Week 24 ass hDLes - No man's land

There are absolutely no guys who qualify for the ass hDLes this week.  Between the limited number of teams remaining in the league (remember, I only consider the playoffs to be the 6 team that made the "winners bracket"...and thats down to 4) and the expanded MLB rosters which dont require teams to put a player on the DL in order to call up a replacement, the odds of there being any more ahDLes is pretty remote.  Which makes me feel sadness...not the type of sadness that was felt by the Tampa Bay defense after I dropped them this week (really, how else can you explain giving up 56 straight points to start last nights game?), more like the sadness you feel when you realize there are no more pizza rolls in the freezer after you have decided that you want pizza rolls.  We're talking total, complete sadness.

In trying to stick to my pledge to not acknowledge the existence of the game which shall not be talked about, I havent checked in on my team at all this week (before today), which has made my wife a very happy person (I cannot tell you how many times she made disapproving comments about how often I checked my phone when I was following along with games that had my players in them).  So this morning, I decided to give a quick glance at the MLB box scores (Im still trying to avoid ours until Sunday sometime...there is a proper mourning period when your team dies for the season).  There were a few random things that stood out (like Robinson Cano and Kold Calhoun having nearly identical slugging percentages) as odd.  The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, California, USA, Earth trotted out a lineup that featured several players whom I either had never heard of or didnt realize were on the LAAACUE.  Heres the starting 9 for them last night (against King Felix, no less).

That is Tony Compana...not the bat boy

CF Tony Campana
SS Gordon Beckham
RF Brennan Boesch
DH CJ Cron
1b Efren Navarro
2b Grant Green
C Hank Conger
3b Luis Jimenez
LF Shawn O'Malley

I only had to look up the first names of 3 of those guys...and I feel pretty good about that.  Only 1 of those guys should be ever starting in a MLB game (CJ Cron), though a couple would be valuable reserves (Campana for speed, Beckham, and maybe Green, for defense, Boesch for his ability to go half seasons without hitting a ball out of the infield).  The rest of those guys arent even has beens, they are never gonna bes.  The highest OBP of anyone in the lineup was O'Malley's .333, but hes only gotten a handful of at bats, so really, the honor falls to the .303 posted by Efren...AGAINST FELIX HERNANDEZ, aka the best pitcher on the planet not named Clayton Kershaw (who is having some issues with the Cubbies in the first inning of todays game...he will no doubt not allow much else).  Big surprise....Felix threw 7 shutout innings, allowing 3 hits, 2 walks and striking out 11 (Tony Campana struck out 4 times in the game, Grant Green , 3 times).  Gordon Beckham saw 9 pitches in his 4 hittless plate appearances.  Boesch pulled off the miracle of seeing 9 pitches in 4 plate appearances and walking in one of them (though it was intentional...for some reason the Mariners couldnt hit and it was a 0-0 game into the 9th).  Great stuff out in the OC.

There was one other thing, it started out as an observation and then threw me head first down the rabbit hole and I am pretty sure that I stumbled on something nefarious going on.  First, I simply noticed that Corey Dickerson (whom Bob so dickishly stole from me and someone else who I cant remember) had a slugging percentage (.566) over .100 points higher than Robby Cano and Calhoun.  I mentioned it to Kyler, who basically said, "DUH! all the Rockies have high slg % because they play at Coors."  Full disclosure:  I was all in on the Rockies at the beginning of the year.  Between getting tacos, Adam Ottavino and Troy Tulowitzki, I was ALL IN.  Then Ottavino stopped getting everyone out, Tulo went down, CarGo started dealing with a multitude of injuries that eventually led to him being shut down and with the two of them went every chance of getting tacos.  I bailed.  I am a Rockies bandwagon jumper offer.  So...I had no idea that they were leading the league in most offensive categories.
I remember Coors field as the hitter's paradise that it was in the mid/late 1990s through the early 2000s when guys like Andres Galarraga, Ellis Burks and Dante Bichette (If anyone says something bad about Dante, I might actually stop being friends with you), but it has largely played like a slightly above average hitters park in recent years.  I wanted to check on Dickerson's splits to see what they looked like.  EEEEE GADS! Either than man performs better when he gets some “home cooking” (and by that I mean he gets some from his lady friend), loves wearing pin stripes or someone at Coors Field is feeding him pitch locations. Check this out:

Dickerson -

Home – 244 PA, 82 H, 18 2b, 5 3b, 14 HR, 20-37 bb-K, 371/422/688 for a 1.110 OPS…that’s like inner circle Hall of Famer great

Road -   212 PA, 47 H, 9 2b, 0 3b, 9 HR, 16-59 bb-k, 242/297/428 for a .725 OPS…that’s like 1970s middle infielder bad

 

WTF mate.  And its not just him.  Here are the Rockies splits as a team:

320/371/525 at home  115 HR, 202 BB, 515 K

227/277/354 on road     60 HR, 141 BB, 678 K

Maybe Coors is playing like an extreme hitters park again.  How else do you explain one team going from the greatest hitting team in the history of the major leagues at home to the worst hitting team in the history of the major leagues on the road?  Surely, if the park is playing great for hitters, like it was in the 90s, we would see that reflected in the pitching stats:

 

Slash against Rockie pitching:

284/348/453 at home  87 HR allowed 265 BB, 510 K

266/336/435 on the road 78 HR allowed, 245 BB, 505 K

 

Utoh.  That line is what I would expect to see from a slightly above average hitters park. 

 

So, to see if there was a prescident for it, I checked out the 1996 Rockies.  In 1996, more runs were scored at Coors Field than have been scored at any park in any one year in the history of MLB.

The 96 Rockies:

343/408/579 at home  149 HR, 298 BB, 504 K

228/295/357 on road,   72 HR, 229 BB, 604 K

 

Ok, maybe there is a trend here...maybe the Rockies just sign and develop players who hit lots of flyballs that go out of the yard at home, but fall to the warning track (and opponents gloves) on the road (this is the reason Kyler gave).  The 1996 split is actually more extreme than the 2014 one. Lets see what the pitching stats look like.

 

Against:

304/375/501 at home, 122 HR allowed, 314 BB, 457 K

264/346/421 on road,   76 HR allowed, 310 BB, 475 K

 

Basically, not as extreme as the home splits, but there is significant difference here...because the home field played extremely offense heavy for both the hitters and the pitchers of each team.  Every one in 1996 hit better when they played at Coors Field.  In 2014, only the Rockies hitters were significantly better at Coors, their opponents werent. 

 

That leads me to one conclusion.  The Rockies are getting information at home that the other team isnt getting, and that the team isnt getting when they are on the road...aka stealing pitches or locations.  For the most part, a player is what a player is.  Sleeping in his own bed, hanging out with his own friends/family, being on his normal routine at home can make a player more comfortable and therefore make him perform better.  So can being familiar with the hitting background and the configuration of the seats in his line of vision.  But those things dont take a terrible MLB player and turn him into a Hall of Famer. And it certainly doesnt do it to an ENTIRE TEAM OF PLAYERS like Coors Field is doing to the 2014 Rocks.   I know guys like Tulo and CarGo (when healthy) and even Cuddyer can hit no matter where they are, but the numbers for the whole team are concerning.  I hope that I am wrong.  I hope that there is an reasonable explanation for it.