I posted a fanpost last year after the SpillySlam about all the things that happened in the game that made it a game that would be memorable forever.  I feel similarily inspired tonight, and I appreciate that I'm not writing this one at 4 AM :)

So first, a little personal story.  I was supposed to go to the game with some friends (read former) tonight, but they cancelled on me at the last second.  So, I went home to watch on TV and enjoy the game from there.  Somebody's getting a lump of coal in their stocking at Xmas this year.

Here's the things that stand out to me from the game:

1.  The Rockies left so many runners on base in the first few innings, that Drew Goodman changed his signature "they're leaving a village on the bases" to "they're leaving a whole county on the bases".  It was a continuation of their issues from the extra inning game on Sunday, where they left an incredible number of men on in extra innings.  Bases left loaded in the second, third, two left in the fourth, fifth, and sixth, as they fell behind 9-2.

2.  On the flip side, the Cardinals were starting rallies with two outs, scoring six runs after two were out. 

3.  Holliday and Cargo both homered in the game.  I thought that was cool.

4.  When Holliday hit the three run bomb to put them up 9-2, I had shades of his homer in the clinching game against Arizona that sent us to the World Series in 2007.  I remember thinking back then, that hey, we're actually going to the WS!!!  When he hit it today, I had a flashback and thought, game over.  Boy was I wrong.  Chacin unintentionally intentionally walked Pujols with two outs to get to Holliday, and it backfired big time.

5. Francis was cruising through the first eight batters.  Starting with LaRussa's goofy number 9 position player (using the term loosely with Aaron Miles), the next five all reach, scoring three runs.  They score two more in the fourth, after the goofy number 8 pitcher sacrifies two runners into scoring position.

6. Tracy makes a curious move in the bottom of the seventh, pinch hitting his backup catcher Chris Iannetta.  Rather than risk losing his backup catcher, he inserts Iannetta into 3rd base for the second time in his career.  This would pay off HUGE in the ninth inning.

7.  Manny Corpas gets the win with two scoreless innings.  This got some of the most funny reaction on the post-game posts.

8.  Dennys Reyes has one of the worst AB's in baseball history, even throwing his bat wildly on a swing and a miss.  LaRussa regrets batting him now.

Ok, so onto the bottom of the ninth inning.  Down by six runs.  Prior to the first Boston comeback, the team had scored 5 runs TOTAL in the ninth inning in like 70 games.

9A. Olivo leads off with a single.  He NEARLY gets doubled off of first on a smash by Mr. Late Night, but alertly gets back.  That could have been it right there.

9B. Mora pinch hits, and slaps one to right field.

9C. Barmes walks on a 3-0 pitch from Reyes, which the all-star cough cough catcher flubs for a passed ball, scoring Olivo.  LaRussa decides to bring in his closer in a 9-4 game, showing respect for the Rockies.

9D. Iannetta comes up, batting as the third baseman.  He absolutely crushes a 3-2 pitch for a three run bomb, bringing the score to 9-7.  I'm jumping up and down at this point (and not just for the tacos)

9E. Still need two runs.  Dexter comes up and launches one to right.  Winn looks awful going after it, and it goes as a double.

9F. Hawpe pinch hits, looking to tie it up.  He ends up hitting a cue shot, and almost beats it out.  Two outs, Dex to third base.  Tension mounts.

9G. Cargo comes up, and hits a shot to right field.  Winn is playing literally five feet from the wall, and the ball lands in front of him.  Single, 9-8.  At this point I am really nervous, as I'm thinking it would really suck to lose now.  I also hopped onto the game thread at this point.

9H. Giambi comes up, looking for a walkoff.  He hits another one to right field, in front of Winn who butchers another ball.  Cargo scores all the way from first, TIE GAME!!!

9I.  Cook comes in to pinch run for Giambi for like the 432nd straight game.  He represents the winning run.  Who scored the winning run in the SpillySlam game?  You guessed it, pitcher Adam Eaton, who also got the win.

9J. Olivo comes up for the second time in the inning.  He hits a ground ball to you guessed it Winn in right field, and Cook chugs over to third base.  This brings up Mr. Late Night himself.

9K.  Smith absolutely smokes a 2-2 pitch to right field over Mr. Winn, and the Rockies have another unbelievable comeback - biggest in team history!  And the Row goes wild!!!!!!!  Every player except for Hawpe scored in the ninth, including Olivo twice.

So, I'll leave the post at that.  What an incredible game, I'm sure everyone thoroughly enjoyed the stirring comeback.  Can we now have faith in this team and their future success this year, now that they have apparently learned the art of the late inning comeback?  Wow.  What a game.  I love this country!

I thought the discussion on whether a pitcher can win the league MVP award while pitching every five days was very interesting.  Like most people, I thought it would be very hard for a starting pitcher to be more valuable than an everyday player.

Luckily, we have more quantative ways to look at this topic now.  Thanks to fangraphs (who have excellent stats, even though the recent Ubaldo article was a bunch of tripe), I looked at WPA as a way to compare how many wins did a player contribute towards to try and normalize between hitters and pitchers. 

I did run the NL pitcher numbers both with pitching only and combining their hitting and pitching - for MVP, I would think you would have to combine the two to get an overall WPA number to compare against hitters.

Looking at the last five years, I saw something interesting.  In the power and offense crazy era of baseball, the top hitter definitely contributed more WPA than the top pitcher, which makes some sense.  However, as the offense has calmed down, the gap has closed, and in a couple of cases, a pitcher had a higher WPA than the highest position player in their league - Zack Greinke last year, and Cliff Lee the year before that.

So, I think I am changing my mind on this.  This year, Ubaldo has the highest WPA in the NL, and if he keeps that up, he should definitely be in the conversation for MVP in addition to the Cy Young. 

Ok, so I know I am definitely into tracking how the team does win/loss-wise by starting pitcher more than most other people.  I actually care about this more than the pitchers W/L record - although in Ubaldo's case this year they are the same :)  But I digress.

Let me start with my main point - the Rockies are at 29-27, not where we expected them to be.  I believe there are two main reasons for this:

#1 - Getting a 1-7 record out of Greg Smith's 8 starts this year.  Absolutely killing the overall record.

#2 - DLR going on the DL.  The Rockies were 3-1 in his four starts this year, after going 18-4 in his last 22 starts last year.  That is a lot of wins to try and replace.

So, the Rockies currently sit at 2 games over .500.  The first table shows the breakdown by starting pitcher.  Obviously Ubaldo has been saving our bacon so far, but it also shows something else very interesting - how absolutely horrible we were with Greg Smith starting.  We were 1-7 in his 8 starts, which works out to a 20 victory season if he made every start for us (the horror of that thought!)

Even a .500 level pitcher would give us 3 more wins, putting us at or near the top of the NL in wins.  So, Smith's starts have almost singlehandedly put us in the hole we are in.  You can see the stabilizing impact of Chacin's and Francis' starts, keeping us much closer to .500.  Also, Hammel has picked it up after going 0-4 in his first four starts.

Ok, so for some historical context.  Last year, the Rockies finished 92-70, or 22 games over .500.  How did we get there last year?  Well, here's the 2009 table below.  Surprisingly, due to their slow starts, Ubaldo and Cookie only contributed to 2 of those 22 games combined.  You can see DLR, Hammel, and Marquis being the big contributers, DLR leading the way at 8 games over .500 over the season. 

Also, you only see 7 starts in the "other" category FOR THE WHOLE YEAR - it's hard to remember how incredibly resilient our starting pitching was in '09, and how remarkably consistent as well.

Ok, for a little fun, I put together the 2009 table post June 3, at which point the Rockies were at 20-32 (we need a catchy nickname for this date, as we are always referencing it).  During this timeframe the Rockies were 34 games above .500 - yes that is correct, their 72 wins led baseball, and were 9 more than the 2nd best Giants in the NL at 63 wins.  This table looks more like the Rockies we have come to expect - Ubaldo and DLR dominating, strong pitching across the board.  The Rockies were an UNBELIEVABLE 18-4 in DLR's last 22 starts last year - for all the abuse he gets on the Row, I think people forget how incredibly spectacular the Rockies have been with DLR on the bump.  And the Rockies were a 100 win pace team with four of their five starters - that's why our expectations are so high for this team.  They really were a sick team post 6/3.

So to summarize, I think replacing Greg Smith with the equivalent of .500 pitching puts us back on pace to be among the leaders in wins in the NL - too bad we had to suffer through eight of those starts, but he's gone now.  Getting DLR back anywhere close to the way he pitched for the last year before he got hurt could put us back to outpacing the rest of the NL in winning percentage, as we did last year post June 3rd.

Once we get all five starters humming, the wins will come - tell everyone to get off the ledge and stop worrying!

I guess an off day brings out all the closet baseball geeks - including me :)  I've been playing around with lots of numbers today trying to get a feeling for our Rockies hitting in 2010.  Is it as bad as it has seemed?  Is it average, but not meeting potential?  What can we do to improve?

So first, the wOBA data is from fangraphs, and the split OPS data is from ESPN.  First, I looked at wOBA for the nine likely candidates for the eight starting positions (I left out Ianetta, Giambi, Spilly, Mora - we can debate that).

So, here's the 2010 wOBA and career wOBA:

I included the career wOBA so we can assess any SSS issues.  Clearly, Olivo has greatly overperformed so far, Helton has greatly underperformed, Hawpe is a little high, Dex and Barmey a little low.  If you take the average of each of the two columns, however, they are .3478 and .3472 respectively, so overall regression wouldn't have a huge impact, it would just smooth things out between the players individually.

So, we're looking at approximately a .347 wOBA team not including pitchers.  Our pitchers have been at .193 wOBA (with zero walks LOL).  If you include this in the total number, scaling by plate appearances (104/1708), we end up with a .338 wOBA, assuming equal PA's for the nine people above.  Our team wOBA is at .331, so we have clearly been suboptimal in our use of our players so far, mostly too much Dex and a little Cargo too high in the lineup, and Iannetta's slump early in the season.

So, based on wOBA, how do you arrange the lineup?  I toyed with it several ways - the first would be as it is above, with Dexter out.  Overall wOBA goes up, as your best hitters get the most at bats.

But, as Andrew points out, some research points to arranging your lineup a little differently, to optimize between PA's and having men on base.  This has come up with in order of best to worst, 2, 4, 1, 5, 3, 6, 7, 9, 8 as your lineup (hence all the shenanigans with the pitcher batting eighth).  Ignoring the pitcher wackiness (as pinch hitters change the equation), we have a lineup that looks like this:

As much as I like this lineup, I believe that I would do it a little differently.  I think Tulo is really our best hitter, and Smith is more suited to leadoff, which leads us to:

The risk here is that Olivo regresses hard back to the mean, but if he starts to cool off, you can rearrange things.

I guess the key takeaways here are:

1.  Helton should be batting lower, probably around 6th

2.  Cargo should be lower as well, until he increases his wOBA by walking more than 2.5%

3.  Dex should be on the bench against righties (already happening thankfully)

4.  Jim Tracy should be happy with the alternating L/R :)

I also took a stab at a lineup to use against tough lefties (maybe ~10% of the time):

Fowler actually has a .980 OPS vs. lefties, so he gets in ahead of Smith, who has struggled.  I have Mora in, as Stewart has struggled as well against lefties.  I wouldn't use this lineup in general, just against tough lefties as I said.  It keeps 5 of the 8 positions static, only Cargo hits at two different points in the lineup.

Are we just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic?  I don't think so, but probably a little..  Our .331 wOBA puts us eighth in the NL.  The Brewers and the Phillies are at .350 wBA, so getting more at bats for our productive hitters will put us near the top of the NL instead of the middle, but not leadership.  Combined with our pitching (currently #1 valued pitching staff in MLB), we should start dominating the NL as our true position becomes evident.

To really pop the wOBA, however, you would need to do one of two things - get a .350 wOBA hitter to play 2nd base, or get a .400 wOBA hitter to replace one of our .350 wOBA hitters.  Like I said, our current hitters are together in general playing at their career averages, so to expect an overall improvement with the current hitters is unlikely.

I guess I'm not too worried with 22-22.  As Tracy figures out what combination will work, and the pitching gets even healthier, the team will take off like '07 and '09.  This time FTW!!!

Ok, got back from the game today.  Pretty good crowd, definitely a great feeling at the park with the come from behind win.  Just after the game, I thought it was just a pretty good win.  After I got home, I watched some highlights and post-game commentary, and I felt inspired to write this fan post.  I'm now thinking that this win was bigger than I originally thought.

First, this game was I believe an example of a great team doing whatever was necessary to get a win.  The Reds came in as the hottest team in baseball, having won seven in a row.  Homer Bailey had a great start, and kept the Rockies at bay and off balance.  But, true to form, the Rockies used what I think is their greatest strength and worked the pitch count.  Bailey hit 117 pitches in the bottom of the sixth inning in a game he had only given up one run.  Consequently, he had to come out, exposing the soft underbelly that is the Reds middle relief.  If Bailey had been able to pitch into the seventh or eighth, the game could have ended much differently.

Previous big wins, like the 14 inning SpillSlam and the following game Tulo walk-off were definitely more exciting, but involved an element of failure and luck as the bullpen gave up three runs in one case to fall behind, and gave up two in the other to give up a lead in the ninth.  This game did not have that feeling of somehow getting lucky to win.  Instead the Rockies won by playing as a team and doing everything necessary to win.

I think the greatest play of the game was the sacrifice bunt by Smith.  Well, not the greatest play, but the greatest decision in a game filled with great decisions.  And the reason I say this is not because it was the statistically correct thing to do - we may have been better off with Smith batting there as hot as he has been.  But, this was a case of putting the team first.  We were down two runs, and had an opportunity to put the tying run in scoring position, less than two outs, with our #3 and #4 hitters due up.  As hot as Smith has been, he checked his ego at the door, and executed the bunt.  He could have fouled off the second attempt to get a second strike, and would have then been allowed to swing.  I have seen many other players give half-hearted bunt attempts in a similar situation.  But here is the likely NL player of the week, up in a key 7th inning situation, being asked to bunt for the good of the team.  And he did, and executed perfectly by hitting the ball to Rolen.  (Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but it reminds me of the time Tim Wakefield gave up his start in game four of the ALCS to save the bullpen in game three of a blowout to the Yankees.  It was a completely selfless act by Wakefield, and you know what happened next.  The Red Sox rallied from a 3-0 hole and won their first World Series since WWI.)

Ok, that inning also saw the damage created by EY2.  His chopper forced Phillips to try and make a highlight play on an otherwise routine grounder.  He tagged up on a 225 foot sacrifice fly and forced the throw home, allowing Cargo to move up to third base.  Tulo responded with a clutch two-out RBI single, and the game was tied.  The team picked up Seth Smith after his selfless act and got both runners home.

The seventh also saw the second of two great personnel decisions by Jim Tracy.  First, in the sixth, he pinch hit for Ubaldo.  Although Hawpe ultimately didn't score on a questionable base running decision, Ubaldo was dealing with a minor leg injury and removing him from the game was the right thing to do.  Then, in the seventh, he took Tulo out after he sprained his back running to first.  Both of these were not easy decisions, but these two mean too much to our team to take unnecessary risk for the expense of one game.  Excellent judgement by manager Jim Tracy.

There were also many amazing plays by the team to keep themselves in the game.  Ianetta gunned down speedy Drew Stubbs to end the third inning.  Barmes made a leaping catch to turn a double play on a ball possibly headed to the gap, turning two potential runs into outs.  Ubaldo hustled on an infield chopper to force a bad throw and score the first run.  After the Rockies tied the score, Betancourt had possibly the pitch sequence of the game pitching to demi-god Joey Votto in the eighth with a spectacular 3-2 strikeout.  All of these plays kept the game in check and allowed the drama to unfold.

So Ian Stewart must be able to leave his previous failures at the door.  Actually, in the post-game interview, he said this was not the case, and that it was bothering him quite a bit that he had struck out the first three times, all after Hawpe had previously walked.  But, he said he thought he was taking some good swings, and that confidence led to a crushing shot to the Rockies bullpen to give the Rockies a 4-3 lead.  I can't imagine how hard it is to keep going after striking out three times, but he kept himself together and hit an amazingly clutch homer.  Coors Field went absolutely bonkers. 

Now Franklin Morales has to come in to save the game.  He has been filling in for Huston Street, and is learning in a hurry the difference between pitching in the eighth and closing the game in the ninth.  As Drew mentioned on the telecast, he ran into adversity for the first time in this role.  He threw only one strike each to the first two batters, but both were hit for singles - blame poor BABIP luck :).  Anyway, Jim Tracy came out to talk with his temporary closer, and discussed as it turned out two very important topics - what to do if Gomes tried to bunt, and what to do if the Reds started the runners in motion.  They came to a logical decision to throw behind the runner for a number of reasons that Tracy pointed out in the post-game.  First was that it would be harder to get the speedy Rollins with his lead off of second.  Second was that Tracy didn't want Stewart out of position covering if Gomes pulled the ball on a hit and run.  Third was that if Rolen didn't also run, the double play was still in order.  Fourth was that a sac fly only ties the game and the Rockies still had last at-bat.  I can't really argue with the logic here, I was actually very impressed - both with the decision and the fact that the Rockies were so well prepared for this.

So after they make that decision, Morales fell behind 3-0 to Gomes on an incredibly tight strike zone.  After a borderline strike call, Gomes hit an absolute rocket, but right at Seth Smith to get the first out.  Next up was local high school hero Darnell McDonald.  Look at this link for statistics on the holes in his swing, particularly the contact percentage on pitches out of the strike zone.  He swings at absolute junk.  On a 2-2 count (after a completely ridiculous swing for the second strike on a pitch NOWHERE near the strike zone) the runners went in motion.  Ianetta made an accurate throw to second, but it bounced several feet in front of second base.  Barmes made an unbelievable scoop and tag on Rolen to get the second out, just as the Rockies had discussed and planned for.  So on the 3-2 count, Morales threw a 78 mph curve that was one of the filthiest pitches I have ever seen.  If you taped the game go back and look at it again, it is so sick.  McDonald didn't have a chance, game over.  Look at the wild WPA swing on fangraphs for the ninth inning - from 1st and 2nd, 3-0 count on Gomes, no out, to game over eight pitches later.  Tremendous heart and guts by Morales, excellent preparation by the manager, and a sterling defensive play from Barmes.

So, I guess my point is that this game is now bigger in my mind as I think about it more (obvious from the volume of text above I suppose).  If you actually have read to this point, first my apologies, second here come the opinions :)  I believe that this game could mark the point where the 2009 Rockies have finally arrived.  They took the best punches from the hottest team in baseball, and did just enough to pull out the win.  This wasn't a lucky comeback - it was a great team refusing to lose a game they could have lost many times today.  But Ubaldo kept the game in reach, they kept battling and stayed aggressive, and ultimately perfect execution and timely hitting under adversity garnered the victory.  So I'm going to say it - this is the type of game that a championship team wins.  Every team can have a lucky comeback or two over the course of a 162 game season.  But this game was actually won by the better team - on a complete team effort.  Starting pitching, middle relief, closing out the ninth, defense, timely hitting, hustle, grit, even the manager making incredible decisions and showing excellent foresight and judgement.  Most importantly, putting the team ahead of the individual (go ahead and quote Spock if you want).  This is what wins championships. 

Well, and the fact that Seth Smith is a god doesn't hurt either :)

Ok, I'm still buzzing over the unbelievable game last night.  I wanted to log all the weird stuff that happened in one of the most memorable games of all time (listed in no particular order, and please add things I missed in comments):

1.  Rockies only run in the first 13 innings is an unearned run, after a Uribe error, after Stewart gets out in a rundown off of third base, on a bases loaded walk to Helton that was probably strike three.

2. Bochy has Lincecum pinch run for Molina in the top of the 11th.  He has Freddy Sanchez pretend to pinch hit, but instead has closer Brian Wilson attempt to bunt.  He makes one of the worst bunt attempts ever on the first pitch, then proceeds to bunt into a double play.

3. Lead-off double for the Giants in the top of the ninth.  Bochy has pitcher Joe Martinez pinch run for Garko.  He lets Rowand swing away instead of moving the runner over, and he strikes out.  Two ground outs later the Rockies are out of it.

4. Adam Eaton gives up eight baserunners in his two innings, yet gets the win and scores the game winning run.

5-14 after the jump

Continue reading this post »

I was listening on the radio yesterday to JT the Brick, and he went off on the Rockies and Giants, saying they played in the worst division in baseball, that he disregarded any win streaks they were on due to the inferior competition, and that the Braves would definitely win the wild card.  Safe to say, I don't think JT is a gentleman or a scholar. He clearly has not looked analytically at how dominant the Rockies have been in interleague play, for example.

Here are the interleague records from 2006-2009.  Blue are AL, red are NL.  Clearly the AL has been the dominant league, almost all blue at the top.  However, look at the Rockies - a lone red row in a sea of blue.  Should have colored them purple :)

Lumping Colorado with the rest of the weak NL is an easy thing to do, but it is not accurate, especially relative to interleague play.  The Rockies can hang with anyone from the AL, and have proven that over the past four years.

Seeing Cleveland near the bottom makes me think back to 2007.  We swept the Yankees that year (beating Mussina, Pettitte, Clemens), took 2 out of 3 from Boston in the regular season (beating Schilling, Beckett) , and it would have been interesting if Cleveland had been able to close out Boston in the ALCS.  Oh well, let's get them this year!

Well, a combination of getting up too early today and getting excited about the Rockies got me thinking about Ubaldo's streak of 22 consecutive starts with 6 or more innings pitched.  I was wondering what the longest such streaks were for Rockies pitchers.  I went to the great starting pitching database at baseballmusings.com, and exported the Rockies starts in their history.  After some excel magic, I got the following info (please excuse the rough formatting):

Ubaldo has been on an amazing run.  If someone can give me a pointer to flat data from all teams, I can see how his streak is in an MLB context.

Only one real surprising name on the list - Roger Bailey?  Really?  I had to double check that to make sure my formula was right :)  His streak started at the beginning of the 1997 season.

We traded Jason Jennings after his incredible 2006 season - got back some pieces that helped us get to the World Series in 2007, and Jason has not been the same since he left.

Cook's been a horse with two streaks of 10, we're going to miss him.  But he clearly wasn't right over the past month or so.

And Brian Bohanon!  One of my favorite stats from 2000 (pre-humidor, remember) was that he tied Randy Johnson for lowest road ERA in the NL that year - 2.79!  Home ERA 6.65.  Maybe one of the final straws that led to the humidor.

It feels truly awesome to have a legitmate ace - we'll take on anyone in the post-season!

For reference, I have added the longest such streaks for the New York Yankees from 1993 to 2009 - same timeframe as the Rockies, maybe even a little easier in the AL because of the DH, and clearly the best team in baseball over that time.  Ubaldo beats this collection of future Hall of Famers and championship stalwarts.

I got to thinking today, that now the Rockies are 63% to make the playoffs, the reason for potentially raiding the farm system should change.  Previously, I was thinking that we needed to make a trade to make sure we make the playoffs - there adding a strong middle reliever or a middle of the rotation type starter made sense.

However, I believe now that the Rockies are in good shape to make the playoffs at this point (pinch me before I wake up).  If we make a trade, it should be geared at being a better playoff team, not a better regular season team.

What do the Rockies need to make them a better playoff team?

1.  Ace starting pitcher - part of the reason we lost to the Red Sox in '07 was that Josh Beckett (even more so in the post-season) was a true ace and dominated game one.  Do you feel comfortable with Cook, Marquis, even Ubaldo vs. someone like that in game one of the World Series?  We should only trade for someone you think would be better than those guys (like Halladay of course).  Here's a place to start shopping.

2.  Right handed slugger - right now, our best right handed power hitter is probably Tulo, followed by Spilly, Ianetta, Atkins, Barmes?  You get my point.  Our lefties have pretty good numbers vs. lefties, especially OBP, but for power nothing beats a right handed slugger vs. a  southpaw.

3.  Closer type pitcher for bullpen - a shutdown guy for the eighth inning.  In the playoffs, Tracy will ride the starters, likely into the 7th or 8th.  That means we need two nasty pitchers for the eighth and ninth.  We have one in Huston Street.  Would like a second (last night Corpas and Perala did not step up).  Maybe it's Franklin Morales from the left side, would be nice to have one from the right side.  Here's the top relievers.

Other than those three, I can't think of another trade that would make us a better playoff team.  Thoughts on who you would add for a post-season run?

P.S.  Mondogarage, give my thoughts and love to Jenn.

Ok, I'm sure we are all excited about the Rockies 30-10 run since June 4th.  I put together some data assuming that the baseball stats since June 4th are truly predictive of the future.  This is extremely best case for the Rockies, and probably represents some sort of ceiling.  It is still cool to look at :)

First, here is the run differential since the Rockies were 20-32:

 You can see the Rockies are dominating MLB by a wide margin.

So, what is the pythagorean projection assuming the winning percentage predicted by the above run differential remains the same for the rest of the season?  Glad you asked ... (exponent = 1.81)

 Lookie lookie, guess who catches the Giants AND the Dodgers?  I had to go to tenths on the wins because it is so tight at around 95 wins.  Looks like the ending of the 2007 season.  And having Manny back will likely help the Dodgers run differential moving forward, but it still pays to dream.  This actually predicts the Dodgers missing the playoffs.

Ok, last thing I wanted to post was TW/TL data for the Rockies starting pitchers.  If anyone can point me to a place online where I can look this up, that would be appreciated, because I am updating this manually right now (any errors in the data belong to me).

Jimenez has started four of our last ten losses.  I don't see that continuing with how well he has been pitching.  Of course the other starters will probably come back to earth, so maybe it will balance out.  If we did trade for Halladay, who would you replace?  Knee jerk reactions are DLR or Hammel, but really?  6-1, 7-2 respectively?  My vote is bullpen help or a right handed slugger, not a starter.  But Halladay would be nice too.

First time post on purplerow, I can't get enough of the intelligent baseball discussion!

My post is centered around Todd Helton and his decline in production in recent years.  I have been trying to see if I could figure out any particular reason other than simple aging, and I have a couple of theories.  Here's some data:

As you can see, Helton's OPS started coming down around 2005 - dramatically vs. left handed pitchers.

More after the jump ...

Continue reading this post »