Rockies Snag Sinkerball Reliever Chris Sampson

The Rockies are always on the lookout for sinker-oriented groundball guys to counteract Coors Field’s treacherous environs, so they took a flier on former Astros swingman Chris Sampson yesterday, signing him to a minor league pact with an invitation to spring training.

Sampson, 33 in May, is a five-year veteran with 33 career starts and 131 career relief appearances. He hasn’t started since 2008, and likely will compete for a long relief role with Colorado.

Originally drafted as a shortstop, Sampson retired after his first year in the minors before coming back four years later as a pitcher, ultimately making it to the bigs in 2006 despite being extremely (and understandably) old for his minor league levels; he didn’t hit Double-A until he was nearly 27.

Sampson is probably past his prime, therefore, even though he’s still worked shy of 400 MLB innings. His velocity is in the 87-89 mph range and his curveball continues to lose movement and effectiveness.

Still, though, Sampson has some positives, starting with a career 51.8% groundball rate, 52.3% last season. His fastball does have good sink, and he has a solid slider to back it up; he’d do well to just ditch his ineffective curveball entirely at this point and revert to a fastball/slider/changeup mix.

Sampson almost never strikes hitters out, but rarely walks them either, with a 2.18 BB/9 career (2.37 last year).

Despite his groundball ability, Sampson has still allowed one homer per nine innings over his career, which certainly makes his groundball attributes lose some luster. Without the ability to control longballs or strike hitters out, Sampson’s reduced to an innings sponge/control artist/double-play guy. He’s made it work before–0.6 WAR in 2009, and 1.6 in 2008 (although the 2008 total had more to do with his starting 11 games)–so Sampson could be useful-ish.

He’s posted a positive WAR in four of his five seasons, but the one exception is, of course, last year, where he struggled to a 5.93 ERA and 5.91 FIP, allowing seven homers in 30 1/3 innings and getting booted off Houston’s 40-man roster. Now, 24.1% of fly balls off him aren’t going to be flying out of the park again, but I wouldn’t trust Coors Field to bring that into the realm of excellence, particularly since groundball guys tend to have higher HR/FB rates than flyball pitchers.

It’ll be imperative for Sampson to keep the ball down, both in the dry Arizona air of spring training and the thin air of Coors Field, if he wants to grab a job and keep it. There was enough bad luck involved in 2010 that there’s a solid chance he could be a good eleventh or twelfth pitcher for the Rockies, but if 2010 was indeed a collapse, Sampson probably doesn’t have much left to offer.