What's the effect of Coors Field on these numbers?

Well, he is basing off a league avg ERA of 4.40 for the NL, and a "league avg era" in Coors according to his list is 4.91

Oops...that's starters ERA. League avg reliever is 4.48

1) Dan O'Dowd finally abandoning the notion of trying to find a gimmicky team to win in Coors and simply assembling a team of the best players he could find.

I thought they induced the most groundballs of any team in baseball this year. Wasn't that by design, to find groundball pitchers?

I kind of expected a better projection than that for Jimenez, and thought he would be better than Morales. Guess I'm just easily impressed by shiny things like a 116 MPH fastball.

Are these supposed to be neutral-park projections, or what you think their actual Coors-influenced numbers will be?

They are park adjusted

OK. I thought the hitters looked a little low, and the pitchers high, but now that I check, most of the hitters in their 27-29 seasons are projected to pretty much meet their career lines.

The pitchers do seem a bit high to me. Jeff Francis has easily beaten that projection each of the past two years, is 27, and is healthy. Manny Corpas is projected to have the worst season of his career at the age of 25. Aaron Cook is projected to have his highest ERA since 2003. And so on.

I'm with Boots on Corpas - Dan, can you throw a spotlight on Manny?

I'm not Dan but I play him in my fantasy life ...

Including minor leagues, Corpas has just 225 IP the last 3 seasons. Typical or better for a reliever but still a small sample size and any such track record needs to be regressed pretty heavily. Also, he has 179 Ks in those IP which is not that special for a reliever. And his career minor-league WHIP is 1.33, career major-league WHIP 1.15. That said, the projected HR rate seems high and the Ks a little low.

But mainly I go with the IP thing. Over the last three years, 1.5 in the minors, Corpas has compiled the track record of one good starting season. That's very little to go on.

^ If I am not mistaken, Corpas generates ground balls at a high rate. Which is part of his skill set that makes him so special. Too lazy to check at the moment.

They are park adjusted

I guess my question is, what would an ERA projection of say 4.50 be in your average NL park? AL park?

I guess my question is, what would an ERA projection of say 4.50 be in your average NL park? AL park?

Three-year weighted, I have the Coors overall run factor as 116, so take off 8% or so.

Is Stewart (or Atkins?) slated for 2B?

By these projections, the Rockies have pretty good depth at the corners (Smith, Spilborghs, Koshansky) so they may be reasonably able to withstand some injuries to their top hitters. The main question marks are the same ones they had last season -- C, 2B, CF.

SP depth also seems reasonable (and didn't they just sign Kip Wells? why? not a bad gamble but this doesn't seem the team that needs a 5th starter).

I'll grant this team projects at least a little better than I gave them credit for in some recent thread. But I'm guessing it's still around a mid-80s team in terms of true talent and it will take some luck to make the playoffs. (Note, not sure any NL team much less NL West team projects substantially better.)

Ubaldo Jimenez is the Rockies' 7th or 8th best starter? I don't think so.

The Rockies don't appear to know who is playing second for them. It could be Stewart or Jayson Nix, or they could bring in someone like Iguchi (has he signed elsewhere yet?).

I don't have any idea what they're going to do at second. At this point, they might just as well have hung on to Jamey Carroll, who was OK there in 2006.

Jimenez had a good run in the majors but his first half-season pitching in the minors was downright terrible.

I guess my question is, what would an ERA projection of say 4.50 be in your average NL park? AL park?

Three-year weighted, I have the Coors overall run factor as 116, so take off 8% or so.

Many thanks Dan!

If I were Marcus Giles I'd offer to sign here for the league minimum. After one year of Coors-inflated stats he might be able to fool somebody into giving him a 3 year deal like Kaz Matsui did.

Dan, any chance of getting projections for the Rule 5 guys?

or they could bring in someone like Iguchi (has he signed elsewhere yet?).

He signed with the Padres.

Random comments:

The Rockies were second in the majors in GB%, to Toronto.

Corpas has, to this point in his major league career, allowed twice as many GBs as FBs - but that's only based on 322 total batted balls.

Ubaldo Jimenez was not terrible at Colorado Springs. He really only had three bad starts out of 19. One thing that you have to be careful about in looking at minor league pitchers, especially starters, is the distribution of runs across games. There will be any number of times in which a pitcher in the minors will be left on the mound to absorb a pounding where in the majors he'd be taken out of the game, because the focus in the minors is less on winning and more on development and the major league teams want the pitchers to get their work. Jimenez, for example, gave up 9 ER in 2 2/3 innings in his first start, 7 ER in 3 2/3 innings in his third start, and eight ER in 3 2/3 innings on June 7. He posted a 4.16 ERA in his other 16 starts, which is a very good ERA for Colorado Springs.

-- MWE

Jimenez, for example, gave up 9 ER in 2 2/3 innings in his first start, 7 ER in 3 2/3 innings in his third start, and eight ER in 3 2/3 innings on June 7. He posted a 4.16 ERA in his other 16 starts, which is a very good ERA for Colorado Springs.

But you can play this game with most pitchers. He did have plenty of other bad starts - just look at some of his walk totals.

Ubaldo (and the other Latino pitchers for the Rockies, in general) struggle throwing early strikes. Corpas is the noteworthy exception. The Rockies bullpen seemed to be ahead after one pitch more than any team I watched last year.

Ubaldo and Morales frustrated the folks here in Tulsa by insisting on tickling the radar guns vs. throwing strikes. Ubaldo can be a top-flight starter, and Morales isn't far behind, but they'll need to show they can unlearn the "throw it harder" mentality.

Vizcaino is a great addition to the bullpen.