As the Rockies shift their focus towards the offseason, Kyle Newman of The Denver Post writes that the club is looking to “make up ground” regarding its pitching development and analytics department. While Newman notes strides the club has made recently in those departments, the news isn’t entirely good.
On the pitching side of things, the club has been successful in looking to diversify its stockpile of arms in the minor leagues rather than simply focusing on sinker-slider pitches as they have previously. That being said, one prospect tells Newman that the changes have left the club’s planning for the pitchers they draft as unfocused. What’s more, the rash of injuries the Rockies suffered in the big league rotation this year (including Tommy John surgery for rotation stalwarts Antonio Senzatela and German Marquez) exposed the club’s lack of upper-level pitching depth, a situation that has forced the club to aggressively target pitching help not only in the last two drafts but also at the trade deadline this year.
Looking at the club’s analytics department, while the organization is in the midst of constructing what Newman describes as an analytics-specific building the Rockies call “the Lab”, Newman points out that most organizations around the major leagues already have their own version of such a building. That leaves the project as little more than playing catch-up relative to other organizations. Another example of the Rockies working to merely catch up to the competition is seen in their analytics staff. While prospects in the organization tell Newman that there’s a newfound emphasis on providing the players with digestible data thanks to each level of the organization sporting an analytics coordinator who travels with the team, the Rockies still employ just 11 full-time analysts total, tied for the second-fewest in the majors.
Meanwhile, in a Q&A with the organization’s blog, Rockies GM Bill Schmidt discussed the club’s future and cited the club’s aggressive acquisition of pitching talent as a reason for optimism regarding the club’s future. “We’re trying to make ourselves better and improve our talent base, and along the way, hopefully some of those guys are going to help us,” Schmidt said, “I think we’ve added 38 pitchers over the last two years through trades, the draft and international signings. You would like to think that even if a third of those guys hit, it’s going to help us.”
When asked about organization goals for the Rockies headed into the offseason, Schmidt kept things relatively vague, acknowledging that the club is “not where we need to be by any means” but simply pointing to a need to add depth to the big league roster rather than naming specific areas the club is looking to improve headed into the offseason.
More from the NL West…
- In losing director of pitching Brian Bannister to the White Sox as Chicago reworks its front office, the Giants have suffered a hefty loss to their pitching infrastructure. Evan Webeck of The Mercury News recently wrote about Bannister’s departure, noting that pitchers in the organization such as righty John Brebbia and veteran starter Alex Cobb were shocked to see the club let Bannister go, calling him a “miracle worker.” Webeck notes that the club seemingly plans to fill Bannister’s role by giving increased responsibility to other members of the club’s pitching infrastructure, with pitching coach Andrew Bailey and assistant pitching coach J.P. Martinez both mentioned as key pitching minds who remain with the organization.
- The Dodgers have utilized platoons aggressively to great success in their outfield this year, and perhaps no player embodies that success better than Jason Heyward. Heyward’s .270/.343/.481 slash line in 365 plate appearances this season is his best offensive performance since the shortened 2020 campaign, and his best since his rookie season back in 2010 over the course of a full season. That offensive surge is thanks to LA’s focus on optimizing his matchups in order to minimize his at-bats against left-handed pitchers. As a result, Heyward has taken just 27 plate appearances against lefties all season, allowing his career .268/.353/.435 slash line against righties to shine through. As noted by Jack Harris of the LA Times, the mutual appreciation between Heyward and the Dodgers organization lays the groundwork for a possible reunion in 2024 even as Heyward is slated to return to free agency come November. For Heyward’s part, he says it would be “an honor” to be asked to return to the team next season.
Hicks and Heyward. Both UFA bound in 2024. Looks like Jason would like to stay right there in LA. Hope Aaron feels the same about Baltimore.
I’ll bet the Cubs wish they’d known.. Heyward plays better for LESS money.
Nope. We’re still paying him. Good Guy – glad he’s doing well for your team.
Heyward seems like a new man. Hicks’s performance once he left the Yankees….well, let’s just say
The best thing Colorado can do for it’s pitchers is move to Salt Lake City. Good luck building a top rotation in Albuquerque and Denver. The drastic change from the sea-level NL west parks to Denver is havoc on their hitters hot streaks too. They could have Seattle and Tampa’s pitchers and they’d still probably struggle to prevent runs
SLC is 4,265 feet above sea level so
That’s around 80% of the elevation in Denver. It’ll be hard for the Rockies to improve 20% in most other areas. Seems like an improvement worth exploring to me. Or Colorado needs to turn the humidors up.
Maybe they meant Death Valley?
If COL has the second fewest analysts, who has the fewest, and likely even more catching up to do?
Look at the worst records over the past 2 seasons. Pick one of the two worst.
Isn’t that a lot of teams excuse. The ball doesn’t carry so the hr hitters fly out or the wind turns curve balls flat. Cubs overcame the pitching and hr aspect. Seems like to just play the run scoring field at home in Colorado and pitch better on the road.
Forget the analytics, Rockies. How about exercising some baseball common sense in keeping and acquiring players? I’ve never seen so many stupid player decisions in 50 years of following baseball.
Wait another ten years. After 60 years you’ll just see things differently.lol
Analytics drive good player personnel decisions. See the team mentioned in this article about platooning. They have the latest analytics staff.
Fire KRAPLER and Farhan. Hire Ron Wotus as manager and Ned Colletti as President of baseball operations
I think you mean Pokey as POBO and Colletti as his “token toupeed talker.”
Krapler? Did you come up with that yourself? Such brilliant comedy, you should have your own Netflix special.
Yeah, hire two people the game has entirely passed up, brilliant.
What’s the point of hiring Bannister when he’s got no pitchers to work with? Dumpster pitchers Urena? Deivi Garcia? Toussaint? Patino? Unless the Sox get some legitimate pitchers to go along with Cease and stop relying on DFAs, Bannister’s biggest achievement will be sitting at his desk seeing how long a chain he can make with paperclips.
>What’s the point of hiring Bannister
> when he’s got no pitchers to work with?
A good pitching coach can turn the nobodys into somebodys. And that is the point in hiring him—getting more out of your pitchers than you or they thought was possible.
It doesn’t matter how many pitchers he has to work with. His job will be to tear down and rebuild, so they will just be traded anyway.
Are you advocating not hiring the best coach available, but instead opting for some crappy coach because the team is lacking talent?
The Rays claim DFAs all the time and turn them into studs.
Honestly, the idea of using Jason Heyward in a platoon capacity as some sort of revelation feels laughable. Not only is this a very common thing to do for borderline MLB LHH, but he played this exact same role in the Cubs organization the past few years and did absolutely terrible.
That being said, Heyward and the Dodgers coaching staff deserve a lot of credit for turning his career around after an extremely disappointing stint in Chicago. I hope he continues to rake as a veteran part-time player after a surprisingly uneven career.
For several recent years with the Cubs Heyward’s splits were basically 2:1 against RHP:LHP, so while it was quite a bit more time against righties he still saw a lot of at bats against lefties, compared to what the dodgers did this season was have it be maybe 10% of his ABs. That’s still a pretty dramatic difference. I agree that if should be obvious but wasn’t obvious enough for Chicago.
Well, the thing with that is he was already taking 80% of his ABs vs. RHP in the final 3 years of his stint, and he was also fairly unsuccessful doing so. Perhaps being on the wrong side of the platoon a bit less often helped him out, but I’d imagine with that dramatic of an improvement more was going on.
That being said, I agree with you that the Cubs could’ve gotten more value out of him platooning him more aggressively and earlier in his career though. Even in his prime years he had some difficulty with lefties and it should’ve been evident after a year or two that he wouldn’t be successful as a full time guy even with solid defense. Perhaps they didn’t have a platoon partner they liked for him or they were afraid to bench their shiny expensive star because of the potential sunk cost.
It helps having lineup protection and a very deep bench. Being able to be shielded from even more inopportune matchups will help his performance, of course.
The difference was the cubs are paying him $20+ million a year. That’s why he didn’t platoon as heavily in Chicago.
He’s also talked about some mechanical tweaks that he’s done that he claims to have helped as well. I’m not sure its all about limiting his at-bats against righties but instead its probably a combination of the two.
Heyward- seems familiar- wasn’t he a Cub at one point? Wonder what the going rate is for a journeyman – nice to see him doing well maybe he’ll scrape up a guaranteed contract someplace
Jeff clearly got over Adam Duvall hitting his cardboard dog with a HR.
instagram.com/p/CDFFwGxhtUC/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA…
Oh the Rockies. Realized they are focusing on next season about 7 months too late. Shame too, cause Coors Field is a fun place to watch a game.
Four seam fastballs and sliders in Denver. The altitude KILLS spin rates all those sinkers tend to also add gap hits in the huge OF.
It’s incredibly hard to pitch at elevation with such little margin for error. Thing is a sinker can’t be the dominant pitch. It has to be used to offset the four seamer.
I was a marginal part of building the last competitive staff they had. With the Rockies it’s more their inability to stick to any kind of process. It confuses their staff from Denver all the way down to the AZ complex.
I’m confused by your post. A sinker is a fastball, albeit a two-seamer, whereas a slider is a breaking ball more dependent on spin than the sinker.
The sinker is thrown differently than a fastball. I think. Someone answer this for us, please?
No it’s not. For a sinker, or 2-seamer, the grip, and how it’s thrown, is the same as a 4-seamer, but the ball is rotated in the grip 90 degrees. A 4-seam has equal number of seams and smooth areas in the direction of the spin (seam-seam smooth, seam-seam smooth). The 2 seamer does not (seam-seam smooth smooth smooth).
Because of the above post, I have done some research on the slider. and while the spin rate is similar to a sinker, it is less reliant on spin rate than other pitches. The slider uses something called gyro-spin, which apparently has less influence on movement. that would explain why sliders are effective at altitude, but I’m still confused about why the sinker wouldn’t be.
I think I discovered the problem. Schmidt thinks 30% of those 38 pitchers in their minor league system will become contributing major players.
Ummmmn Schmitty, only 17% of top 100 prospects do that.
I’m glad someone fact-checked that because not only was the rationale poor (we acquired 38 pitchers in the recent years so obviously some will turn out even though we’ve only developed a few good ones over the past decade!) but I thought it was crazy for him to think he would suddenly have an entire staff of legit contributors on his hands.
Jean Matrac-
It’s spin DIRECTION effected. The oxygen levels of the Denver air place different pressures in different sides of the ball. Four seamers and sliders will mitigate the effect. There’s some science on it. I’d assume it’s Google available. It’s downward break that gets effected. 4 seamer and slider loses less at elevation.
Sinkers CAN be effective…the two seamer. Ubaldo Jimenez had an amazing one. It’s just that the altitude neutralizes marginal ones. All sinkers aren’t equal. It’s that they have broad built ON sinkers.
Thanks, your post got me to do some Google searching, and I learned something. Agreed that not all sinkers are equal, but couldn’t that be said about most pitches? It is counter-intuitive that the sinker loses more downward break than the 4-seamer, since both are fastballs, but I’ll take your word for it that that’s the case. You obviously have more knowledge about this than I do.
It’s hard to discuss on a page comment section. What’s really important in Denver is repertoire and deception. That’s what made Ubaldo Jimenez such a pristine model of pitching at Coors. Yes, he had an excellent sinker. But pitches don’t exist in isolation the way we like to break them down. They exist in sequence. It was Jimenez’s tailing four seamer and deceptive motion that set up that sinker. It’s why Colorado just going out and nabbing every top sinkerballer might not work.
What happens in Denver is MANY of those sinkers don’t fall quite as much. We’re talking about a matter of inches. But that’s just enough to be the difference between a ground out and a gap flare. And it’s a park with huge alleys. Virtually everything conspires against pitching there.
The best pitcher at Coors will be one with an unpredictable and deceptive delivery….high K potential…and that sinker to mitigate the ball getting into the air. Sounds like the recipe for ANYWHERE…and it would be. But it’s just hard to be “traditional” at Coors and get any wiggle room. I believe even Kershaw struggles at Coors cause it takes his stuff and makes it average. A pitcher there really has to put the hitter off to catch a break.
A scientist could explain it better. But there’s something to do with the weight of oxygen in the air at mile high that effects the sinker. We’re talking a mere matter of an inch or two…but enough. And couple that with pitch choice and repertoire. Its not ALWAYS the sinker it’s what is used before it.
Remember how bad Heyward was with the Cubs? That is exactly what to expect if Bellinger is extended.
Heyward has practically begged the Dodgers to re-sign him next year. But then, so did Justin Turner.
I think the difference is that Turner, because of better track record overall, was going to have a heavier asking price. Heyward should be fewer years and less AAV than Turners, so realistically the odds should be better. As long as he’s not expecting 3-4 years at 10-15 million a year, his odds of being kept are probably better. If he’s only seeking a 1 year deal or 1 year w/ option and the cost is under 10 for the guaranteed year, I’d say he likely gets kept around.
Turner was expecting the two years he got in Boston. The stories weren’t posted here, but in a couple of interviews this season Turner expressed shock and clear disappointment that the Dodgers didn’t even make him an offer, and it wasn’t like they couldn’t afford to pay him what he got from the Red Sox. In fact, with the option, it’s almost exactly the same AAV as they paid Martinez. So go figure. The point being, on Hayward they might bring him back given that the OF mix probably isn’t going to change much next season, and presumably Peralta will be gone. But it won’t happen no matter what Hayward says or wants, it will be “just business” as it was with Turner.
The Rockies will never attract FA pitchers or develop pitching of their own so long as they play outside in the thin air.
Solution? Put a dome over Coors Field.
I’ve spent a lot of summers in Aspen, so I know just how beautiful Colorado is. Never been to Coors, but I’m told it too is beautiful.
However, if winning baseball is the goal, and it should be, making Coors a neutral site offensively would go a long, long way towards achieving that goal.
Besides, if a baseball game lasts about three hours, the good people of Colorado would still have 21 other hours in their day to enjoy their beautiful environs.
Just sayin’!
What the Rockies need to do is dig a giant 1-mile-deep hole into the Earth, then put Coors Field on an elevator system. When they’re on defense, lower the field to sea level and when hitting raise it up to a mile high. Easy fix for their pitching and they can continue to be delusional in their quest to compete every year
The Rockies’ solution to their pitching woes is drafting and developing guys that don’t suck at the MLB level. It’s not altitude or any of that noise. Greg Maddux is Greg Maddux (for example) no matter where he pitches
Farhan is just salivating at the opportunity to platoon Heyward with Wilmer flores while the giants go on to win 76 games in 2024.
Wilmer doesn’t deserve to be included in any of the bashings. He has put up a 133wRC plus while earning $6m. Pick another guy.
Was that bashing Wilmer? I love Wilmer. Read it again then think about it for five minutes.
So you should. Everyone should love Wilmer.
I see it now. Apologies. My bad.
Sure, but you’ll have to deal with Fred.