Colorado Rockies: More predictions for the 2019 season

At the beginning of a very big news day yesterday for the Colorado Rockies, we started our predictions series for our contributors and experts as one of our contributors, Aaron Hurt, made his predictions for the 2019 Rockies. Today, I will do my predictions for the 2019 Colorado Rockies.

The Colorado Rockies head into the 2019 season on the heels of the back-to-back playoff appearances for the first time in franchise history. This season, as a result of the success, they have extended manager Bud Black.

They also extended third baseman Nolan Arenado on the biggest contract in franchise history. However, they only made one real addition for this season, and that was Daniel Murphy to play first base.

They had a lot of losses, including reliever Adam Ottavino, second baseman DJ LeMahieu, and outfielders Gerardo Parra. This statement might ruffle some feathers but for the latter two, they are not really losses in a production sense but in more of a clubhouse sense as both, if you look at them objectively, have not played as well as they have in the past.

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The biggest loss of those four is undoubtedly Ottavino. The Rockies so-called “super-bullpen” was anything but that last year as they flopped in a big way as they actually regressed from 20th in bullpen ERA in 2017 to 26th in bullpen ERA last year. I honestly don’t see that getting any better.

I’m not a fan of the offense either. The Rockies offense has not been good the past few years so I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here. I think Daniel Murphy will essentially replace DJ LeMahieu’s bat in the lineup with a high batting average but Murphy has slightly more power, but he’s still not going to hit a ton of homers (his career average is 15 a season).

I think David Dahl will provide more offense that Carlos Gonzalez and Gerardo Parra but that’s not terribly hard to overcome. They averaged 11 home runs, 59 RBI, and a .280/.336/.420 slash line and a 91 OPS+. Dahl’s own OPS+ alone last season was 113.

The biggest problem for Dahl and Murphy both will be health as Murphy was injured for most of last season and you probably know that Dahl has had numerous injuries throughout his career.

The Rockies starting pitching staff is the area of least concern for me. However, after Kyle Freeland and German Marquez, I still think it’s spotty. Jon Gray has not proved that he can be the ace that the team hoped that they drafted and Tyler Anderson‘s home run issue and the back of the rotation, whether it’s Chad Bettis or Antonio Senzatela, still has room for vast improvement.

In addition to this, nearly every single NL rival of the Rockies has improved.

I would put the Reds, Phillies, Mets, Braves, Cardinals, Nationals, and Padres in this case. I think the Brewers are about the same and the Dodgers and Cubs practically did nothing this offseason.

Even if the Rockies play as well as they did last year, they would, realistically, have a worse record because other teams have gotten better.

Last year, I predicted that the Rockies would go 90-72…and they went 91-72 so I was pretty accurate. I also predicted that they would be in the Wild Card Game. However, I had them winning the 1st NL Wild Card spot and my player predictions were way off so take them as you wish.

Biggest surprise player: David Dahl

Biggest disappointing player: Ian Desmond

Record: 85-77, 2nd in the NL West, miss playoffs but they are in the Wild Card hunt in the final week of games. Division winners are Dodgers, Brewers, Phillies. Wild Card winners are Nationals and Cardinals. The NL Champion is the Brewers.