something of a fantasy team mentality when it comes to Barmes: he's a second baseman who hits homers! Of course, with those homers comes a low average and OBP, and Barmes gets caught stealing a lot more than he should. And the other worry is that his power outburst isn't really sustainable: prior to 2009, he'd hit 30 homers in roughly two full seasons' worth of at bats. Is it worth a long-term contract to have a second baseman hitting around .250 with a sub-300 OBP, just because he's knocking fifteen homers a year? Grade: C-.
Omar Quintanilla: It's hard to look at Quintanilla's 2009 line and think that this was a guy who was on the active roster all season. Yes, Quintanilla managed just 69 plate appearances all year, just eight more than Eric Young got in roughly a month with the team -- and eight fewer than Ubaldo Jimenez got starting every fifth day. It didn't help Quintanilla's cause that he was actually a worse hitter than Jimenez, but it's painful to wonder how good the Rockies could have been if they hadn't wasted a roster spot on Quintanilla all year. Seriously, Jeff Baker (.305/.362/.448 with the Cubs, as a semi-regular starter) needed to go so that the Rockies could carry Quintanilla's glove on the roster? As I've said before, the Rockies, with two good gloves up the middle who can also hit (Tulowitzki, definitely; Barmes, somewhat), don't really have a lot of use for a good glove/no hit infielder off the bench. Jim Tracy briefly said that he would be getting more playing time for Quintanilla, but quickly thought better of that. Grade: Incomplete.
Jason Giambi: Like, how much mileage the Rockies got from Giambi's bat late in the season. While Giambi only made 31 plate appearances, all in September, he managed to get 11 RBI -- nine more than Quintanilla. While the Rockies realistically could not have had Giambi to start the year -- Giambi was going to start, and probably at DH since he can't really play the field any more -- what he did for the team underscores the mistake the team made in carrying Quintanilla all year. Somebody like Baker could have done this just as well. Grade: A.
{ 0 comments }
With over a week to reflect on the 2009 season and the quicker-than-expected playoff exit, it's now time to go on with the review of the season.
My player grades, as always, are a reflection not just of the player's performance during the season but also the expectations that the Rockies had for that player. I'm not going to hold Omar Quintanilla to the same standard that I hold Troy Tulowitzki, for example. A guy who was expected to be a key player, but wound up disappointing, is going to be graded more harshly than a guy who was expected to be a bit part and performed as such.
In addition, I'm looking to the future (what else is there to do in the offseason?) The grades themselves are a mere reflection of how the player performed in 2009, but I'm also interested in what to expect from the player going forward: can he improve on his performance this season? Is he likely to regress next year?
That gives a nice lead-in to the Rockies' two-headed catching tandem of 2009.
Yorvit Torrealba: The Rockies entered the season paying a lot of money to a backup catcher. And, in fact, Torrealba essentially was a backup catcher for most of the season, as he appeared in 64 games (61 as a starter) and made 242 plate appearances. That's more than a typical backup catcher would get, to be sure, but they were about in line with his 2008, when he began the year as the starter but ceded more and more playing time to Chris Iannetta as the season went on.
In 2009, Torrealba had the complete opposite track. He began the season as the backup, making just six starts in April. Around midseason, he had to deal with an ugly situation that involved his wife and kids in Venezuela. As the season went on, though, Torrealba got more and more playing time, to the point that he was a full-time starter in September (he started 24 games in September and October.) A lot of that had to do with Chris Iannetta's disappointing season, but Torrealba performed pretty well himself: he hit .322/.373/.392 in the second half, after hitting .225/.309/.352 in the first. His performance was such that he started all four games in the NLDS, with Iannetta not recording a single plate appearance.
Even in his supposedly excellent second half (and Iannetta's terrible one), though, Torrealba actually posted a lower OPS than Iannetta. Torrealba's second-half performance had a lot to do with BABIP: on the season, it was .347, with a whopping .390 in the second half. Torrealba's line drive percentage also spiked to 22.5%.
While Torrealba must be commended for a fine year, the Rockies should not make the same mistake that they did after 2007: responding to a disappointing season by Iannetta by signing Torrealba for a lot more money than he should be making. Of course, in 2007, Torrealba wasn't really that good, but did save the Rockies when Iannetta came out early in the season and stunk it up. This time around, Torrealba provided a good average, but with precious little power. And it would be a severe mistake to think that a 31-year-old catcher having a season that was much better than his established level of performance is suddenly a budding star. He's not. (And the dropoff in power, despite the higher batting average, means that Torrealba will be pretty much useless at the plate if his average drops back down to its usual .250ish level.) Grade: B.
Chris Iannetta: It sometimes seems as if whomever the Rockies appoint as their starting catcher at the beginning of the season disappoints: Iannetta in 2007 and 2009, Torrealba in 2008, Danny Ardoin in 2006 (seriously, what were they thinking?), JD Closser in 2005 (wow, he was a disappointment.) Iannetta entered 2009 as the starter, and while his power numbers are good -- hard to complain about a .232 ISO power and 16 homers in roughly half a season's worth of plate appearances -- his average stunk. Seriously, even with his proclivity for drawing walks and his ability to hit the ball a long way, it's hard to write glowing remarks about a guy who hit .228 on the season.
Beyond the initial numbers, though, where Torrealba benefited from an unusually high BABIP, Iannetta's was ridiculously low. .253, to be exact. His plate discipline numbers were little changed from 2008. On the other hand, his line drive and ground ball rates were way down, while his fly ball percentage was way up. That suggests that, perhaps, Iannetta was trying to swing for the fences too much.
I really think that, assuming Iannetta and Torrealba are both .250-.260ish hitters, that Iannetta is a more valuable player. Even when Iannetta is hitting .228 and Torrealba is hitting .290, that point is debatable -- seriously, go check out some of the debates the commenters at Purple Row have been having about that. Assuming that the Rockies bring back Torrealba, Torrealba probably will enter 2010 as the starting catcher. But I would not be shocked at all if Iannetta has a bounce-back year and winds up as the starter by midseason.
Of course, if he doesn't, Michael McKenry looks good down on the farm. Grade: C-.
{ 0 comments }
While we're still waiting for the sting of the NLDS loss to go away, we're going to take a look back at the 2009 season, starting with the annual list of the top 10 Rockies games of the year.
10. April 6: Diamondbacks 9, Rockies 8. What was supposed to be a pitchers' duel between Aaron Cook and Brandon Webb to kick off 2009 never materialized; instead, the offenses were out in force in a slugfest. The Rockies put eight runs on the board, but only had eight hits and got solo homers from Troy Tulowitzki, Chris Iannetta, and Seth Smith. Neither starting pitcher would make it past the fourth inning. Unfortunately for the Rockies, this one kind of set the tone for the early part of the season, as the Rockies would get inconsistent offense and so-so (at best) pitching for much of April and May. The Diamondbacks, though, wound up being more damaged by this game; this was the only start Webb would make all season.
9. October 1: Rockies 9, Brewers 2. This game clinched a playoff berth for the Rockies. So why is it only number nine on the list? The game was basically over by the third inning, when the Rockies pushed four runs across against Brewers starter Manny Parra to take a 5-0 lead.
8. May 29: Rockies 3, Padres 0. The Padres weren't going anywhere, but before this game, the Rockies weren't, either. This was Jim Tracy's first game as manager, and it saw the Rockies win behind eight shutout innings by Jason Marquis, the one consistently above-average starting pitcher the Rockies had in the first half.
7. September 25: Rockies 2, Cardinals 1. The wild card wound up not being that close in the end, but there was a point with about a week left in the season when the Rockies needed every win they could get to hold off the hard-charging Braves, who were threatening to pull a Rockies-style September 2007 on the Rockies themselves. Getting a win over the Cardinals and Chris Carpenter certainly helped. What also helped was to see a return of the old Aaron Cook: in five shutout innings, Cook got fourteen grounders in his first start in over a month.
6. May 3: Giants 1, Rockies 0, 10 innings. The Rockies clearly weren't scrambling to fulfill any birthday wishes of mine, as "getting shut down by Barry Zito" was nowhere near the top of that list. But more importantly than that, Jason Hammel shut down the Giants in this one as well. I had had some skepticism about Hammel as a starter after his first start, but this game did quite a bit to calm that skepticism and helped establish Hammel as a legit big-league starter. Of course, it also indicated another trend, that of Hammel being a much better pitcher on the road than in Colorado.
5. June 5: Rockies 11, Cardinals 4. At this point, the Rockies weren't serious contenders for anything, but this game was important for a couple of reasons. First, the Rockies showed that they could compete with the cream of the National League, on a night when Adam Wainwright was starting (to be fair, the Rockies did almost all their damage against the Cards bullpen.) Second, this was Jorge de la Rosa's first win of the season. After scuffling through April and May, Jorge really turned things around afterwards. I have to think that shutting down the Cards did a lot to help his confidence.
4. August 25: Rockies 5, Dodgers 4, 10 innings. The Rockies never came closer to the division lead than they did after this win, at which point they sat two back of the Dodgers in the West. Unfortunately, a five-game losing streak torpedoed thoughts of overtaking the Dodgers. This game also was the first time anyone really questioned Jim Tracy's managerial decisions; Tracy elected to pitch to Manny Ramirez with two outs and a runner on third in the ninth inning of a one-run game. Huh?
3. September 27: Rockies 4, Cardinals 3. Fortunately, Tracy learned his lesson on that one. Sure, Albert Pujols represented the go-ahead run in the ninth inning, but with one out and a runner on second, Tracy decided he'd rather take his chances with Ryan Ludwick. Of course, the Rockies may not have won were it not for Clint Barmes' game-saving catch. Or was it a catch?
2. September 16: Rockies 4, Giants 3. A Giants win in this game would have put them a game and a half back in the wild card, and the Rockies came into this one having lost four in a row. You could almost smell the September collapse coming, but instead, Jorge de la Rosa shut out the Giants for eight innings, striking out nine. This win effectively ended the threat from the Giants; this started a 3-7 stretch for the Giants that they never recovered from.
1. July 12: Rockies 8, Braves 7. This one ended up not mattering as much as I thought it would, since the Braves finished a few games back. But for sheer entertainment, you couldn't match the last game before the All-Star Break. Jason Hammel and Jorge de la Rosa (making his lone bullpen appearance of the season) let the Braves get out to a 7-3 lead, but some fielding blunders and a Seth Smith homer helped the Rockies claw back. It was fitting that All-Star Brad Hawpe gave the Rockies a walk-off win in the ninth.
{ 0 comments }
I was all ready to write about the eighth-inning comeback, the clutch hits from Jason Giambi and Yorvit Torrealba, the leap by Dexter Fowler, and take back every bad thing I've ever said about Torrealba.
And then, just like that, the season was over.
Huston Street, so effective all season, could not get the job done two straight nights in the postseason, first giving up a run in a tie game on Sunday night, then coming back less than 24 hours later and blowing a two-run lead that sent the Rockies out of the playoffs earlier than we all had hoped.
The offseason now begins with a bitter taste in the mouths of Rockies fans. Unlike 2007, when many Rockies fans were understandably skeptical about the staying power of the team given the previous 11-year playoff drought, fans can look forward to at least a couple more years of good baseball in Colorado, as the team retains a young offensive core and should return its starting rotation (sans Jason Marquis) virtually intact heading into 2010. Of course, you could have said the same thing entering 2008, when Matt Holliday and Troy Tulowitzki were supposed to be the building blocks for a couple of seasons as a contender. That did not happen, as Tulowitzki had a sophomore slump and several supporting players fell off a bit that season, but now few can deny that the Rockies have a strong core of young players returning.
For now, I am reaching for the scotch, but we will be back to review one of the best seasons in Rockies history.
{ 0 comments }
Tonight showed just why the Rockies are missing Jorge de la Rosa so much in this series.
It\\\'s not so much that the dropoff from de la Rosa to Marquis or Hammel is that great; it\\\'s the dropoff from Marquis or Hammel to Matt Belisle that\\\'s the bigger concern. Belisle pitched a scoreless frame when called on tonight, but \\\"scoreless frame\\\" is the key word. Ideally, when your starter exits the game in the fourth inning, you\\\'d like your long man to be able to give you three or four innings, particularly when the game isn\\\'t out of reach. It\\\'s not that big of a deal if you can\\\'t play matchups in the late innings when it\\\'s 9-2, but in a game that see-sawed back and forth into the late innings, the Rockies were handicapped by having to go through several relievers early.
The difference in the two bullpens was clear. Neither Hammel nor J.A. Happ made it out of the fourth inning, but the Phils had Joe Blanton in the bullpen to give them 2.2 innings; the Rockies got through the next two innings with Belisle, Joe Beimel, and Jose Contreras. That handicapped the Rockies in the late innings; it would have been nice to have had Beimel available to pitch to Ryan Howard with runners at the corners in the ninth, but Tracy needlessly went to Beimel to get Howard in the fifth inning: not a point in the game where you want to be using a one-out specialist. Sure, it was a tie game, but it was not difficult to foresee that the Rockies might have wanted Beimel around to face Utley and Howard in the late innings.
And in all of this, where exactly was Jason Marquis? Back to the original point, the postponement of Game 3 meant that the Rockies will have Ubaldo Jimenez on regular rest in Game 4, and should have Aaron Cook available to pitch Game 5. Was Tracy keeping Marquis available in case the game went fifteen innings? The Rockies could have had Marquis come on in the fourth when Hammel wasn\\\'t getting it done, and gotten several innings out of him. (Whether those would have been well-pitched innings is debatable, though the Rockies were at least as likely to get a good performance from Marquis as they were Belisle.)
Anyway, it\\\'s starting to appear as if some of the luster is coming off Tracy after his stellar performance as manager in the regular season. Tracy made some pretty questionable moves in tonight\\\'s game (not to harp on it, but batting Torrealba fifth?) and those might have made the difference in the game. Notable in their absences are Chris Iannetta (zero plate appearances in this series), Seth Smith (two plate appearances), Ian Stewart (two plate appearances), and Brad Hawpe (four plate appearances.) While Stewart struggles against lefties, Smith and Hawpe aren\\\'t all that bad, and Iannetta kills them. And it\\\'s not as if Atkins and Spilborghs kill lefties (noted that Atkins had a couple of big hits tonight); in fact, Smith and Hawpe both had a better OPS against lefties this season than Spilborghs did.
{ 0 comments }
As I write this, Yorvit Torrealba just looked at strike three from Ryan Madson.
Jim Tracy\'s decision to bat Torrealba fifth tonight is baffling. While Torrealba had been having a good season up until tonight, he\'s still Yorvit Torrealba. This is a player who had a .380 SLG and hit two homers all season, but apparently one big hit on Thursday was enough to convince Tracy to bat him in the middle of the order? And he hasn\'t even hit lefties well this season. Batting, say, Chris Iannetta (who has an OPS over .900 against lefties this season, albeit in a somewhat limited sample) in the fifth spot against a left-handed starter would at least be defensible, though I personally wouldn\'t do it. Batting Torrealba there -- well, if the Rockies had deployed someone else there tonight, the Rockies might be winning right now.
On a warmer night, Tulowitzki\'s sac fly to score Gonzalez from third in the seventh inning probably would have left the park. The Rockies have been able to weather a poor outing (really, a poor fourth inning) by Jason Hammel tonight, and just need to push across another run to go up 2-1.
{ 0 comments }
The Rockies knew going into the NLDS that they would need to win at least one game in Philadelphia. Mission accomplished.
Aaron Cook wasn't great, but he was good enough on a day when the offense came out strong after a poor performance in Game 1. Yorvit Torrealba was the hero, striking for a two-run homer in the fourth inning off Cole Hamels. Aside from that, the Rockies got two sac flies from Dexter Fowler. It wasn't a great performance by the offense -- the Rockies only had nine hits on the day -- but the Rockies did a great job of hitting in key spots, as the team didn't leave very many runners in scoring position.
Now the series heads back to Denver, and with the win in Game 2, the Rockies can now win the series with a couple of wins at Coors Fields, where they were 51-30 in the regular season. Jason Hammel will start Saturday; the Rockies haven't officially announced a starter for Game 4, but odds are it will be Jason Marquis, who pitched in relief on Wednesday. It's doubtful the Rockies would bring Ubaldo Jimenez back on short rest to pitch Game 4, instead holding him back in case he's needed to start a Game 5 in Philly.
Aaron Cook wasn't great, but he was good enough on a day when the offense came out strong after a poor performance in Game 1. Yorvit Torrealba was the hero, striking for a two-run homer in the fourth inning off Cole Hamels. Aside from that, the Rockies got two sac flies from Dexter Fowler. It wasn't a great performance by the offense -- the Rockies only had nine hits on the day -- but the Rockies did a great job of hitting in key spots, as the team didn't leave very many runners in scoring position.
Now the series heads back to Denver, and with the win in Game 2, the Rockies can now win the series with a couple of wins at Coors Fields, where they were 51-30 in the regular season. Jason Hammel will start Saturday; the Rockies haven't officially announced a starter for Game 4, but odds are it will be Jason Marquis, who pitched in relief on Wednesday. It's doubtful the Rockies would bring Ubaldo Jimenez back on short rest to pitch Game 4, instead holding him back in case he's needed to start a Game 5 in Philly.
{ 0 comments }
So, it's somewhat unexpected that today's game will not be the last Rockies game until spring training opens in March.
The preseason magazines were their usual bearish selves regarding the 2009 Rockies; after all, there was supposed to be no way that the Rockies could replace Matt Holliday's offensive production off a team that was only 74-88 in 2008. Or that they could weather a season-long injury to Jeff Francis, the ace of the 2007 team.
Okay, so I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't that bullish on this year's Rockies team entering the season. I thought this was a team that would finish around .500, maybe being an 85-win team with a few good breaks. While a few things happened that we all really should have expected -- Troy Tulowitzki bouncing back to hit .297 with 32 homers after taking a step back in 2008, for one -- there were a few elements of this team that nobody could have foreseen back in March. Jason Marquis, obtained in the offseason for Luis Vizcaino, being an All-Star and a 15-game winner? That was pretty unexpected; Marquis won 15 in 2004, but that was on a team that won 105 games. Todd Helton hitting .325 should be expected, but it was pretty unexpected that Helton played in 151 games and made over 600 plate appearances. Carlos Gonzalez looked in 2008 like he would be a prospect bust; in 2009, he improved his plate discipline and had an .878 OPS. Jorge de la Rosa finally had the season that the Rockies had long hoped he would, and that the Diamondbacks, Brewers, and Royals all had given up on him ever achieving. Jason Giambi looked done in Oakland, then came to the Rockies in September and had a 1.219 OPS, largely in key at bats in the stretch run. Ubaldo Jimenez improved his command to the point where he can reasonably be called an ace. In the rest of the division, nobody could have predicted that Brandon Webb's Opening Day start would be his only one of the season; the Diamondbacks were widely expected to challenge for the division title.
Entering the season, I openly wondered whether the Rockies' 2008 season was a brief step back for an organization that was on the upswing, or whether 2007 was a one-year blip for an otherwise middling organization. Well, we now have a pretty clear answer for that. While the Monforts still don't seem too keen on spending money, Dan O'Dowd has proved himself to be a very capable GM over the last few years. It's hard to think of a move he's made that has completely blown up; in fact, his track record over the last couple of years has been excellent. O'Dowd got great value back in the Holliday trade, getting a lock-down closer and a young outfielder with tons of potential who's actually living up to that potential. Going back a couple of years, the Jason Jennings trade netted the Rockies Jason Hirsh and Willy Taveras; though neither is with the Rockies any more, both played key roles on the 2007 team. And he's really done well with the under-the-radar moves. Picking up Marquis for Luis Vizcaino was a stroke of genius; the pickups of Jason Hammel and Rafael Betancourt also worked out well. Back in 2006, O'Dowd picked up Kaz Matsui for chump change. Initially, I thought O'Dowd was at best a middling GM, but given what he's had to work with, he's done an excellent job of putting a winning team on the field, and must be commended -- more than anybody else -- for the Rockies' two playoff appearances in the last three years.
The preseason magazines were their usual bearish selves regarding the 2009 Rockies; after all, there was supposed to be no way that the Rockies could replace Matt Holliday's offensive production off a team that was only 74-88 in 2008. Or that they could weather a season-long injury to Jeff Francis, the ace of the 2007 team.
Okay, so I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't that bullish on this year's Rockies team entering the season. I thought this was a team that would finish around .500, maybe being an 85-win team with a few good breaks. While a few things happened that we all really should have expected -- Troy Tulowitzki bouncing back to hit .297 with 32 homers after taking a step back in 2008, for one -- there were a few elements of this team that nobody could have foreseen back in March. Jason Marquis, obtained in the offseason for Luis Vizcaino, being an All-Star and a 15-game winner? That was pretty unexpected; Marquis won 15 in 2004, but that was on a team that won 105 games. Todd Helton hitting .325 should be expected, but it was pretty unexpected that Helton played in 151 games and made over 600 plate appearances. Carlos Gonzalez looked in 2008 like he would be a prospect bust; in 2009, he improved his plate discipline and had an .878 OPS. Jorge de la Rosa finally had the season that the Rockies had long hoped he would, and that the Diamondbacks, Brewers, and Royals all had given up on him ever achieving. Jason Giambi looked done in Oakland, then came to the Rockies in September and had a 1.219 OPS, largely in key at bats in the stretch run. Ubaldo Jimenez improved his command to the point where he can reasonably be called an ace. In the rest of the division, nobody could have predicted that Brandon Webb's Opening Day start would be his only one of the season; the Diamondbacks were widely expected to challenge for the division title.
Entering the season, I openly wondered whether the Rockies' 2008 season was a brief step back for an organization that was on the upswing, or whether 2007 was a one-year blip for an otherwise middling organization. Well, we now have a pretty clear answer for that. While the Monforts still don't seem too keen on spending money, Dan O'Dowd has proved himself to be a very capable GM over the last few years. It's hard to think of a move he's made that has completely blown up; in fact, his track record over the last couple of years has been excellent. O'Dowd got great value back in the Holliday trade, getting a lock-down closer and a young outfielder with tons of potential who's actually living up to that potential. Going back a couple of years, the Jason Jennings trade netted the Rockies Jason Hirsh and Willy Taveras; though neither is with the Rockies any more, both played key roles on the 2007 team. And he's really done well with the under-the-radar moves. Picking up Marquis for Luis Vizcaino was a stroke of genius; the pickups of Jason Hammel and Rafael Betancourt also worked out well. Back in 2006, O'Dowd picked up Kaz Matsui for chump change. Initially, I thought O'Dowd was at best a middling GM, but given what he's had to work with, he's done an excellent job of putting a winning team on the field, and must be commended -- more than anybody else -- for the Rockies' two playoff appearances in the last three years.
{ 0 comments }
