MLB: The Many Faces Of Spring Training; Colorado Rockies, Suiting Up // NBA: After The Break + Denver Nuggets On The Slide

sports-notebook.blogspot.com . . . FOR MORE ANALYSIS, GO TO "MILE HIGH SPORTS RADIO," AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team---milehighsports.com. SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed., Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner. . . // . . MLB: The Many Faces of Spring Training; Colorado Rockies, Suiting Up // NBA: After The Break, + Denver Nuggets On The Slide. . . // . . . MLB---Spring Training is a basket filled with myriad opportunities. Managers and coaches zero in on preferred wish lists as though vengefully, which could include full batting order concentration on strikeout reduction occurring any which way that it can happen, from singles, bunts, balks or walks, while other managers will prefer singling out his team’s top two, maybe three hitters for optimum training toward repeats of the long ball and extra base hits, hoping that with less coaching the rest of his line-up will be base-runners from whatever it takes, after all they are signed pro’s. Some managers will put the emphasis on starting rotation and bull pen relief, on winning games from the mound. The trend could be the latter, based on MLB 2013 producing a record number of strikes, 36, 710. Yet other managers could attempt to shape their teams for combat with clubs likely to be hardest to beat within their respective divisions, for instance, four AL West teams could worry most about competition from likely top team, the Texas Rangers, while four NL West managers might fear the L.A. Dodgers more than any other club. Too, Spring Training will disappoint a slew of ballplayers in return for not measuring up during “let’s see what you got” moments---heartbreak avenue, back to the minors. . . During Spring Training, last year’s top club, the AL East’s Boston Red Sox, won’t be trying to fix what isn’t broken. Year 2013 was magical for the Red Sox, going from the basement the year before to winning the AL-LC and then the World Series. Telling for all MLB clubs from the Red Sox is that the team came close to finishing the season with a .350 On Base Percentage, which is more than 30 percentage points higher than the league average, perhaps a sign that hitting, and possibly a different kind of hitting, could take the lead in that age-old competition, “hitting era vs. pitching era,” singles and extra base hits lording it over the home run. Yes, OBP isn’t a big deal if it doesn’t translate into runs. During 2013, the Red Sox scored more than 850 runs, no other MLB team reaching 800, and that evolved less from the long ball into the stands---the Red Sox were in sixth place among teams with the most HR’s last year. Is there a Red Sox model, then, for other teams to emulate? An informed guess is that the Red Sox were an example of player chemistry more than anything else, a line-up to kill for, lead-off hitter Shane Victorino, Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz, Mike Napoli, and a pitching staff of only one hurler with 10 starts or more having an ERA above 4.3. Except for the N.Y. Yankees, no MLB team has won consecutive WS since the N.Y. Yankees purchased their third straight during year 2000---the Red Sox could upend that record during 2014 even by maintaining a status quo. . . Within the NL, it’s likely that last year’s NL pennant winner, and WS loser to the Red Sox after six games, the St. Louis Cardinals, will seem re-invented during Spring Training, having acquired SS Johnny Peralta from the Detroit Tigers, 2B Mark Ellis from the Dodgers, and OF Carlos Beltran having left under free agency for the Yankees, plus Matt Carpenter’s shift from 2B to 3B. But, solid returnees such as OF Matt Holiday and catcher Yadier Molina can offset that considerably along with a pitching staff of one of baseball’s lowest ERA’s. Still, much of the Cardinals pre-season workouts will surely emphasize integration of the new. As to teams looking to rise up from the lower depths, the Houston Astros have been working hard. While WS winning teams rarely repeat their success in a following year, the lowest among losing teams seem to suffer from the opposite---they repeat, as if being last or next to last were a comfort zone. The Astros have had a way of proving this, last year and the year before being far below the margin. During 2013, the Astros lost 111 of their 162 games. Of the year’s total number of MLB strikeouts, the Astros committed 1,530, this lack of successful hitting obviously in need of attention prior to Opening Day. Too, the Astros pitching staff ERA above 4.7 was the year’s worst in professional baseball. When basement living repeats, among medicines are key draft picks, and that is what the Astros will be counting on via development for future seasons of top-of-the-line picks SS Carlos Correa and RH Mark Appel. During Spring Training, the Astros will begin building power and skill from OF Dexter Fowler, over from the Colorado Rockies, RH Scott Feldman from the Rangers/Baltimore Orioles, and RH Chad Quills from the Miami Marlins. But what was it that enabled the Astros to win more than 50 games during 2013? Will anyone at Houston be looking into that with a sense of trust, asking if whatever that was could expand, grow and lift the team? . . . // . . COLORADO ROCKIES ---ONE way to describe inequality in baseball is to reflect on the gap between games won at home and those victories that occur on the road. Between the two, the Colorado Rockies have a gap so wide it can make one think of Grand Canyon. Though finishing last in its division in 2013, the Colorado Rockies held the NL’s at home team batting average record---.270, while coming in 12th with regard to the away from home team batting average. Closing this gap is an essential task if the Rockies are to prevent another back-to-back bad year. Appearance-wise, the Rockies could seem to be the same team as last year minus a troubling loss, that of 1B super-hitter Todd Helton retiring, and from only a partial overhaul of a rotation that has never met expectations, though the talent is still there re. LH Jorge DeLa Rosa (good home record, 10-1, but quite poor on the road). Add, RH Juan Nicasio, RH Tyler Chatwood and RH Jhoulys Chacin. This rotation will be reinforced hopefully by an acquisition from the Oakland A’s, LH Brett Andersen, providing that Andersen can override ailments and return to promise shown several years ago as a rookie, when he won 11 games. Also new within the pitching staff will be LH Franklin Morales chosen to start instead of being relied on solely as reliever. As for more of the new, in for Helton at 1B will be Justin Morneau, over from the Minnesota Twins, batting average .259, 74 RBI’s, 17 HR’s. And, no-one’s quite sure what the Carlos Gonzalez move from LF to CF with Drew Stubbs, over from the Cleveland Indians replacing Cargo at LF, will mean for the Rockies defense, or how effective Stubbs can be as lead-off batter if Spring Training suggests he stay that way in the line-up. For base-running translated into runs, the Rockies will again rely for power and skill on SS Troy Tulowitzki, CF Gonzalez, RF Michael Cuddyer, and catcher, Wiln Rosario. With some luck, much of this will be sorted out during Spring Training, when the Rockies meet teams likely to press hard against their strengths, for example, the Arizona Diamondbacks, L.A. Dodgers, L.A. Angels and the Seattle Mariners, especially if emphasis goes to chasing and reducing, if not eliminating, the vulnerabilities that have caused the team’s road losses, namely downturns in OBP, plus runners that do get on base being left there at half-innings, and lack of HR’s offsetting the low OBP. . . . // . . NBA---IF forced to choose only three teams to finish the NBA 2013/2014 regular season, while all others would leave on vacation, some analysts and sportswriters would consider selecting three that reflect major differences in the team construction/strategy equation, that is, the building of a team to serve what front office management and coaches believe will keep winning games. There is the essentially “star power” team that contains two or three super shooters + a big or two, like the Miami Heat, and there is the team that relies solely on “no star whatsoever but on “teamwork across the board,” like the Denver Nuggets, and then there is the hybrid, that team that relies on a star player or two operating with starters and relievers first selflessly, team- players until opportunities arise for them to overtake a game almost solo and shoot high-end, such as the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant. So, this page will be following three teams more closely than others now that the all-star break is over with, for most NBA teams less than 30 games to go before the playoffs kick in: “the Heat,” “the Nuggets” and “the Thunder,” keeping in mind that we may learn much about what causes one team to succeed at winning more than others, or we may learn that the differences in the three strategies really mean little, that it is mostly other factors that cause a team to win, or lose, more than others. Right now, the Heat is leading the East’s Southeast Division by 12 games over second place club, the Atlanta Hawks, and the Nuggets have fallen to fourth place within the West’s Northwest Division and below .500, while the Thunder leads the East’s Northwest Division by five wins above second place team, the Portland Trail Blazers. But, while the Heat is a division leading franchise and holds second place behind the Indiana Pacers within the entire East, it is five wins back of the Thunder. And, were the Nuggets within the East and of the same division as the Heat they’d be but one win behind the second place Hawks, and if of the East’s Atlantic Division the Nuggets would be tied with second place team, the Brooklyn Nets. Implied here is that the Nuggets are within the toughest among the NBA’s six divisions for that playoff reach. But, the downside is center-stage now, the Nuggets have been on a long slide, playoff candidacy for them that which only a miracle could deliver. Today, accusations about the Nuggets never showing enough consistency when it comes to winning could seem false because the Nuggets have been “extremely consistent” about being “inconsistent,” they’ve become mercurial, e.g., a seven game winning streak, soon an eight game losing streak. Are we now to believe that the teamwork/no star interference concept for team construction and winning games is deeply flawed, or are other matters the culprit behind the Nuggets current slide? Exactly what’s behind the Nuggets not being playoff-bound this year won’t be known for some time, though some negatives are quite apparent---injuries to point guard Ty Lawson, a bench minus Andre Miller, a recent road trip that pitted the Nuggets against four teams packed with more skills, and maybe from a fact that former Nuggets Head Coach George Karl probably operated with, that while the teamwork/no star concept can win game after game, it is also a most fragile concept, for it demands a lot more finesse than when star shooters who can also defend are afield. Teamwork reliance means greater dependence on playbook adherence, less improvisation. In other words, when one piece of the puzzle is gone, things go awry. It could be that successful recovery from absence of key components of the whole is now what’s absent among the Nuggets, and so all has gone awry. END/ml