Baseball Prospectus - Chat with Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat

Chat: Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat

Welcome to Baseball Prospectus' Tuesday December 17, 2019 1:00 PM ET chat session with Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat.

This chat will be to discuss the Colorado Rockies Top 10 Prospects List, released today.

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: My driveway is icier than the Rockies. Let’s chat

The Colonel (Pasadena, CA): Whose bat do you think is better, Brendan Rodgers or Carter Kieboom?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: Kieboom will be significantly higher on the 101. That’s not all on the bat, but a lot of it is on the bat.

Gabriel (Garden City): Please tell me something to make me optimistic about Tyler Nevin? I'll start: he's hit above league-average at age-appropriate levels for each of the last three years. Last year his walks were up, his strikeouts were down, only his BABIP regressed. Maybe there's a year or two, post-Murphy, where he keeps 1B warm while we hope for Toglia to develop?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: I don’t know that I would consider a .744 OPS above-average once you consider he bandbox that Hartford is, and that he’s a first baseman. If I didn’t know he was a former top ten prospect and reasonably high draft pick, I would have bucketed him with the Brian Mundells of the world.

Jim (TX): Next two years - 2B - Rodgers trying to climb past McMahon and Hampson. Arenado, Story, Murphy in place. Who starves for reps?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: They have already tried Hampson in the outfield and I could see him settling in as more of a 400 PA superutility type, but predicting what the Rox do with their available MLB playing time is a game show where I always end up going home with some lovely parting gifts. A lot of this depends on how Rodgers comes back from the labrum surgery as well.

Andrew (Ohio): Any sense re how much the Rockiesā€™ puzzling approach in drafting, developing, promoting, and using young players is driven by financial vs baseball vs loyalty considerations? Hard to imagine a team going years on end not trading a single player from the 40 man roster and at the same time favoring mediocre veterans over young players with at least potential.

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: I've often said the Rockies are the one organization I really struggle to find a strategic through line for. A lot of what you suggest is true, but they also ran a young pitching staff to the playoffs, and haven't really tried to find the "veteran starter that fits Coors lately." Then again they signed their franchise player to a huge extension and are trying to trade him a year later maybe.

Ryan (MD): What odds do you give an Arenado trade?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: It's weird that it's even being talked about, which makes me think there's some smoke, but given the current baseball economic market I can't see a team giving a prospect offer to take on 220 million that would have it make any sense for the Rockies. 5% maybe?

Yuri (Israel): What an uninspiring chat today. Still better than a Craig chat, but underwhelming none the less.

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: Like Ric Flair, it was inevitable that Yuri would turn heel on me as well. We'll always have the tag title win at the Omni.

ameng007 (Bay Area): Colton Welker got off to a hot start at the start of 2019 but then had various nagging injuries the rest of the year. Do you expect him to perform more like the first month of AA last year in 2020 and re-establish himself as the best hitting prospect in the Rockies system after Rodgers graduates?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: Even during that hot start I had concerns about the underlying swing. I don't think he's as bad as his 2019 line, and Double-A can be an adjustment, but for the hitting side of things I might prefer Toglia or Schunk even medium term.

Miguel (Alexander): not a prospect any more but how does Hampson project going forward and how does he fit in the Rockies plans? His debut was pretty dismal and yet not really worse than Rodgers'

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: Maybe his second half improvement is meaningful--it's about what I figured he'd hit as a pro--maybe it is just BABIP noise. There was always the risk a swing with that many moving parts would struggle for a while against major league stuff. I want to believe in the profile, as he's been one of the more fun prospects to cover, but he might be more of a four day a week guy you move around and try to hide against better righties.

The Colonel (Pasadena, CA): What the heck happened to Peter Lambert? Is he as bad as his stats look? What's his new outlook?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: He had to pitch his home game in Coors which has flummoxed better pitching prospects than he. He doesn't really have a bat-missing option, it's more a collection of 50-55 pitches which is tough in 2019 baseball even before you start hurling at altitude.

Dinger (NC): Which is more likely: an Arenado trade for high prospects where Colorado retains some of Arenado's contract, or an Arenado trade for lesser prospects but they offload his deal?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: I feel like if you are going to retain money you might as well just use more money to continue to pay Arenado to be a top ten player in baseball.

Ryan (MD): I want to expect a little bit of a bounceback for Daniel Murphy, thinking he was playing through a finger injury most of 2019. But he's not getting any younger, so his numbers could still end up the same in a healthy 2020. What say you?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: On the seventy or so Mets prospects where I talked about a potential Muprhy extension in the mid-2010s, one of my concerns is that it would go fast in his 30s once his lower half went. I was right I guess, although he managed to cobble together two all-star campaigns before it happened. I wouldn't be shocked if he has one more decent, Coors-inflated season in him, but there's huge risk it's going the other way now.

Togo (Red Rocks): Groshans for Rodgers, who says no and why?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: I suspect both teams would say no, but for different reasons. Well, the same reason actually, having far less injury info about the player they are trading for.

Kelly (Elm Street): Brenton Doyle gives off a Jason Werth vibe no?

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: I comp'd him to Brandon Marsh in the blurb. Werth is roughly the same genus, but he was a huge dude with even bigger athletic tools. I think the quick decline in his early-30s have led people to forget just how good he was at his peak in Philly.

Colorado Rockies Top 10 Chat: We will roll through the rest of the NL West with Dodgers tomorrow and Padres Friday.