Breaking Down the Non-Roster Invitees: Colorado Rockies

The Rockies are yet another team with a large and interesting group of non-roster invitees. Let’s take a look at 14 particularly notable ones.

UTIL Alfredo Amezaga—The longtime Angels and Marlins utilityman missed basically all of 2010 with a knee injury. Still just 33 (yeah, it seems like he’s been around forever), he’ll need to be completely over the injury to deserve a spot–he doesn’t have any offensive skills, so he’ll need maximum defensive mobility to make up for that.

OF Charlie Blackmon–Blackmon will be 25 on July 1, so he’s a bit old for a guy who’s never seen Triple-A. Still, he’s a solid all-around player who does a lot well, but no one thing great. He hit .297/.360/.484 in Double-A last year, swiping 19 bases and playing a solid center field. He’s not really a flashy prospect, but he could be a solid MLB contributor fairly soon.

LHP Rex Brothers—A power fastball/slider reliever, Brothers has racked up the strikeouts, and some project him to be a rare lefty closer. He could be up very quickly, perhaps (although this is an extreme longshot) even breaking camp with the team. He’s got to cut down on his walks (18 in 23 AA innings last year), but once he does, he’ll be up in short order. He’s one of the best lefty relief prospects in baseball.

RHP Billy Buckner—Buckner has a serious home run problem that’s precluded the 27-year-old from sustained success. He was unloaded on Detroit for Dontrelle Willis in an exchange of headaches in the middle of last season, and proceeded to put up a 9.40 ERA in eight starts…in Triple-A. He’s got three nice offspeed offerings, but his fastball is so awful that it really doesn’t matter, and Colorado really isn’t the place for a guy with this ridiculous of a HR/FB problem. Neither, of course, is Triple-A Colorado Springs. Buckner’s got some talent, and with the right coach and ballpark, he could be an asset. This is the wrong situation for him, though.

SS Thomas Field—Field will spend 2011 trying to prove that his 2010 offensive breakout wasn’t a Cal League fluke. He hit .284/.397/.466 with 15 homers, one of the top offensive lines for a shortstop in the minors. That’s way out of line with his previous track record, though, and he struck out 25.9% of the time. Field is already 24, and he’s not the greatest of defenders at short, so that offensive breakout better be for real, or he’s not likely to have much of a career. He’ll need to get on track after an awful showing in the Arizona Fall League–a good start in camp will be Step 1.

LHP Christian Friedrich—Friedrich ran into a bunch of injury problems last year in Double-A which stopped his express train to the big leagues; he missed almost half the season and his numbers were way down. Many are quite pessimistic about his future health; the big deal for him in camp is going to be to prove he’s over the elbow problems and that his stuff–which features a plus-plus curve, solid-average fastball, and average changeup and slider–is back to normal. Hopefully he’ll get back on track in 2011; if he does, he could be up at midseason, right around his 24th birthday.

1B Jason Giambi—Giambi’s challenge is to show he can still hit enough to overcome the roster drag of carrying around a player who’s only defensive value is as a below-average first baseman. Last year’s .244/.378/.398 line did the trick well enough, but at 40, he’s certainly on his last legs. It’s easy to see him being a solid pinch-hitter in 2011, but it’s equally easy to see him hitting .135 in May and getting released for the last time.

1B Mike Jacobs—Something finally seemed to click for Jacobs once he switched organizations late last year. Long an impatient hitter with tons of power but little else, he put up a 21/21 K/BB in the Blue Jays organization after struggling to a 65/28 mark with the Mets’ AAA affiliate. Jacobs has a 486/166 K/BB in his MLB career, so it was a welcome change that he at least got it right in Triple-A. Now 30, he’ll have to both a) keep it up and b) hope that someone besides me took notice. Colorado’s not a bad place for a power-first guy to play, although that doesn’t guarantee anything (see Koshansky, Joe).

RHP John Maine—Maine’s another guy trying to come back from a lost 2010. He actually struck out nearly a batter per inning, but he allowed a bunch of walks and homers, posting a 6.13 ERA and 5.78 FIP in nine starts with the Mets before getting shut down for the year in May. Colorado isn’t a place for a guy who posted a 26.5% groundball rate last year, but Maine’s been useful in the past, so he’s certainly worth a flyer. He’ll need to regain both his command and velocity to succeed in the harsh Colorado environment; one wonders if his fastball-heavy repertoire may lend itself better to a bullpen role at this point.

LHP Greg Smith—It’s hard to believe that Smith was considered a pitcher on the rise in 2008, but even then, he really didn’t do much well. He’s a finesse guy who nibbles too much and works up in the zone, which worked when he had two advantages: pitching in Oakland and pitching to hitters that had never seen him before. Once he moved to Colorado and there were scouting reports on him, he was pretty much doomed, and a decline in his already-modest velocity didn’t help. Smith’s best pitch is his changeup, so he probably isn’t going to fit in a situational role, and he pretty clearly doesn’t have what it takes to start. Fifteen Triple-A starts in 2010 didn’t go much better than his eight disastrous ones for Colorado.

LHP Eric Stults—Stults is a better version of Smith, not that that’s saying much; he wound up spending the 2010 season in Japan. Formerly a competent back-of-the-rotation option for the Dodgers, he’s never made more than ten starts in a season, never getting much traction in the bigs and posting a 4.84 career ERA. Like Smith, he’s an extreme flyballer, and that’s not going to play as well in Colorado as it did in LA.

OF Willy Taveras—Taveras is attempting to recapture his 2007 glory, when he hit .320/.367/.382 for Colorado; he’s done absolutely nothing at the plate since and was forced to spend most of 2010 in Triple-A. While he’s still fast, he’s not the speed demon he once was, and Taveras never was the best of defensive center fielders even with his speed. While he still could be a solid pinch-runner and defensive outfielder, he’s too poor a hitter to be worth a roster spot unless he shows something at the plate elsewhere, either in the spring or Triple-A. Isn’t it hard to believe he’s only 29? It seems like this guy is 39. At his age, I suppose there’s some sort of bounceback chance.

RHP Claudio Vargas—After years of working as a swingman, Vargas is now exclusively a reliever, and not really a particularly good one; he posted a 7.32 ERA with Milwaukee last year. Like Maine, he suffered a huge drop in velocity last year, forcing him to rely heavily on his slider. At 32, he may still have some mileage left–his FIP was 4.76, and he posted a 1.74 ERA in 2009. Still, right-handed relievers with mediocre fastballs aren’t really hot commodities, and Vargas, like many others on this list, is a flyball-heavy pitcher trying to make a team that plays half its games in Coors Field, which doesn’t bode well.

RHP Sean White—A fairly generic righty reliever, White isn’t a flyball pitcher (FOR ONCE!…wait, did I just resort to all caps? Wow…apparently I’m worked up at 11 pm about flyball pitchers…), but almost never gets a strikeout, so he’s really just a one-pitch guy who throws the one pitch for strikes. That has value, but there’s a reason this guy’s an NRI–guys like White are solid insurance for other, more interesting and important players. Coming up with a good second pitch would really help him out, as throwing a mediocre 90-94 two-seam fastball 75% of the time isn’t the most successful of strategies. He can take the ball and not embarrass himself if called upon, but if White’s pitching in high leverage, your bullpen’s in bad shape.