Colorado Rockies: The four most disappointing players of 2019

Let’s just say that 2019 didn’t exactly go as planned for the Colorado Rockies.

After two straight playoff appearances, the Colorado Rockies were expected to be back in the hunt for a third straight year. They were not expected to finish 71-91, a distant 35 games out of first in the NL West and 18 games behind the second Wild Card.

Any time a collapse like this happens it’s tempting to point fingers and cast blame… so let’s do just that. These are the four players that most disappointed Rockies fans this season as well as a bonus player who broke a lot of Colorado hearts in 2019.

Kyle Freeland

2018 Kyle Freeland had one of the best seasons for any Rockies pitcher ever. He went 17-7 with a 2.85 ERA and an eye-popping 8.4 WAR. This led to a well-deserved fourth-place finish in the Cy Young voting, the best finish for a Rockie since Ubaldo’s magical 2010 season.

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2019 Kyle Freeland, on the other hand, just plain stunk. It’s not even fair to call what happened “regression,” because Freeland had never been this bad. “Total collapse” comes a lot closer to capturing the rolling disaster that was Freeland’s year.

The Denver native finished with a 3-11 record, 6.73 ERA, and a counterproductive -0.8 WAR. His walk rate rose, strikeout rate plunged, and he gave up 2.2 HR/9 — an unsustainably high mark, even in this homer-happy season.

Freeland also had two separate DL stints, for blister issues and a groin strain, respectively, and faced the ignominy of a brief stint in the minor leagues. Quite the fall from grace for a player that looked poised to head the Rockies rotation for years to come.

Daniel Murphy

I’m not sure signing a 34-year-old coming off a -1.0 WAR season counts as a major acquisition, but still, signing Daniel Murphy was the biggest splash that the Rox made this offseason. Sure, no one thought that we were getting prime 2016 Murphy – he of the .347/.390/.595 triple-slash line – but you had to think that the top brass expected more than the barely above replacement level .279/.328/.452 that the Rockies got.

The former second baseman also struggled with his move to first, compiling a -0.5 dWAR with nine errors. Those miscues were tied for sixth-most among all MLB first basemen, despite the fact that Murphy started only 98 games at the position.

Murphy is still signed for one more year (not counting a 2021 mutual option that is almost certainly not going to be exercised), so maybe he can salvage some value in 2020. If he doesn’t rebound though it seems like we’re looking at Ian Desmond 2.0.

Wade Davis

When the 2018 season closed, Wade Davis’ job was as secure as any closer in baseball. He had just finished leading the league in saves (43), setting the Rockies’ team record in the process.

He continued his successful run into the start of 2019, rattling off five straight saves with a microscopic 0.77 ERA. Then things started to get a little rougher. He completed his next save, but gave up two runs in the process. Then allowed a run in his next outing. From June 13-19, he gave up eight runs in four appearances. By the end of June, his ERA was up to 6.00 and many pundits were calling for his job to go to Scott Oberg, who was outpitching Davis by almost every metric.

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Oberg was officially given the job at the beginning of August after an ugly loss in which Davis gave up five runs in one-third of an inning. His record officially sat at 1-5 with a 6.82 ERA, and you’d like to think that that’s as bad as it would get … but you’d be wrong.

Davis continued to struggle in low-pressure middle relief outings that only pushed his ERA higher and higher. He finished out the year with two four-run debacles that left his ERA at an eye-poppingly awful 8.65, worth -1.3 WAR overall.

It’s possible that bad luck played at least a partial role in Davis’ collapse, as he had a higher-than-average .349 BABIP and lower-than-average 55.4% strand rate. His FIP and xFIP were 5.56 and 5.80, respectively. Those are not good marks, to be certain, but a far cry from his actual ERA.

The Rockies are on the hook for $17M for Davis’ services next season, which means that he’s almost certain to be on the roster to start the year. This is one of those seasons that went so bad you have to think some correction is in order, though at 34 years old, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever see prime Kansas City Royals-era Wade Davis again.

DJ LeMahieu

Rockies fans have long known what the rest of the baseball world came to realize this season: DJ LeMahieu is a pretty darn good baseball player. It was both joyful and heartbreaking to watch DJ have so much success with the Yankees this season as the former Rockie set career highs in a bunch of offensive categories including hits, runs, RBI, doubles, homers, slugging, and OPS+.

Some of that may be attributable to the ping pong ball that was used instead of a standard baseball this year, but still a breakout like this can’t be ignored. What makes it sting even more is the fact that the Yanks signed LeMahieu for only $12M a year, which, for those keeping count, is just slightly more than the $10M that the Rox paid the older, less durable Murphy to be a replacement-level first baseman.

Here’s a depressing what if: what if, instead of signing Murphy, the Rockies re-signed DJ and played him at second, with Ryan McMahon handling first for the bulk of the season and Garrett Hampson playing outfield. The Rockies would have been better on both sides of the ball, plus they would’ve scored emotional points for keeping one of their favorite talents in the fold.

Instead, the Rockies faithful will just have to settle for watching DJ fight for a World Series berth with his new team, which, by the way, also features our old friend Adam Ottavino (1.90 ERA, 2.2 WAR) coming out of the bullpen. And to think, if health and fortune had cooperated DJ and Otto could have even been playing beside former franchise cornerstone Troy Tulowitzki as well.

C’est la vie; on to 2020.