Colorado Rockies: Three breakout candidates for 2019

Germán Márquez

You’re probably saying to yourself right now, “Didn’t Márquez already kind of break out?” My answer to you is no, he did not. He was excellent for just the back half of the season (the last two months to be exact), but I think he still he has a season to come that will take the baseball world by storm.

A throw-in, essentially, in the Corey Dickerson-for-Jake McGee trade with Tampa Bay almost three years ago, Márquez has slowly turned himself into one of the brighter young guns in baseball over the last two seasons, and he still has a ton of ceiling left.

I fully expect for Márquez to be a Cy Young level guy in 2019, along with Kyle Freeland, and the two of them could very likely carry this team to the World Series. That’s how good they are.

Boasting an upper 90s fastball and a wipeout slider, Márquez struck out 230 guys this year in 33 starts. That’s a team record and he didn’t even throw 200 innings.

I think the craziest part of his season is that he wasn’t having a very good one up until July 20. In 20 starts prior to his 21st start on July 29, Márquez was 11-9 with a 5.00 ERA, 112 strikeouts to 40 walks in 108 innings. Opposing teams were hitting nearly .270 against him and getting on base at .335 clip, so for the way his season ended up turning out, it shows you just how dominant Márquez can be … and he only did it for two months.

In his final 13 starts, including the one-game playoff, the 23-year-old right-hander went 6-3 with a 2.25 ERA in 88 innings. He added 118 strikeouts, good for 12 per nine innings pitched, to just 17 walks, opponents batting average dropped to a mere .204, and opponents on-base average went to just .253.

When Márquez limits baserunners, like most good pitchers, he is nearly unstoppable. Walks have plagued Colorado starters in the past, and they hurt Márquez for the first few months of this season. When he tightened up his control … wow, just wow. If he can do this for 25 or 26 starts in 2019, instead of just 15 or 16 like in 2018, you could be looking at a future superstar in the purple pinstripes.

David Dahl

Ah, the curious case of David Dahl. Originally drafted by the Rockies in the first round (No. 10 overall) in 2012 out of high school from Alabama, Dahl has never quite put everything together. By no means is he a bust pick, but he just hasn’t been able to stay healthy for a full year. If he does, oh boy, could he be something special.

We saw flashes with Dahl in the majors in 2016, and he performed even better this past season, but it’s still just a 140-game sample between the two seasons in the majors, and with a season completely lost to injury smashed in between.

Colorado Rockies

He landed on the DL in 2018 for a month and a half with a broken foot, so we’re just waiting for the healthy season to come about in the majors. His only true fully healthy year happened in 2016, where he played 155 games between Double-A (76), Triple-A (16) and the majors (63), and all he did was hit 25 home runs, 39 doubles, eight triples, drive in 85 runs, score 112 runs, steal 22 bases and, on top of it all, his triple slash was .314/.379./.541. When healthy, he’s a bonafide stud.

Even in his injury-shortened season last year, where he never really got his feet under him until mid- to late August, he hit 16 home runs in just 249 at-bats in the majors, including nine in September alone, where we saw him hit one in six of seven games, including five in a row.

Dahl also has a good chance, with a full season, to be a 20-20 player. That may not seem like a big deal, but do you know how many players had 20-20 seasons last year? Ten. The Rockies had two of them in Ian Desmond and Trevor Story. Of the other eight, six were All-Stars. Also, he’s a plus defender, posting a .990 fielding percentage in about 1,000 innings of work in the major leagues.

He’s the pinnacle of breakout candidates for Colorado and, if David Dahl can play a full season, it’s not a guess on whether he will or won’t … because he will.

Let me know you think could have a big year for the Rockies in 2019 on Twitter @tysoncrocker2!

Note: Statistics from baseballreference.com