The Rockies and Rangers swapped players Thursday, sending Greg Reynolds over to the Rangers for Chad Tracy. Reynolds, the Rockies 2nd round overall pick in the 2006 draft, has only played 94 games with the team, amassing a 7.47 ERA. He has been plagued by injury issues and what must have been extreme amounts pressure from being the guy picked when the Rockies passed on players like Longoria, Kershaw and Lincecum.
The club also announced a one year deal with Casey Blake. Blake, 38, will be joining the sixth Major League team during his 13-year Major League career. The Des Moines, IA native spent the 2011 season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, his fourth season with Los Angeles, and batted .252 (51-for-202) with 10 doubles, 1 triple, 4 home runs and 26 RBI in 63 games. The right-handed hitter has batted .264 (1186-for-4500) with 264 doubles, 18 triples, 167 home runs and 616 RBI in 1,265 career games. The 2011 season marked Blake’s first since 2002 that he played in fewer than 109 Major League games. Additionally, Blake had at least 20 doubles and 15 home runs in eight-straight seasons from 2003-10.
Blake has spent the majority of his career as a third baseman, playing 923 career games at the hot corner. Blake has also seen significant time at first base (116 games) and in the outfield (242 games) over his career. In 30 career games at Coors Field, he has batted .311 (32-for-103) with 13 doubles, 1 triple, 6 home runs and 23 RBI. Blake was selected by Toronto in the seventh round of the 1997 First-Year Player Draft out of Wichita State University. He has played in the Majors with Toronto (1999), Minnesota (2000-02), Baltimore (2001), Cleveland (2003-08) and the Dodgers (2008-11). The Rockies now have 39 players on the 40-man roster with the addition of Blake.
Chad Tracy, who happens to be Jim Tracy’s son, has never been to the show. Tracy, 26, batted .259 with 32 doubles, 2 triples, 26 home runs and 109 RBI in 134 games for Triple-A Round Rock in 2011. His 26 home runs and 109 RBI led the Round Rock club and set a new Round Rock single-season franchise record. Additionally, Tracy’s 109 RBI were tied for the Pacific Coast League lead and lead all Rangers farmhands last season. Originally selected in the third round of the 2006 First-Year Player Draft out of Pepperdine University, Tracy is a .269 (704-for-2619) career hitter with 167 doubles, 111 home runs and 472 RBI over parts of six Minor League seasons, all in the Rangers organization. The right-handed hitter and thrower was named to the Texas League Post-Season All-Star team in 2009 after a season in which he batted .279 (149-for-535) with 32 doubles, 26 home runs and 107 RBI.
So ends the era of Greg Reynolds, our highest pick ever. We were all pulling for him, but the pressure both physically and mentally seemed to take its toll. Reynolds, 26, split the 2011 season between Triple-A Colorado Springs and in the Majors with Colorado. With the Rockies he went 3-0 with a 6.19 ERA (32.0 ip, 22 er) in 13 appearances/3 starts over five stints. At Triple-A Colorado Springs he went 6-7 with a 6.81 ERA (109.2 ip, 83 er) with 65 strikeouts and 32 walks in 19 starts. The Pacifica, CA native has a career Major League record of 5-8 with a 7.47 ERA (94.0 ip, 78 er) over two seasons (2008, 2011) with the Rockies. Additionally, Reynolds has a career Minor League record of 21-18 with a 4.70 ERA (377.1 ip, 197 er).
So long Greg, we hardly knew ye.
It seems like Blake has hit .990 (all GS HR’s) in Coors against the Rockies.
let’s hope it is coors and not playing against us that gets his bat going in the evening…
DanO must be back from his holiday vacation, and just decided to made this huge move that really amounts to almost nothing except we can now finally close the book on the most disappointing Rockie ever drafted in one Greg Reynolds.
BTW I really like the Blake deal as a stop gap until Arenando is ready for The Show!
First time posting on this new site. Great, great job, Jaredean!!! Anyway, it is pretty sad to see Reynolds go due to the fact that I always held out hope that he’d pan out for us after spending such a high draft pick on him. However, it was painfully obvious after this last year that he will never, ever crack our rotation. Hopefully for him he will make it in Texas (just not too successful
Hope Tracy is a good addition for us.
Chad Tracy’s 109 RBI w/Round Rock a year ago broke the franchise mark of 101; which was established by Mike Coolbaugh in 2005.
If you are looking for a great off-season read, I recommend “Heart of the Game” by SL Price, the Mike Coolbaugh story.
Marc
DanO your Rockies house cleaning would be a little easier if you did it more than once every five years or so. So, yes, three #1 draft picks have been cast off this off season with Stewart, Weathers, and finally now G Reynolds. No problem with any of these moves except that they were done a couple years too late in each case.
The inability to evaluate baseball talent and recognize a drafting mistake then just moving on shows how stubborn the people in the front office can be in protecting their turf. Not a huge difference but each of these players could easily have been traded after the 2009 season with likely a better return.
Yes I realise that the pitchers have had injury problems, but that is exactly why I would have dumped them for some other team to gamble on their upside potential. And Stewart (the head case) was likely the same player at the end of the 2009 season as he he is now – because he simply refuses to change his approach at the plate.
Next up Friedrich, however according to DanO’s operational formula, the Rockies will have to wait until he is also completely without value before dumping him on the trading block. My point is that Friedrich should have been traded after the 2010 season (his first of two mediocre AA efforts), but the Rockies most likely will send him back to Tulsa once again to see if he can repeat that 5.00ish ERA.
Oh and I almost forgot, if you are not going to play Chris Nelson (also a #1 draft pick) everyday at second base, then you (DanO) might be wise to trade him before he becomes equally as worthless as the others. Still I have to admit that the Colorado Spings team will be better in 2012 than last year, as you have now acquired a decent collection of AAAA players to fill out that Sky Sox roster.
Like Button Pressed.
As I was reading your post I was nodding my head and thinking “Chris Nelson” and then got to the final paragraph and you addressed him.
I agree. He needs to be given the Jayson Nix treatment. Have the job out of Spring Training and if he can’t hit in the during April just let him go.
Does this organization draft poorly or do they develop poorly? I know baseball yields a much lower percentage than other sports, but it is difficult to believe the quantity of misses this organization has had. It really makes me wonder about what happens to these players once they enter the organization.
I like the move with Blake, hope it works outl. Now will we ever be able to change our fiddle with the lineup so everybody can be rested for a useless September manager?? Go Rockies!!
Lots of good comments that I agree with.
Blake is a perfect signing: a one year, reasonably-priced contract to adequately fill 3B until the arrival of Arenado.
A good question was raised about whether our problem is merely bad drafting, or whether bad player development has contributed to the problem. I’m sure that it’s some of each. Regardless, Reynolds wasn’t going to pan out, so we might as well see if Tracy turns into anything, although that’s a really bad AAA batting average, and I saw something that said that his fielding isn’t great. What will CS do with both Tracy and Paulsen? They both need to play and get better.
If the Rockies don’t add another guy to play 2B, then Chris Nelson may get his chance. It’s time for him to either perform or move on (which would be another wasted first round draft pick).
I’m afraid the mentality of drafting the player for the hole you are trying to fill, rather than the absolute best player on the board, has cost us over and over. Reading articles like this (http://tinyurl.com/roxGoria) makes me really sad that they passed on a player, one that for sure would have altered the course of the team for the better, because they felt they were stacked at 3rd. Now we have no Atkins and no Stewart. They were looking at it in the sense that, “we have 3rd locked up for years to come and he doesn’t project well at 2nd.”
Why isn’t the drafting mentality, “I don’t care if I’m stacked at third, this guy is legit and if our guys at 3rd do perform and we can’t use him at 2nd we have an amazing bargaining chip to trade.” Then you put him on the field with Tulo, realize you have the best left side in all of baseball, possibly in all of history, and sit back and watch the wins roll in. Draft the best player possible, not one that fills holes. You pick them up and it still takes a couple of years to get them into the show – you have no idea what those couple of years would produce. Atkins fell off the map after the WS and Stewart was too busy sleeping through meet and greets to care about this team.
Jaredean, couldn’t agree more. They should always take the best available for exactly the reason you have mentioned. If what we have is very good then trade either what we have or the young phenom. Either way you have bargaining power. The way DOD did it with Stewart and other number ones was to fill a hole and then be left with nothing.
Is it drafting or player development? I say drafting because the guy that scouts, signs, and develops Latin players seems to do a pretty good job. The guys that scout and draft players in the States don’t seem to do as good a job.
I truely believe it is all on Bill Geivett and his staff of player development. I disagree that Stewart was a poor draft pick. Is that what most Rockies fans thought when he was being touted as a #4 prospect in baseball by, I can’t remember which one, either America or Prospectus? I doubt it. Yes, some of it is definitely on the player but a good part of it is also on player development. If something needs to be fixed it needs to be done early on. Don’t knowingly let a player get all the way to the big show and then fail. Good staffs should recognize bad approaches long before a few seasons with the club.
Jardeen (BTW great site here at RWO!) I agree with you regarding taking the best player available (especially in the first round) in the draft and I think that also includes evaluating the pitchers vs position players.
There are many drafts that I have followed where I just know that the Rockies are going to take a pitcher in the first round primarily because it is next to impossible to get a free agent pitcher to make his home at Coors Field.
Obviously this is merely hindsight but if the Rockies had drafted Longoria while also having Stewart live up to his potential, I would hypothetically suggest that the Rays would now gladly trade you David Price for Evan Longoria – as just one example.
Having said that I worry a lot about how well the Rockies development guys are doing their job with the drafted players. This whole Matzek fiasco should never have happened and that experiment conservatively extended Matsek’s development time by at least a year, or even worse he may never completely recover from the damage inflicted by the Rockies development guys.
If I had to assign grades over the say last ten years it would be draft=C, development=D and international draft/development=B. The problem is that the Rockies have to do substantially better than that if they truly are going to build the team from within.
I know there is a lot of blasting of the Rocks drafting, but not all of it is deserved. Here’s a link to an article about pitchers selected in the first round (copy and paste into your browser. Doing this to try to avoid the moderator purgatory….( Jaredean, is it possible to grant some users the ability to post without moderator interference? The ones you know for sure will only post links to discuss for example?)
http://tinyurl.com/SIRox
Some key stats from the article.
From 2000-02 there were 83 pitchers selected in the first round (including supplemental picks) — 51 out of college and 32 out of high school. Here is what happened with those 83 top pitching prospects:
• 38 never made it to the major leagues. That means 46 percent of first-round picks from 2000 through 2002 never threw a pitch in the big leagues.
• First-round pitchers out of college were virtually just as likely never to make the big leagues (45 percent) as high school pitchers (47 percent).
• 21 pitchers managed to win even as few as 10 major league games in their careers, or just 25 percent of those first-round picks.
• Only eight of the 83 pitchers have won 10 games and posted a winning record — just a 9.6 percent success rate.
So it’s not just the Rocks that have trouble drafting and getting the pitchers to the majors. But then again it’s been a number of years since the Rocks have been able to do it…..
Next is overall drafting. Again it’s tough finding how the Rocks compare to other teams. But I was able to find this SI article from a couple years ago.
http://tinyurl.com/SIRox
It ranks the Rocks at seventh. Take a look at some of the players no longer here. But before you start ranting at the Rocks, notice the other teams as well.
But in the end, how much does the draft help the teams? This article in CBSSports is interesting as it rates all the teams for 2011 if the players were forever locked to the team that drafted them.
http://tinyurl.com/SIRox2
The top three teams would have been Seattle, Atlanta, and Arizona. Bottom three, in descending order, San Diego, Cubs, Baltimore. Other teams of note – Dodgers were fourth, San Francisco was 22.
With all this, I think I have to agree with others, draft the best player available and to heck with the position.
In closing, here are the words of Mark Twain, who was quoting British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. “There are three kinds of lies, There are Lies, Dammed Lies, and Statistics”
Awesome Trip. Thanks for posting this.
trip (and all) – i’ve specifically set this comment section up so you could post links…i have it set at 2 links will go through just fine, 3 links will hold it for moderation…i like to use http://tinyurl.com on the links i post, so they are smaller…it is very easy to use, just go to their site, plug in your link and generate a small one…
So, feel free to post links and i’ll look into seeing about having more than 2 for specific people – i just have read that spammers use many links in one post…
I edited your post and changed your links to tiny links and noticed that the first two that you posted were identical…not sure if that was intentional or not…
Here is a scary stat for you:
“Since 1901, 4,043 pitchers have thrown at least 90 innings in the major leagues. Reynolds’ ERA of 7.47 ranks sixth-worst, all-time, just ahead of Radhames Liz. The worst ERA belongs to John Van Benschoten, the famed bust for the Pirates. Van Benschoten allowed 100 runs in 90 innings. Oh, and while I’m here, Reynolds’ home run rate of 1.91 per nine innings is tied for 11th-worst in history.”
This comes from a very intersting article about the trade here: http://tinyurl.com/83pkh4b
Chad Tracy the Lesser is organizational filler. A non-prospect.
A non-prospect that we may very well see at 1st base this season.
Blake seems like a small, but good veteran signing. Hopefully he can overcome last season’s injuries and contribute.
-ghoste