LATEST STORIES FROM BAD ALTITUDE
Bad Altitude: Pitcher News; I Dump My Tickets
The Rockies signed Ubaldo Jimenez to a four-year, $10 million deal, one of those arbitration-avoidance specials that have become all the rage the past few years. It's little wonder when guys are getting $10 million for a single season in arbitration -- when they lose. Keenly Dan O'Dowd has managed to attach team options to the deal that could potentially keep Jimenez in Colorado...
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January 28, 2009
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Bad Altitude: Taveras, Fuentes Skip Town
Willy Taveras signed with Cincinnati, who have a knack for wasting money on players who can't play, and Brian Fuentes is headed for Anaheim. Good deal for the Angels, who get Fuentes for almost $20 million less guaranteed than the Mets gave their former closer, Francisco Rodriguez. Fuentes wasn't all that far away from saves leader Rodriguez in VORP last year -- 18.0 versus...
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January 03, 2009
Bad Altitude: Embers and Embree
The Rockies have signed 39-year-old Alan Embree to a one-year deal. Embree's a below-average situational reliever who has managed to bounce around for 16 seasons because he's left-handed. Financial terms were not disclosed, as they say, but it's probably somewhere between $1.5 and $3 million. He made $3 million and change last season for the A's, for whom he posted...
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December 10, 2008
Bad Altitude: Holding Pattern Continues
It's hard to really knock the slow start to the hot stove season from the perspective of a Rockies fan, since they really would have been better off keeping Matt Holliday for another year and that's the only really high-wattage deal that's gone down thus far. I've been dutifully checking the rumor sites, but Colorado is now back in its familiar position from years...
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December 07, 2008
Bad Altitude: The Cold Stove
It's as I feared: the Rockies are once again complete nonentities in the trade-rumor reports and free-agent signing buzz columns on the national websites. It's not that Colorado plans to stand pat after trading their franchise player for a platoon outfielder, a fifth starter whose ERA at Coors may well top 7.00 (the Chacon Line), and a damaged-goods closer that they have...
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November 22, 2008
Bad Altitude: Quite a Haul
So we have a better idea now of the players the Rockies will receive from Oakland in the Matt Holliday trade, although not a complete one. There are physicals still to come and there is also a chance that Dan O'Dowd may flip the only guy with abig-league profile, reliever Huston Street, for further prospects. Street's presence in the trade saves it from being a complete disaster...
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November 11, 2008
Bad Altitude: Rockies to Trade Holliday
I'm still waiting to hear what prospects they're getting back. I highly doubt they'll be major-league ready, since Oakland studiously divested themselves of most of their remaining assets of that sort last season. Still, I'd rather have A's prospects than most other teams', since they draft and develop pitchers like clockwork and they have a farm system that...
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November 10, 2008
Bad Altitude: The Only Thing Worse Than a Lousy Postseason Is a Lousy Offseason
Well, so much for baseball in 2008. Anybody else feel ripped off? The fact that the champs clinched in a three-inning pretend game must have left a lot of people besides me seeking closure. I guess I must seek it in my Ken Burns DVD's and those dreams I sometimes have where the Rockies' ownership isn't a bunch of greedy short-sighted morons.
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November 06, 2008
Bad Altitude: Rain On
I waited a day to write anything because I felt I might be overreacting, but if Peter Gammons himself has come out to call this the worst World Series ever -- before it's officially over, even -- then I don't know what else to wait for. Boy, is baseball going out on a brutal note this season. Spooked by terrible TV ratings and aghast at the prospect of rain delay Simpsons...
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October 29, 2008
Bad Altitude: Another Bummer World Series
Things could still turn around in the game tonight, but a World Series I was really looking forward to watching has kind of turned around us. Everywhere you look, it's bad news. The television ratings are beyond abysmal, aided by bad weather and dumbly scheduled start times. The umpiring has been hideously bad, from the random Greg Maddux strike zone granted Jamie Moyer (what...
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October 27, 2008
Bad Altitude: At the Turn
I didn't watch as much of the preview coverage for the World Series as I could have because the five minutes an hour they spend talking about baseball on ESPN is inevitably sandwiched between twenty minutes of commercials and forty minutes of football talk. I don't know which is more tedious. Of what I saw, picks tended to divide into groups -- people who hadn't actually...
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October 23, 2008
Bad Altitude: What Side You On?
I have a long-held bias against Philadelphia sports and the Phillies in particular. Philly fans have a reputation that precedes them everywhere, and in general the town has been light on stars with national appeal. I'm not a big Donovan McNabb guy, I can't stand Iverson (or what he's doing to basketball in Denver now), and John Kruk and Mike Schmidt just don't do...
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October 21, 2008
Bad Altitude: Turnaround
I feel really bad, but I was between a rock and a hard place. On one hand you had the chance to watch the Tampa Bay Rays clinch passage to their franchise-first World Series. On the other, my pub quiz team needed their all-star history/pop music/Simpsons quotes anchor at nine sharp. What's a right-thinking fellow to do? I elected to make it to the bar on time, and I ended up...
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October 17, 2008
Bad Altitude: How 'Bout Those Rays?
I was watching a documentary about the James Bond movies last night, and they had a bit on the making of the tank chase through St. Petersburg, Russia in GoldenEye. Remember that? The tank smashing through all those walls, crushing police cars, upsetting applecarts, generally wreaking PG-13 havoc? That was Evan Longoria and the St. Petersburg, Florida offense last night in Boston...
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October 15, 2008
Bad Altitude: The Two Series After Four Games
After the Rays pulled Scott Kazmir early and the Red Sox were able to stagger through another inning and change with the plainly ineffective Josh Beckett, I thought that Boston ought to have the advantage going into extra innings last night. But Terry Francona seemed to overdo it with matchups, and you knew as soon as 25th man Mike Timlin came in that it was all over for Boston.
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October 12, 2008
Bad Altitude: Oh No, What If the Rockies Are Terrible?
First-week panic is too easy. The offense hasn't shown up at all for Colorado, even after a much-needed 2-1 victory tonight. The Rockies have scored 12 runs in 7 games, which wasn't exactly the plan. Even when they've gotten good pitching -- and they've gotten their share -- they've lost with the off...
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April 20, 2008
Bad Altitude: Must Beat Diamondbacks
Hey, the Rockies are on Fox's regional broadcast today! I can't remember that happening at any point in the last three years. Progress has arrived. Unfortunately, Colorado has been unable to do much against their division rivals in the first four games they've played this year. An offensive burst in ...
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April 20, 2008
Bad Altitude: 2MRoP: Seattle Mariners
WESTERN HOMES: Here is the thing that jumps out at me about Seattle. They're spending a very large amount of money, and you have to think that they consider themselves a contending team. Yet their offense is dreadful. Obviously the Mariners consider themselves a team that's going to win with pitching...
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April 18, 2008
Bad Altitude: 2MRoP: Pittsburgh Pirates
WESTERN HOMES: There are teams with smallerpayrolls than the Pirates, butall of them can point to something they're doing better than Pittsburgh along the player-development cycle. The Marlins might have fire sales every couple of years but they sure do their homework with scouting and get good playe...
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April 18, 2008
Bad Altitude: Nix Wins Starting 2B Job
Given that the story behind their surge into the postseason last year was built on young talent, it's not at all surprising that the Denver Post is reporting today that rookie Jayson Nix has won the Rockies' starting second base job. Colorado brought a bunch of guys into camp with theoretical shots a...
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April 17, 2008
Bad Altitude: 2MRoP: New York Yankees
If you're just joining us in progress, the Two-Man Roundtable of Power is Mark T.R. Donohue (that's me) and Ali Nagib (Bad Altitude's Research Department, although up until just now that has largely been a ceremonial title). We're doing team previews and we're starting with the Yankees.
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April 17, 2008
Bad Altitude: Where's the Baseball?
My birthday is next week -- Tuesday -- positioned right at the very dawn of the baseball season where it always falls. I love having a birthday in February. I'm from Illinois, where you know we like our Lincoln, and Lincoln's birthday is in February too. I like the whole Leap Year thing -- I was this...
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April 01, 2008
Bad Altitude: 2MRoP: Cincinnati Reds
WESTERN HOMES: The Reds were terrible last year (72-90), this we know. They have a good farm system according to Baseball America, whose book ranks them third overall this year. They're sort of going for it this year. They signed Francisco Cordero to a big deal and they brought in Dusty Baker, not mu...
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March 30, 2008
Bad Altitude: 2MRoP: San Francisco Giants
WESTERN HOMES: The conventional wisdom holds that there isn't another team in the majors that was recently a playoff contender and now has as bleak a future as the Giants. They've neglected their player development system, especially on the offensive side, for more than a decade as they've tried to w...
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March 20, 2008
Bad Altitude: Cost Certainty Is Sexy
I have the text for the Two-Man Roundtable of Power's discussion on the Yankees right here, but it's going to take some time to convert to blog form. In the meantime, I wanted to take a moment to note that the Rockies were in the news again yesterday for signing Brad Hawpe to a three-year extension. ...
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March 14, 2008
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