If the Rockies are unwilling or unable to sign a significant free agent pitcher or acquire one via trade what are your thoughts on them using the cash that they have freed up from trading Holliday (and will hopefully free up from trading Atkins) to sign a couple of GOOD relief arms?

Cruz is the guy who I am thinking of specifically.  Beimel and Cruz would both take more years and more money than seems prudent but over the last 5 or so years EVERY signficant free agent reliever contract has looked silly at the time that it was given out.  While giving muli-year deals to relief pitchers is not the best value in baseball nor the most risk averse option in baseball it IS a pretty predictable and relatively inexpensive method of improving a team.

The Colorado bullpen is going to get a LOT of work in 2009
 and giving someone like Cruz a 3 or 4 year deal that might suck in the final year provides the Rockies with a lot more flexibility than trying to sign a starting pitcher for 5 or 6 years or a position player for 6-8 years.  Both the total annual salary and the total value of the contracts are smaller for relief pitchers.

1. Chris Young has incredible range.  Watching him more intently than I did during the inter-divisional games his range really caught my attention.  The Mike Cameron comparisons seem pretty valid both in terms of range, speed and ability to destroy mistakes and fastballs (but the inability so far to hit other stuff).
2.  Augie Ojeda is a wizard.  While no one that I have seen currently is better than Orlando Hudson defensively at 2nd base, Ojeda has made a few plays in this series that I don't know if even Hudson would have made.
3.  Tony Pena is as dominating as I remember him being from early in the season.

Any one else have observations about this team that we will be competing with for the next several years?

If TBS doesn't run out a better broadcast crew.

The guys tonight seriously made me long for a Joe Morgan/Jeff Huson tandem.

Heard a lot of homers call games and a lot of idiots call games as well but this is the first time that no one knew anything about either team (or virtually any of the players on either team).

Padres fans had to be cringing just as badly as Rockies fans (or close to it).

For those that haven't heard yet the Broncos' Darrent Williams was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting last night around 2AM in downtown Denver.

I guess that it qualifies as off-topic but it was both sports related and local so I felt like making a thread.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/broncos/2007-01-01-broncos-williams_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA

Loved this quote in the Rocky Mountain News this morning:

"This is the kind of deal the Minnesota Twins make," O'Dowd said. "This is the kind of deal the Oakland A's make. This is the kind of deal the Colorado Rockies have to make. It's a three-for-one deal. You fill multiple holes all with players you control at no (excessively large) dollars."

This is the recognition (and the execution) that I have been praying for from Rockies management to follow up on the good job that O'Dowd's people have done putting together the farm system.

Hopefully the Rockies can print out this quote by O'Dowd and plaster it all over Coors' Field so that they don't forget it. :)

Disclaimer: I am not a stats guru and am a total rookie feeling my way through this as I immerse myself in this field/area/world.

I stumbled upon a post over at Bucco Blog http://buccoblog.mlblogs.com/my_weblog/2006/11/marginal_margin.html that has a table of calculations for Marginal Wins and Marginal Payroll and uses those to come up with 'efficiency ratings' for team management groups.  The efficiency ratings amount to Marginal Cost/ Marginal Win.

I won't explain more of that since most of you already are familiar with these metrics and there are much better definitions and explanations at the provided link.

I have been playing with this data to extrapolate what kind of records the 'efficient' small-market teams like Minnesota and Oakland would have posted  if they had been able to match the Rockies higher payroll averages during this span (1999-2006).

I ended up calculating what type of average record Minnesota would have had with the Rockies average payroll and I also calculated what type of average record St. Louis (a team with a greater payroll than us) would have had with the Rockies management efficiency.

Anyone care to check my math (I apologize for bad form, improper nomenclature, etc.)?

-------
Data/Figures:
---------

COL Avg M Payroll = 51,081,393
MIN Avg M Payroll = 33,988,126
STL Avg M Payroll = 67,637,492

COL M Cost/M Win = 2,082,829
MIN M Cost/M Win = 955,394
STL M Cost/M Win = 1,568,406

COL Avg. M Win = 24.5
MIN Avg. M Win = 35.6
STL Avg. M Win = 43.1

COL Avg. Win % = .452
MIN Avg. Win % = .520
STL Avg. Win % = .566

Marginal Win (M Win) baseline record = 48.6 Wins (every win above 48.6 is equal to one M Win)

Marginal Payroll (M Payroll) = 7,150,500 (Payroll beyond the cost of fielding a team of replacement level players)

*******
*******
*******

St. Louis with the same payroll but with Rockies management efficiency (MCost/MWin):

STL M Payroll / COL (MCost/MWin) = (67,637,492)(2,082,829) = 32.47 M Wins

162 game season * STL Avg. Win % (.566) = 91.69 actual Avg. Wins.

32.47 M Wins (Adjusted M Wins for Efficiency)
48.60 Wins (Baseline for M Wins stats)
-----
81.07 Average Wins [91.69 currently]

------------------------

Minnesota with the same management efficiency (MCost/MWin) but with Rockies payroll:

COL Avg M Payroll / MIN (MCost/MWin) = (51,081,393)(955,394) = 53.47 M Wins

162 game season * MIN Avg. Win % (.520) = 84.24 actual Avg Wins.

53.47 M Wins (Ajusted M Wins for Payroll)
48.60 Wins (Baseline for M Wins stats)
-----
102.07 Average Wins [84.24 currently]

Like everyone else, I love having Brian Fuentes as the closer for the Rockies.

He is young and affordable and gives the Rockies late game talent and reliability that they have never really had so it isn't likely that they would trade him.

That said, what kind of talent do you believe that the Rockies could get in return for Fuentes since this year is shaping up to be a seller's market and the demand is so high for relief pitchers?

A funny quote from Brad Hawpe:

"I think it was a cutter, slider-type pitch on the outer-third, out over the plate," Hawpe said. "It was just a fly ball that got out."

That tells you something about his power right there.  I wasn't aware that flyballs 'just got out' in Washington.

I just found this quote a bit amusing.

I have no idea who the Cubs have on the roster to play first base while D. Lee is injured but if they get desperate to try and save the season I wonder if they would be interested in Shealy.  He is a good defender and he could actually provide some of the offense that the Cubs were counting on from Lee.

Of course it would amount to a rental, as Lee is the long-term answer at 1B for Chicago and Shealy doesn't have another position to play.

Sutcliffe and O'brien are doing the commentary for the WBC game between the USA and Mexico.  When discussing international players who are making a big splash at the WBC the first name that came up was Manuel Corpas of Panama, who they said was drawing raves and comparisons to Mariano Rivera.

I guess he isn't going to be an under the radar prospect anymore. ;)

An article that I found in a quick search for info on him from the WBC.

http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/app/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060305&content_id=45249&vkey=n ews_milb&fext=.jsp