SEASON:
ARI 88-70
SDP 87-71 (1 GB)
COL 86-72 (2 GB)

SEPTEMBER:
COL 17-7
ARI 13-9
SD 13-11

I find this race, and the one in the Central, quite interesting, because I don't particularly care which team wins.

More Rockies fun:

* They now have the longest winning streak of any team this year.

* They have the best record in the NL since June 1st, and the second-best record in baseball after the Yankees.

* They have now ensured that the three-game series in Coors with the Diamondbacks this weekend will be meaningful for both teams. At worst, the DBacks will come into town with a three-game lead over the Rox in the West.

* Most remarkably, they still have the lowest ERA in the National League since the All-Star break.

C'mon Vaux, I know you're rooting against those preachy Rockies.

Wonder what the Padres and D-Backs think of the lineup LA used against Colorado tonight.

Scott Hairston homered leading off the eighth for the Padres

Who needs Milton Bradley !!

Hoo boy...if the Rockies run the table...Clint Hurdle will hold the franchise record for wins.

After hitting a solo home run Wednesday night, Hairston was batting .323 (20 for 62) with seven homers in 26 games with the Padres. His on-base percentage going into Wednesday was .400, his slugging percentage .754.

Do the Diamondbacks have any second thoughts about having traded him within the division?

"Yeah, to some degree," General Manager Josh Byrnes said. "We obviously like Rosales, and I think Scott's going to be a good player. The timing of it now is more dramatic given the race, but believe me, in any trade we're assessing all the variables before we pull the trigger on it."

4 games to go and no NL team has clinched a playoff spot. And I don't think anyone can clinch today either. I would almost trade a Cubs central title for the other 5 teams all ending up with 89 wins. How would that shake out? First a bunch of playoffs to determine the division winners, followed by a three team round robin WC playoff? That would be 1951, 1967, and 1978 all wrapped up into one.

Well, maybe not, but it would be cool.

And the schedule-makers' heads would explode. And I'd have to figure out a way to take Monday and Tuesday off work to watch like 30 hours of baseball

"To some degree," Josh Byrnes, "to some degree"? Are you #### kidding me?

You trade a cheap young pre-arb outfielder in his prime to a division rival in the middle of a pennant race for a AAA pitcher with a broken arm, and that's all you can say? "To some degree"?

How about "you got caught with your pants down, and Kevin Towers went on you just like Doug Melvin abused Joe Garagiola Jr. in the Sexson trade"? That would be a more fitting response.

What makes this a real pisser is that I knew, everybody here knew, everybody in North America knew that your beloved left fielder Eric Byrnes would be sucking his dog's balls right about now.

You and Moorad and Kendrick and the remaining paper pushers in your front office better hope that Hairston doesn't lead the Padres to the playoffs, while the Dbacks get knocked out of this race.

If that happens, you guys are going to look like a bunch of idiots.

Also, the Rockies have the highest team fielding percentage in major league history.

Also, the Rockies have the highest team fielding percentage in major league history.

Two weeks ago, I seem to recall the Cubs leading all of baseball in DER. That would be strange if the Rox set the FP record without the DER title.

The Rockies are the best team in the NL right now, no ifs whens or buts. They are hitting well, pitching well and fielding well. It's been actually great to see their two young pitchers (Jimenez and Morales) come into the middle of a pennant race and do so well. If the Rockies weren't about to abuse the Dbacks in Coors, I'd actually really be enjoying their run...

Also, looking at 2008, given the uncertainty of AZ's rotation and the need for many young players to pick up their game; given the mess in LA's front office; and given SD's upcoming free agent losses (Cameron, Bradley) and lack of rotation pitching depth, I think it's safe to claim that the Rockies are the favorites to win the NL west next year. One of O'Dowd's plans finally worked.

That would be strange if the Rox set the FP record without the DER title.

Not really. FP just measures ability to avoid errors.

This was my assessment of the Hairston trade when it happened:

Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:42 pm

Mark me down as someone who says that

A) Anyone who thinks Hairston was "given a chance" doesn't really understand what given a chance really is.

B) Scott Hairston playing in San Diego will come back to haunt the D backs. Take that to the bank.

Link

I think it's safe to claim that the Rockies are the favorites to win the NL west next year.

I would think so. They've done all this without anyone other than Matt Holliday (and possibly Tulowitzki; we'll have to wait and see) playing over their heads, and despite losing Aaron Cook, Jason Hirsh and Rodrigo Lopez for the season. They've got two highly regarded young starters getting some experience and pitching well, so they'll head into next year with some combination of Francis, Cook, Hirsh, Jimenez, Morales and Lopez as their rotation.

They don't have any major free agent losses to worry about, and they'll have Iannetta (who's been very good since he came back from the minors) and maybe Ian Stewart to fold into the lineup. Next year could be a lot of fun.

I think it's safe to claim that the Rockies are the favorites to win the NL west next this year.

Fixed

wow. if the Rockies win 14 straight (or however many) to end the season and make the playoffs. that would be awesome.

Mark me down as someone who says that

A) Anyone who thinks Hairston was "given a chance" doesn't really understand what given a chance really is.

This comes up a lot, whenever anyone with really good minor league stats (Petagine, Pickering...) is jerked around and given 100 at bats here, 125 at bats there, plays poorly, there are always some who say, "see minor league stats mean nothing, he was given a chance and failed".

I have almost never seen anyone who makes that argument concede the player in question did not get fair shot. They will insist that the 150-250 at bat sample scattered over 2-3 years is a completely fair representation of the player's ability and that the 1000-3000 AAA/JPL stats mean nothing in comparison.

Hairston had a large number of AA/AAA PAs that said he was a better hitter than players like S. Drew, Carlos Quentin, Tracy, Snyder, Montero etc., Taking minor league stats in conjunction with AA/AAA stats and he still looks like a better hitter than all I just named, except possibly Tracy

Remember the Bay Street Bombers of the nineties, who tried to win with power power power? Well this Rockies team has put almost 200 more people on base than their opponents, something the 90's teams never approached; kudos are in order-they finally figured out how to win in this ballpark.

You are SO right JPWF13. It drives me crazy. I always get arguments in situations like this that go..."Well he hasn't proved himself"....or "You have to earn your at bats"...etc.

As far as I'm concerned, a guy earns his major league shot by performing in the minors. If you have a guy that has performed at a very high level in the minors, and you are serious about this player, then you open a spot for him and give him a full season of CONSECUTIVE play to try to prove himself able to make the adjustments at the major league level...or at the very least, more than half a season.

Those that claimed Hairstons shot was 3 weeks in the every day lineup in April, all the while knowing that unless he hit .600 with 12 homers, Quentin was going to take his spot as soon as he came off the DL, just don't get it.

I think Scott gets his chance next year, depending on the Bradley situation. I believe the guy is going to get 500+ at bats from San Diego next year and put up a an OPS+ over 110.

Not really. FP just measures ability to avoid errors.

Right but you would expect a positive correlation between not making errors and turning balls in play into outs. I think it would be pretty surprising if the best team in the history of baseball (How many team seasons would that be? Three thousand or thereabouts?) at avoiding errors wasn't the best team at converting balls into outs as compared to the much smaller sample of 29 other defenses in that year.

I'm not sure about that, Pops. I could swear I recall a fairly recent team (by "fairly recent," I mean the last 20 years or so) that had a bunch of old but surehanded guys afield--they made very few errors, but because the team collectively had godawful range, they weren't good at converting batted balls into outs, and didn't have a good DER (or wouldn't have, if the stat even existed then). Thinking maybe it was Baltimore or somebody, but that's strictly off the top of my head.

In any case, whether I'm hallucinating that team or not, I can pretty easily imagine the case where this could happen, and I don't think it'd be THAT strange. (The opposite would be a team full of, say, mid-80s Shawon Dunstons, who get to a ton of balls and record a lot of outs as a result, but also are very error prone and so have unspectacular FPs. This seems equally plausible to me.)

OTOH, I also see (what I think is part of) your point--a team that converts a lot of balls into outs will thereby offset the errors made (which will show up in their FP), and also likely have a good DER.

Look at Kouzmanoff, he hit in April, .113/.171/.183, an almost inconceivably bad month, he's hit .311/.366/.517 since May 1.

Even though he had hit .332/.395/.556 in 4 minor league seasons, he's not especially young-25, so his career was in literal jeopardy, he could very easily been benched, played sporadically after April, been sent back to AAA in 2008 etc etc...

and become another data point for those who dismiss players like him.

Petco does him no favors either, but he's .284/.342/.517 on the road this year. He can hit, his adjustment to MLB pitching was obviously rough, but he can hit. So can Hairston, guys whose career minor league lines are .322/.401/.571 in 2000 PAs don't grow on trees - even in the PCL. (Chad Tracy was .337/.386/.472; Overbay: .341/.411/.531; Conor Jackson: .332/.423/.530; Carlos Quentin:.312/.427/.526; Montero: 291/.360/.468; S. Drew: .315/.385/.546- I pick them because not much in the way of league or park adjustment needs to be made to compare their stats, Hairston had a higher career minor league OPS than every single one of them, and collectively their major league stats probably OPS+ 100 to 105 even with the horrible year Drew and Quentin had.

The Rockies are the best team in the NL right now, no ifs whens or buts.

Nothing against the team -- it's a great story, and I wish them well -- but when Colorado is the best team in the NL, you know something is amiss. It's like when Wake Forest is the best football team in the ACC.

And besides, the Rockies don't really seem like an extreme example; it's not like their DER's poor--in fact, it's close to the best in the league. It's just not quite the best, whereas their FP is (historically high, in fact).

I've been one of Hairston's biggest supporters in AZ for a really long time. Last year I waged a campaign on AZ message boards to have Eric Byrnes traded and Hairston given the job in left field. Needless to say, that didn't succeed... I wonder why...

I'm happy for Hairston, even if he's giving me heart-burn with his performance in San Diego. I'd figured he'd never get his fair chance in AZ (a lot of people in the front office didn't like him, and I think he lost his biggest supporter when Rizzo left).

Still, my hope was that he'd get traded to the AL or at least outside the division where I can enjoy his success without qualms. Josh Byrnes had to make the idiotic decision to trade him within the division in the middle of a pennant race. Truly moronic.

Oh, btw, because of the chance of rain and rain delays, the Dbacks may push Webb's start to tomorrow and start Yusmeiro Petit today in Pitt. The concerns is that a long rain delay may ruin Webb's start and knock him out of the COL series too. Given how Webb has sucked against COL this year, I really don't know if I should hope for anything out of Webb in COL... their lefties, especially Hawpe and Helton, have badly abused Webb this year.

According to ml.com and KTAR in AZ, Webb is not starting, and Micah Owings is going in his place.

I just noticed that not only has no NL team clinched a playoff spot, but according to BPro, no team even has a 90% or greater chance of making the playoffs with 4 games to play.

I just noticed that not only has no NL team clinched a playoff spot, but according to BPro, no team even has a 90% or greater chance of making the playoffs with 4 games to play.

Reposting this from the Wild Card thread, with the added note that the reason the Central Divisions %'s don't add up to 100 is my crappy rounding, not BPro's odds. The Braves have a non-zero playoff shot but they're it for teams not listed.

Presented merely for sake of argument, since I'm sure even the BPro guys would say these numbers are no better than a best guess at this point:

Playoff Odds (Division Chance)

Cubs: 89.4 (89.4)
Mets: 85.8 (77.4)
Diamondbacks: 83.0 (62.3)
Padres 57.2 (22.2)
Phillies: 41.7 (22.4)
Rockies: 32.5 (15.3)
Brewers: 10.1 (10.1)

They also say there's a 30.5% chance of a tie in the West, with a 6.7% chance of a three-way tie. The Wild Card has a 44.1% chance of a two-way tie, 32.3% outright winner, 17.5% three-way tie, 5.3% four-way tie and 0.8% chance of a five-way.

How awesome would a five-way tie be?

How awesome would a five-way tie be?

In addition to being awesome for fans (well, AL fans, I don't know how the fans of all the teams would feel about it) it would have the lovely side-effect of probably giving Bud an aneurysm

[Jake] Peavy won his NL-leading 19th game, and the Padres spoiled Bonds’ home finale for San Francisco with a much-needed 11-3 victory over the Giants on Wednesday night.

If Peavy wins his 20th game, either on Sunday or in a 1-game playoff on Monday, to clinch a playoff spot for the Padres, does anybody think he's got a chance to make some noise in the MVP voting? At this point, I think I'd probably vote for him, but I'm much more open to the idea of a starting pitcher being the Most Valuable Player than the BBWAA appears to be.

In addition to being awesome for fans (well, AL fans, I don't know how the fans of all the teams would feel about it) it would have the lovely side-effect of probably giving Bud an aneurysm.

I would think it would also give the NL Central winner a pretty big advantage going into the NLDS (and perhaps beyond). So I know what outcome I'm rooting for ....

Mets: 85.8

Quite frankly this is absurd, it's based on the assumption that the Mets are a .558 caliber team. Right NOW they are not, and it's not just a random slump, the pitching staff is toast right now. The late September 2007 Mets are a .400 team AT BEST (and only because they are scoring 6 runs a game- and since that's not their true level either I actually think they are a .300 team RIGHT NOW).

The Met's odds to make the postseason can't be any better than 50/50 right now even with a 1 game lead on both the divison and wildcard. The ELO version is especially off since it is supposed to take trends in account- but it only drops the Mets to 84.8%

I would think it would also give the NL Central winner a pretty big advantage going into the NLDS (and perhaps beyond). So I know what outcome I'm rooting for ....

I never even considered that. The NL Central winner would actually get a boost from having a worse record.

I never even considered that. The NL Central winner would actually get a boost from having a worse record.

Of course, there's also the scenario where 7 teams tie for 4 possible playoff spots, 5 East/West teams with identical records for 3 spots and Cubs/Brewers tied in the Central.

Question about DER:

Has anyone attempted to quantify how ballpark effects can skew this number? Were the Rockies really that bad the last few seasons on defense?

07-7th
06-22nd
05-29th
04-30th
03-29th

If there ARE ballpark effects that negatively influence their DER number, than that makes their 7th place ranking this year all the more remarkable. I guess I'd need to see home and road DER to get a better idea.

Man, if the Braves only had some pitching behind Huddy and Smoltz..I am rooting for the Rox and Pads!!
Rox cos of their yonug core, Pads cos of Maddux!

You expect the Rox to have a bad DER based on where they play. What they did this season was to thicken up the infield grass. Historically, the Rox apart from their altitude issues, had one of the fastest infields around, which just added to the problem.

That, Tulo and Taveras in CF with some young guys might be the reason they been so awesome

A lot of Rockies do have good zone ratings, at least, with a few notable exceptions . Here's the +/- runs I get using Dial's defensive method:

Helton: +12
Matsui: +8(! - that's a first)
Carroll: +7
Tulowitzki: +11
Atkins: -15
Holliday: +13
Taveras: -10
Hawpe: -2

Still, my hope was that he'd get traded to the AL or at least outside the division where I can enjoy his success without qualms. Josh Byrnes had to make the idiotic decision to trade him within the division in the middle of a pennant race. Truly moronic.

Stop the negativity Levski. Focus on the positive. Eric Byrnes is just finding new levels of ability at age 31, it looks like a Barry Bonds like late career surge! The entire league wants to throw us top pitching prospects for Carlos Quentin. CGonzalez too! Stephen Drew is just in a year long slump. And eventually one of those balls will actually stick to Chris Young's glove.

Accept the greatness that is Jeffrey Mooron!

Eric Byrnes is just finding new levels of ability at age 31

Yes, his popup rate is at career best 27%!

Micah Owings was a clutch god today. He replaced Webb to start the game, despite throwing a bullpen session yesterday, and threw 6 1/3 scoreless innings, allowing 4 hits while striking out 4. And, just for good measure, he went 4-4 at the plate, with 3 doubles and 3 runs batted in.

Dbacks are up 8-0 in the bottom of the 8th. God knows they desperately need this win.

Micah Owings was a clutch god today.

A guy in my NL only roto league dropped Owings the day BEFORE his last start - he's 1/2 point out of the money, he's 0.04 era points behind one team and .002 whip points behind another- dropping Micah and missing his last two starts may have just cost this guy a couple hundred bucks...

The joys of fantasy baseball.

The ELO version is especially off since it is supposed to take trends in account- but it only drops the Mets to 84.8%

Jeff Lynne predicts the Mets will make the playoffs?

I always get arguments in situations like this that go..."Well he hasn't proved himself"....or "You have to earn your at bats"

Sounds like a Gary Matthews, Sr. transcript. The man is a cliche god. Gosh I hope the Phils drop him after this year.

The ELO version is especially off since it is supposed to take trends in account- but it only drops the Mets to 84.8%

When in doubt, always go for The Move version.

Scott Hairston continues to be one man wrecking crew for San Diego.

I wish I could dig out ALL the posts I've made over the past couple of years, arguing and pleading and begging the Dbacks to give him a full season worth of at bats in LF, but no, I have to watch him explode in SD and single-handedly torture the Dbacks in the division race.

Mark it down: the Eric Byrnes extension, combined with the Hairston trade and the Quentin dump (which will happen soon enough, and in which the Dbacks will sell a quality major league ready outfielder for crap) will be by far THE WORST set of transactions that Josh Byrnes will have made as a general manager.

Now I understand that his hands were tied because Jeff Moorad and Ken Kendrick, being by far a couple of the biggest idiots to own a major league team (they make the guys in Pitt look smart), forced Josh Byrnes hand by agreeing to the Eric Byrnes's extension over the general manager's head. So they take the brunt of the blame.

But there's NO excuse for trading a guy who's proven to be a BETTER hitter in the minors than ANYONE you have on the roster, a guy you didn't have to trade in July, to your DIVISION rival in the middle of a goddam pennant race... all for some AAA reliever with a broken arm. NO EXCUSE. Josh Byrnes, you f####d up. Period.

You can now stop worry about having the Dan Uggla freebie as the the biggest black spot on your record. You've now got a big scarlet H on your forehead. Oh, and how fitting is it that right as Hairston is single handedly carrying the Padres into the playoffs, Eric #### Byrnes is in the throes of his annual 2nd half collapse?

Luckily, btw, the Dbacks have ENOUGH outfield depth to overcome the loss of Hairston and Quentin; in fact, the guys they kept (Young and Upton, hopefully CGonzalez, GParra, ACunningham) should be able to compensate for the loss of Hairston and Quentin. Hopefully the front office gets scarred enough by the Hairston fiasco and the concommitant Eric Byrnes suckitude so that they hang tight onto CarGo and Parra... because we all know that they'll need one of them to step up really soon once Eric Byrnes turns into a glorified and overpaid 4th outfielder who eventually has to be Shawn-Greened out of town...