March 13, 2008
Rotation Evalutation, Colorado Rockies
Baseball Historians of the Baseball Book Blog donated $50 or more and dedicates this post to his son Devin.
The series looking at team pitching rotations using the Marcel the Monkey projections continues with the Colorado Rockies. Their starters posted a 4.58 ERA in 2007, ninth in the National League.
Note that in figuring ERAs, I'm using Marcel's mIP and mER columns. The ERA listed in the spreadsheet uses the average of mER and bsrER. I wanted to avoid posting 1/2 runs in the table. Pitcher order is taken from the CBSSportsline depth chart.
Jeff Francis
Photo: Icon SMI
Marcel predictions for the Colorado Rockies top five starters for 2008.
| Starter | Innings | ER | ERA |
| Jeff Francis | 188 | 91 | 4.36 |
| Aaron Cook | 164 | 76 | 4.17 |
| Ubaldo Jimenez | 100 | 47 | 4.23 |
| Franklin Morales | 80 | 35 | 3.94 |
| Kip Wells | 140 | 84 | 5.40 |
| Totals | 672 | 333 | 4.46 |
A 4.46 ERA for the Rockies starters wouldn't be bad given their ball park. If Franklin Morales can post that ERA over 160 innings, it will even be better. Morales's 462 strikeouts and 24 home runs in 428 minor league innings bodes well for a successful major league career.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much depth to the rotation this year, with Kip Wells, Ramon Ortiz and Mark Redman going at the back of the pack.
Previous posts in this series:
Correction: Fixed the league.
The Baseball Musings pledge drive continues through March. Please consider making a donation.
What about Jason Hirsh? He will likely absorb considerably more innings than Wells this year; he's hurt to start the year, but I haven't seen anything that says he's going to miss the whole thing.
Yeah, all the talk and reports I've seen have it
Francis
Cook
Hirsh
U-Ball
and Morales and company
In that order.
And I'm assuming you mean 9th in the National League, not American league?
it seems as though all the teams pitching are getting better this year. are the offensive numbers planing to plummet or what?