Offensive woes projected for the 2020 Colorado Rockies

Mike Petriello published an article earlier this week on the projections of each of the 30 MLB teams and their offenses. Each of the 30 teams have between two and ten players that are projected to have a minimum of 300 plate appearances and a wRC+ above league average (100 or more). The Colorado Rockies were not at the top.

As you may expect the teams towards the top of the projections are mainly teams that made the playoffs in 2019 and the teams that did not fare so well, were not playoff teams, like the Colorado Rockies.

The Minnesota Twins top the list as they have ten players that are projected to be above league average. That’s partially because they had ten players fall within that criteria last year. If you were to take the plate appearances down to 200 plate appearances, the Twins had 14 players in 2019 that had a 100 wRC+ or better.

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On the other hand, the Colorado Rockies were not a playoff team in 2019 and that was, partially, due to the lack of offense that the Rockies had outside of their four All-Stars: Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story, Charlie Blackmon, and David Dahl. The Rockies did not have another player with even 100 plate appearances with a wRC+ that was league average or above.

Heading into 2020, though, the Steamer projections (that are generated through FanGraphs), project that just three Rockies will be above league offensively in 2020. That is Arenado, Story, and Blackmon. Just below league average and qualifying for the plate appearances in the projections are David Dahl (93 wRC+) and Ryan McMahon (92 wRC+).

That, obviously, points to signs that the Rockies secondary talent is subpar, as it was in 2019 and for most of the seasons prior. In 2018, they had 3 players fall within the 300+ PA and 100+ wRC+ (Arenado, Story, and Blackmon) with David Dahl just falling short of qualifying since he had 271 PAs and in 2017, only Arenado, Blackmon, and Mark Reynolds were above the threshold.

For the 2020 projections, the only teams with less than 3 players above league average are two teams that lost 100+ games in 2019: the Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles, who lost 103 and 108 games.

That’s part of the reason why with all of the Nolan Arenado trade rumors, the Rockies need to get multiple pieces to help their offense in a possible trade if they trade him: to replace Arenado and make the team’s offense better in the future.