Parallels between 2018 Colorado Rockies and 2015 Kansas City Royals

The Royals made it through the regular season to a World Series trophy by focusing on clutch hitting, sterling defense, and most of all, an absolute lock-down bullpen. Sounds familiar, right? I lived in Kansas City during the years the Royals made a couple of runs at the postseason. I can safely tell you that Ned Yost was not highly regarded as a game manager by writers, talk-radio hosts, or the fans. Yost, like any other manager, had his fair share of woulda-coulda-shoulda’s. He was often berated for being so quick to go to the bullpen at the slightest sign of trouble. Yet, looking back, it wasn’t like he could lean on the Royals below-average starting pitching. They were ranked 22nd in the regular season with an ERA of 4.34, according to FanGraphs.

Colorado Rockies

His near religious choice to bring in Ryan Madson or Franklin Morales to get out of jams in the sixth inning, Kelvin Herrera pitching in the seventh, Wade Davis setting-up in the eighth, and finally for Greg Holland to come in and slam the door closed in the ninth changed the pitching landscape. Teams with sub-par starters changed how they looked at the value of relief pitchers, and their ability to impact games. Just take a look at how Dave Roberts with the Dodgers, A.J. Hinch with the Astros and Terry Francona with the Indians all manage their pitching corps.

Colorado’s starting pitchers aren’t terrible by any stretch. It is quite the contrary. The reasons for inconsistency of Rockies’ pitchers are going to be very different from those of the Royals. Rockies feature a pitching staff with no player over the age of 28. There are going to be a few bumps in the road as the young Rockies starting pitching staff matures and develops. Colorado’s General Manager, Jeff Bridich, has foreseen this, though. Knowing that that the Rockies have a chance to compete, it appears Bridich followed along with Dayton Moore’s and Ned Yost’s blueprint by aggressively building one of the toughest (if not the toughest, according to yours truly) bullpens in Major League Baseball.

Much like Yost in ’15, Bud Black will have the ability to keep his pitching staff on a short leash, and then, at the sight of trouble, send opposing offenses through the meat-grinder that is the Rockies bullpen. The Rockies will have their fireman reliever with Chris Rusin to work through tough multiple innings, Jake McGee, Adam Ottavino, Mike Dunn, Scott Oberg and the rest of relief corps for specialty and match-up appearances, and Bryan Shaw to setup for closer Wade Davis. It’s also worth noting Davis was an important cog in that World Series winning Royals’ bullpen.