Colorado Rockies: Drawing parallels between the Rockies and Red Sox

So, the point is that Boston didn’t solely spend for all their players. Most every big contributor excluding J.D. Martinez and David Price were acquired in some other form or fashion, and when that’s the case all you need is a smart front office and prospects and the Rockies have both of those things. The Red Sox had 21/25 players on their World Series roster acquired outside of free agency, and the Rockies NLDS roster had 19/25, and if you want to count Holliday and Iannetta as drafted players, then that number goes also to 21.

Here is the NLDS Roster:

Draft: Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story, Charlie Blackmon, Tyler Anderson, Kyle Freeland, Garrett Hampson, Ryan McMahon, David Dahl, Chad Bettis, Chris Rusin, Harrison Musgrave, Scott Oberg

Trade: German Marquez, Tony Wolters (waiver claim), Seunghwan Oh, Adam Ottavino, DJ LeMahieu, Carlos Gonzalez

International: Antonio Senzatela

Free Agents: Wade Davis, Chris Iannetta, Ian Desmond, DJ Johnson (minor league free agent), Gerardo Parra, Matt Holliday (minor league free agent)

No this is not as good of a roster as Boston. No the Rockies don’t have three top end starting pitchers as of right now, but if it shakes out the way we think it could with Freeland and Marquez, you have two, and Jon Gray is destined for a comeback season.

The Rockies are deep looking into 2019, and a key should be the bullpen. The team spent over $100 million on the bullpen last offseason and it almost totally flopped. Wade Davis had his ups and downs and had a decent 2018 but could still be better, but where to look in the ‘pen in right at Bryan Shaw and Jake McGee. If those two are healthy and on top of their games, the Colorado bullpen turns into a weapon versus a liability, and the stress can be taken off of the starters more.

Let’s take a look at the projected rosters for the upcoming season. Both are in fact PROJECTIONS, due to the fact that there are still some key free agents on the board.

C – Sandy Leon // Christian Vazquez

1B – Mitch Moreland
2B – Dustin Pedroia
SS – Xander Bogaerts
3B – Rafael Devers

LF – Andrew Benintendi
CF – Jackie Bradley Jr.
RF – Mookie Betts

DH – J.D. Martinez

SP – David Price // Chris Sale // Nathan Eovaldi // Rick Porcello // Eduardo Rodriguez

Bench: Eduardo Nuñez, Brock Holt, Blake Swihart, Vazquez//Leon

Bullpen: Ryan Brasier (CL), Matt Barnes, Heath Hembree, Steven Wright, Tyler Thornburg, Bobby Poyner, Carson Smith

(All Red Sox roster info was garnered from our friends at BoSox Injection and Baseball Reference.)

The Colorado Rockies

C – Chris Iannetta

1B – Daniel Murphy
2B – Brendan Rodgers // Garrett Hampson // Ryan McMahon
SS – Trevor Story
3B – Nolan Arenado

LF – David Dahl
CF – Ian Desmond
RF – Charlie Blackmon

P – Kyle Freeland // Germán Márquez // Jon Gray // Tyler Anderson // Antonio Senzatela

Bench: Ryan McMahon, Garrett Hampson, Tony Wolters, (extra outfield bat)

Bullpen: Wade Davis (CL), Bryan Shaw, Mike Dunn, Jake McGee, Scott Oberg, Chris Rusin, Chad Bettis, Harrison Musgrave

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Full disclosure as well, I expect the Rockies to add another bat before the season, so this lineup can be improved, even though it’s not bad.

The Rockies also added Dave Magadan as hitting coach who was an instrumental part of the Red Sox runs in the mid 2000s.

Basically everyone on the Red Sox had career years last season; they had everybody playing well all at the same time, nobody really seemed to get hurt the whole season, and it culminated in one of the most dominant start to finish teams we’ve seen in a long time.

The Rockies were inconsistent to say the least last season. Ian Desmond never put it all together (and he hasn’t in a Rockies uniform thus far), the expensive bullpen was a mess, the catching was atrocious at times (offensively and defensively, with the exception of Tony Wolters), and the back end of the rotation never seemed to gain their footing.

But if you’re the Rockies, you’ve got to feel good about you’re team going into 2019, and if you use your own assets, which the Rockies have plenty of, to get the players to put you over the edge (i.e. Chris Sale, Steve Pearce and Nathan Eovaldi for the Red Sox in 2018), you could be looking at the Rockies’ best chance to compete for a World Series in their history.