The perpetual problem for the Colorado Rockies in Coors Field has been with run prevention. The two most recent years that the Colorado Rockies made the playoffs, 2007 and 2009, were years where the Rockies were league average in run prevention. In recent years, to combat the effects of altitude, the Rockies have resorted to defense while mulling through various pitchers, humidors and rotation plans and pitch counts to try to find the “secret sauce”. In 2013, the Rockies placed additional focus on personnel.

Part of the plan for 2013 was to acquire Brett Anderson, specifically targeted as a pitcher who throws strikes and generates ground balls. Meanwhile, they hoped that the return of Jorge De La Rosa, the continued performance of Jhoulys Chacin and the development of Juan Nicasio could make the Rockies competitive with hot prospects Eddie Butler and Jonathan Gray develop. There is a lot of hoping with that plan, but churning some numbers can give a hint at what the Rockies front office might be looking at.

I imagine anyone who knows about baseball knows there are unique challenges to pitching a mile high at Coors Field. The humidor, introduced before the 2002 season, helped to mitigate some of those home runs. According to ESPN.com’s Park Factor, Coors Field has not been first in the league in the rate of home runs since that 2002 season. As of 2013, they ranked 8th in home run rate though one should note that for both 2010 and 2011, they ranked 2nd until dropping to 3rd in 2012. However, even with the humidor reducing home runs, Coors Field has been extremely friendly to hitters in terms of runs according to Park Factor , ranking first or second for yielding runs in every year since 2002 with the exception of 2008. The reason is that, as Dave Cameron notes, the thin air allows batted balls to carry better and that Coors Field has an expansive outfield, resulting in more hits (and a higher BABIP) allowed by pitchers.

In a ballpark prone to giving up more hits than expected, it can be hard to measure pitcher performance “fairly”. However, what we can attempt to do is turn to statistics that attempt to just to park effects. One of which is called “FIP” for “Fielding Independent Pitching”. The idea is that a measure of a pitcher’s effectiveness should be determined by elements that a pitcher can control such as strikeouts, walks and home runs. Base hits are elements that are ignored on the idea that the difference between a hit and an out is the positioning and defensive capabilities of a fielder. In other words, FIP thinks that a pitcher shouldn’t get credit when a diving outfielder makes a spectacular catch no more than a pitcher should get penalized for when the outfielder misses that catch.

The nice thing about FIP is that it “looks” like ERA, where a 4.00 FIP would be considered “average” for a major league pitcher. There’s even a pretty simple formula for FIP. However, if the 4.00 is hard to picture or sounds meaningless, we can use FIP- which might sound just as meaningless for a few sentences… What FIP- does is compare how much better or worse a pitcher was compared to the league. 100 is considered “average” with a lower FIP- indicating a better pitcher just as a FIP (or ERA) lower than 4.00 is considered a better pitcher. Furthermore, it’s a percentage difference. So someone with a FIP- of 85 would be considered 15% (100-85) better than the average pitcher while someone with a FIP- of 110 would be considered 10% worse than the average pitcher.

Now, we know Coors Field gives up a fair amount of home runs and sometimes pitchers just get a little unlucky because they gave up a flyball hit that’s normally caught in a park with a short fence. So, there is a statistic called xFIP- which adjusts the number of home runs a pitcher yielded by looking at the number of flyballs a pitcher gave up then recalculating the home runs they should have allowed if they had a league average home run rate. Just like FIP-, xFIP is compared to 100 to figure out if a pitcher is better or worse than the league average.

More meaningful, I hope? I hope so, because hopefully you can use that to impress your friends… though that too might be a lot of hoping. Just remember that if their eyes glaze over, you can use the opportunity to excuse yourself from the conversation to get another drink.

On to the data.

I decided to look at all starting pitchers who threw at least 150 IP and started 30 games in Rockies Franchise history and threw out any seasons pitched for other teams (Sorry De La Rosa). I then sorted it by FIP- from best (lowest FIP-) to worst but I dropped the decimals so 93.4 is still ranked higher than 93.5 even if it looks like “93” and “93”. Note that xFIP has some blanks because flyballs were not tracked until recent years. Surprised? Try to find out how many home runs were hit over the left field fence at Coors Field in 2002 without watching video of the season and you’ll run into the same problem.

Anyway, here’s your chart.

Top 30 FIP- Rockies Starting Pitchers in Team History Name G IP ERA WHIP BABIP FIP FIP- xFIP- WAR Jhoulys Chacin 98 589.2 3.57 1.33 .281 3.95 89 105 10.3 Ubaldo Jimenez 137 850.0 3.66 1.28 .283 3.58 77 92 19.5 Tyler Chatwood 32 163.0 3.70 1.47 .306 4.07 93 109 2.4 Jason Marquis 33 216.0 4.04 1.38 .287 4.10 88 103 3.5 Jorge de la Rosa 118 665.0 4.24 1.37 .300 3.97 87 96 11.9 Aaron Cook 206 1268.2 4.46 1.46 .306 4.38 92 102 18.7 Armando Reynoso 87 501.0 4.63 1.47 .301 4.91 99 6.8 Jason Hammel 87 505.2 4.73 1.42 .314 4.06 90 100 8.8 Jason Jennings 156 941.0 4.74 1.55 .310 4.60 93 106 14.3 Roger Bailey 46 289.1 4.76 1.51 .289 5.29 101 3.6 Marvin Freeman 59 324.2 4.85 1.49 .306 4.87 95 5.0 Joe Kennedy 43 254.1 4.88 1.58 .318 4.67 96 107 3.6 Juan Nicasio 55 287.1 4.92 1.45 .318 4.05 93 106 4.5 Jeff Francis 185 1050.2 4.93 1.44 .313 4.47 95 102 15.6 Shawn Chacon 83 488.0 4.96 1.45 .271 5.21 104 122 5.2 John Thomson 101 609.0 5.02 1.41 .300 4.56 87 104 11.7 Darren Oliver 32 177.2 5.07 1.45 .297 4.66 93 110 2.8 David Nied 39 210.2 5.13 1.58 .308 4.77 100 2.7 Byung-Hyun Kim 50 283.2 5.14 1.51 .325 4.48 93 102 4.2 Kevin Ritz 98 567.2 5.26 1.59 .313 4.84 93 9.3

Ubaldo Jimenez looks pretty comfortable atop that table, huh? For his Rockies career, he had a FIP of 3.58 and a FIP- of 77 indicating that for his years with the Rockies, he was 23% better than a league average pitcher. You might have thought Pedro Astacio and John Thomson were the worst pitchers in history until you realized how much offense was happening in the PED, pre-humidor era. Don’t worry though, Mike Hampton was still horrible with so many home runs and walks given up without many strikeouts. Then you have people like Aaron Cook who didn’t strike out many but also didn’t walk many and had a reasonable home run rate especially for Coors.

But the bigger takeaway? If the Rockies rotation for most of 2014 consists of Jorge De La Rosa, Jhoulys Chacin, Juan Nicasio and Tyler Chatwood, the Rockies will be fielding four of the top 11 starting pitchers in team history in terms of FIP-. Granted, the threshold for best starting rotation in team history is pretty low, but that fact is still worth noting.

Yes, even Nicasio, with his ups and downs, is among those ranks. Nicaso has a career FIP- of 93, which is 7% better than the league average pitcher. Why’s that? Low walk rates and decent strikeout rates. His 2013 season looked ugly on paper but he still managed a FIP- of 98. Two years removed from his neck injury, if he can return to his rookie season performance FIP- of 83, he could surpass Chacin and De La Rosa as the best pitcher. Meanwhile Chatwood, who I’ll admittedly wasn’t a fan of before the Rockies acquired him (and still have doubts about), performs well in FIP- thanks to a not-quite-ridiculously-low-but-still-pretty-sweet home run rate.

Brett Anderson, meanwhile, has a career FIP- of 87. Even allowing some extra home runs once he switches over to Coors Field would put him in Jhoulys Chacin territory at worst. Does that help the Rockies though? Well, let’s look at starting pitching statistics only for everyone who started a game for the Rockies in 2013, again in terms of FIP-.

Rockies 2012 Starting Pitchers Name G IP ERA WHIP BABIP FIP FIP- xFIP- WAR Tyler Chatwood 20 111.1 3.15 1.43 .314 3.66 85 106 2.0 Jhoulys Chacin 31 197.1 3.47 1.26 .288 3.47 80 105 4.3 Jorge de la Rosa 30 167.2 3.49 1.38 .303 3.76 87 108 2.9 Juan Nicasio 31 157.2 5.14 1.47 .303 4.25 98 115 2.2 Jon Garland 12 68.0 5.82 1.59 .321 4.93 114 121 0.4 Jeff Francis 12 57.0 6.16 1.51 .316 4.89 113 101 0.3 Jeff Manship 4 21.0 6.86 1.43 .265 5.52 128 116 0.0 Roy Oswalt 6 27.0 7.00 1.78 .459 2.57 59 83 1.0 Drew Pomeranz 4 16.2 8.10 2.52 .385 8.03 186 172 -0.4 Collin McHugh 4 19.0 9.95 1.84 .377 5.26 122 119 0.0

Poor unlucky Roy Oswalt, with a BABIP of .442 yet a FIP of 2.57 and a FIP- of 59. All those hits ballooned his ERA to 7.00 and most starters somewhere along the line have a four game stretch that bad (including Ubaldo Jimenez). Now some of the hits Oswalt allowed may truly be due to ineffectiveness but some of it is darn unlucky as his home run, walk and strikeout rates were still solid. Even with those six starts though, in terms of WAR, he was the Rockies fifth best pitcher which speaks to how bad Rockies starting pitching was last year. That mess of Francis, Manship and Pomeranz et al. is what Anderson will be replacing.

So, that’s the good news.

For the bad news, we return to xFIP-. Taking a look at the previous charts, the only pitcher with a xFIP- lower/better than 100 is De La Rosa. Remember, xFIP- assumes how many home runs a pitcher would give up based on the number of flyballs they actually give up. By those numbers, it seems that Rockies pitchers allow quite a few home runs less than they should have based on the number of flyballs they give up. This could suggest a few things, that either Rockies pitchers are notoriously lucky or that something about the humidor depresses homerun/flyball ratio. Might that be to the point that even balls that are home runs in other parks get caught on the warning track (or ricochet off the wall) at Coors? I’ll admit, it’s hard for me to say.

In absence of an explanation for the depressed home run rates, the other two ways to improve xFIP- (and FIP) in general include increasing strikeouts and reducing walks. Here again, Anderson shines with a career xFIP- of 84. When compared to his FIP- of 87 with a good walk rate prior to 2012 and a good home run rate. Even in 2013 as he recovered from Tommy John surgery and dealt with a stress fracture in his right foot, he had a career high groundball rate and increased strikeout rate though he allowed many more home runs than expected given his flyball rate and had a career worst walk rate which would still be better than many Rockies pitchers past and present. In the end, with the ever fun hope of “if he’s healthy”, Anderson should produce better than the nonreturning dregs who took up a rotation slot last year.

Jordan Lyles? FIP of 117-, xFIP of 108. Um, still not a fan of that trade and even when I saw him in person, it looked like he was still trying to figure things out. He has lowered his home run and walk rates over the last two years but they’re a bit from being borderline tolerable, especially with his low strikeout rate. He is still young enough to figure things out and might not be R-rated horrible, but if he is in the rotation as he is, the next Rockies dynasty will have to wait until next year.

What about the rest of the 2014 Rockies? With the exception of De La Rosa, they look to be about average compared to the league. This is where we get back to ifs. If Chacin returns from injury in May and is effective, if Anderson stays healthy and if Chatwood maintains his performance over the course of a season, the Rockies should be decent. However, looking again at the first table, the Rockies have had “barely” decent starting pitching before which looked even better behind a good defense. If Nicasio or Chatwood improves, the Rockies rotation could be, for the first time, borderline good. And then, if one of those ifs rears their ugly head and bites Lyles too hard, there actually is a bit of hope. Instead of the reincarnation of Jeff Francis or Aaron Cook or Franklin Morales, the Rockies have two prospects in Butler and Gray to step into the fold. Both of them are good at limiting walks while throwing strikeouts.

The Colorado Rockies have assembled, in terms of career FIP, one of the best rotations in club history. Yet the questions remain though on whether a) is it good and b) is it good enough? To the first, I’d say “No”. To the second, I’d say “It could be… but ask me again in 2015 after the rookies get promoted and I hope to give you a much more positive answer that, yes, it is historically good… for the Rockies, anyway.”

And that’s all I have to say about that… for now.