Probably a decent move for both teams. Guthrie wasn't going to get Baltimore out of last place, and will be useful in Colorado if he can keep the ball on the ground. Hammel and Lindstrom will fill roster spots until some of the youngsters are ready.

Clay Rapada (one of the most extreme LOOGYs in existence - death on lefties, horrific v righties) gets DFA'd too. Career splits:
vL (136 PA): .153/.253/.220
vR (95 PA): .359/.474/.692
Total: .235/.343/.408

Wait, seriously? The Rockies just traded for a guy who's given up more home runs since '09 than all but two pitchers? A guy whose career GB/FB is 0.70?

I hope it works out for them, but I'm sure as heck not holding my breath.

Yeah, this seems a strange one from the Rockies' perspective. Guthrie's stats don't scream out that he's a good fit for Coors. I find it's always hard to tell what the plan is in Colorado as they seem to be going for it/building for the future simultaneously.

Are the Rockies bound by the Orioles arbitration offer, or do they get to re-start the process? Just curious.

"Jeremy is excited to join the Rockies and I see this as a positive result for all parties," Van Wagenen said. "Negotiations with the Orioles were steady yet slow and an arbitration hearing seemed possible and even likely. Once informed of the trade, Jeremy decided to make a showing of good faith and agreed to a deal within the Rockies' payroll structure, since he felt it important that his relationship with his new team get off on the right foot. Jeremy is excited about a fresh start with a new organization and a contending team close to home."

Really nice trade for the O's. I think Guthrie is overpaid for what he can give you, and is pretty close to FA, right? Hammel wasn't good last year but is probably a bit undervalued IMO and might bounce back and Lindstrom can be a decent reliever when healthy. I just don't see a huge difference between Guthrie and Hammel and Lindstrom more than makes up that difference.

Looking at FanGraphs, Hammel was way off last year:

2009: K/9=6.78, BB/9=2.14
2010: K/9=7.14, BB/9=2.38
2011: K/9=4.97, BB/9=3.59

He didn't show any loss of velocity on his fastball, but appears to have lost command/effectiveness of his other pitches, allowing hitters to tee off on his fastball. If it's fixable, Baltimore clearly wins the deal, as Hammel is four years younger than Guthrie and is under team control for an additional year. Lindstrom is a nice little bonus - not a great reliever, but a solid guy to help in the 7th/8th innings.

Colorado should be able to flip Guthrie for value at the deadline, if not earlier. In the meantime, he can eat innings and take some of the strain off the bullpen.

This is part of the purge as they felt Hammel could never live up to his promise, and accomplishes another goal of getting a guy who's demonstrated his arm can handle 200 innings. Hammel also had issues making it a full season without arm issues. The FB ratio of Guthrie is a bit worrisome in that park.

Guthrie, number 1 starter? What am I missing? He looks about as marginal as you can get.

What am I missing?

The Orioles' number 2 through 5 starters.

Guthrie, number 1 starter? What am I missing? He looks about as marginal as you can get.

Chacin is pretty clearly the number 1, but Guthrie probably has more career starts than the rest of the team combined. It's a bunch of very raw guys.

Edit: Chatwood (25), Moscoso (21), Nicasio (13), Outman (25), Pomeranz (4), Rogers (22), White (10) = 120. Guthrie has 154.

Lindstrom has been an injury risk throughout his career, but he can be a very effective reliever when he is healthy. He can reach triple digits on occasion, but generally pitches in the mid to high 90's. If the closer is injured, he can step into that role. When he was with the Astros in 2010, he was great in the first half in the closer role (2.80 ERA, 21 saves) but pitched poorly in the second half when a back problem flared up.

Unless Hammel is injured or something, I don't like this deal for the Rockies, because of Guthrie's cost and the potential as a poor fit for Coors.

Colorado should be able to flip Guthrie for value at the deadline, if not earlier. In the meantime, he can eat innings and take some of the strain off the bullpen.

No offense, but I've always found this somewhat puzzling. Pitcher who go five and a half innings are roundly criticized in the MSM and here, too, as bloodsucking drains on the bullpen. Guthrie has averaged a hair over six and a third innings per start over the last three seasons. That means in the half season you mentioned that the Rockies might keep Guthrie while he takes pressure off the pen he'll pitch all of an additional .83 innings * 17 starts through the All-Star break, or 14 innings total. If the last guy in the pen--whose innings Guthrie's presumably helping the Rox keep from having to pitch--is even half a run worse per nine the the next to last guy, Guthrie saves all of three-quarters of a run by being a durable rotation horse as opposed to the kind of five and a half wimp we so often decry.

What am I missing?

What am I missing?

It's a domino thing. If a low-inning guy consistently causes the bullpen to be tired, suddenly you've got crappy middle relievers (out of necessity) throwing high-leverage innings as they fill in for the fatigued front-end bullpen guys.

In theory, anyway. I don't have any numbers to back that up, but that's what I would imagine the catch is.

It's a domino thing. If a low-inning guy consistently causes the bullpen to be tired, suddenly you've got crappy middle relievers (out of necessity) throwing high-leverage innings as they fill in for the fatigued front-end bullpen guys.

In theory, anyway. I don't have any numbers to back that up, but that's what I would imagine the catch is.

I think it also depends on the staff. If you have a lot of SPs who struggle to go 6, then the effect really multiplies.

If you've got Halladay, Lee and Hamels as your front three, a 5.5 IP, good rate-stat starter is fine at #4/5.

Let's say, though, that usage is optimal rather than conventional. If I give my team an additional 14 innings, I can simply clip those 14 innings from the worst guy in the bullpen... ah, of course. It's not saving the run differential of the 14 innings between the last and next to last guys in the pen, but between the starter and the last guy in the pen. Don't know how I missed that. Still, in Guthrie's case it doesn't mean much, since he's averaged an ERA of 4.39 over the last three seasons, That's more like a run rather than three-quarters of a run that his durability saves.

I think it also depends on the staff. If you have a lot of SPs who struggle to go 6, then the effect really multiplies.

Does it, though? If I have three Guthrie's on my team, and I can rather easily find relievers for the back end of the pen who put up ERAs of 5.00, I've still only saved six runs over the entire season. Barely more than half a win, and that's when the majority of my rotation is involved.

For all that we hear about it, I would have thought the savings would be more substantial.

Orioles fans appear to be furious with this trade. I have mixed feelings. I don't love it, and would have preferred a couple prospects, but Hammel's 28 and 29 year old seasons plus Linstrom's 32 and 33 year old seasons seems like a good exchange for Guthrie's 33 year old season. The truth is that one year of Guthrie at $8-10M just wasn't worth that much.

What am I missing?


The Orioles' number 2 through 5 starters.


Its so easy when you see the answer.

and I can rather easily find relievers for the back end of the pen who put up ERAs of 5.00

I think 7th/8th/9th RPs are a good sight worse than that.

I don't know where else to put this, but since Uehara was previously on the Orioles, Rosenthal says Texas is shopping him b/c they want to get rid of the $4 million of his salary they owe. This would seem to be a huge sell-low moment on the guy. The A's are after him and they should be. Come July there will be a lot of teams that want him.

Nudging this along:

This has me wondering if a market inefficiency might be starters that go only 5 and a half innings.

Let's make the Losers a little worse, too, in ERA than a rotation of Five Guthries.

It looks like Guthrie is going to make something like 10m this season, while some sap who only goes five and a half innings with an ERA of 4.75 (an ERA+ around 75) the kind of pitcher who shuffles from team to team, year to year, getting deals like 1/3, at best.

Losers = 5.5 innings * 150 starts = 825 IP w/ an ERA of 4.75 = 435.4 runs
Five Guthries = 6.33 innings * 150 starts = 950 IP w/an ERA of 4.39. = 463.4 runs

For the moment let's imagine all games go 9 innings, and for the two teams to balance out they'll both give up 700 runs over the course of the season. Each team's pitching needs to go 1,458 innings, meaning for the Losers to catch up with the Guthries they need to throw an additional 633 innings and yield only 264.6 runs. The Guthries will be giving up 236.6 runs in only 508 innings.

Here's what the Losers and the Guthries need from their pen to arrive at the target of 700 runs allowed for the season:

Loser's bullpen: 633 IP with an ERA of 3.76 (264.6 runs allowed)
Guthrie's bullpen: 508 IP witn an ERA of 4.19 (236.6 runs allowed)

Which is easier to find? The combination of Loser's pen and rotation, or the Guthrie's pen and rotation?

and I can rather easily find relievers for the back end of the pen who put up ERAs of 5.00

I think 7th/8th/9th RPs are a good sight worse than that.

Definitely needs to be resolved.

I expect it's not a huge additional factor, but going to the bullpen an inning earlier also forces an NL team to use a pinch-hitter earlier in the game, which can affect late-game substitutions.

It's not just innings/start, it's the number of starts, too. With so much uncertainty in the rotation, I think they see Guthrie as providing some stability--someone likely to make all his starts. If you had 4 Hammel's and knew they were going to be able to make all their starts, yeah, Guthrie doesn't add much.

It is a little odd in that they've picked up another older guy in the last year of his deal.

Can you even adequately staff the loser's bullpen? 633IP at 1IP per pitcher is 633 appearances. 633 appearances / 162 games = 4 appearances per game (rounding up). If you're using 4 relievers per game and a guy can only go 2 games in a row before needing the 3rd game off you are maxing out an 8 man bullpen with a workload it probably cannot handle (who pitches 4 out of 6 games all season?). Most teams only have a 7 man bullpen, in which case you'll need 2-3 guys who can do long relief (otherwise known as AAAA starters).

Asking for two/three long men with 3.75 ERAs is certainly too much.. one of them would be better than one of the loser starters.

Loser's bullpen: 633 IP with an ERA of 3.76 (264.6 runs allowed)

And that's the problem. This is a 9-man bullpen under current usage. And not 9 guys giving you 70 innings each, but 9 slots of 70-innings each, with probably 14 guys filling up those slots.

First, with scoring down these days, teams are using their bullpens less -- only an average of 474 IP last year when it used to be 490-500 just a few years ago. That load is spread across 7 reliever slots so an average of about 68 IP per slot. Yet, in all of MLB, there were only 39 relievers who threw as many as 68 innings (ESPN player splits). Another 41 were between 60 and 68 and another 49 were between 50 and 60. On average, with their top 4 relievers, teams are covering only about 255 of those 474 innings. They are using 6-9 guys to cover the remaining 219.

So a rotation of Guthrie's adds another 150-160 relief innings on top of that load. That's 2 more reliever slots under current usage, requiring probably at least 3 more scrap heap, AAAA-type pitchers. Alternatively, you can try to increase the load on the top 4 hugely, giving them lower-leverage innings and watching their arms fall off.

Current starter/reliever usage is pretty much at its breaking point. It's got to be (a) starters pitch more innings -- which with the decline in offense we are seeing; (b) individual relievers (or slots) need to pitch more innings; (c) another roster spot goes to the pitchers -- we're already seeing the occasional 13-man staff; (d) you have a rotation of 4 5 2/3 inning guys which frees up a roster spot for a reliever.

EDIT: The guesstimate of 255 IP from the top 4 relievers is based on the 15th, 45th, 75th and 105th most relief IP in 2011.

I'm mostly indifferent to the trade. More rearranging chairs on the Titanic move. That said, I'm a huge Jeremy Guthrie fan and I hate to see him go.

Seems like a pretty meh trade from Baltimore's perspective. I understand the goal of getting something for Guthrie, and they got two pieces for one, and Hammel's controlled through 2013. But, if Hammel's decline from last year holds, will they even want to pay him for 2013? I guess adding Lindstrom is nice.

Colorado confuses me. Are they going for it?

I expect it's not a huge additional factor, but going to the bullpen an inning earlier also forces an NL team to use a pinch-hitter earlier in the game, which can affect late-game substitutions.

Good point. It also needs accounting for.

It's not just innings/start, it's the number of starts, too. With so much uncertainty in the rotation, I think they see Guthrie as providing some stability--someone likely to make all his starts. If you had 4 Hammel's and knew they were going to be able to make all their starts, yeah, Guthrie doesn't add much.

Agree that it's not just innings/start, but as to uncertainty in the rotation I'm wondering whether we can determine the actual cost of that uncertainty--is it merely cumulative, or is there some point past which the next 20-25 innings makes a critical difference?

Can you even adequately staff the loser's bullpen? 633IP at 1IP per pitcher is 633 appearances. 633 appearances / 162 games = 4 appearances per game (rounding up). If you're using 4 relievers per game and a guy can only go 2 games in a row before needing the 3rd game off you are maxing out an 8 man bullpen with a workload it probably cannot handle (who pitches 4 out of 6 games all season?). Most teams only have a 7 man bullpen, in which case you'll need 2-3 guys who can do long relief (otherwise known as AAAA starters).

Not sure you can't, but it's an excellent question. I mean, without being facetious, you can always staff a bullpen. It will take more time than I have today to chase to the end, but it might be the kind of situation where you can accept a slightly weaker rotation and pen in return for having an additional 30m for position players with which to more than make up for those weaknesses.

@27--all good points. Based on the smart posts following #17 and #22 a rotation entirely of Losers may simply be too extreme. I'm less sure, though, that seeking out a Loser or two with the dramatic $ savings involved and using that savings elsewhere might not be a legitimate way of exploiting what looks to me to be a market inefficiency--the not very good pitcher who nonetheless happens to be able to go six and a very small fraction of innings a start and thus stay near the "magical" and expensive 200 innings mark over several seasons, and is therefore overpaid.

I still need to do a lot of thinkin' on it. That's certain.

My goodness, Lindstrom will be 32 this year? I would have guessed 25 or 26. Guys who debut relatively late always do this to me.

going to the bullpen an inning earlier also forces an NL team to use a pinch-hitter earlier in the game, which can affect late-game substitutions

This effect gets amplified by the (perceived) need to carry an extra reliever at the expense of a bench bat if your starters can't go deep into games.

Orioles fans appear to be furious with this trade.

Orioles fans tend to over-value the mediocrity we know over the mediocrity we don't know.

@32--You'll probably need to try to circumvent the effect by finding relievers who can go two and three innings at a clip, perhaps among the very Losers you're looking among for your rotation. Guys who would give you 4.75 ERAs in those five and a half innings starts, but who might be able to drop that to 4.25 if they were in your bullpen. The one or one and a half pitch guys who can't quite cut it as starters.

(Even as, yes, I do realize this kind of exactitude doesn't exist.)

Why oh why was I so certain that Guthrie was an extreme sinkerball, ground-ball pitcher? Was that his reputation in the minors or something? Or did I just completely make it up?

Orioles fans tend to over-value the mediocrity we know over the mediocrity we don't know.

This.

@34 - There's also a great opportunity here for relief pitchers who can hit enough to stay in for a multiple-inning stint without being an automatic out at the plate. Guys like Micah Owings, Joe Savery, Dontrelle Willis, Jason Lane, etc., would fit well, and some older starting pitchers (Livan Hernandez and Jason Marquis come to mind) could extend their careers this way. Someone like Adam Loewen could also find a Brooks Kieschnick-type job as a fifth outfielder and occasional mopup man.

Well the point is you get into all the interdepencies ("if you tug on one thread of the tapestry..."). Right now typical bullpen usage is about 70 innings per slot. Drop your average starter ip/start by about .4 and you need an 8th bullpen slot and are down to 12 position players. Sure, it doesn't have to be that way if you can increase the bullpen output to 80 innings per slot. The implications of such a change are purely speculative. Or you could go to a 4-man, short-stint rotation ... again with unknown consequences. Or maybe you find those magical guys who can throw 120 relief innings a year without their arm falling off but there have only been about 5 such guys in history. Or you can have a lot of pitcher/position doubles but, as much as that makes sense and we all loved Brooks Kieschnik, nobody's really made it work yet.

I think you start running into 40-man roster issues as well. The average AL teams used a bit over 23 different pitchers last season. Add in 13 position players on the 25-man roster and you don't have a lot of room for genuine prospects on the 40-man. 40-man rosters are already heavily dominated by pitchers and requiring more pitchers to cover the same number of ML innings is only going to make that worse. You don't want to have to make a 40-man roster move every time one of your position players hits the 15-day DL.


So, sure, there are ways it can work in theory but they require making several changes to usage for releivers, starters and position players. OK, I suppose that happens every time there's been a reduction in starter usage but, if you try to work it through for a team or two, I think you'll find that they've pushed starter usage about as low as it can go without adding a 26th roster spot. (Well, it was about as low as it could go a few years back, decreased offense has eased things a bit.)

Really you're closing in on the old "what if" proposal of using 3-4 guys for 2-3 innings each then a closer.

1. This will likely end my 4 year stretch of picking Guthrie up in fantasy baseball as a spot starter.

2. Who knew he was a funny guy:

@jguthrie46: Winners & Losers of @Rockies / @Orioles trade: Winners- #Yankees training staff. Losers: @NickSwisher batting avg.

I wonder if this is the first time in MLB history that Mormons have been traded for each other.