Big Trade for Big Daddy

Wow, I'm like the Bill Paxton of Windows Paint.

As you, me and most indigenous tribes deep in the Amazon who have never spoken to the outside world have heard, Matt Holliday has been traded to the Oakland Athletics for Carlos Gonzalez, Greg Smith and Huston Street.

Allow me to preface this by saying that the Rockies are my #1 favorite baseball team. But... the A's are my #1a. I love them nearly as dearly as my beloved Rockies. So, I have watched, rooted for and read about all four players very extensively. Luckily for me, I can't lose here. For both teams, and their fans, there is plenty to lose. So, I will look at this trade as objectively as I can for both teams, player by player.

Matt Holliday

He's the face of the franchise and has been the team MVP for two years running (at least by my count). Losing him is not an easy thing for the Rockies. That being said, he was on his way to free agency and a contract that would exceed the GDP of every country in the European Union combined. Now, I think people realize the 2007 Disney movie that was the Rockies team is over and the credits are through rolling. It isn't financially viable for the Rockies to buy Scott Boras a new beach-front house with a Holliday contract. That's why the Holliday firesale occured and O'Dowd picked the highest bidder, which turned out to be the A's. What the A's get is an established right-handed bat in a heavily left-handed lineup. He has one year with the A's in 2009 and then heads into free agency. The A's aren't dumb enough to pay one corner outfielder $25 mil a year well into his mid-thirties, no matter how good he is. Billy Beane is essentially playing real estate agent here. He will probably leverage the crap out of Holliday and see if he can't Sabathia him into a greater return than what he gave to the Rockies. If he can't find a deal, he'll let Holliday go to the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Dodgers, Mets or anyone else who can overpay him, while Beane collects his two first round draft picks. There is, of course, a relatively decent chance that the A's (Holliday's Godzilla bat in tow) can overtake the overrated and aging Angels in the AL West and be a contender. If this is the case, they may pay Holliday to stick around and be their franchise as they finalize a move to Fremont, but this is very unlikely. Holliday is basically a new, and valuable, trading chip for Billy Beane, probably not much more.

Carlos Gonzalez

This guy craps talent and pisses ability. He can play average to decent center field right now (and exceptional right field when Dexter Fowler is ready) and he has the potential to hit 30 home runs. A good center fielder who can hit 30 home runs is about as common as a an uninjured Broncos running back. When you find a player with that ability, you grab on and hold tight. That being said, CarGon (or C-Gon) is very unrefined. He has suspect plate discipline (0.16 BB/K ratio in his major league stint), which is probably why Beane traded him. In the minors, he didn't consistently display his talent in the stat column (career .813 OPS in the minors). Still, his talent is hard to match. His speed, power and arm strength all grade as well above average and his arm is exceptional. What O'Dowd has gone for in CarGon is pure, unadulterated talent. He could be a better fielding Grady Sizemore, or he could be a talented bench player who can't seem to put it together. CarGon is by no means can't miss, but if he's a hit, he'll be an out of the parker. It is a ballsy move by the gambling O'Dowd.

Greg Smith

Nibbles, as he has been unaffectionately called, is a soft-tossing lefty that won't blow you away, but will be effective. His fastball averages 87.6 mph, but he can place it where he wants. Probably his best pitch is his cutter/slider that ranges from 80-86 mph. He'll also serve up a passable change-up and a pretty good hook. Nibbles has outstanding command of all of his pitches (except maybe the curve). His problem, though, is that he spends too much time trying to place each pitch on the black (hence the nickname). In the minors, he rarely walked people (2.64 BB/9), but in the majors he got preoccupied with nibbling at the corners and gave up 87 free passes in 190.1 innings. He can strike people out, but he's no Tim Lincecum, so he can't get to caught up placing everything right on the edge of the plate. At the same time, Coors Field is not going to keep balls in the park like the Coliseum. His 34.2% fly ball rate and 45.5% ground ball rate are not particularly good signs for Smith. He may be watching a lot of big flies from the mound. That being said, he is a much better back end of the rotation guy than Jason Hirsh and Franklin Morales. A rotation of Cook, Jimenez, Francis, Smith and De La Rosa/whoever wins the job is much improved over last year's. Smith won't be flashy or exceptional, but he will eat 190+ innings and give you a chance to win. Expect a 4.50 era out of him, but many a home run. P.S. Though it is not much more than ancillary, Greg Smith has one of the best pickoff moves in baseball.

Huston Street

The rumors are saying that O'Dowd wants to turn around and deal Street elsewhere. I'm inclined to agree. Streeter was a great pitcher. Was. And Buchholz and Corpas are capable late relievers. Let's play a game. It's called Fastball Velocity and Our Economy: Plummet Away...
2006 - 91.7 mph
2007 - 90.4 mph
2008 - 90.0 mph
Now let's play Walking Batters and NFL Fines: Soar to the Heavens...
2006 - 1.66 BB/9
2007 - 2.16 BB/9
2008 - 3.47 BB/9
Streeter is by no means a bad pitcher, but he is also showing signs of decline. O'Dowd more or less picked him up for his reputation. If that is the case, and he turns around and trades Street for something better but less reputable, then, for the first time in my life, I will commend Dan O'Dowd for his baseball intelligence (but it will probably be the only time). If the Rockies keep him, Streeter will be a functional but expensive (he has two years left of arbitration raises) reliever. If the Rockies trade him for good players, well done O'Dowd.

Conclusion

Basically, Billy Beane picked himself up a fancy and expensive house. He's going to paint it, maybe refurnish the kitchen, and pitch it to someone else for a higher price. Beane got O'Dowd to buy in on CarGon's potential and Streeter's reputation. Nibbles is a throw in that will hold a rotation spot, but not really excel. Holliday will net the A's either two first round picks or multiple prospects that will be as good (but at more needed positions) or better than CarGon, Streeter and Nibbles. This is probably a loss for the Rockies and a win for the A's. Who knows though? Perhaps CarGon will be the next Sizemore/Beltran and Smith will be the second coming of Tom Glavine, while Street picks up other good prospects. At this point, though, O'Dowd should put a for sale sign on Garrett Atkins and Todd Helton, and see what he can get. Helton would be salary dumping, while Koshansky fills his spot. Atkins and maybe Street could get a very good return package (obviously, it's time for Ian "Do You Think I'm Sexy" Stewart to play third). Maybe throw in Willy Taveras and the Rockies will have cleaned up a bit of a mess and moved on for their next push at a playoff run (maybe 2010). Hawper in left, D-Fowl in center, and CarGon in right could be quite an outfield. I guess we'll have to wait and see if O'Dowd didn't get fleeced.

Rox Recap 5/23/08 (The League of Clutch Just Got a New Member)

Lately, it seems the only team more snakebit than the Rockies are the NY Mets. No longer anyone’s favorite squadron, the NY Mets endured a collapse of historic proportions last September, blowing a 7.5 game lead to the Phillies in the last 17 days of the season. Then they went out and landed their big gun, their noisy cricket, by trading for “Don’t Mess With the Johan” Santana, figuring he would be the rock they needed to take them to the upper echelon of Major League teams and erase the bitter taste of their late season choke. Instead, the NY Mets are scuffling along at 22-24, Santana has been decent (5-3, 3.36 ERA, 58/15 K/BB ratio), but there have been rumblings about his lack of velocity and inability to win important games. Their manager Willie Randolph is on the hot seat to keep his job and has begun to gripe to the media about what he believes is a racial bias in how he is portrayed. Add all that up and you have got one dysfunktional team heading for a major overhaul in the way they play the game and who will actually be there to play it. It’s only fitting that they then come into our house and become the victims of our first walk off win of the season.
1) Big Daddy only went 2-7 in this 13 inning affair but man did he make the 2 count. With 1 out and nobody on in the 9^th, down by 1, he stepped to the plate against uber-closer Billy Wagner who came into the game sporting a spotless 0.00 ERA and 9 saves. He hadn’t given up a home run either until Matty unloaded on a fastball on the outside corner. He roped a home run to dead center field that couldn’t have gotten more than 15 feet off the ground at any point of its trajectory. Then, in the 13^th, the game still tied at 5, he took an 0-1 pitch from Aaron Heilman to right field to knock in Johnny Herrera with the game winning run. Talk about clutch. For a team that hasn’t had many clutch moments to brag about this year, this was a game to remember. Though the calendar said May, it sure as hell felt like September.
2) G-Rain (that’s Greg Reynolds, I’m trying to get it to catch on) pitched an uneven ballgame. A sinkerballer not known for the strikeout, Reynolds tallied 5 in 6 innings of work. He was pitching efficiently though his ball/strike ratio wasn’t exactly impressive (37/47) until the 6^th inning when he served up cold, hard blasts to Carlos “The Latin Travis Hafner” Delgado (that’s not a compliment, look at their statlines the last few years) and Fernando “Omar Minaya owed me a favor” Tatis who was last seen stocking shelves at your local Kroger. He did only allow 4 hits, but he also walked 3 including the opposing pitcher Oliver Perez. It will be a process to get him going like it is with most young pitchers but he showed enough promise last night to make me believe he’s going to be special.
3) The turning point in the ball game (besides the obvious homer in the 9^th by Big Daddy) was T-Rex’ pick off of Jose Reyes at second base with nobody out in the 10^th inning. After leading off with a double, you can imagine the groans and gripes about Fuentes, especially after blowing the lead in his last appearance on Wednesday. But Fuentes’ move to second can be lethal in small doses, not unlike the underwater black wasps from Anaconda. Right before he picked him off, I leaned over to Eric and told him that Fuentes had a killer move to second and maybe he could catch Reyes napping. Lo and behold, 5 seconds later, Reyes is trudging back to the dugout, the fans are going nuts, and the Rockies have avoided what could have potentially been a back-breaking moment. It also showed that I know a thing or two about a thing or two.

4) Grimes sprained his right knee and will probably have to go on the disabled list, adding to the laundry list of unfortunate occurrences that have befallen the Rockies this season. Our hottest hitter now will spend his next couple of weeks from the sidelines while we try to get our season going. Fantasmatic.

5) Taylor Buchholz, come here, let me hug you. You’ve done nothing but dominate hitters with a steely stare, a yellow snapdragon Uncle Charlie curveball and a Linda Ronstadt fastball (the ol’ Blue Bayou.) Last night you came through once again and pitched 3 strong innings in relief and picked up the win you so rightfully deserved. Cheers to you, Taylor Buchholz. Keep that ERA where it is (1.27) and I think we’ll be just fine.
A turnaround game? Who knows. I’ve already used that one this year. All I know is that we’re 4-3 on this current homestand and need to start winning series if we’re ever going to reach the .500 mark, much less contend. The Franchise goes today, so let’s take 2.
P.S. Congrats to my cousin Justin Masterson who picked up his first Major League win with 6.1 inning of 1 run baseball against the Royals on Wednesday. It will be the first of many. You heard it here first.

You pokerface; you brought ‘er.

Get it? Anyways—the baseball pokerface. I came up with the idea for this post a few days ago and haven’t gotten around to it until today. I swear on the grave of the Rockies 2008 season that I thought of it a few days ago. Then, this afternoon, while I was doing research for a newspaper article, I opened up Mozilla. There, staring me in the face on the ESPN homepage was an article by fricking Jerry Crasnick about showing your emotions in baseball. Up until today, I thought Crasnick was a halfway-decent human writer. Now I know that he is some kind of crazy Alien from Europa or Titan with some form of mind-reading device, posing as a sports writer in order to gain perspective on our cultural and political practices, possibly with sinister intentions:

Do you trust that face? So very sinister…

Since Crasnick did lots of research and did a "Starting 9" of the most significant examples of emotional baseball players, I will instead just rant about the concept of the baseball pokerface, maybe providing a few recent examples. Actually, I’m doing that because I’m lazy.

There was a lot of hoopla and hullabaloo recently about Joba Chamberlain’s fist pumpage and the vexation it caused hall of famer Goose Gossage, who apparently still wants media coverage because he is bored and his newfound hall of famerness is no longer fulfilling. I would like to officially declare Shenanigans on Gossage and the other Debbie Downers and Negative Nancys who complain about emotion in baseball.

I completely understand why baseball players have the unwritten law that they must act like stoic robots. People don’t want to be shown up, whether it’s the umpire, a pitcher who just gave up a home run, or whoever. The problem with robotics is that it is dehumanizing. Instead of being normal, emotionally driven people, our heroes on the TV screen must act as though they feel nothing. Then when a reporter puts a microphone in their face, they spout standard sports clichés that are boring and tell you nothing about a player (see Bull Durham).

I, personally, enjoy when a baseball player acts out in baseball. If Barry Bonds didn’t pirouette, I wouldn't know that he wanted to be a ballerina as a child. If Manny Ramirez didn’t pose at the plate after every long fly ball, I wouldn’t know he was an asshole (well, maybe I would). If Ozzie Guillén didn’t firmly plant his foot into his mouth every time he opened it up, I wouldn’t have profanity-laden, homophobic tirades to laugh at. I could go on.

Sure, all of these people “disrespect the game” according to some archaic standard that was apparently established long before I was born. But, I’d like to see a little disrespect. It makes for good entertainment. When a rookie gets their first hit, instead of standing there acting like it is nothing, they should jump up and celebrate. They could even awkwardly high five the opposing first baseman. I’m sick of every announcer in the history of the world saying something along the lines of, “he isn’t showing it, but you know he’s smiling on the inside.” If the pitcher feels disrespected, they can give the rookie some chin music next time they come up. Maybe then, the rookie will get pissed and they can fight—more entertainment!

One of my favorite Rockies highlights of the last few years was the time that Matt Holliday hit a baseball to Jupiter (perhaps Crasnick put a communiqué into the baseball) against Matt Cain. He proceeded to run around the bases screaming “yeah, bitch!” at Cain.

Then there was that time when Beltin’ Helton hit the walk off homer against Takashi Saito that helped spurn the Rockies onto their end of season blitzkrieg. He ran and jumped into the homeplate mash-up like he was about to eat a live deer.

Then, as I write this, I just came upon a play today, in which Manny Ramirez made a running catch, jumped up the fence and high-fived a fan, then threw the ball back in to double off a runner. Ramirez being Manny.

I love baseball and I would be just fine with it staying as it is. If the MLB wants more revenue, however, they might encourage a little more emotion and showmanship out of their baseball players and managers. It has worked for the NFL. Everyone knows Chad Johnson and Terrell Owens are jerks, but they are fun to watch. It has also worked for television. There are all kinds of reality shows with insane people that flip out for no reason. Why do people watch it? For entertainment. For a few laughs. For the sense of security that can only come about when you know there are dumber, crazier people in the world than you.

When I see a pitcher pump their fist after a strikeout, or a batter admire their majestic home run, it let’s me know that they care about what they are doing; that winning matters to them. This helps convince me, as well, to care about what they are doing and whether or not they win.

Today’s Random Quote (or Exchange):

Tobias: I’m afraid I just blue myself.

Michael: There’s got to be a better way to say that.

- from Arrested Development

Rox Weekend Recap 4/11-4/13

As far as weekends go for the Rockies, let’s just file this one in the Weekend at Bernie’s II folder: the killer ending made up for any vomit inducing qualities one may experience in the first two thirds of the film. Friday and Saturday had that eerie déjà vu feeling of last Friday and Saturday where the D-Bags bashed, bopped, and bludgeoned Rockies pitching by outscoring us 20-5 in a three game sweep at Coors. In the first two games in the desert this past weekend, the Rockies played the same infectious tune that’s been stuck in their heads for a majority of their games thus far. It must have been some Panic at the Disco song because nobody can listen to that shit and not want to go quietly into the good night. We were once again outscored 18-5 in those games as we ran up against what is quite possibly the top starting pitching duo in all of baseball in Brandon Webb and Dan Haren. I didn’t quite cry myself to sleep, but I imbibed a few stiff drinks and thought long and hard about what the coming six months would bring for me and my beloved Rox. Then Sunday happened. Sorry if this is a long post, but there’s much to discuss.

1) Alright, I understand that the Rox faced two of the best pitchers in the game during the Baby Backs series, but we also countered with our ace in Jeff Francis and Frankie Morales who had shut out this same team a week earlier. Consistently we’ve shown so far that we’re fantastic at being incredibly inconsistent, but thank Elway the offense finally showed up so we can finally say we’ve beaten our bitter rivals at least once this year. Atkins, Holliday, and the National League leader in perseverance and peer support Clint Barmes all went yard as we rattled the Snakes (sorry) 13-5. Everybody seemed to get big hits when they weren’t getting beaned (which will definitely have some bearing on a future game between these two) and the lead was never really in doubt though Aaron Cook seemed to want to make it interesting for a hot second. Hurdle should definitely consider keeping the scorching Barmes in the lineup for at least the beginning of the Padres series at second base. Jayson Nix is playing fine, but I feel in order to keep the offense rolling, Barmes needs to get a few more at bats.

2) Tulo still hasn’t found his stride yet at the plate (he’s hitting .159 with 0 rbis as of Monday) which led Clint Hurdle to sit him down for the finale on Sunday. Thinking about it this weekend, however, I realized that last year he started out slowly too (hitting only .185 near the end of April) but eventually finished with the greatest season ever for an NL rookie shortstop after Hurdle held him out of the lineup for a couple of games. Tulo is too good of a player and too hard of a worker to be held down for too long. He’s made quality swings at pitches lately but has been fouling them straight back, putting him in the hole in too many counts and forcing him to chase poor pitches. Once he has a multi hit game in this upcoming San Diego series (and I’m positive he will. You heard it hear first), he’ll return to form and this offense is going to esplode.

3) Congrats to National League Player of the Week, number 5 in your programs number 1 in your hearts, Matt Holliday, who continues to prove that his better is better than your better. During the week, Big Daddy racked up a .480 average with 2 bombs and 10 rbis to go along with extending his streak of home runs in at bats immediately after getting hit by a pitch. Seriously, I wish I had the stat of how many times he takes the ultimate revenge on a pitcher by going deep in his next at bat. He was plunked by Brandon Medders in the 6th, a severe no no if you pitch in the National League. In his next at bat in the 8^th inning he crushed a 3-2 pitch from Doug Slaten off the wall in left and followed that in the 9^th by destroying a Tony Pena fastball 400+ feet into the left field bleachers. He did the same thing to Micah Owings in Game 4 of last year’s NLCS and everyone remembers what happened on September 19, 2006. Even if you don’t, I’ll tell you. Giants pitcher Matt Cain hit Holliday in the middle of the back in the third inning. The storm clouds were gathering. His next at bat, Cain tries to throw a breaking ball first pitch and Matt hits it 496 feet off the scoreboard at Coors. As he’s running the bases, all he does is scream “Yeah, bitch! Yeah, bitch! How do you like that, bitch?!” to Cain. One of the greatest highlights I’ve ever seen and if I could find it online, I’d give you the link, but I’ve searched high and low to no avail.

4) I don’t know what to do about Jeff Francis yet because I know he can pitch. He knows he can pitch. Clint Hurdle knows he can pitch, but something’s just not clicking for him. No, it doesn’t help that he’s had to face Brandon Webb twice and will face Jake Peavy on Thursday, but that’s the life of a number 1 starting pitcher in the best division in baseball. What’s extremely encouraging though is the performance of Aaron Cook thus far. He deserves better than his 1-1 record shows because his last two starts have been fairly phenomenal. He’s mixing up all of his pitches and his sinker dives faster than the career of Mario Lopez after Saved by the Bell (No offense, Mario, you know we tight.) He’s working quickly, working efficiently, and he’s democratic as always, staying away from all those fascist strikeouts.

5) I will soon print a retraction of my previous article on how Justin Upton doesn’t deserve any credit in the national media. Kid can flat out rake. Anybody have some crow for me to eat?

Our West Coast swing takes us to the heavy sea air of Pets Pets Pets! Park for a three game set with the Padres (that means Fathers in espanol.) What say we take the series? Would everybody be ok with that? Anyone? Bueller?

Rox Recap 4/7/08

I was determined to not write the same Rox recap I’d been writing for the last week. I wanted to be positive and spur my Rockies onto their much-anticipated second victory of this short season. Unfortunately for the first 7 and a half innings last night, I was prepared to copy and paste lines of lament from my last articles as the Rockies swallowed yet another serving of cold crusty defeat. Then Big Daddy did it again.

1) Though 3 of Matt’s 4 at bats last night were weak at best and frustrating at worst, you can’t argue with the results of his 8th inning 2 run tattooing which put the Rocks up for good. Matt, let’s be honest here, looked overanxious to hit anything Tom Glavine rainbowed (that’s a verb, right?) to the plate last night. His 4th inning at bat epitomized the entire Rockies team for the first week of the season. Todd Helton had just worked a leadoff walk off Glavine who still showed he has the stuff to straight up dominate young teams who fail to be patient at the plate and let the ball travel, therefore using the opposite field instead of trying to pull everything. Holliday strolled to the batter’s box determined to single-handedly interrupt the Rockies’ hitting hibernation. He took a mighty hack at a 76 mph changeup from Glavine that dove down near the dirt on the outside corner and tapped the ball meekly back to Glavine who calmly turned a fired the hardest ball he would throw all night to second to nab Helton. He also flew out softly to center field with two on in the 6th inning, but like I said, if Matt can do nothing the whole year except hit clutch bombs in the late innings, I’m going to run out of things to complain about. You can’t argue with the results of a win, no matter how agonizing they may be.

2) What more can you say about Aaron Cook’s performance on the mound last night? This is the pitcher we signed to a $30 million contract in the offseason. 7 innings, 1 run, 2 hits, 15 ground ball outs on only 73 pitches. That might have been the best Cook has ever looked and I was at Coors last year for his 88 pitch complete game victory over the Padres. The Braves had absolutely no answer for anything he threw up there. Sinkers, cutters, changeups, fastballs, everything was working for Big Red as he ate up more bats than a party at the Osbourne’s. Unfortunately for Cookie, the Rox bats Jason Jennings-ed him and supplied him with a grand total of 0 runs so he couldn’t be credited with the win. Cook still has yet to win a game in April in his entire career but if he keeps pitching like he did last night, it’s only a matter of time before we can muster up even a couple runs of support.

3) The game took a grand total of 2 hours and 5 minutes, the shortest game on record in Coors Field history. Glavine and Cook both looked to be in the prime of their careers: Glavine tossing rosin bags to the outside corner and Cookie cutting bats like bandsaws. Rarely do you see two pitchers so incredibly on point during a game with neither one of them factoring into the decision, but such is baseball.

4) Tulo finally looks like the Three-lo of old at short as he was the beneficiary of the majority of Cook’s ground-ball prowess. He made several running plays in the hole and also coming in on the ball and his throws to Todd were spot on. It looks like that initial bout of stone hands was just a fleeting problem. No one deserves a Gold Glove more than Tulo, especially after “MVP” Jimmy Rollins somehow robbed him last year.

And finally, look at this potent quotable from the Rox resident skipper Clint Hurdle on the play of rookie second baseman Jayson Nix:
“It is the proverbial dog on the pond. Above water he is cool, calm, collected. Below water, he is a paddling son of a gun.”
No wonder he became the media darling and favorite interview during the postseason run last year. But seriously, where does he get his material?

As always, Go Broncos.