I'd have been a lot more confident we'd get the sweep today a couple of weeks ago, but Cookie's been scuffling of late, missed his last start or at least had it delayed until today, and may still have some lingering after effects of the injury. Let's hope our lineup carries over some of last night's fun so all that doesn't matter.

Go Rockies!

Colorado Springs: L 9-13

Joe Koshansky got a couple steps closer to having a 30-30-.300 season by hitting his 27th homer and going two for two to reach that .300 BA. Koshansky's likely going to get another shot in September to show that his bat isn't too slow for the MLB, I'm actually hoping he gets used a lot to give him as much opportunity to do so as possible. Doug Bernier also hit a grand slam in the loss. Franklin Morales' outing wasn't nearly as discouraging as his last one despite getting hit around a bit in five innings plus. I keep on getting the premonition that he's either going to get shut down for a year with a major surgery over the winter or come back in 2009 with an ace like vengeance for the Sky Sox. Don't ask me why, and you'd definitely be wise to just ignore that statement if you're looking for actual analysis, I'm just putting it out there.

Tulsa: W 7-4, L 6-7

The Drillers split a doubleheader, Tony Blanco had a pair of homeruns and four RBI in game one, while Daniel Carte had a pair of hits, a walk and scored twice in game two. I'm still trying to decide what to do with Brandon Hynick who won game one with six and two thirds innings and four runs allowed on six hits and three walks. There are a couple of reasons to be somewhat terrified of the prospects of him pitching at Coors, and a few that make it seem like a reasonable projection. The key points are first of all that he's clearly still pretty far from being ready to pitch at the MLB level, and that there's a decent chance that he won't get much closer than he is now, but second he's shown a fairly clear line of progress from the point where he entered the minors with Casper to now, and there's not necessarily any reason to think that progress is ready to stop. His K% is back up near 20% this month, and his ERA down to 2.49 even with yesterday's mediocre start. I think it's pretty clear he'll be starting in Tulsa again in 2009, but a couple of months like this out of the gate could get him a call to Colorado Spings by next June or July, and from there it's just a relatively short drive up the freeway to the big leagues.

Modesto: 3-1

"Chacin just knows how to fiddle, just because you own a Stradivarius doesn't mean you can play the violin."

A scout told me that recently when I asked about whether he likes Jimenez or Chacin as the ace of the Rockies rotation in five years. This was a mixed response that was both encouraging for the Machine, but sort of discouraging with the implication that he feels U-ball might not ever reach his full potential. At any rate, Chacin fiddled his way to another standout  performance in a duel of top pitching prospects last night. Bakersfield stacked their lineup with left-handers against him, but as has been the case so often this season, it made absolutely no difference and might have actually been counterproductive. The five lefthanded hitters went zero for nine with four K's and a walk. The rest of Bakersfield's lineup went three for eight with a strikeout and a GIDP. A grand total of one out of eleven balls put into play left the infield in the air, a line drive single in the fifth. The other two hits were both off grounders.

Michael McKenry homered for one run and Nick Haley more or less manufactured the other two by himself off of smart baserunning and taking advantage of Bakersfield mistakes. Michael Paulk and Nelson Robledo both had a pair of hits in the win.

Asheville: W 8-5

Cory Riordan bookended two solo homeruns at the beginning and end of an otherwise strong seven inning performance to pick up this win. In a rebuilding year for the system, Riordan's performance is good enough to keep him around in my top 30, probably just outside the top 20, in fact. While I thought he might have been trailing off earlier this month, it's looking more like that was just random noise after he's peeled off a couple of solid starts. He's keeping a +20% K rate and sub 5% BB rate, which is actually pretty good for a pitcher of Riordan's type in the Rockies system where contact is king.

Kevin Clark homered, his 16th, which ties him for the team lead. It was an opposite field shot, and the fact that he can hit it to all fields is a good thing. The fact that he's been striking out nearly 40% of the time this month is definitely not.

April: 25.6%

May: 24.3%

June: 27.6%

July: 34.3%

August: 39.6%

Guys who have their K numbers go the wrong direction while staying at the same level can probably be put way on the back-burner when it comes to considering who's going to make the majors. In contrast, I rag on Brian Rike a little in the Tri-City blip and the comments, but at least his sub 20% K rate this month shows a solid effort at trying to fix what had become an apparent issue, and it's stuff like that which might very well keep him in my top 30. And in case any friends or family members of Kevin's are reading this, I'm not saying Clark's not trying or not progressing, I'm not saying he's a hopeless cause, I'm just saying that I can't see where the progression's taking place so I've got to go with what I have. Rike, for his part, had three hits yesterday including a double.

Tri-City: W 5-4

Charlie Blackmon remains a player that I just don't know enough about yet to determine how solid a prospect he is. His draft position and scouting reports say he should be considered a solid prospect. His performance thus far in the Northwest League doesn't do anything to dissuade from that, but unfortunately it doesn't certify it either. After a three extra base hit night in yesterday's win, Blackmon is now tied for third in the league in batting average and tied for first in doubles hit. The guy he's tied with on both counts, Josh Vitters, is easily considered a prospect, but then again, Vitters was the best hitter in the 2007 draft and is just 18 years old compared to Blackmon's 21. In Blackmon's defense, because of the way the two players' home parks skew the numbers he's actually hitting better than Vitters this season, but not nearly enough to make up for the three year gap in their ages.

Diamondbacks prospect Cyle Hankerd (Fight on, Cyle!) in 2006 for Yakima hit .384/.426/.519 in exactly as many at bats as Blackmon has had up to this point for Tri-City before Cyle got called up to Lancaster to use that wind aided launching pad to further pad his first season stats. In the two seasons since, Cyle's shown himself to be little more than an MLB fourth outfielder at best, and is sputtering along in Mobile this season to a .616 OPS that says he's going to repeat AA. With an adjustment made to a luck driven high BABIP for Hankerd, he and Blackmon would appear to be very similar players at this point in their careers. Blackmon has a couple of advantages, however. First, he's left handed, Hankerd's right, meaning Blackmon should be helped by facing more RHP's. Second, Blackmon's contact rates, which have been dipping to close to that 10% K line, already show that he's taken a step that Hankerd had yet to show in the NWL and are more encouraging to me than Brian Rike's walk heavy OBP numbers in 2007. Usually OBP is a good thing, but for college players just entering a rookie league, with all the erratic high school and Latin American pitchers, it can be very misleading, which is a lesson Rike's reinforced to me this year.

Less encouraging is a dramatic home/road split for Blackmon, which I've noticed in the last couple of seasons appear relatively frequently for hitters at Gesa Stadium, and I'm not entirely certain why, since the park factors for Tri-City shouldn't favor hitters. Maybe the Rockies need to check that the exhaust from their busses isn't entering the cabin. At any rate, solid consistency at all parks would be a much better indicator that he'll be able to carry the success to higher levels. As was the case with Rike last season, I'll probably include Blackmon in my top twenty prospects, but I'm not at all convinced that he's the real deal yet.

Parker Frazier this season is becoming more convincing that he'll become an MLB caliber talent, but not giving much reason to expect him to become more than a #4 starter. He's still at a stage of development where progress with his pitches could raise that ceiling, but right now that's where it seems to sit. Frazier went five innings last night, struck out five, and walked four.

Casper: Postponed again, somebody in Wyoming must have angered the baseball gods.

Missing the rest of your Pebble Report? Sorry, I took a long time looking stuff up on Blackmon and have to do my weekly grocery shopping now. I'll try and have the rest edited in later.

Livan experiment, take two.

With JDLR's recent spate of strong starts, you have to think that Livan won't get a third chance with another bad outing tonight. While we're on the subject of preparing for 2009, you would think that at some point Ian Stewart's career .342/.419/.658 line against left handed pitching would dictate his placement higher in the batting order than say someone like Brad Hawpe, who for all his recent heroics is historically less effective against LHP's or especially a speedy centerfielder that manages just a .274/.325/.343 line against them, but alas:

Anyway, go Rockies!

2008 has pretty much lost meaning to Rockies fans, as last night's anemic game thread would indicate, so increasingly our focus is going to be on 2009. This offseason is shaping up to be an interesting battle as all five teams will enter with big holes to fill, and whoever does the best job at that might well head into April as the favorite. While it's easy to get caught up in the Rockies big rotation question marks heading into the offseason, it's important to note that our rivals aren't much better off:

AZ 2009 Lineup with their ages and 2007 OPS+ figures:

C: Snyder 28, 111

1B: Jackson 27, 121

2B: ?

SS: Drew 26, 104

3B: Reynolds 25, 108

LF: Byrnes? 33, 63

CF: Young 25, 85

RF: Upton 21, 101

Rotation:

Webb 159

Haren 153

Johnson? 109

Davis? 95

Scherzer? 156

Petit? 146

Arizona's rotation looks a lot better on paper than it does in real life. Driveline Mechanics (whose bloggers are apparently going to be joining SBN soon, woot!) outlined the risk that is Scherzer, a risk that became reality earlier this year when he was shut down for "shoulder fatigue". He's in a sort of Mark Prior/Joel Zumaya class of pitcher that will be great until the seemingly inevitable crash against that injury wall, a wall he may well have already hit. Petit is that rare breed of a finesse righty, something that almost never works very long at the MLB level without some sort of ball scuffing or slopping technique. Davis and Randy Johnson are both showing age related slides to mediocrity or worse, a condition that could be expected to continue next season. As troubling for the D-backs might be the lack of development with the lineup, as it's looking more likely that they will have just one superstar player in Justin Upton, a pretty good one in CoJack, but merely solid regulars at four other positions, and outright holes in left and second base. Adding in several bullpen departures, the situation for the D-backs in 2009 shows a team that will have troubles maintaining contention, even with the pair of aces at the top of the rotation. Without help from the farm, the only recourse left to the Diamondbacks to make fixes is to spend a boatload of money. As a Rockies fan, I don't want them to get those funds, it's one big reason to hope the Dodgers keep them home this year.

Speaking of LA and having to spend a boatload of money:

C: Martin

1B: Loney

2B: DeWitt?

SS:?

3B: ?

LF: Kemp 24, 111

CF: Jones? 32, 35; Pierre? 31, 69

RF: Ethier 27, 103

Rotation:

Billingsley: 142

Kuroda: 113

Kershaw: 117

#4: ??

#5: McDonald?

Brad Penny's back issues are making it more iffy that the Dodgers pick up his option, and at any rate they're going to have to dip into the free agency pool to shore things up or rely on a tremendously young but talented group of pitchers. The Rockies of this year can tell them the perils of doing that. But LA's going to be having to also fill several position player holes, and there might already be a tight supply of decent available players to do that via free agency. While Los Angeles has the money anyway, the short supply of FA talent makes it more likely they'll have to dip into their farm system to make trades.

Now let's look at the Rox:

C: Iannetta 26, 128

1B: Helton 35, 102

2B: Baker? 28, 93

3B: Atkins 29, 105; Stewart 24, 125

LF: Holliday 29, 159; Spilborghs 29, 134

CF: Fowler?; Taveras 27, 59

RF: Hawpe 30, 129

Rotation:

Jimenez: 117

Cook: 119

Francis: 85

???

???

I think I'm changing my position from a few days ago and am right now in the camp that we keep Holliday unless we get a quality starting pitcher. After looking at the other teams, I'm just starting to see too much opportunity for next season to let him go right now. Atkins is another story, as there's no way we're going to be able to deal Helton, Garrett's looking like a good player who will have greater value to the team in trade and a better opportunity for long term security on some other club. I think the Rockies need to give Hawpe some first base time, in fact, I'd like him to be pencilled in as the starter for 2009 as I think that layout with him at first, Spilly in right, Holliday in left and Stewart at third gives us our best offensive and defensive look not to mention one of the NL's most potent lineups so long as Fowler adjusts well and Tulo hits like he did last night. The next question would be to how to go about telling Todd (barring a miracle cure) that he'd have greater value to the team as a potent bat off the bench than a starter, but that's where Clint Hurdle can really earn his keep. If he's successful at that, it makes up for a multitude of in game strategy decisions.

I'll try and look into the two teams below us in the standings tomorrow, the Giants are a lot closer than I thought they'd be and the Padres seemingly might be destined to be at the bottom in 2009 again the way things are looking right now. The point is that there's a big opportunity for the Rockies this offseason to become divisional heavyweights with relatively minor fixes.

Jorge De La Rosa's outing last night was his fourth quality start out of his last five. When we got him, he was more of a one good start, two or three bad ones type of pitcher, so I'm hopeful that this trend continues for the rest of the season, as he'd be a surprisingly decent asset to carry into next season if it does.

Colorado Springs: Postponed

Tulsa: 2-1

Zach Parker seems to get motivated by beating the team he spent most of the 2004-2007 seasons with, as for the second time in the last couple of weeks he tossed a gem against the Drillers. Alan Johnson pitched as effectively for Tulsa, shutting out Frisco for seven innings before a game tying, one-out RBI double by Elvis Andrus in the eighth chased him. Justin Nelson has been having a particularly brutal week on defense, as for the second time in three days a late fielding error by him proved costly, this time allowing the winning run to get on board in the ninth before being doubled in for the walk-off defeat.

Eric Young had three hits, including a double and scored the Drillers only run. Jeff Kindel added a pair of hits as well in the loss.

Modesto: L 1-7

Just like that, Michael McKenry's lucky walk streak disappears as he went zero for four with three strikeouts. Meanwhile, Brandon Durden got knocked around in three innings and the only scoring the Nuts could muster was a Jason Van Kooten solo shot in the third.

Asheville: L 3-6

The Tourists looked great beating up a weak Lexington team on the road last weekend, but since returning home have gone 1-4 against stronger competition. This is not a good sign for the T's hopes of securing a South Atlantic League championship this year. One big reason is that Darin Holcomb's struggling to a .236/.288/.273 line this month, and while he's still making a lot of contact, he 's just not getting squared on pitches of late. I think it might just be a sign of fatigue in his first taste of full-season play, but his slump makes it important to watch how he starts in Modesto in 2009.

Connor Graham had a mixed start. The record shows some pretty hard contact and ten hits off of him in six innings led to five runs, but there are also some positives. The Marlins have a talented offensive squad at Greensboro, with Mike Stanton and Matt Dominguez being elite prospects and a couple of other players being decent ones. Stanton went two for three off Graham with a double and a strikeout, but Dominguez was held hitless with two K's. In all Graham finished with nine strikeouts in six innings and two walks.

Tri-City: L 0-3

The only knock on Christian Friedrich's start last night would be a somewhat out of character flyball rate, but other than that he was just as dominant as usual of late, striking out eight and walking none in five innings, allowing just four hits. Friedrich's 27/2 K/BB ratio for the month of August in just 16 1/3 innings is outpacing even Shane Lindsay's 2005 in terms of K percentage, but with much better control. This kind of pace indicates he's ready to pitch as far up as Modesto right now, which would give him a late 2010 estimate for being ready for the majors.

Casper: Postponed

After our thrilling three game sweep  of the Diamondbacks has put us right back into this playoff chase, we get to go on the road and face the lowly Nationals, who we just hammered for three of four games to start the homestand. Our position couldn't be rosier and the Dodgers and D-backs have to really be feeling the heat right now knowing how we have our unearthed pair of aces, De la Rosa and Livan Hernandez to pitch for us the next two nights...

Wha..? I thought alternative histories were all the rage these days. What do you mean it won't sell?

Go Rockies!

Jayson Nix's black-eye from yesterday's Cuba-USA game will be nothing compared to the one the US team will take for coming home empty-handed, which looks like a very real possibility after they went down to their second defeat. Nix homered in the loss.

Todd Helton got some been there, done that advice from Randy Johnson in regards to his back pain and a referral to Johnson's spinal specialist. At this stage of Helton's career, there really can't be much middle ground. You're either going to be optimistic that some recovery can be made and Helton can regain some portion of his former ability through medical procedures, or you see the tell-tale signs of a sinking ship and flee to the lifeboats. The Rockies really only have the first option, unfortunately, as they're sort of handcuffed to steering wheel.

While most of the observers have been maintaining that only one of this year's first round hold-outs, Padres pick Allen Dykstra, is expected not to sign by today's deadline, I've been thinking for awhile now that reality's going to be different, and because of recent rule changes, it could dramatically impact the Rockies draft position for 2009.

As of right now, the unsigned first rounders include six of this year's top ten picks. Despite the Rockies currently holding the fifth worst record in the majors, our draft slot has the potential to slide three more spots to eighth overall if Pedro Avarez, Eric Hosmer and Brian Matusz fail to come to terms. The situation becomes more troubling when you consider that there are another six teams within two games that could in a worst possible scenario (all six pass us, no more first round picks sign) drop us to the eighteenth overall selection despite having a pretty wretched record. While this doomsday scenario is highly unlikely, I don't think Dykstra will be alone when it comes to 2008 first round selections re-entering next year's draft. Needless to say, I'm watching today's deadline situation with some rooting interest.

The Giants are the only other NL West team other than San Diego to fail to sign thier first round selection thus far, and if Buster Posey fails to enter the system, their 2008 draft takes a huge hit. It's already slipping in my mind just because of the delays in development they've accepted with their highest profile picks who have  signed. I was never as high as many on Roger Kieschnick to begin with, and while Brandon Crawford's a solid athlete, he's far from being a solid ballplayer. The same won't be true of Posey, who has the polish and bat to step in and perform against top minor league pitching right away assuming they can actually reel him in.

Right now, the Rockies have had the most success with their first round pick, the Dodgers Ethan Martin has missed all of the rookie league season after getting minor knee surgery, and while Daniel Schlereth has pitched well, he's also just thrown four innings in relief, so there's hardly a real sense of how good a reliever he'll be just yet. Christian Friedrich, meanwhile, pitches again tonight for Tri-City and has been sensational this month.

Colorado Springs: Suspended

Rescheduled as part of a double-header on August 27th

Tulsa: W 11-1

After getting schooled by one Rangers pitching prospect the night before, Tulsa turned around and showed another one some humility, driving Neftali Feliz out after three innings and five runs. Chris Nelson had three hits and drove in four, Tony Blanco also collected three hits, and Justin Nelson hit his 16th homerun of the year. Newly acquired journeyman Gary Cates took a liking to the Texas League with a five for five night and three runs scored in his system debut. Tulsa's defensive issues continue, Nelson and Eric Young each picked up another error, and Tony Blanco, after 29 errors at third, got his 30th with the Drillers in left field. Not that errors paint a clear picture of defense, but in this case, Tulsa's Texas League leading 173 isn't lying.

Chaz Roe went seven innings allowing just four hits and a walk and one run.

Modesto: W 5-2

Simon Ferrer's knuckleball was used to decent effect last night, the ten hits he gave up in six innings is probably fairly misleading as there were only two line drives hit off him, both for singles, although he did allow a pair of extra base hits on flyballs. It otherwise looks like a lot of Texas Leaguers and seeing eye grounders though, from what I can tell.

Matt Repec, Lino Garcia and Michael McKenry all homered, McKenry also drew three walks and has a 9/1 BB/K ratio in his last ten games. That's pretty ridiculous and I might add considerably lucky, as even the best players at strike zone judgment won't get all the calls to go their way due to umpire variance alone, and McKenry's had three out of his other four months this season with K rates over 20%. I could see him taking a step forward, but I'm highly doubtful he could go so far so fast. Still, the progress underscores that McKenry's potential value has once again taken off. He's the Nuts best position prospect by a considerable margin over Daniel Mayora, the question is how highly should he be regarded among Rockies prospects overall? I guess first we have to decide how he ranks among Rockies catchers. Wilin Rosario has more potential, but McKenry's got far more polish and is a better all around defender right now at the position. I think I'm still leaving Rosario ahead because of the high ceiling, but I don't think McKenry's that far off and should crack my top ten depending on how I'm going to reconcile the injury to Hector Gomez and how far I decide to drop Nelson.

So, sort of half thinking it through, a temporary draft of my top ten Rockies prospects would probably look something like this:

1. Dexter Fowler
2. Jhoulys Chacin
3. Christian Friedrich
4. Casey Weathers
5. Greg Reynolds
   
6. Gomez
7. Rosario
   
8. Brandon Hynick
9. McKenry
   
10. Aneury Rodriguez

I've got high regard for Connor Graham, am uncomfortable dropping Nelson, figure EY2's probably somewhere in this territory now, Roe too, despite concerns about his velocity, and I'm bullish enough on Parker Frazier to have even thought of putting him up here, so I'm probably going to tinker with my list over the next couple of weeks before we have our PuRPs discussion, but as it stands this will have to do.

Asheville: L 1-4

Warren Schaeffer has a .353/.378/.529 line going for the month of August after three more hits last night, and I'm scratching my head as to where it has come from. This is, after all, the same player that put up a .485 OPS in Casper last season, but he's not the only Tourist that falls into that where-have-you-been category. Brian Lapin hit his fifth homerun of the month and is at .258/.303/.774. If you've ever seen Lapin, you'll know that prodigious power should be a part of the 6'6", 230 lb. man-beast's game, but up until this month he had just two professional homeruns in 271 professional at bats. So I guess the bigger question is that if these two are having no problems hitting of late, what's going on with the rest of the Tourists? Everth Cabrera did steal his 70th base and Bruce Billings had a quality start in the loss.

Tri-City: W 9-2

Patrick Rose is also putting together a fine August, .318/.434/.568, tripling and homering in yesterday's win. Rose was one of several Dust Devils with multiple hits, Charlie Blackmon did it (again), as did Chris Vasami, James Sims and Derek Kinzler. Kenny Durst had another strong outing, he's hanging right out there on my periphery of prospects to watch with an excellent K/BB ratio, but some otherwise mediocre indicators.

Casper: Suspended

They completed one full inning before being rained out, Ethan Hollingsworth had a perfect first with a K and Rosario a single for the only marks of distiction in the game thus far.

Yeah, I forgot to schedule this. Oops.

Go Rockies!

Okay, on the docket for today:

Brian Fuentes' tightrope act last night turned out successful, but I'd like a few more 1-2-3 appearances from him from here on out just to help make sure that he jumps into the free agency pool and won't be tempted to accept arbitration. I want those draft picks, dang it.

Oscar Villareal amounts to a "cellar air salvo" from the Rockies, a bunch of stale wind that doesn't amount to much impact. But I do have to admit he's got a great name for anagram generators. "Larvae sac I roll,"  he says.

Spilly's taking his swings now, the Rockies could use his bat for a little more right handed production besides what we're getting primarily from Holliday and Iannetta.

One of the biggest differences between 2007 and 2008 has been a big drop in production value relative to the league from most of our position players. Last year we had five of the MLB's top 60 players in terms of VORP (Matt, Todd, Tulo, Hawpe and Atkins) but so far this year just Holliday cracks that list. With a big night yesterday, Hawpe's inching closer to joining him, however. Brad currently ranks 66th, and his consistency from year to year (even though he's pretty streaky within them) bodes well for his ability to retain value over the course of the extension he signed last winter.