Stop me if you’ve envisioned this one before:

It’s a soupy late August evening in Atlanta, and the Rockies are up 7-5 on the Braves. Kyle Kendrick, while giving up some hard contact all game, is nevertheless still chugging along in the bottom on 8th. The Rockies are thrilled to get this outing from Kendrick. He’s taking the pressure of a bullpen that had to work overtime each of the first two games of the series and, besides, the Rockies can get away with it because it’s always potent lineup has, once again, put up a big run total.

But now the game is getting tense. Kendrick has loaded the bases. Walt Weiss is tempted to pull him, but there are already two outs, and it’s only the 8-hole hitter who stands between Kendrick and an easy hand-off to Adam Ottavino in the 9th. Just one more out. But hold on! Wilin Rosario, who pinch hit in the top half of the inning, is still in the game behind the plate, and he just failed to corral a well-placed slider in the dirt! One run scores! A rushed throw back to Kendrick covering the plate sails high. The tying run rounds third and heads for home…

Totally believable right? After all, the scenario squares nicely with what we know about the main actors involved. It squares, at least, with what we think we know. Let’s challenge some of those assumptions, shall we?

Myth 1: Kyle Kendrick is an innings-eater.

In as much as it’s possible with regards to a guy who gets paid millions of dollars to play baseball for a living, I feel bad bad for new starting pitcher Kyle Kendrick. It’s not Kyle’s fault that he represents the Rockies’ most dramatic offseason move to improve its most glaring weakness, yet in many quarters he has been and will likely continue to be an object of scorn and ridicule for many fans who need some on-field outlet for their frustration with the front office’s inability, year after year after year, to shore up the starting rotation: “This is the guy they brought in fix the rotation? This guy?!” And now, here I am, come along to poke holes in the preeminent argument levied in defense of Kendrick’s acquisition: “Yeah, but at least he eats a bunch of innings.”

Actually, he doesn’t. Kendrick has, over his career, averaged 5.8 innings per start. The league-wide average over the same period is 5.9. That’s right: his supposed primary strength is actually a weakness; albeit just barely, he is, in fact, below average at innings-eating. Of course, when it comes to anything pitching-related, merely below average is usually a boon to the Rockies in particular, and Kendrick’s innings-eating is no exception. Among the starters most likely to stick in the rotation this year, only the young Tyler Matzek has averaged more innings per start in his career than Kendrick, and Matzek has obviously yet to establish a track record in this or any other facet of pitching that we can bank on. But Coors Field is undoubtedly a factor that drags down a pitcher’s innings per start, just as it drags down all other measures of pitching acumen. There’s no reason to believe it won’t also drag down Kendrick when he gets here, which stands to make his good-only-by-Rockies-standards innings per start number that much less impressive.

Now, Kendrick has proven to be durable over the years. That matters; especially to a Rockies team that has suffered more than its fair share of injury woes lately, and that is (rightfully) highly motivated to avoid having to use as many AAA-caliber pitchers in 2015 as they did in 2014 – not to mention having to rush prospects like Jon Gray and Eddie Butler. But that’s not the kind of innings-eating most often cited in Kendrick’s defense. We typically hear that he will, even in games where he gives up a few too many runs, at least be able to “pitch deep into games,” and therefore “save the bullpen.” Over his career, relative to the rest of the league, Kendrick has done neither.

He does seem to have the right kind of attitude to eat innings despite taking some lumps (after his most recent spring start: “I’ve just got to keep battling. That’s my thing.”), and perhaps the Rockies will use him as such in 2015, pushing him deep into games results be damned. But despite what you might hear around these parts, he’s not actually been a prolific innings-eater to this point in his career. Even considering each baseball season en masse, Kendrick has never reached 200 innings, something the much maligned - but actual innings-eating - Jeremy Guthrie has done five of the last six seasons.

Myth 2: Wilin Rosario hasn’t improved as a catcher.

Rosario, as likeable as he may be as a hitter and as a person, has never earned many fans as a catcher. Baseball purists, in particular, cringe at the very sight of Rosario crouching behind the plate. Most fans of all stripes would probably have cut bait on the idea of Rosario as a catcher a long time ago. He’s been declared a lost cause by the majority of observers. Yet the Rockies have continued to keep that door propped open. Why?

Well, as it turns, the guy actually has gotten better over the years. Behold:

Year Catcher Innings Framing Runs per 7000 Blocking Runs per 7000 Total Receiving Runs per 7000 2011 123 14.7 -7.5 7.2 2012 878 -9.6 -16.8 -26.4 2013 910 -8.4 -4.2 -12.6 2014 824 -1.7 -6 -7.7

This data - from Baseball Prospectus, which has made more progress in the study of catching metrics than any other outlet producing publicly available data – suggests clearly positive trends in Rosario’s defense, in terms of both receiving the ball and manipulating the strike zone. You’ll note, of course, that most of the numbers in that table are negative – going from horrible to less horrible isn’t exactly braggable. Moreover, none of these numbers capture all the “other stuff” catcher’s do that can’t be accurately measured. It’s possible that Rosario has been awful at the non-quantifiable, and that he remains so today. However, regardless of the baseline, the myth in question is that he hasn’t gotten better. He has. Here’s the data in visual form, excluding Rosario’s first year, which represented a tiny sample:

(Side note: As I wrote last month, it looks like Rosario is already better than both McKenry and Hundley have been over their careers with regards to pitch-framing in particular. All of them bad; Rosario least bad.)

Rosario has taken most of his reps at first base this spring, and it appears his days as a catcher are numbered, which may render this entire line of thinking moot. And no matter how you slice and dice the data, squint hard at the visuals, and censor the media reports, the Baby Bull isn’t very good behind the plate. But if the Rockies decide not to break camp with both Nick Hundley and Michael McKenry, or if they trade Rosario to another team, it’s important to keep in mind the fact that Rosario has, in fact, improved over the years. Expecting additional growth might not be prudent, but neither is it prudent to ignore the growth that’s already occurred.

Myth 3: The only thing the Rockies need to worry about is the pitching staff.

We hear it all the time: “The Rockies lineup is always great.” “All we need is more pitching!” The prevailing wisdom for some time has been that if the team could muster just an average pitching staff, then our overwhelming offense would carry us to the postseason. On the surface, this is basically what happened in our playoff seasons of 2007 and 2009. The Rockies were 14th in the league in team ERA in 2007 (4.32) and 10th in 2009 (4.24); solidly in the middle of the pack – even better when one considers the Coors factor – and good enough to get the team into October.

But as good as those two years were in the annals of Rockies pitching history, neither of them represented the best season in Rockies earned-run prevention history. That would be 2010, when they registered a 4.14 team ERA… and won just 83 games. In both 2011 and 2013, the Rockies pitched to a just barely higher 4.44 team ERA… and won 74 and 73 games respectively. But ERA is a raw and imprecise measure, so let’s take a look at ERA-, which adjusts for the Coors factor (and also the league’s overall offensive environment), and FIP-, which adjusts for both of those factors along with defense on balls in play. ERA- is a better estimate for the quality of the team’s bottom-line run prevention, and FIP- is a better estimate for the team’s true pitching talent. Here are all of the Rockies seasons that were roughly league average or better by either measure in the post-humidor era, along with the team’s wins, sorted by estimated pitching talent (FIP-). 2009 looks a little better, 2007 a little worse, and in the same general neighborhood of both of those playoff years, are pitching outputs that led to a bunch of team win totals in the 70s.

Season ERA- FIP- Wins 2009 92 88 92 2010 91 90 83 2006 95 94 76 2008 102 94 74 2007 90 95 90* 2013 102 98 74 2011 101 103 73

(*in 163 games)

Lots of comparable Rockies pitching seasons; widely varying results. The Rockies will always score a lot runs because they get 81 games at Coors, and so looking at the bottom-line team offensive numbers at the end of the year will always be a bit misleading (just as doing so with regards to the pitching will be misleading). The truth is: the offense has not “always been fine.” In fact, according to the more sophisticated measures, when we adjust for the Coors factor, our offense has usually been particularly not fine. Besides making clear just how much worse the Rockies offense tends to be on the road, this article from Purple Row makes a larger point about the possibility of a built-in disadvantage for the Rockies (and I’d encourage you to check out a counterpoint posted here at Rockies Zingers on the same subject), but regardless of the answer to that particular mystery, what’s clear is that figuring out how to hit on the road, and/or acquiring players who already have a road-ready approach, is just as relevant to the Rockies’ success as finding more pitching. The interesting thing about the Rockies last two playoff seasons? They rank first (2007) and second (2009) in the team’s history in wRC+ on the road. Pitching is not the only thing that matters.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta…

…Charlie Culberson, manning shortstop on Troy Tulowitzki’s scheduled day off and in perfect position to back up the throw, corrals the loose ball, wheels, and fires back to the plate to cut down the potential tie run, preserving the lead he helped build with a bases-clearing double back in the 5th.

Two Rockies fans, visiting from Colorado, exchange gleeful high-fives. And as they watch their team migrate back to the dugout, through wide smiles they take long draws on their beers, which despite being overpriced compared to the generous Coors Field beer prices with which they’d become familiar, suddenly taste sweeter than a Georgia peach.

Less believable than the beginning of this vision? Stay tuned for a future edition of Rockies Myth Busters, wherein we learn that Charlie Culberson is not as bad a player as you think he is, and that Coors Field is home to some of the cheapest beer in professional baseball.