Are the 2020 Colorado Rockies the second-best NL West team?

Heading into 2020, the Colorado Rockies are at a bit of a crossroads. Will they reach the playoffs like they did in 2017 and 2018 or are they truly closer to what they were in 2019: a fourth-place team?

After a dreadful 2019 season in which the Colorado Rockies suffered a slew of injuries and numerous down seasons from players, the Rockies have not done a thing this offseason. Well, at least on the major league free agent or trade front.

In fact, with the Chicago Cubs signing outfielder Steven Souza, Jr. to a one-year deal, the Rockies are the only MLB team not to sign a free agent to a major league contract this offseason. That, however, did not stop team owner Dick Monfort from predicting the Rockies would win a franchise-record 94 games in 2020.

That is likely part of the reason why Nolan Arenado is not happy with Jeff Bridich and company: his contract, at least to most people, looks like it has hamstrung the franchise financially, when Arenado signed the deal with the caveat that it would not do that.

The biggest problem is that if you look at the team objectively, they really need to improve many aspects of it.

FanGraphs 2020 projections have the Rockies as 29th at catcher and first base, 27th at second base, dead last in left field, 26th in center field, 17th in right field, 20th in starting pitching, and 20th in relief pitching. The only two positions in which the Rockies are in the top half are at third base and shortstop, with Nolan Arenado and Trevor Story.

However, those are only projections. In both 2017 and 2018 when the Rockies made the playoffs, FanGraphs (and many others) projected the Rockies being under .500.

So instead of projections, let’s look at how each of the NL West teams look heading into 2020 with looking at their 2019 WARs and a look back at 2017 and 2018 for the Rockies, when they made the playoffs.

After the Arizona Diamondbacks traded for outfielder Starling Marte from the Pittsburgh Pirates, I decided to delve into the numbers a bit on the D’backs.

They won 85 games last year and that’s after they traded Zack Greinke to Houston at the trade deadline. They also traded away their franchise stalwart, Paul Goldschmidt, to St. Louis last offseason.

So, I looked at their projected 26-man roster (remember, it will be 26, not 25, starting this year) with Marte. Here’s what will likely be their 26-man roster projection, per Roster Resource.

If you just use Baseball Reference for each of those 26 players WAR totals (it’s slightly different with FanGraphs WAR), their WAR in 2019 was 44.1, which is a pretty good number.

Here’s the breakdown of that 44.1 bWAR:

• Starting lineup: 27.4 bWAR
• Bench (5 players): 2.9 bWAR
• Starting rotation: 8.1 bWAR
• Bullpen (8 man bullpen): 5.7 bWAR

If you look more in depth, the bullpen is weakest as they didn’t have any huge strength. They also didn’t have any huge weakness. In fact, all of the eight relievers had a bWAR between 0.4 and 1.0. Not a single one of the players on the 26-man projected roster posted a negative bWAR season last year.

In addition, they have David Peralta, who posted a WAR of 1.9 in only 99 games as well as starters Zac Gallen and Luke Weaver, who posted WARs of 1.3 and 1.7. That was only in eight starts and in 12 starts so if the D’Backs can get that production in a full season, that make the D’Backs even better.

The San Diego Padres in win-loss projections and in results last year, were not as good as the D’Backs. They only finished one game back of the Rockies in the NL West last year. They have made some moves this offseason, though, that will make them better if they play like they did in 2019.

This includes the additions of outfielder Tommy Pham, outfielder Trent Grisham, reliever (and former Rockie) Drew Pomeranz, and starting pitcher Zach Davies.

Even with the additions, though, they are not as good as the D’Backs in their 2019 bWAR. The Padres current 26-man projection had a bWAR of 27.1 last year, or 39 percent less than Arizona’s 2019 total.

Here’s the breakdown of that 27.1 bWAR:

• Starting lineup: 13.6 bWAR
• Bench (5 players): 1.8 bWAR
• Starting rotation: 6.2 bWAR
• Bullpen (8 man bullpen): 5.5 bWAR

Comparing to the D’Backs, the lineup is obviously way weaker. The D’Backs projected starting lineup had a 2019 bWAR of 27.4 alone and the Padres don’t have that on their entire team. The bench is weaker as is the rotation. The bullpen is a virtual tie.

If you take a look at the Giants projected roster, you probably don’t know half of the names anyways and the ones that you do know aren’t that good (at least anymore). The total bWAR for that team last year was 14.7, which is less than 0.6 bWAR per player. In other words, a last place team.

The Dodgers are not as much of a run-away in the 2019 bWAR department as you may think, but they do have a few things of note.

Overall, their projected 26-man roster had a bWAR of 44.8 in 2019. For comparison, the D’Backs projected roster was at 44.1.

Here’s the breakdown :

• Starting lineup: 30.7 bWAR
• Bench (5 players): 4.0 bWAR
• Starting rotation: 8.9 bWAR
• Bullpen (8 man bullpen): 1.2 bWAR

This may be a bit lower than you’d expect for a few reasons.

• Hyun-Jin Ryu signed with Toronto in free agency. His 2019 bWAR was 5.3.
• David Freese retired and Rich Hill signed with Minnesota in free agency. They each had WARs of 1.4.
• Russell Martin is not factored in since he hasn’t re-signed, or signed elsewhere. His bWAR was 0.8.
• Gavin Lux is slated to be the everyday 2nd baseman. He only posted a 0.3 bWAR but he only played in 18 games
• Justin Turner, Corey Seager, Joc Pederson, and Alex Verdugo all only started between 82 and 125 games. They all posted bWARs between 3.1 and 4.0 in that span, though.

With those caveats, it’s easy to see why the Dodgers are still the cream of the crop not only in the NL West but the NL and baseball, in general.

The 2017 Rockies were the first Rockies team that made the playoffs since 2009. They faced the D’backs in the NL Wild Card Game and lost in a heartbreaker in the desert. The Rockies won the NL Wild Card Game against the Cubs in Wrigley Field in 2018 but they were quickly vanquished by the Milwaukee Brewers in a three-game sweep in the NLDS.

So that we are comparing apples to apples with the two teams to 2020, we looked at each team “26-man roster.” The 13 position players are the eight that started the most games at each position and the five bench players are the five players with the most amount of plate appearances. For the pitchers, it is the five pitchers with the most starts that compile the rotation and the eight relievers with the most innings pitched that compile the bullpen.

The 2017 Rockies, who went 87-75 with a Pythagorean W-L of the same record, looked like this:

• Starting lineup: 19.1 bWAR
• Bench (5 players): -2.1 bWAR
• Starting rotation: 13.8 bWAR
• Bullpen (8 man bullpen): 7.6 bWAR
• Total bWAR of the 26-man roster: 38.4.

Here’s the 2018 Rockies, who went 91-72 with a Pythagorean W-L of 85-78:

• Starting lineup: 14.9 bWAR
• Bench (5 players): -1.8 bWAR
• Starting rotation: 19.0 bWAR
• Bullpen (8 man bullpen): 5.3 bWAR
• Total bWAR of 26-man roster: 37.4

And, once again, here’s the projected 2020 Rockies with their 2019 bWAR totals from earlier (71-91 record, 71-91 Pythagorean W-L)

• Starting lineup: 16.3 bWAR
• Bench (5 players): -2.4 bWAR
• Starting rotation: 6.6 bWAR
• Bullpen (8 man bullpen): 4.9 bWAR
• Total bWAR of 26-man roster: 25.4

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• Colorado Rockies: Charlie Blackmon out for the season
• Colorado Rockies: Injuries shift look of roster ahead of Dodgers series
• Colorado Rockies: Has Sean Bouchard earned a second look in 2023?

So the starting lineups are just about the same. The benches are all about the same (all three are atrocious). The bullpen gets worse with each year and the starting rotation dropped like a lead ballon in 2019 but, if you watched the Rockies in the past few years, you likely already knew this.

The thing that you likely didn’t know is that even when the Rockies made the playoffs, at least on paper, those two teams were never as good as the D’Backs are right now. At least by bWAR, it’s not even particularly close as the D’Backs are 13 percent better than the 2017 Rockies, which is by run differential, the best Rockies team since 2009.

You may not have known that, on paper, the Padres and Rockies are in a virtual dead heat heading into 2020…but, again, neither one is particularly close to Arizona or the Dodgers.

Final Thoughts

Obviously, there’s a reason why games are not played on paper or by projections and that’s because of the “human element” to games. There’s room for regression or growth from players and that can significantly change the projections.

However, when you look at the numbers with an objective view with the numbers, it is a bit easier to see why the downturn in Rockies baseball shouldn’t have been as surprising (I was one of the people who predicted a good 2019 team as well) as well as the disparity between the Rockies and the Dodgers and Diamondbacks in 2019.

As a result, it’s easier to see that the Rockies, at least on paper, are not the second best team in the NL West. Honestly, the Rockies are no better than a third-place team in the weakest division in the National League…and even that is up for debate.