2015 Outlook: Rockies’ Rotation

Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

The Colorado Rockies’ rotation experienced all kinds of problems and instability in 2014. Here’s a brief discussion on how things might work out in 2015.

In case you missed it, Jeremy Guthrie recorded a World Series win last night. The same guy who derisively tipped his cap at Rockies fans as he walked off the mound in the summer of 2012, after getting the hook for another horrifically bad outing. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the pitching situation in Colorado is dire.

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Perhaps our new general manager, Jeff Bridich, is on the case. One of his first official acts as GM was firing the Rockies’ pitching coaches, Jim Wright and Bo McLaughlin. The fact that Bridich expressed a willingness to go outside the organization in his hunt for a new coach gives me hope, because what this team most needs right now is a shakeup. Of course, there also appear to be problems at the developmental level, given that immensely talented pitchers like Eddie Butler are getting their call-up and then being terrible, getting injured, or both. All of this is to say that I don’t feel entirely confident about the coaching our pitchers are receiving, which makes it hard to get too excited about them. However, there will be 162 games to start in 2015, and someone has to start them, so here we go.

I wrote a post back in April projecting the June 1st rotation. So much had already changed by that point that it felt stupid to make a prediction of any kind, but I turned out not to be too wrong. What I didn’t foresee was Butler getting called up so early. I also didn’t know that Jhoulys Chacin and Brett Anderson would both battle injury all season (although I thought Anderson was likely to). And I didn’t know that Jordan Lyles would get injured (who could have?). All of that set the stage for Butler in addition to some other minor leaguers like Christian Bergman and Tyler Matzek, not to mention randoms like Jair Jurrjens.

At this point, it feels like a fool’s errand to make any kind of conjecture about 2015. There were so many injuries in 2o14, to everyone, and a lot depends on rehab and surgeries going well and people being ready for spring training. And then there are guys whose contract status is still up in the air, like Franklin Morales. So what follows is my ideal rotation. Consider this entire post branded with a giant asterisk which leads to the following footnote: *All predictions are based on both contracts and health turning out exactly as this writer hopes they will.