Colorado Rockies: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season

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.

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?

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.