Exploring Wandy Rodriguez-Colorado Rockies Waiver thing in minute detail

I have just read this piece from Ken Rosenthal on the likely scenarios revolving around the Colorado Rockies waiver claim on Wandy Rodriguez.

If we believe his premise than then Ed Wade is under no pressure to shift Rodriguez at all. He can wait until the offseason and prey on the fact that the free agent class is lousy and hope a GM gets desperate enough to offer something good for Rodriguez.

Forget we're in the 'middle' of the season, this is the first move of the offseason. By claiming Rodriguz, Dan O'Dowd wanted the first shot at Rodriguez and hoped that Jim Crane was putting so much pressure on Wade to trim payroll as fast as possible, they might possibly just dump Rodriguez without asking for any prospects in return.

This is not the case, or at least I believe is not the case. Ignoring the fact that I believe it absolute nonsense that anyone would say Rodriguez does not provide value for money in a 3-year $36m contract moving forward, something I have dealt with in great length here, any negotiation will come down to a tug of war between prospects and money.

If Wade were to kick in $3m in each of the next three years (2012-2014) at a total of $9m to get back better prospects, which would mean the Rockies were paying Rodriguez an average of $9m for the next three years at a total of $27m, that would be way under market value, considering they are paying Aaron Cook $9.25m this season in his last year before free agency.

This would only be palpable if the Astros got a decent cache of established rather than top prospects. We're talking no Christian Friedrich's, Peter Tago's or Tim Wheeler's here. Wade would snag one or two players that the Rockies are down on, or where they have depth. But no spare boot players like Ian Stewart or Jason Hammel.

How would this $3m be palpable to Astros fans and Jim Crane? Well, say you get three pretty decent prospects, just pretend you are paying them $1m a year for the next three years. By kicking in that money to Colorado that's effectively what you are doing.

Courtesy of Astros County, even the Rockies players know how big it would be for the Rockies to acquire Rodriguez moving forward. While we're on links, David Cameron of FanGraphs, who I do give a lot of shit to, makes pretty much all the right points. Comparing him to Ted Lilly is just dumb, suggesting that his age, 32, is a red flag is dumb (considering the way he pitches/his career trajectory). This is not a saber/non saber thing. It is an ignorant/informed thing, with one side having no idea about Wandy. They have 1. never looked in depth at his numbers. 2. never really watched him pitch.

In my opinion, a deal does not get done. In light of the Bourn trade, I think Wade will be gun-shy about trading one of his players without the chance of getting a heist, and O'Dowd, who doesn't understand how valuable Wandy Rodriguez at $9m a year could be for his team. His loss I guess.

Moving onto more positive things, check out the photos of George Springer's press conference at Tri-City last night. He stayed late to sign as many autographs as possible and hopefully will get some gametime tonight. Apparently he coached first base for the seventh inning last night.

Bogusevic deserves all the at bats he can get

Giants fans are not thrilled at getting shutout by the Astros, but Wandy Rodriguez can do that to any team when he is on. The defending World Series Champs are not scoring nearly enough runs, but they are pretty banged up at the moment, and are seeing their season slide dramatically, having been overtaken by the Diamondbacks.

Brian Bogusevic continued his strong August last night, jacking a solo home run into the RF bullpen in the eighth inning. His line for the month of August now reads: .383/.432/.735 in 16 games played, and he only started half of those.

Meanwhile George Springer was in town to meet the press, try on his new jersey and take batting practice. He will head to Kissimmee Florida for a few days, then head onto Tri-City to get a bit of playing time with the Valleycats.

The MO on Boggy was that he hit the top half of the ball too often, leading to too many groundballs. I'd be happy to let him get most if not all the at bats from now on through September so we can see what we have got for next season in right field. What happens next year in the outfield is more sticky. If they want to play Lee in the final year of his contract (2012) and play Wallace too, then Lee shifts back to LF and Martinez plays RF. Would he be ok in RF for a season?

Rodriguez meanwhile pitched another gem, and drove in two runs with what would have been a double for anyone else, but he took so long to get to 2B that the throw beat him.

Jarred Cosart pitched a gem last night for the Hooks even though they lost pretty heavily, Jean Carlos Batista, a shortstop signed from the Dominican is having a good start to his pro-career in Greeneville.

Brian McTaggart meanwhile seemed to suggest that placing Brett Myers and Rodriguez on waivers was standard procedure and that it did not necessarily make a trade the desirable outcome. Not sure I totally buy into that, but we will have a clearer picture by Tuesday, when the two business days are up.

"El Caballo Encouraged to Trot to first"

When I saw the above headline on astros.com I could not resist having a gentle poke. I thought Lee had been doing that already without Brad Mills telling him to do it. Or perhaps he's going too fast on the way to first and he needs to make sure he doesn't overexert himself. Or is this a horse joke? I'm confused. This is the guy who has a .048 BA on balls hit to the infield and routinely gets nabbed by a few meters on balls hit deep in the hole.

Turns out the article was about encouraging Lee to take more walks. And since the trade deadline, he has done a pretty good job at that, netting 11 BOB in 14 games in August. He's also got a .152 BA and .217 SLG%. Not so good. Its easy to tell when a player is done, when they succeed at one thing, it knocks about ten other things out of whack. In this instance, the ability to draw walks has destroyed Lee's ability to hit, and to hit for power.

Perhaps Mills should just bat him ninth and tell him to do nothing but draw walks. Not even allowing him to swing the bat. Lets do that. Talking of Lee's struggles, Mills said:

"I want to get him going," Mills said. "He needs to get going. The last month, he's still got 19 RBIs in the last 28-30 days, which isn't terribly bad, but at the same time, he's still not that type of hitter he can be."

You want to get him going by telling him to draw more walks. Hmm...

George Springer Better Not Be Asking For $10m

Only way Dave Clark's sending you home is if you're in the HR trot.

So I've been a few days late on this one, but wow, hope it is not true. This is coming from Richard Justice so we should tread carefully here. This may be Springer being cynical and just trying to exploit the latent unrest in the front office and preying on the fact he knows they have to sign him or suffer a revolt from the fanbase. Or this may be an opening negotiating tactic where he just fired off a large number. If I remember correctly the Astros spent $8/9m in the entirety of last years draft. The Astros are already probably going to have to over-slot Jack Armstrong if they want to sign him, so expect negotiations to go straight down to the wire.

Last night saw a great game, one where the Astros got superb starting pitching, a bunch of early runs, and a competent bullpen performance. The 9-1 win against the Diamondbacks, a margin of 8 runs was their second heaviest victory all season (they beat the Cubs 11-2 in April). J.D. Martinez hit another bomb to right field, and he and Jose Altuve, along with Jimmy Paredes all had good games. Wandy Rodriguez, who is in the shop window if he wasn't already, tossed six shutout innings.

I enjoyed several things about the Astros first inning. They scored five runs obviously but others sprang out:
1) Cody Ransom's fielding error was due in part to the speed of Jason Bourgeois and Alutve on the basepaths.
2) J.D. Martinez's plate approach. He could have easily have swung early in the count with a man on third and one out, but waited until a hanging changeup on the fat part of the plate at 2-2, stayed with it and drove it over Justin Upton's head in RF for a 3-run home run.
3) Carlos Corporan actually delivered. Upton could and probably felt like he could have made the catch, as the ball went through his glove.
4) Jimmy Paredes 'hustled' on a ball that could easily have been a triple, but ended up being an infield single.
5) Playing a little small ball. Paredes feinted to steal, forcing Kelly Johnson to move towards second. Clint Barmes took advantage of it and singled it through the hole on the right hand side of the infield.

The most notable thing about last night was the absence of Carlos Lee, and Brad Mills needs to realise that if he is in full rebuild mode, he needs to stop giving so much time to Angel Sanchez and Jason Michaels, and put Martinez in the heart of the lineup and not Lee.

We have to be mindful that whatever Martinez does in two months he might not replicate it next season. But I think it less likely that he crashes like Chris Johnson in 2012. CJ's struggles have been getting mismatched on breaking pitches again, and again and again. Martinez is only 23 and has far better minor league splits (.342/.407/.551) compared to (.277/.317/.432). You can see the hip flinch that he added to his swing which ensures he stays back on the ball and doesn't pull off it like Johnson has been wont to do.

Hopefully Johnson and Brett Wallace make good use of their month at AAA, and I think just tearing the ball off the cover in a live baseball environment will do some good for both of them. If nothing else it will keep them on their toes next season and they will realise that you cannot go through the motions and expect to stay on that 25-man roster. It also makes me question if the coaching staff thought both of them were doing enough behind the scenes to correct the flaws in their swings, and CJ needs to work badly on his defense (so does Wallace).