rockies at mets 4-23 to 4-25

[hiaspire]

I don't think there was anything wrong in having Tulo sit for a little bit and work on some things. That happens with a lot of rookies who struggle out of the gate. I think it will probably be a positive when we look back over the course of his season. He's expected back in the lineup tomorrow I believe.

Hurdle conveniently gets hit either way. Blasted for sticking with a pre-determined plan and not being flexible for slumping players when we need to get more Ws, and blasted for trying to do what is probably right with a youngster in most cases here.

It was good for Tulo's development IMO. He's by no means rotting away IMO any more so than dozens of other prospects who go through similar things early in their big league careers before getting back on the saddle to give it another try. A couple of games don't last forever, though it sometimes is made out or feels that way. Tomorrow is the restarting point of his hopefully very successful rookie campaign. This short re-focusing will be a good thing for him IMO and hopefully his approach is a little different coming back with better results.

[Roxpert]

Originally Posted by wolf213

I enjoyed Barmes 0-4 with 4 strikeouts night.... proved to me even more how much of an idiot Hurdle is. Hell I bet Tulo puts the ball in play in at least one of the at bats.... but know our number one prospect gets to rot on the bench, while Barmes provides air conditioning for the umpire and catcher...

I ****ing hate anything named Clint.

Wolf, I just finished reading this great post over at PurpleRow. Overlooking his typos, this poster has nailed it, and so I thought I'd cut and paste it here for all to read. It's long but a worthwhile read....

This is about as mad as I've been this year
and it doesn't have much to do with today's actual performance.

I've managed to just stay complacent with Hurdle's management this year, understanding his flaws, but recognizing that the players have the final say on the success of this team.

However, after today, I feel stronger about wanting this clown out of "our" dugout. The lineup is a complete joke. We haven't had a leadoff hitter step up, so that isn't necessarily his fault, but as the team starts to struggle, he's pushing more and more for a veteran presence in the lineup, which just smacks of lunacy when your vets are Barmes and Torrealba.

For starters, this lefty-righty lineup thing was taken way too far today, as he states in the notes column how he preferred the R-L split for seven straight batters, nevermind the relative talent of those hitters. While Taveras has been struggling, he's easily outplayed Finley, with an OBP 100 points higher, and represents more longterm potential than the thirty-something. One a real competitive team, Finley would have been DFA'd by now, since his offensive skills have cleary eroded over the past three years, and the team has better alternatives in the high minors (though Spilborghs is NOT the savior of this team). I don't doubt Taveras will still get his ABs, but it is starting to look like Finley has "earned" a platoon role thanks to his veteran presence and Hurdle's cornball idea that RLRL puts pressure on other pitchers (has it yet?).

The second offence is a firable one in my opinion. When you have a 22 year old with good potential, he needs to play almost every day, period. Does that mean every day in the majors? No, but he can't waste valuable development time sitting on the bench. Missing three games is like losing 12 ABs, so it's nothing critical, but it's the message that it sends that's so wrong. Telling him to watch how "good" hitters take pitches is absolutely asanine, and makes the assumption that Tulowitzki has never seen a major league hitter before. Does he just read comic books between innings on days he's playing, ignoring other hitters? No, the root of the problem here is that Hurdle feels the pressure of his team's struggles, and wants to go with the guys he trusts the most, no one more than Barmes. It didn't take Barmes long to prove he can't outhit a mendoza-esque Tulowitzki, yet that won't keep him out of the lineup much. Barmes offers too much to this team, like solid defense, little growth potential, few pitches per plate appearance and little external confidence. A competitive franchise would have cut their losses by now, but Hurdle stills sees the redeeming quality in Barmes (perhaps when he can quantify it he'll tell us).

What was said for Tulowitzki can be said for Iannetta. Torrealba has all but taken the starting job recently, thanks to the luckiest of doubles in one game. If Linden would have caught that ball rather than having it hit of his wrist, we wouldn't be talking about this "clutch" player at all. Yorvit isn't young, and he's not going to change his spots. His slugging and OBP are both sub-.300, and he doesn't look like much of a defensive upgrade over Iannetta. If Chris is overmatched, he needs to go down, plain and simple. You can't stash him on the bench, as it doesn't help anyone. Iannetta needs the lion's share of the catching job. If they won't commit to that as they should, he needs to go down.

So basically, Hurdle is relegating three 25 or younger players to split/platoon duties with veterans that are their equal or worse. Forget the future, how is this helping the present?

Now for some smaller issues. This RLRL thing is killing me. If you want to score runs, you need your best hitters to have the most opportunities at the plate. You also want your best power guys in a position to cash in more runs. How is this being accomplished with the current lineup? Helton's average may have returned, but it's looking more and more likely that the power won't be coming back. His ISO is only .108 over his average, which means the batting average is enflating his power numbers. What Helton has excelled at thus far is reaching base, at a clip of .476. If he's on almost half the time, but he's not doing it with much power, why not bat him second?

Helton isn't even the hottest hitter. Holliday is now batting .400 after 80 ABs, yet still hits fifth in the order, making it far more likely that Finley will come to the plate more often than Holliday every game. Why can't he hit third in the order? Atkins has struggled thus far, so give Holliday the opportunity to fill that spot in the order. It seems like Helton and Holliday are the two doing the most damage on a night in night out basis, so I'd rather make sure that both get as many ABs as possible.

Baker should also be creeping in on some of Hawpe's ABs. Jeff has cooled, but Brad has yet to reach room temperature. The two should share right more equitably until one separates himself from the other. Right field needs to become an open competition between the two.

I don't buy the argument that it's too early to change the heart when it hasn't been found early to change the top and bottom of the order over the last week. Taveras is just as "proven" in his skill set as Atkins is in his, yet he isn't given the benefit of the doubt (especially not with a veteran like Finley around...) Hurdle's veteran preference has already burned him in the pen, and we shouldn't give him any credit for switching to Corpas for the eighth, Hawkins losing ball games did that for him.

Finally, when is it time to question Hurdle's decision for hitting coach? Several posters today have already openly wondered about the team's approach at the plate, and the offensive numbers for each hitter are considerably below expectations (outside of Helton, Matsui, and Holliday). Ten of the thirteen hitters on the roster are underperforming, almost half of these are far below expectations. Some players will surely bounce back thanks to BABIP, but the dearth of power...hell, the dearth of hitting period, is quite alarming.

This isn't a bale out post, but I'm no longer willing to overlook Hurdle's faults as much as I have thus far this season. The roles of this team are poorly managed, and the staff has shown little outward confidence in its youngest hitters, often pinch hitting for them late in close games, and benching them for sub-quality veterans. I still think this is a .500 team, and one that will recover some of its offense. Still, Hurdle's philosophies and roster managing will keep this team from reaching its upside.

The outcome of the game meant little to me, the first time I saw today's lineup was the first time this season I've really felt embarrassed for "our" players. I'm done playing the silent critic of Hurdle. His management style is humiliating a franchise that should instead be celebrating a bright future, not frustrating it with a lack of confidence...


by David OhNo on Mon Apr 23, 2007 at 10:44:21 PM MDT

[wolf213]

Roxpert,

I read that two, and thats exactly how I feel.

How am I supposed to care about this team, when the team and the manager, and the front office gives the impression that they don't even care.

[Roxpert]

Wolf, they all care over there, but they are incompetent. That's my take. The owners don't understand the business they are in or really much of anything about how baseball works or how to run a baseball team (hence, the extensions are handed out as if we've had success). The GM is the "C-student" in applying modern baseball analysis theory to his personnel and budgeting decisions. And the manager is an affable buffoon.

That's about where we sit right now, and it ain't pretty, IMO.

[GerryInCS]

Originally Posted by Roxpert

Ahh, RMF, you forget that Torrealba is pulling his weight, and is making up for the poor start of Iannetta. With he and Barmes, we may not "suck" as bad as, say, the Royals or Pirates!

The Royals and Pirates could probably beat us, and rather soundly, too. We'll find out later in the season, I think we have a set with the Royals, as well as the Devil Rays, in Interleague play this year. We'll finally get to see who the worst team in baseball is this year

[GerryInCS]

BTW, we can now say goodbye to Holliday. He's on an early season tear in his 'contract' year.. Definitely one guy who will not be on the roster on August 1st.

[BigRapidsJackass]

There's 2 theories with young, highly-regarded prospects who are struggling:

1. Let 'em play till they figure it out. The Brewers did this with JJ Hardy, and it appears to have been a sound strategy.

2. Send 'em down till they figure it out. This has the advantage of delaying arbitration and free agency. But sometimes there's just no substitute for going through growing pains in the majors. An additional full year of Hardy at AAA might've resulted in the improvement the Brewers have seen, but it might've just delayed the inevitable struggles of his rookie season by one year.

But I will agree that there's nobody out there who thinks it's a good idea to let a prospect sit on the bench. Yeah, give Tulo a day off here and there, but not 3 in a row ... not when Barmes is the alternative.

BTW, it's always worthwhile to check a player's offensive stats against the "PrOPS" metric at The Hardball Times. PrOPS looks at batted ball data (line drive, FB/GB %, etc) and tries to determine what a player with average luck would be hitting. Tulo's PrOPS number is about 100 points higher than his real-world OPS. Sure, his K rate remains way too high, but he's probably also been a bit unlucky in having more of his batted balls fielded than would otherwise be expected. Finley also has a significant PrOPS disparity, but his case is different: (1) he's 20 years older than Tulo; (2) even if he were producing at his PrOPS level, that would still be pretty poor for a CFer. Same with Tavares.

[Barmes was also very PrOPS unlucky last year. The problem with him -- as with Kim and Fogg: they're getting game action to increase their trade value. They've all "increased" that value to the point where a DFA is the only realistic option.]

[hiaspire]

Originally Posted by BigRapidsJackass

Let 'em play till they figure it out. The Brewers did this with JJ Hardy, and it appears to have been a sound strategy.... But I will agree that there's nobody out there who thinks it's a good idea to let a prospect sit on the bench. Yeah, give Tulo a day off here and there, but not 3 in a row ...

BRJ, that's hardly the case. EVEN WITH JJ HARDY, your own example. He's hit the bench a couple of times in his early years. The Brewers did that very thing in letting him recharge on the bench for 3+ games his rookie season when struggling. People think stuff that goes on here is unthinkably stupid that nobody else does in the game, but that's just nonsense and selective memory. Stuff like this example happens all the time, to Tulo AS WELL AS HARDY.

From an MLB.com article at that time: Hardy recharges on bench

It's a new experience for the 22-year-old, who rocketed through the Brewers Minor League system since being a second-round draft pick in 2001 and is considered the beginning of a wave of prospects expected to hit Milwaukee in the next few seasons. Hardy can't ever remember a 100-at-bat stretch without a home run. He also can't remember ever getting three days off...

Hardy entered Saturday's game with a .156 batting average (15-for-96) with no homers and eight RBIs. Since a five-game hitting streak from May 6-11, Hardy was hitless in his next 13 at-bats. By his own admission, the wheels in his head are turning too fast.

"They've been turning ever since I got here," he said. "That's the hardest part about it. I've been going up to the plate thinking about a million things."...

"I've been seeing things a little more clearly," he said. "Maybe, in that way, these days off have been good. I'm watching more, thinking about stuff by myself during the game."

Sounds exactly like what they are saying about Tulo nearly identically. It doesn't just happen here. That is fairly common for struggling rookies. In the next 5 games after sitting, Hardy went 5-for-14 and eventually raised his batting average 92 points the rest of the way so you are right in that it does appear like a sound strategy, but they did the same thing with their young struggling SS as we did with our young struggling SS.

[Dante Bichette]

Barmes, Finley, Tavares, Torrealba, Mabry, Herges, Hawkins, Kim.

No wonder we suck

[Heltonfan]

Tulo's PrOPS number is about 100 points higher than his real-world OPS.

About 200 points, actually. And I'm not buying it. PrOPS says that Tulo should be hitting .288 so far. He's currently 11 for 57... add 5 hits (16 for 57), and he's up to .281. Just one problem with that: adding the five hits brings his BABIP up to a ridiculous .390. Furthermore, PrOPS expects 2-3 of those added hits to be of the extra-base variety. The really sad thing: even after all these hard-to-believe boosts, he still comes out as a below-average hitter.

So I don't trust PrOPS at all. I think the best approach to take is to identify a BABIP that you believe is sustainable for the player in question, and tweak his stat line to reach that BABIP. In Tulo's case, he currently has a .268 BABIP. Last year in Tulsa, he had a .324 BABIP compared to league average of .315. League average in the NL so far this year is .301. So let's be (very) generous to Tulo and add a single and a double to his stat line. That brings his BABIP up to a robust .317... and his overall line up to .228/.302/.281. I can't make a realistic tweak that gets him up even to replacement level.

Now, the above method answers a slightly different question than the one that PrOPS is asking; PrOPS is asking "how well has he really hit so far?" whereas I'm asking "what is a sustainable level of performance for a player with these K, BB, and HR rates?" I prefer my question (shocking, huh?), largely because I don't particularly care what Tulo's numbers would look like if he miraculously kept hitting 26.8% line drives.

[hiaspire]

"Let 'em play till they figure it out. The Brewers did this with JJ Hardy, and it appears to have been a sound strategy."

Another example of the approach with Hardy below. Tulo is getting much more playing time than him by comparision. Sticking with a young player as they "figure it out" can also include working with them in non-game situations and having them learn from big leaguers around them if needed. And taking a breather when they need to recharge and refocus. Not just running them out constantly to repeat mistakes over and over. I don't see a problem with how the Brewers did Hardy or how we gave Tulo the same treatment now in his early struggles.

After becoming the first Brewer to make his Major League debut on Opening Day since Paul Molitor in 1978, Hardy's playing time has dwindled; his start Friday was just his 10th this month.

"It's hard," he said. "It's something I've never had to do before. But at the same time, I understand. It's not like I'm getting all mad that I'm not playing. I'm up here watching the game, learning, and I'm ready to play whenever I'm in there."

[BigRapidsJackass]

EVEN WITH JJ HARDY, your own example. He's hit the bench a couple of times in his early years. The Brewers did that very thing in letting him recharge on the bench for 3+ games his rookie season when struggling.

Coud it be that Bill Hall started those games at SS? I don't know. I'm just suggesting while giving Tulo a breather isn't a horrible idea, giving Barmes 3 starts in a row is.

I prefer my question (shocking, huh?), largely because I don't particularly care what Tulo's numbers would look like if he miraculously kept hitting 26.8% line drives.

I'm not sure that PrOPS is out of line here. Big swing/lots of bat speed = high line drive percentage and high strikeout percentage. PrOPS is going to be pretty useless with such a small sample, but so is BA and OPS, and (yes) even BABIP. The truth is that Tulo is swinging and missing a lot, but hitting the ball hard when he makes contact.

Hey, when the great Kaz Mat returns, I'm all for the Carroll-KazMat keystone combo, with Tulo getting some time back at AAA and Barmes getting ... umm, traded for a low-A ball prospect.

[hiaspire]

Originally Posted by BigRapidsJackass

I'm just suggesting while giving Tulo a breather isn't a horrible idea, giving Barmes 3 starts in a row is.

I thought you said that there is "nobody out there who thinks it's a good idea to let a prospect sit on the bench" as you list the other alternatives of playing through it or demoting to AAA. That's what I was disagreeing with anyway, especially in relation to a similar young player going through similiar stuff that you list as an example of what to do in such cases. As you point out with Hardy, what they did with him seems like sound strategy for his individual development - but it's nearly identical to what we are doing with Tulo.

The development of a star prospect is arguably a much higher priority in the bigger picture beyond what our record is during those 3 games and a fraction of the overall schedule (we'd probably be 1-2 or 2-1 no matter who was at SS and struggling those days). If the problem is Tulo thinking too much at the moment and repeating mistakes over and over (like Hardy as a rookie), that's a bigger issue to address than whoever is replacing him while he recharges and gets things together IMO. That's going to make more of a difference than the extremely slight possibility of picking up one more win in April but letting a young guy continue to struggle. Getting him going again is a more important cause that'll have a bigger impact on the season ahead and more importantly his early career. There are many people in the game as illustrated who would think giving rookies like Hardy/Tulo some time off when overwhelmed would be a fine idea that could do them a world of good by slowing the game down on the bench and making the adjustments needed through patient learning.

What the Rox are doing isn't unreasonable or unusual by any means. It makes a lot of sense in the judgement and examples of many throughout the game, and has worked many times with youngsters. Instead of prematurely criticizing them as idiots over it, let's give it a fair objective chance and monitor the overall development results. I think it will turn out to be very good for Tulo as it was for Hardy in learning the ropes at the big league level.

[BigRapidsJackass]

I am afraid that if I see Hurdle in his post-game comments say "He just needs to slow things down" one more time, my beautiful new 42" LCD TV will die an unnatural death.

[hiaspire]

Throwing stuff and breaking things doesn't make it any less true, though. Hardy speaks for himself in terms of that time on the bench helping him slow things down and be more focused without thinking so much at the plate. Hopefully it does the same for us and our young SS. If the Rox diagnose Tulo going through much of the same things as Hardy expressed as a frustrated rookie, then the similar treatment seems appropriate and tested. Or at least something reasonable to try before going down other more extreme avenues. He's still got a very good shot of having a nice rookie season and contributing to this team's improvement.