It wasn’t supposed to work like this.
In February 2012, Ubaldo Jimenez and someone like Greg Reynolds were supposed to be heading to spring training later in the month to battle it out to see who would earn the honor of being the starting pitcher on Opening Day for the Colorado Rockies. Casey Weathers was going to be the closer by now. Instead, all three are with other teams today, and the Rockies Opening Day starter could very well be a guy – Jeremy Guthrie – they just traded for, two weeks before the start of camp.
What happened? Where are all the arms from the farm system?
It’s hard to argue that the Colorado farm system hasn’t done a solid job of producing every day players that can measure up in the big leagues. They’ve produced some stars like Troy Tulowitzki and Matt Holiday, and several quality players. Pitchers, on the other hand…well…not so much. Jimenez is gone because he couldn’t get it together between the ears. Others have fallen by the wayside for reasons like injuries and just plain old ineffectiveness. Only a hand full have made it to Coors Field at all.
Of the 28 pitchers on the Rockies 2012 Spring Training roster, only 12 are products of the Rockies farm system. Moreover, of that group, only four or five appear ready to make a push to make the big league staff. It’s not like Colorado hasn’t been drafting pitchers. They’ve done it in droves. But what’s happened to those guys AFTER they’ve been signed?
The easy thing to do is point fingers at the Rockies scouting department, but that would be wrong. A scout’s job is to help select the best prospects available. No one is a sure thing (okay, maybe Stephen Strasburg, but he’s the exception…) and every player picked needs to be developed and improve once he’s in the system before they become big league ready. That’s what doesn’t seem to be happening.
For instance, let’s take the high profile case of Reynolds and Tim Lincecum. In 2006, both guys were coming out of college – Reynolds from Stanford and Lincecum from Washington. The Rockies had the second overall pick in the draft and choose the 6’ 7” power pitcher from Stanford…just like every other team would have done. Colorado passed on Evan Longoria and Clayton Kershaw, among others, as well as Lincecum. (In fact, Lincecum didn’t go until the 10th overall pick – after such notables as Brad Lincoln and Bill Rowell, and was just the seventh pitcher drafted.)
Hindsight is perfect, of course, but if any of those in charge of making selections say they would have picked the 5-foot nothing, mechanical mess that Lincecum was – and still is – over Reynolds they are LYING. The fact that Lincecum has had such an incredible level of success defies all logic and basics of scouting. He truly is a freak of nature. His small size and screwed up mechanics were red flags the size of Texas. The simple fact is that if all 32 teams had it to do over again, based on what they knew THEN and without the benefit of hindsight, they’d ALL draft the big right hander from Stanford. It was the correct move at the time.
So what happened? Leaving the freak of nature Lincecum out of it, Reynolds should have become a star. Same with high picks like Weathers (2007) who is now with the Cubs. The potential was there. The development part? You tell me. Yes, injuries play a part in it, but a lot of injuries can be prevented with proper training. There’s no way a young arm on a 6’ 7” frame should be injured all the time and throwing just 87 miles per hour when finally healthy.
The point is this: The Rockies have had to turn outside the organization to find pitching, which is messing up the master plan – as well as our shot at another World Series. It can’t all be about blown draft picks. It’s not just bad luck that young pitchers keep getting hurt and wash out.
Rather than blame the scouting, the better idea as a new season dawns would be to take a good long look at what happens – and what doesn’t – after those young arms don Rockies gear for the first time. If the farm system is going to be given the perfectly reasonable task of producing impact pitchers, something needs to be fixed down there.
Comments