Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 11, 2007
The Coors Report

I was hoping someone would attend the SABR meeting in Denver yesterday, and Dan Fox did. He pens this excellent report on the meeting, including information about the humidor, or the environmental chamber as the Rockies like to call it:

Finally, Walter Sylvester, who works in the Baseball Operations department for the Rockies, was introduced and opened the floor to questions from the group. In answering one question he noted that a sample of balls are tested when they come out of the chamber to ensure they still meet specifications with the ones that fail the test being used for batting practice. He also opined that he thought that eventually bats may come under the same scrutiny as baseballs and that he thought that the baseballs used in the bullpens by pitchers also come from the chamber (which makes sense since a pitcher warming up should use baseballs that are as close to those used in the game as possible).

Regarding the chamber it is his view that at the end of the day it really comes down to personnel. In fact and most interestingly, he seemed to lean more towards the position that the chamber shouldn't be used since it can and should be made to work to the Rockies advantage both on the field and psychologically (for example an ad for the firm 5280 in the visitor's clubhouse reminding the opposing teams of where they are). Although he wasn't asked about roster construction in those conditions (I did ask the question afterwards and he said he thought expanding the number of pitchers, for example, would be situational in terms of how the season was progressing) nor about the so-called hangover effect for Rockies hitters, he made the point that excellent pitchers such as Roy Halladay and Luke Hochevar have come out of Colorado and so it is possible to succeed at altitude with good players (of course the counter argument that the same rules don't apply at the high school and college levels wasn't addressed). To this comment he received a nice round of applause. He also cited the improved pitching of the Rockies in 2006 on the strength of Jason Jennings and Aaron Cook and not the chamber as most responsible for run scoring being down a bit at Coors.

Thanks for the reporting, Dan!


Posted by David Pinto at 05:15 PM | Equipment | TrackBack (0)
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