Colorado Rockies: Should they have kept Raimel Tapia on the MLB roster?

As the regular season drew near, the Colorado Rockies were finalizing the 25-man roster. They currently have only four players on the bench … and a few of them have not been meeting expectations. Let’s not forget that the Rockies did have another choice who they could have picked for the Opening Day roster. Raimel Tapia is a prime example of one of the guys they probably should have kept on the 25-man roster.

Though being on the Colorado’s 40-man roster is a good thing, Tapia most likely would have made an impact this season while being on the Major League bench. This is exactly what he did last season as he had 160 plate appearances, resulting in a .288/.329/.425 slashline accompanied by 16 RBI. These aren’t monster numbers, but they do show progression from his 2016 season.

The Rockies have an interesting situation with Tapia. He isn’t on the 25-man roster, so the 24-year-old Tapia is playing for Colorado’s Triple-A affiliate, the Albuquerque Isotopes. Though he’s only played in 11 games this season, he has already posted 11 hits (including four home runs) and 13 RBI. This gives him a slashline of .234/.333/.553. He’ll most likely be called up later this season … but perhaps it’ll be too late by then.

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The Rockies four-man bench has primarily consisted of Ryan McMahon, Tony Wolters, Pat Valaika, and Mike Tauchman. All four are struggling off the bench, especially Tauchman, the man the Rockies picked over Tapia. He currently has one hit in his 15 at-bats, resulting in a batting average of .067. That’s not good if you didn’t catch on.

If the Rockies truly wanted to keep Tauchman on, they could’ve sent down McMahon, who only has two hits in his 26 at-bats. It would make sense to send him down as well as Tauchman due to the depth in the outfield. This would allow Ian Desmond to be the main guy at first with Valaika backing him up.

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Tapia is getting overlooked by the Colorado Rockies. I even talked about how they shouldn’t sleep on his talent, which is utterly ridiculous in my opinion. Here you have a guy who has proven himself to be a possible mainstay with the Rockies, but they just don’t seem to see the potential at this moment in time.

As Tapia continues to play better than all four men on the bench, hopefully the Rockies see soon that this guy can really help them in the long run.