Why Mike Hampton is So Fly
...and other tales of the Rockies
December 9, 2000
Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle have signed with the Colorado Rockies, and I'm in love with the direction the ballclub is heading.
There are a lot of reasons on first impreesion to be skeptical about these free agent signings. Hampton has just received the longest contract for a pitcher since Wayne Garland's record ten-year deal back with the 1977 Indians. Garland, of course, was pretty much a bust out of the gate, and the Indians were "out" their entire million dollars. That might not seem like a lot now, but it was a major portion of the club's payroll during that period for zero IP from Garland.
It would seem to pale in comparison to Hampton's $121 million, round about $15 million a year. After all, if Hampton goes Lima on the Rockies, you can pretty much write off the franchise's hopes of having a quality pitching staff for a decade. Hampton's also had the knock that he's not a very good cold weather pitcher -- remember how shakily he started 2000? -- and there's no colder spot year-round than Denver. As for him being an extreme groundball pitcher, there've been other groundball pitchers who've come and gone at Coors with their ERAs in tatters and their confidence destroyed. Darryl Kile and Bill Swift come prominently to mind as matching Hampton's profile fairly closely.
You also might be wary (and/or chary) of Denny Neagle if you're a Rockies fan. Neagle, after all, was mediocre at best down the stretch with the Yankees in 2000 (7-7, 5.81), and was started late in the post-season series and yanked early in the post-season games by the respected Joe Torre. He missed half of 1999 with injuries, and at the relatively tender age of 32, is on his sixth major league club.
More to the point, Neagle is the most extreme flyball pitcher in the majors as measured over the past five years. That doesn't bode well in a home ballpark with an astonishing 169 home run index in 2000 (that means 69% more homers are hit at Coors than the median major league ballpark, hardly news to most of you.) Neagle gave up 31 homers last year with his half his home games at relatively spacious Yankee stadium. And a five-year contract for a somewhat underwhelming guy like Neagle could also be a mini-Garland, since some pitchers start to have a drop-off round about Neagle's age.
in combination, there are a few further strange things. It's been rare for a team to commit to two lefties for its number one and two pitchers. Left-handed hitters are happy at Coors, hitting .326, but righties are even happier, hitting .338. And the Rockies may have put their payroll to the level that it will be impossible to add a thumper like A-Rod to their lineup.
So why do I love this pair of moves so much?
Let's first look at Hampton's contract. While $121 million sounds like a lot of money, and even $15 million sounds like a lot of money per year, the eight-year commitment -- assuming Hampton stays healthy -- is pre-purchasing a substantial discount on his salary in 2004-2008, again assuming the coming labor apocalypse doesn't destroy the current salary structure. And while Hampton is a bit of a shrimp (he's listed at 5' 10", 180), which has traditionally been a warning sign to the professional scouts that a pitcher won't have staying power over the long-run, there's nothing in Hampton's history that indicates he's particularly vulnerable to physical problems. He's pounded away 200+ IP for four years now, coasting in the low 3.00s for ERA. He's no Pedro Martinez, but then again, who is? At 28, there's no reason to believe Hampton won't be among the top pitchers for most of his contract.
I'm skeptical about pitchers succeeding at Coors just because they're groundball-sinker pitchers. That's not qualification enough. Mike Hampton, though, is going to be great at Coors no matter what his ERA. He's a gamer, very intense, and his history of resiliency suggest he's not going to be shaken by a few dingers or blow-outs.
And as perhaps the best-hitting pitcher in the game, Coors puts him in a peculiarly good position to help himself out. If the Rockies are smart, they'll count on him as an extra pinch hitter when he's not starting. And the fact he's not an automatic out will keep him in those slugfest games where otherwise a more timid pitcher would be yanked.
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Neagle also doesn't bother me in reality as much as he ought to on paper. Unlike most extreme flyball pitchers, Neagle is not a power master. So in the spacious Coors' outfield, with the new and improved fast and defensively adept Rockies' outfield, a lot of those flyballs are going to hang up and be caught. Sure, he'll give up 30 homers every year -- which will be pretty good for a Coors pitcher. It's all relative.
Nor does he rely on a sharp breaking pitch, which was Darryl Kile's undoing in the thinner and cooler air of Colorado. He's got a mixture of stuff: decent fastball, very good change, a few screwy pitches. And as much as he's a clubhouse cut-up, which might've turned Joe Torre off him, he's intense enough when he's in the game.
Both these contracts provide protection of a sort to Hampton and Neagle, by taking them into their late 30s. They don't need to watch their career stats, which (other than Wins) won't look pretty after even a season at Coors. This is going to help enormously with the usual confidence and future job security problems that have crept up in the past with high-profile pitchers.
So from the Rockies' perspective, they've got two well-above-average starters locked into a rotation at what look like reasonable prices if you price them five to eight years into the future. With a power-groundball-lefty and an off-speed-flyball lefty, they've got a fire-spitting strikeout artist righty in Pedro Astacio to round out their top three, at least until he's deported or goes to free agency. Throw yet another lefty junkballer like Brian Bohannon in as your fourth man in the relatively lefty-free NL, it's going to be a rotation that few NL teams will be prepared for. Hitting is a game of adjustments: the more frequently the hitter has to adjust, the less successful he's likely to be. And the Rockies had a surprisingly good bullpen last year, adding Gabe White and Jose Jimenez as lefty and righty rocks to the end game.
The Rockies have discovered the fundamental truth of the law of opposite ballpark effects: the more extreme your ballpark is offensively, the more you need to emphasize superior pitching and defense in making up your team. Last year they worked on the speed and defense part, this year they're working on the starting pitching. They don't need A-Rod, in truth. I don't think it's too early to peg them as the front-runners in the NL West for 2001.
And the best fit of all: since Coors was built near the site of the old train yard, Denny Neagle's train whistle impersonation will have new life.
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