Forgotten Colorado Rockies: Roy Oswalt’s short tenure

In the next few weeks, we will be starting some new series looking back (and forward) on different aspects of the Colorado Rockies. One of the things we are starting today is forgotten members of the Colorado Rockies. Today, our first one is Roy Oswalt.

Even though the Colorado Rockies have only played 27 seasons in their franchise’s history, there are plenty of players that you may have forgotten about.

They could be players that were part of a trade that never panned out for the Rockies, someone that started their career with the Rockies and moved on to success, someone who had a career that, while not necessarily Hall-of-Fame or All-Star worthy, was long but they made just a brief stop with the Rockies or just someone that had a lot of success with a different team and didn’t have success with the Rockies.

Today’s forgotten Rockie falls into the latter category. If you think of Roy Oswalt as a Colorado Rockie, you are in a very small minority of people.

Oswalt only made nine appearances (six starts) with the 2013 Colorado Rockies. He went 0-6 with an ERA of 8.63. However, it looks like he was the victim of some bad luck as his FIP in those nine appearances of just 3.08.

His home run rate and walk rate were around his career average and his strikeout rate was actually two strikeouts higher than his career average. However, his H/9 rate was sky-high as he was averaging nearly 14 hits per nine innings.

Those nine appearances ended up being the final nine appearances of his MLB career, a career that had a lot of success early.

He saw most of his success with the Houston Astros. He spent 10 seasons with the Astros and in that span, he was a 3-time All-Star, he garnered Cy Young Award votes in five seasons with all five times being in the top five of votes, MVP votes in four seasons, and he also came in second in the NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2001.

He only came in second because somebody by the name of Albert Pujols happened to have 194 hits, 37 home runs, 130 RBI, and a slash line of .329/.403/.610. Oswalt still came in fifth in NL Cy Young Award voting that season.

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The Astros traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies in 2010 when Oswalt had regressed some but he was still pitching well above league average. In 2010, he wasn’t an All-Star but he still came in sixth in the NL Cy Young Award voting.

While with the Astros and Phillies, he made 13 appearances (11 starts) in the postseason and for the National League champion Houston Astros in 2005, he won the NLCS MVP award after he went 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA in 14 innings.

Oswalt fizzled after he left Philadelphia after the 2011 season. In 2012, he pitched with the Texas Rangers and pitched to a 5.80 ERA in 17 games (9 starts) and he last pitched in the majors with the Rockies.

Even though he had a high peak, the brevity of his career (13 years) and the crowding of the Hall of Fame ballot meant that Oswalt dropped off of the ballot on his first time in 2019 when he got just 0.9 percent of the vote.

However, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t have an excellent career and one of the most forgotten Colorado Rockies of all-time.