Rox Talk

A 0-6 road trip against the Royals and Tigers. Regardless what the pundits say, I think this is the end of the season. To be swept in two separate road trips this year is deplorable. Why is Hurdle still managing this team? Fire him, won't it be embarrassing enough for him to show up at the All-Star break with the worst record in baseball rather than dealing with the alternative? Which by the way is what? Can an interim manager manage the All Star game? The Roxs currently stand at 32-50. Nine games back from division leading D-backs in fourth place. Currently 20-19 at home and 12-31 on the road, the Roxs have been outscored by its opponents 341-417 (expected wins is 34 versus historical wins at 38). On pace for 63 wins with 674 runs scored and 824 runs against.

Weekly WPA leaders (overall as well):

Off Day

Off day for the Roxs has they travel to Detroit for the season's last bit of interleague fun. Once again it seems the Roxs are running into a team (Detroit) that has found itself in a winning streak. This seems to be the Roxs M.O. this season...always running into hot teams. Why couldn't we get the D-backs now? Anyway the Roxs showed some life early in the month but it would appear early season habits are resurfacing and the Roxs continue to fight mediocrity. It is a shame since alot of the injuries are healing and we should be getting back in stride. 2 games away from the half way point and although starting pitching has been miserable I really think that the offense should take the brunt of the struggles. Roxs are on pace to score 680 runs, almost 150 runs less than last year. The pitching is actually on pace for around 800ish runs which isn't bad but when you hope that the offense should be in the mid 800s it would seem to me that the pitching is holding up their end of the bargain!

Stat of the Week

Update Win Shares for the Roxs

Probably not a good thing when Corpas and Tulo have zero win shares!

Player - Total WS
Cook 10
Holliday 10
Helton 7
Hawpe 6
Atkins 6
Spilborghs 6
Buchholz 6
Fuentes 5
Barmes 5
Iannetta 5
Baker 4
Taveras 4
Herges 3
Wells 2
Quintanill 2
Speier 2
Podsednik 2
Jimenez 2
Torrealba 2
Grilli 2
Arias 1
Reynolds 1
Stewart 1
Francis 1
Herrera 1
Smith 1
Sullivan 0
Bernier 0
Morales 0
Capellan 0
Newman 0
Nix 0
de la Rosa 0
Vizcaino 0
Bowie 0
Corpas 0
Tulowitzki 0
Rusch 0
Redman -1

He Was A Rockie?

Yesterday's Recap

Ughhh can't believe we can't beat KC. Of course it seems no one in the NL can beat them either. Honestly we were just getting it back together now we run into a brick wall that are the Royals.

He Was A Rockie? - Daryl Boston

Well since Boston is my favorite AL team why don't we go with the hammer that was Daryl Boston! Signed as free agent in 1992 he played for the inaugural Roxs. Played 124 games in the outfield and batted .261. Well past his prime at 30 he played another season as a Yankee and got out of baseball. Did have 14 HR and an OPS+ of 96. So he basically was your average outfielder. Whoohooo...

Rox Talk

Another 4-3 week against the Atlanta (1 Game!), Indians, and Mets. The Roxs currently stand at 32-44. Seven games back from division leading D-backs in third place. Currently 20-19 at home and 12-25 on the road, the Roxs have been outscored by its opponents 322-380 (expected wins is 32 versus historical wins at 36). On pace for 68 wins with 686 runs scored and 810 runs against. Roxs graphical wins (home in Purple, away in grey).

Weekly WPA leaders (overall as well):

Well at least we still have a bullpen. No real movement by the offense or starting pitching. Hard to believe we were 4-3 last week. Interesting to note is that last year at this time we had the Fuentes meltdown. Maybe we can still get there?

If I Was Commissioner..

He Was A Rockie?

He Was A Rockie? - Mac Suzuki

Hey just like the name, pitched a whooping 6.3 innings for the Roxs back in 2001 in 3 games going 0-2. Came from KC then was waived and picked up by Milwaukee. Released by them and picked back up by KC. So we basically gave up Brent Mayne for nothing. Ah the good days of Dealin O'Dowd.

Rox Talk

Another 4-2 week against the Giants and White Sox. Hey its interleague...the Roxs are a closet AL team. The Roxs currently stand at 28-41. Eight and half games back from division leading D-backs in the cellar Currently 16-16 at home and 12-25 on the road, the Roxs have been outscored by its opponents 291-355 (expected wins is 29 versus historical wins at 32). On pace for 66 wins with 683 runs scored and 833 runs against. Roxs graphical wins (home in Purple, away in grey). Weekly WPA leaders (overall as well):

Playing well but have they dug themselves too big of a hole to climb back into this thing?

Interleague Part II

Yesterday's Recap

Reynolds did not have a very good day at the ballpark. Early indications to me seem that we have another finesse type pitcher who can't get a strikeout when it is needed. That to me is the Rox's biggest problem with pitchers. We have a bunch of changing speeds groundball specialist but not someone who can rear back and light a ball on fire to get that critical out. Anyway never a good sign when you score 7 runs and lose. Anyway back to interleague play. Roxs travel to the South Side this weekend to take on the White Soxs. Decent matchup, our first foray on the road.

Interleague Part II

Okay so this weekend marks the second go at interleague play for the season. Once again the schedulers have overdone themselves with must see matchups like Arizona/KC, Angels/Braves, Rangers/Mets....ughhh when will it ever end? About the only two series of interest to me is the Red Sox and Red Leggings and hey how about Washington and Seattle (two loser teams but just the fact that Seattle plays Washington (it is a quirky name thing dummy)!

Yesterday's Recap

What a game! A real pitching duel that is about as rare as a triple play in baseball! The longest zero to zero game in Coors Field history was won 1 - 0 by the a Yorvit sacrifice fly in the bottom of 9th. An eerie familiar play at the plate (dropped ball!) and the 5th 1- 0 game in Coors Field history (that is like 1,200 games!).

Stat of the Week

Yesterday's Recap

Rox's offensive returns to normal. An easy 10 - 5 win. Gee if the Rox's average 5.7 runs for the remaining 97 games then we hit 830 runs scored! Maybe? We shall see...

Stat of the Week - Total Base Plus

My newly developed stat is Total Base Plus. What does it mean? Well from my review of various player evaluation stats it seems to me that besides Win Shares there is really no way of comparing offense players to pitchers and vice versa. In my thinking there has to be another way. So I came up with the one factor that one can compare apples to apples and that is bases. Bases you say...yup what is the essence of baseball but getting your players to get on base and your pitchers to prevent people from getting on base. So how about coming up with a way to measure either the total bases a player collects or prevents? Okay to me this is relatively straightforward you simply count the bases the player collects over a season. For instance in 2007, Todd Helton had 682 plate appearances with 117 singles, 42 doubles, 2 triples, 17 homers, and 116 walks. So for 682 plate appearances Todd has the opportunity to touch 2,728 individual bases. From his hits and walks Todd was able to obtain 475 total bases. In comparison Aaron Cook faced 698 hitters and allowed 123 singles, 38 doubles, 2 triples, 15 homers, and 44 walks. So Cook had the opportunity to prevent 2,792 bases but gave up 385 total bases. Okay so Todd got 17.4% of the total bases he could and Aaron only gave up 13.8% of bases. OK so now what? Well MLB players in 2007, had 188,623 plate appearances with 29,885 singles, 9,197 doubles, 938 triples, 4,957 homers, and 16,079 walks. So MLB took approximately 11.5% of the bases that were provided. Since Todd took 17.4% versus the league's 11.5% and if we assume that 11.5% is 100 then Todd comes in at 151 or about 50% better thant the average MLBer. And Cook would be at 83 or about 15% worse in allowing bases. So there you have it, a pretty way to compare apples to apples. For Win Shares Todd had 24 versus Cook's 10. About the only thing I think this sort of compares to is VORP but I believe the "Replacement Player" is such a slacker that it sets the "average" player too low (?). Now of course one can't take something as simplistic as this and keep it this way you have to muck up the simplicity. How does one do that? Well what about hit by pitches, stolen bases, caught stealing, errors, double plays, sacrifices, runs batted in? What about Cook's actual at-bats? What about Helton's errors? Basically a total base representation of every player's mark on a game and season? I need more computing power...

He Was A Rockie?

He Was A Rockie? - Todd Zeile
Okay so Todd Zeile wasn't a big mystery. Pretty well known entity. The one interesting stat is that if you review players who played for the Roxs at baseball reference and if you review the Rockies pitchers, guess who is sitting there at the bottom of the list? Yup Todd Zeile! He pitched one inning back in September 2002 with the Dodgers in town. He came in and pitched a scoreless Top of the 9th when LA was leading 16 - 3! He faced 3 batters gave up a hit, then a double play, then struck out someone! He pitched again for the Mets in 2004 but didn't fair too well. Anyway that year he played in 144 games and hit 18 homers with a .273 batting average.

Rox Talk

A 4-2 week against the Dodgers and Brewers. Some life at least with the pitching and maybe some offensive. The Roxs currently stand at 24-39. Ten games back from division leading D-backs in the cellar (thought the D-backs would come back to Earth or perhaps they aren't playing their chumps). Currently 14-15 at home and 10-24 on the road, the Roxs have been outscored by its opponents 262-332 (expected wins is 25 versus historical wins at 29). On pace for 62 wins with 674 runs scored and 854 runs against. Roxs graphical wins (home in Purple, away in grey).

Weekly WPA leaders (overall as well):

Ho hum the inconsistencies of this season are simply maddening. Win some, lose some. When Tulo, Barmes, and Holliday all return will the offense kick into gear? Ughhhh

Interesting Rox Stat

From the column "Ten Things I Didn't Know Last Week" at Hardball Times here is why the Roxs are on pace to score 650 runs....

AB H BA
Atkins 67 13 .194
Helton 52 15 .288
Holliday 50 13 .260
Barmes 41 11 .268
Spilborghs 40 13 .325
Hawpe 38 10 .263
Taveras 34 6 .176
Tulowitzki 31 5 .161
Torrealba 30 8 .267
Iannetta 29 9 .310
Baker 26 6 .231
Quintanilla 24 4 .167
Podsednik 21 6 .286
Herrera 14 4 .286
Nix 13 1 .077

If I Was Commissioner..

Yesterday's Recap

The Cookie Monster was back. Great pitched game and I guess a good way to finish an otherwise terrible road trip. Hopefully we get our groove back returning home although the Brew Crew played havoc with the D-backs so hopefully we don't catch another hot team.

If I Was Commissioner...

Stat of the Week

Yesterday's Recap

They are alive! Finally some life from our Roxs. Francis refound the strike zone and pitched a great game. Torrealba got a pitch to the head then had a nice little throw down when he went to tag a runner after a dropped third strike. Could this be the spark? Best part of the game was when after the bench emptying fight, Ianetta came up and sent a ball deep into the left field bullpen. What a nice exclamation point!

State of the Week - Career Assessments

Bill James invented Career Assessments, formerly called the Favorite Toy, as a projection method to predict final career totals for players. The formula presumes that a player has (42 - age)/2 seasons remaining, but not less than 1.5 seasons, and it is determined using the player's age on June 30 of the previous year. If the player is a catcher, his remaining seasons are multiplied by 0.7. Using the established norms and years remaining, the final total is projected, and the chance to reach that total can be derived. No player can have more than a 97-percent chance to reach any goal.

Check here

He Was A Rockie?

Yesterday's Recap

Another poor starting pitching performance and the offense just not there. Different city and different time zone yet still same result. Someday we will win again! (I hope!)

He Was A Rockie?

This week we look at Eric Wedge who currently is the manager of the Cleveland Indians and played very briefly with the Roxs back in 1993. He was a catcher (just like Joe Girardi, another big league manager) and he played all of 9 games (only one complete game as a catcher, the rest was Pinch Hitting). Drafted in the expansion draft and taken from Boston he just wasn't big league material. He had played two years previously in Boston getting into 28 games then after leaving the Roxs went back to Boston for an additional 2 games. So who says you can't make it in baseball...manage a team after only playing in 39 big league games! Wedge batted a buck 82 with 11 bats and 2 hits and 1 RBI.

Rok Talk

Yesterday's Recap
Girrrr no comment, not a good week (see below). On to the City of Angels.

Rox Talk

A 0-7 (!) week against the Phillies and Cubs (two divisional leaders). Two teams that really are playing well...or really playing well against a team that is not very good! The Roxs currently stand at 20-37. Twelve games back from division leading D-backs in the cellar. Currently 12-14 at home and 8-23 on the road, the Roxs have been outscored by its opponents 240-314 (expected wins is 22 versus historical wins at 26). On pace for 58 wins with 682 runs scored and 892 runs against. Roxs graphical wins (home in Purple, away in grey). The road record is abysmal with the Roxs on pace to win only 21 games on the road, the worst since 2003 when they only won 25.

Weekly WPA leaders (overall as well):
Nothing...you lose 7 straight games and there is nothing good to report. Helton seems to be awakening but with all his toddlers on the DL it would seem that he is the only one still around! Also this marks the first week (I believe) that all the WPAs numbers are in the negative. The bullpen was holding onto a slight positive but after last week's blown leads in Chicago they dipped below.

Yesterday's Recap

Helton homers again and the Roxs still lose a close one.  Perhaps we can sneak a win on Sunday...maybe, possibly, please, pretty please?