That’s hardly a big enough sample to definitively say that Story will be a better road hitter with whatever team signs him, but there is reason to believe that a more consistent road/home view of pitch movement is beneficial to a hitter.Īnother factor: Tulowitzki, LeMahieu and Arenado all played their first season away from Colorado in their age-30 season. That’s a lot of data, so here’s a simpler explanation: While all three had worse home splits after leaving Coors, two of the three (LeMahieu and Arenado) became markedly better road hitters after leaving the Rockies. Let’s look at the last three superstar infielders to leave the Rockies: Troy Tulowitzki, DJ LeMahieu and Nolan Arenado. But there’s evidence that once players break free, they start to adjust. There’s an argument to be made that when you’re routinely seeing pitches that don’t break as much, it makes it harder to hit on the road, where the pitches are behaving “normally.” In this sense, Coors Field can become like a helicopter parent: spoiling you at home so you’re less prepared to thrive in the real world. (This is why spin rate is important.) In the thinner air, there’s less resistance, so pitches don’t break as much. But it’s also worth considering how pitches break: What makes a breaking pitch break is that when a ball spins, the seams face more resistance on one side of the ball than the other. The traditional thinking - and there’s some merit to it - is that the ball flies farther in the thinner Colorado air, helping hitters. Yep, that’s a Coors Field split, all right. Just as notable, he has 393 strikeouts at home versus 472 on the road. It’s true: Story’s home/road splits have been noteworthy. Let’s start with the Coors Field question, since that’s the first thing that comes up whenever Story’s name is bandied about as an acquisition target for any team. Still, it stings in retrospect, and just over a decade later, it will likely cost the Rangers well into the nine-figure range if they want to remedy that mistake. (Seattle did this.) Still, the Rangers could have had Story for six figures. 2 pick and $8.5 million on Danny Hultzen with 13 future All-Stars just waiting there. Baseball America ranked him 40th in its top 200, and hey - it could be worse: The Rangers could have spent the No.
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Hindsight is a gift, but it’s true that Story was not a slam-dunk future All-Star at the time. With the 45th pick in that draft, the Colorado Rockies selected Trevor Story out of Irving (Texas) High and signed him for a $915,000 signing bonus. Matthews never made it higher than A-ball with the Rangers organization, and Cone peaked at Double A. They selected left-handed high-school pitcher Kevin Matthews and college outfielder Zach Cone, both out of Georgia.
#Rangers shortstop series#
Texas was coming off its first World Series in franchise history and lost the 26th pick in the MLB Draft to the Red Sox when they signed Adrián Beltré as a free agent, but they still had the 33rd and 37th picks that year. This is going to sting a bit, so let’s just get it out of the way: The best time for the Rangers to make this particular acquisition would have been June 2011. (For the sake of the Rangers’ contention timeline, we are not including 31-year-old Marcus Semien.) In week one, we took a look at Corey Seager, week two was Javier Báez, and week three was Carlos Correa. This is the final entry of a four-part series exploring the possibility of the Rangers signing one of four star free-agent shortstops.