What the Giants Could Learn from the Rockies

Colorado’s capture of the National League pennant last season made it the best season in the organization’s existence. One of the accompanying narratives was that they were learning how to win in Coors Field. Another was the declining park factor in Colorado had allowed for a more stable pitching staff. While there is some truth to these, for me the Rockies are more than the product of an evolving ballpark-related dynamic. Rather, they are a perfect case study in proper player development.

 

Barry Bonds’s Legs

So the Giants have ended the Todd Linden experiment — 55 at-bats, 23 k’s. We’ll see if Linden makes it through waivers. (I’m betting, just as with Niekro, he will.  No one wants our “prospects.”) Under the Giants’ master plan, Linden, and now Lewis and Ortmeier, were intended to be Barry Bonds’s legs, pinch running or substituting defensively for him late in the game, sometimes spelling each of the starting outfielders.  But the fundamental problem here is that, just as with Neikro, these players are not prospects so much as organizational soldiers, subsisting in triple-A Fresno, available to be brought up in just such an emergency as Roberts’s surgery. Lewis and Ortmeier are both 26, Linden will be 27 next month. Genuine prospects are not quite so long in the tooth before making the majors.

A second-round pick in 2002, Lewis is an outstanding athlete whose baseball tools are still trying to catch up with his body. He has good patience and speed, but his batting average and power are a little on the low side. He’s fast enough to play center, but doesn’t judge the ball well, which limits him to the corners where his offensive deficiencies become less excusable. That certainly sounds like the profile of a fourth outfielder, doesn’t it?  Yet some scouts consider him the upper-level Giant prospect most likely to become a major-league regular.

Hard-nosed and oft-injured, Dan Ortmeier excited the Giants when he hit .274/.360/.463 with 20 home runs and 35 stolen bases at Norwich in 2005. He started 2006 in Fresno, but played himself back down to Norwich. His timing couldn’t have been worse. At 26, he’s near the end of the line.

The first problem the Giants have is that their lineup is old, prone to injury. The second problem is that the guys expected to pick up the slack are themselves old for their level, and just not that good. Sabean used a conscious strategy of trading away prospects and giving up draft choices while surrounding Bonds with “veteran presence.”  He — and Giant fans — are reaping what he sowed.

 

John McGraw Would Recognize This

The Giants’ South Atlantic League affiliate is off to a 12-1 start, playing a game that looks more like something from 1907. The team has scored 76 runs while at the same time hitting just two home runs in 425 team at-bats. What they have been doing is reaching base at a decent .352 clip, and running every chance they get, stealing 36 bases in 46 attempts, including a minor-league-leading 12 by shortstop Brian Bocock. At the same time, it’s not the offense that’s winning games, it’s the pitching. Using anything but a prospect-laden staff, the Green Jackets have given up just 25 runs in those 13 games, with a 1.82 team ERA, allowing just 89 hits and 23 walks in 114 innings. It’s not baseball we’re used to seeing, but it is an entertaining brand of the game.