Stick a Fork in 'em

[BigRapidsJackass]

I called it last year in mid-August (I think it was went Cook went on the DL) and I was very pleased that I was wrong.

But that doesn't change facts. It's over for '08. Time to start looking to next year. Any other approach would be downright foolish.

Starting Points:

1. Must be traded. Fuentes (gone after this year), Herges (same, and has some value), Torrealba (to the first club that will take his contract or most of it), Taveras (as soon as he establishes his health)

2. Should be traded if the price is right. Hawpe, Holliday, Atkins (at least one of the 3, depending on the offer), as well as Barmes (move him before he hits his natural level of .250 BA)

3. Of no use, and should be waived right away. Podsednik. Podsednik this year: .584 OPS. Cory Sullivan, career: .720 OPS. (For comparison: Steve Finley, the epitome of uselessness, last year before he was waived: .490 OPS.) Cory Sullivan is making $1 million this year to play CF for the Sky Sox. Why?? Seth Smith should be playing CF every day for the Sky Sox to see if he can handle the position. Podsednik is worse than useless. He is below replacement level, since Cory Sullivan is the very definition of replacement level. Taveras must be traded, Pods dumped, Spilly must play almost full time in CF when he comes back, and Sully can be the backup. Nothing else makes any sense at this point.

4. Should play 2B everyday. Jeff Baker. We've seen enough this year to determine that he appears to be roughly average defensively at 2B. We need a full year of offensive and defensive performance to see if he is someone who could hold down the position. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by playing guys like Clint Barmes at Omar Quintanilla at 2B. Nothing. We know what they can do, and it is called "replacement level utility man." Baker may yet turn out to be something more. Let's see.

5. Should play most of the time for the Rockies somewhere. Ian Stewart. Time to let him get some major playing time to see if he is going to be MLB starter material. His minor league stats the last couple years have been good, but not exactly awesome. He needs the playing time. 3B (particularly if Atkins is moved), 2B (occasionally; I've seen enough to know he's no starter there); RF, 1B, LF. Get his bat out there 2/3 of the time. Period.

6. No point in letting guys like Redman get hammered. Hirsh is accruing MLB service time right now, being equally crappy for the Sky Sox. If he's going to get better, it's going to be by working against major league hitters. Goodbye Mark Redman, tomorrow would be best.

7. We have a left-handed relief specialist, we just don't know it. His name is Jorge de la Rosa, and he's better than Jeremy Affeldt in that role. We control his contract through arbitration for '09, and he shouldn't be starting. He'll never be an adequate MLB starter. He may be more than adequate out of the pen. Use him for the rest of the year in that role, and we'll know if he's worth hanging on to. Please do not make me sit through Cedrick Bowers. Nice story that he made the majors at 30; now go back to Korea.

8. Let's have a nice long look at Dexter Fowler and Casey Weathers. By that I mean: mid-August callup for Weathers, beginning of September for Fowler. If GenR-ration 2009 isn't ready, well, then 2009 will look pretty bleak.

9. Sign some cast-offs. Sometimes these guys play well and re-establish trade value; remember Jay Witasick? It's not a bad idea when you've got nobody else to fill the roles vacated by traded players. Don't expect any miracles, but every year some players revive their career in August. LaTroy Hawkins might be one of those guys this year.

10. Don't release guys like Vizcaino. You owe him big money next year. Don't get me wrong: I hated the fact that we signed him, hated it more that it was for 2 years. But my hunch: he'll pitch well in the 2nd half. He may be useful next year, and if he re-establishes some value we might actually be able to trade him instead. Now is not the time for panic or frustration moves.

But most of all: face facts. It's over. The D'backs gave us a huge opening, and we did nothing with it. No team with Webb, Haren, and Randy Johnson (even the 40+ year old version) is going to play that poorly all year. Plus you won't leapfrog both them and the Dodgers. Unlike last year, the wildcard isn't open, since there's plenty of good-record runners up in the other 2 divisions. No fantasy land here: 2008 is done. What we do for the rest of this year is important in determining whether we compete next year. Time to get on with it ...

[GerryInCS]

You know your team is on a fast track to nowhere when three of your starters are named Rusch, Redman and De La Rosa.

[HoyaRoxFan]

Bravo, bravo. Well said on every point. And agreed, Gerry, with those three, it's like management wanted to smack us in the face with the fact that they're not even trying.

My only question is, who is a better/more valuabe utility man - Quintanilla or Barmes? Quintanilla is average in every way; Barmes shows flashes of being something better, flashes of being something worse. I wonder then if that makes Barmes worth holding onto, see if he can't be at worst, Jamey Carroll redux. I think I can understand the case to be made as to why that's why he should be traded... and yet...

I think I'd like to see Barmes and Baker split time 50/50 at 2nd for the remainder of the year to see if either of them turn out to be something, as I have about equal faith in both just yet.

[BigRapidsJackass]

Interesting point, Hoya. Basically, I think the betting should be that none of the 3 - Barmes, Baker, Q - will turn out to be anything more than a bench/utility player. You are right that I can't really imagine Q breaking out offensively at this point. The other two:

Barmes: 29 years old, 1264 plate appearances, .696 career OPS
Baker: 27 years old, 454 PA, .779 OPS

I'm pretty sure that what we've see is what we'll get out of Barmes. And he's a nice defensive player at SS, too. Baker? I'm a skeptic, but maybe he's a late bloomer given the injury problems. He may be valuable if he can play an average 2B everyday. That's why I say go with him. I'd like a season full of advanced defensive stats to see if they confirm my eyes: he's roughly average defensively, and he could easily be a 25 HR/high strikeout/7th place hitter type.

My question: there a clubs like KC with Tony Pena Jr (career 574 OPS, 381 this year!) playing SS. Doesn't anyone want to give us a B-/C+ grade prospect for Barmes?

[HoyaRoxFan]

Eckstein, Loretta, Guzman, Crosby, Renteria, Vizquel, Jack Wilson, Alex Gonzalez, Khalil Greene, Ronny Cedeno... et cetera, et cetera...

I've seen all those names in recent weeks as potentially being on the trade block. Rightly or wrongly, no one's giving us anything but organizational filler, cash, or a bag of venison for Barmes.

Say he continues his hot streak to close out the season... I bet he looks a lot better in a trade when the alternative is many of the above names out for free agent dollars...

[BigRapidsJackass]

Y'know what Hoya?

You're right.

There's really nothing to distinguish Barmes from a dozen other capable shortstop/utility guys floating around every offseason.

Renck's Denver Post "mailbag" gets it right regarding O'Dowd's fetishization of his "prospects," refusing to let go of them (and persistently overvaluing them) until there's literally no trade value left at all:

Part of what has created a Rockies' revival threatens to stymie it. The team loves its young prospects so much it squeezes them to death.

That's more criticism of the Rox than you'll see in a year of Ringolsby columns.

But Renck then makes up for it with this suck-up in the regular column:

With his usual wit and smarts, Rockies manager Clint Hurdle revealed his National League lineup today for Tuesday's All-Star game at Yankee Stadium.

He named Milwaukee's Ben Sheets his starter, less than a week after the ace struck out 11 of the first 15 Rockies he faced at Miller Park.

"I'm not very smart, but I picked up on that," Hurdle said, to laughter.

Yeah. Thanks. ROFL.

[Newman]

Originally Posted by GerryInCS

You know your team is on a fast track to nowhere when three of your starters are named Rusch, Redman and De La Rosa.

Shouldn't your tag line quote Gerry, be, that big corporations are turning America into Mexico! Just a thought.

Otherwise totally agree with your above comment. I heard Buster Olney of espn say, on radio, that O'Dowd is one of the worst GMs to try to make a trade with. He asks for too much in his deal making. This goes to what Jackass was saying above, from Renck's mailbag column, that O'Dowd treasures his prospects too much.

Sandy Clough was on the warpath this morning, blasting away at Rockies ownership. I haven't listened to Clough in a long time. Don't think of going over there to 104.3fm in the morning, to a station that really doesn't talk baseball much, since they don't broadcast Rockies games.

Is it really a great accomplishment for Sheets to whiff 11 of the first 15 Rox on the road? Didn't the Mets essentially do that with whoever was pitching in the next series at Shea, when they constantly 3hit our hapless Rox?

This is why I mostly go to the Random Topic thread. Malaise. What's there left to say or do when we have owners like the Monforts and a GM like O'Dowd? How can we fix us, right the ship, with these people in charge? Both Clough and Olney made strong points of how inept O'Dowd is, as a GM, making trades with other teams - or more exactly not making trades with other teams!

When you rate the GMs on this point alone, apparently the Dodger GM is hard to work with as well. Some GMs get things done - like Billy Beane with the A's or the Sabathia trade in Milwaukee, and then some GMs like ours ask for the moon and settle for sitting on his hands, overvaluing our talent, and pointing to the miracle finish of 2007 as proof that we should stand pat and hope we can win the NL Worst with a similar run in 2008. Sigh...how many miracles should we expect in one century, for one team?

[Newman]

Francis and Ubaldo lose to the Nats. It's over. Stick a fork in 'em. It would take a miracle, like way back in 2007 when we won something like 21 out of 22 in September to make it to the World Series. That's not gonna happen again. That was a dream.

The Nats at .372 had the worst winning percentage in baseball coming into the double header today. We got swept by crap. At home. With two of our best hurlers on the bump.

Did Favre get traded yet??? Ugh...Well we always have the Communist Chinese Olympics to look forward to.

[GerryInCS]

Can't hot or pitch against the teams we should, especially at home. Tuesday's game was a fluke

[GerryInCS]

Well, if Livan Hernandez was supposed to be a better option than De Los Santos, he sure as heck didn't prove it on Sunday. 2.2 IP, 9 ER and 3 HRs. That has got to be one of the worst scoring lines given up by a Rockies starter.

[TheIncredibleRox]

Little OT here, but he's had a for stuck in him for a while: Matt Herges. What's a guy gotta do to get a DFA?

[Newman]

Maybe Herges needs to go back on steroids...like Helton needs to.

And yet the Rox draw 33,000 fans a night, cross the 2M barrier again. People come out for this crappy product. Monfort rakes in the dough. Why try to win? It costs money to try.

[GerryInCS]

And the D-Backs are comin' to town. Perhaps we can do the Dodgers a favor and sweep'em LOLOL