Colorado Rockies: Is the 2020 lineup as empty as the offseason has been?

The Colorado Rockies 2020 lineup outside of the Big 4 looks as exciting as their offseason approach.

We’re going to dive deep into the analytics into the 2020 Colorado Rockies’ opening-day lineup outside of the four 2019 All-Stars (Story, Arenado, Dahl, and Blackmon). We will from here on out refer to these players as “The Quartet”.

We are going to focus on offensive output only, defensive prowess or value will not be included in the equation as we will save that discussion for another time.

This is your projected 2020 Colorado Rockies Opening-Day Lineup per RotoChamp:

1. David Dahl
2. Trevor Story
3. Charlie Blackmon
4. Nolan Arenado
5. Daniel Murphy
6. Ryan McMahon
7. Sam Hilliard
8. Tony Wolters

Once you get to the 5 spot everything is a question mark. Outside of The Quartet, the best OPS+ belongs to the much-maligned Ian Desmond at 88. 100 being an everyday average starter. This means the best hitter outside of the 4 All-Stars was 12 percent worse than just a base salary replacement.

Yet, the Rockies paid him $15 MM to put in that “performance,” according to Spotrac.com. Per Baseball-Reference, only Ryan McMahon had a higher oWAR than Peter Lambert, the pitcher, with all of 34 plate appearances. In case you needed help figuring out, it is abysmal.