Colorado Rockies: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season
Will 2020 be a Rocky Mountain high or Rocky Mountain low for the Colorado Rockies in the NL West? Underlying organizational issues may doom them.
Hashtag Rocktober was put on hold last season after a letdown performance out of the Colorado Rockies. This is a team with all the talent in the world, but what they really lack is consistency.
Can 2020 be a year where they pull themselves together and make a run at a postseason berth, or will we see a similar result as we did in 2019?
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The Rockies go quietly under-the-radar in almost all regards, but I’ve paid a whole lot of attention to them, particularly in these past two seasons. We had them burst onto the scene in 2018 where they fell short in the NL Wild card Game. Then we had high expectations for them, in 2019, to which they completely fell flat and finished with a record of 71-91.
It’s still not abundantly clear to me yet and all I can do is speculate for the time being, but seeing how this Rockies team performed last season, I don’t particularly think it’s all on the players. Something is going on in this organization and as more time passes, the clearer it will be.
All I can do right now is look at how the front office upset Nolan Arenado by floating his name out in the league for a trade, and how the pitching staff shows a bunch of inconsistencies, particularly in the bullpen, and draw my own conclusions.
Colorado Rockies: 2020 Preview and Prediction
Offensively, this is a gifted team regardless of what’s going on in the organization. You already have Arenado who’s a top-five player in this league and has just missed out on several NL MVPs. Then you have Trevor Story who continues to be on the rise as both a power threat at the plate and a slick-fielding glove at shortstop.
Story is actually so good at the position, the Colorado Rockies are now trying to establish two of their higher prospects (Garrett Hampson and Brendan Rodgers) at other positions to ensure they make it into the lineup when they’re ready to play at the big level full-time. Give him another year or two and we could be talking about how Trevor Story is the best overall shortstop in baseball.
There’s Charlie Blackmon in right field who the Rockies also floated in trade rumors last season when the team wasn’t doing so hot. But Blackmon still hit .314 last year with 32 big flies. He’s not even that old at age 33 and he’s expressed how he wants to stay in Colorado. The one setback with him is he doesn’t have the wheels he once did to steal bases and play center field. But other than that, Blackmon at the top of this Rockies lineup is about one of the best table-setters you can have this day and age, and he provides consistent power numbers.
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You have a very under-the-radar guy in David Dahl who could just be the best lefty hitter in the league against lefty pitchers. Last year, Dahl hit .319 against lefties in 116 at-bats. The Rockies really like him in the four-spot in the lineup, which is actually a rather cool, innovative move being that Dahl isn’t your prototypical cleanup hitter with ungodly power numbers. Dahl is more of a table-setter at the top of your order, but he doesn’t strike out a lot and timely hitting is his brand.
Then you look at the rest of the Rockies on offense- Daniel Murphy, a former MVP, Ryan McMahon, a converted first-basemen who the Rockies love at second base (following in the footsteps of the Brewers in what they did with Travis Shaw and Mike Moustakas), and Ian Desmond who still casually hits you 20 home runs a season and can play almost every position.
This is a run-producing machine the Rockies offense is. They finished ninth in scoring last year and (assuming they don’t trade any of them), this team year-in and year-out houses three legit MVP candidates in Arenado, Story, and Blackmon. The offense is not the issue on this team.
Colorado Rockies: 2020 Preview and Prediction
The big issue on this team is pitching, and I honestly can’t make sense of it yet. I look at Kyle Freeland and how great he was in 2018 pitching to a 17-7 record and 2.85 ERA while also going up to Wrigley Field for the Wild Card Game and pitching 6.2 innings of shutout ball to ultimately give the Colorado Rockies the win and send them to the NLDS. But then he comes in last year and pitches to a 3-11 record and 6.73 ERA and gives up 25 long balls where he eventually has to be sent down to Triple-A. That’s rather odd to me.
How about German Marquez? Marquez was also brilliant in 2018 pitching to a 3.77 ERA and punching out a whopping 230 batters in 196 innings. But then he comes in last year and sees his ERA shoot up to 4.76 and the strikeout rate dips to 175 Ks in 174 innings.
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What about Jon Gray? Gray was one of the highest prospects in baseball just a few years ago, but what’s weird about him is while Marquez and Freeland were great in 2018 and bad in 2019, Gray was the exact opposite. Gray was horrible in 2018 pitching to a 5.12 ERA leading the National League in earned runs allowed (98), but to his credit, the strikeouts were up at 183 in 172.1 innings.
Fast forward to 2019 and while Freeland and Marquez struggle, Gray actually emerges as their best pitcher with a 3.84 ERA in 25 starts, but also sees his strikeouts dip to 150 Ks in 150 innings.
Then you have similar occurrences with Antonio Senzatela being really good in 2018 and then finishing 2019 with an ERA in the high sixes and posting one of the worst K-rates of starters in baseball. Peter Lambert had two super-strong starts to open his season in June and then he imploded and didn’t win another game until mid-September (3-7 record/7.25 ERA in 19 starts on the year).
What is going on with the crazy inconsistencies of the pitching staff? Is it Coors Field? Is it the pitching coaches? Freeland, Marquez, and Gray are really good pitchers, but the roller coaster of trends they seem to be on is alarming, to say the least, and I really hope they can all figure things out because if all three are as good as we know they can be, this team thrives.
What about the bullpen? Anybody notice how the two biggest acquisitions the past few years, Bryan Shaw and Wade Davis, have completely fallen off the map since coming to Colorado? Shaw was a workhorse in Cleveland as he wound up pitching to a 3.11 ERA in nearly 380 appearances as an Indian. But once he came to Colorado, Shaw saw his ERA skyrocket to 5.93 in 2018 and then 5.38 last season.
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Davis kicked his career into overdrive in 2014 as a member of the Kansas City Royals when he converted to the bullpen and was a part of their World Series master bullpen. As a reliever in three seasons with the Royals and one season with the Cubs after that, Davis racked up a 1.53 ERA and was widely considered one of, if not the best reliever in baseball.
But once both came to Colorado, even though Davis led the National League in saves in 2018 with 43, he saw his ERA jump to 4.13 and then all the way up to 8.65 in 2019, losing him the closer’s job at one point. Now, Davis is in danger of being off this team and potentially out of the league. He’s certainly on a short leash with a potential closer’s gig again.
The bottom line is those are two major components of this Rocky bullpen and the fact that they’ve gotten drastically worse since coming to town is highly concerning, and it makes me think the system that’s in place right now is not the most conducive to consistent winning. Is it the ballpark itself as it caters more to hitters, or is there an underlying issue within the organization?
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How do the Rockies do in 2020? I really don’t know. It depends on what versions of the pitching staff we get. But going by what I saw last year, this team is in some trouble unless they can improve on their pitching. So, I’m going to say the Rockies finish 2020 in fourth place in the NL West (73-89 if it were a full season) and that they’ll hang around with the Padres and Giants for those third, fourth, and fifth slots in the division. Offensively, this is a powerhouse club, but everything else is just too up in the air.