Will pitchers ever want to play for the Colorado Rockies?
When a coveted free agent pitcher is on the market, the Colorado Rockies’ discussions with his agent cease before they even begin. This is a problem.
If Murderers’ Row is where the confidence of pitchers in the 1920s went to die, then Coors Field is where pitchers nowadays spend time wallowing with self esteem issues. This floundering mindset is not exclusive to only Colorado Rockies pitchers, either.
Take for instance, Clayton Kershaw. Widely regarded as the finest pitcher in the game today, he has a 4.63 career ERA at Coors in 17 starts. Aside from Dodger Stadium, it’s the only park where he has allowed double digit home runs against the opposition.
Another talented pitcher in the Rockies’ NL West division, Madison Bumgarner, has a 4.21 ERA in 12 Colorado starts. That’s substantially higher than his career mark of 3.04. If the effect of playing in the park can turn these forces of pitching into mere mortals, what hope is there for anyone in the Rockies’ rotation?
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The Coors Field effect is well documented. Players often see some of their contact and power numbers dip after signing contracts elsewhere by leaving the Rockies. Seven-time All-Star Matt Holliday is a good example of this. From 2006-08 with Colorado, he averaged 32 home runs per season, or a home run every 18.7 at-bats. In the six years following those seasons (2009-14) when Holliday was mostly healthy and with the Cardinals, he averaged 24 home runs per season, or one in every 23.1 at-bats.
So if you have an ounce of power in your swat, playing for the Rockies is a great place for a position player to be. Names like Trevor Story and Nolan Arenado stir up a lot of excitement these days amongst fans. The same cannot be said for a pitcher. Since the game of baseball is three equal parts hitting, pitching and fielding, the pitching part cannot be overlooked.
The Rockies have only three total playoff berths as they enter their 24th season as a franchise in Major League Baseball. If we call anything after the Mitchell Report the primary era exempt from PED use in MLB’s 21st century — from 2008 through 2015 — here is how Coors Field ranks in total home runs hit and average true distance of said home runs traveled:
- 2008 – t-8th/1st
- 2009 – 14th/1st
- 2010 – 6th/2nd
- 2011 – 6th/1st
- 2012 – 5th/1st
- 2013 – 12th/2nd
- 2014 – 1st/1st
- 2015 – 4th/1st
Over the course of those eight seasons, Coors Field has consistently ranked in the top half league wide when it comes to the the number of long balls hit. Every year since 2008, the average true distance for total homers hit at Coors has travelled over 400 feet. No other park has maintained such a statistic. These stats strictly account for power hitting. So what about just plain old hitting?
When it comes to players hitting for contact when the Rockies are hosting, pitchers can’t keep the ball of the bat. Where anything below 1.000 according to ESPN’s MLB Park Factor algorithms equals a pitcher friendly park for base hits, Coors Field’s average number from 2008-15 is 1.214 with a high of 1.315 in 2013 and a low of 1.098 in 2008. However, for all of those years, Coors Field led the way in this category each and every season.
Rockies owner Dick Monfort spoke recently about looking at ways to make Coors Field less offensively friendly, saying:
"“… we’re going to continue to find ways to make it not so offensive a park. We all know it’s the most offensive park in baseball. Part of that, there’s nothing we can do about it. But if there are things we can do to take some of the offense away from it, that’s what we should try to do.”"
When a club cannot attract pitching through free agency, there’s a problem with the business model. The Rockies solely have to rely on building their pitching staff through the draft and trades. So far, that hasn’t seemed to work. Their team ERA consistently ranks in the bottom half of the league. The club has only been represented seven times by pitchers in an All-Star game, and three of those showings belong to former closer Brian Fuentes.
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2016 hasn’t been a promising start to reversing the trend. So far, the Rockies have a team ERA of 9.17, the highest mark across all of MLB. So while a guy like Story is making history and appearing on headlines from coast to coast, the simple fact of the matter is, this team cannot and will not win until they have the right pitchers and a supporting system in place.
Pitcher Mike Hampton set a then record for the largest contract by a player in 2000 when the coveted southpaw signed with the Rockies. It would be the first and last time a starting pitcher on the free agent market would make such a deal with Colorado. What did the Rockies get out of eight years and $121 MM? Two years of service, a 21-28 record to pair with a 5.75 ERA and a FIP of 5.36.
Hampton’s performance there became the preeminent reason why no highly coveted starting pitcher would ever sign a lucrative deal with the Rockies moving forward. His career ERA swelled from 3.44 to 3.98 after two seasons with the Rockies. His combined WAR of -1.7 was enough for Colorado to send him packing in a trade to the Marlins only one quarter of the way through his contract.
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Whether the Colorado Rockies can buck the trend of terrible pitching statistics remains to be seen. If it starts with trades, the draft, or altering the dimensions of Coors Field in some way to attract pitching talent also remains to be seen. It’s not bad luck the club has appeared in the postseason only three times since their inception — it’s a combination of bad pitching, high altitudes and general discontent as a pitcher to sign a contract with the Mile High City’s baseball club.