What will the 2019 Colorado Rockies possibly look like?

The 2018 season is entering the home stretch and the Rockies are in the thick of the chase for the NL West. Win or lose, the Colorado Rockies are soon going to be done with the 2018 season and will need to turn their sights to the composition of their roster for 2019 and beyond.

In order to properly evaluate what the future Rockies will look like, we have to look at which players are going to be free agents after this season, which players will be free agents after 2019, and which players they have under team control for the foreseeable future.

The Returning Core

First, let’s look at the players that the Rockies have locked down for the foreseeable future. The good news is that the pitching staff – the perpetual area of need for the Rockies – looks relatively stable for the first time in, oh, I don’t know, forever.

The entire starting rotation of Jon Gray, Kyle Freeland, Tyler Anderson, German Marquez, Chad Bettis, and Antonio Senzatela is under contract through at least 2020, if not beyond. This young core has been impressive so far and will (hopefully) continue to improve.

This group is not so good that there isn’t room for an ace-level staff leader, though using free agency to add to the starting staff seems unlikely. David Price, Drew Pomeranz, Patrick Corbin, and Gio Gonzalez are the top starters available, none of which inspires much hope (can you imagine how Gonzalez’s 1.53 WHIP would play at Coors? *Shudder*).