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Colorado Rockies: The three biggest lessons to learn from the 2020 season

By Noah Yingling

LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 06: Nolan Arenado #28 of the Colorado Rockies hits a base hit to score Raimel Tapia #15 of the Colorado Rockies from third base during the fifth inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on September 6, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 06: Nolan Arenado #28 of the Colorado Rockies hits a base hit to score Raimel Tapia #15 of the Colorado Rockies from third base during the fifth inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on September 6, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images) /
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DENVER, CO – SEPTEMBER 15: Rockies owner/chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dick Monfort stands in the stands and looks on before a game between the Colorado Rockies and the Los Angeles Dodgers at Coors Field on September 15, 2014 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
DENVER, CO – SEPTEMBER 15: Rockies owner/chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dick Monfort stands in the stands and looks on before a game between the Colorado Rockies and the Los Angeles Dodgers at Coors Field on September 15, 2014 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images) /

The Colorado Rockies season is over after they finished the season going 15-31 in their last 46 games of the 60-game campaign, leaving them looking on the outside of the playoff picture once again.

The Colorado Rockies missed the playoffs for the second straight season after going 26-34 in the shortened 2020 season. Even with it being a shortened season, the Rockies are at a crossroads on what to do for 2020.

Even though 102 less games were played than the original schedule had, there are plenty of things that the Rockies should heed when they evaluate their 2020 season in the coming days and weeks and look to improve for 2021.

They are not a 94-win team as they are currently constructed … and it’s not even close

Fans got a bit of a laugh when Rockies owner Dick Monfort said in February that he thought the Colorado Rockies were a 94-win team.

"“I had an analytical staff go through and interpolate those numbers,” Monfort said. “And so in 2020, we’ll win 94 games and lose 68. “So it’s that easy. All we’ve got to do is start praying and it will happen. Baseball’s a crazy game.”"

Granted, in 2020, the Rockies didn’t even play 94 games due to the pandemic but Monfort’s comments were widely panned.

In fact, we said back when he made the comments that 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.” We ended up getting one of the teams ahead of the Rockies wrong (we predicted that the Diamondbacks would be ahead of them and they would be about even with San Diego) but the overall point was correct: the Rockies are no better than a third-place team as they are currently constructed.

The Rockies went 71-91 in 2019, did very little in the offseason heading into this season (partially, because they didn’t have the money to because they had money allocated to players that were, essentially, dead weight), and ended with a record of 26-34. By winning percentage for a full 162-game season, that’s equivalent to a 70-92 record, one game worse than 2019.

Unfortunately, there have been a lot of people that have seen this coming. The stats said that it was coming … and the Rockies have been at a crossroads longer than some people would like to believe.

Even when they made the playoffs in 2017 and 2018, the numbers suggested that the Rockies were a team that had some good luck that helped them get into the playoffs.

For example, by run differential in 2018, the Rockies should have been an 85-win team, not a 91-win team. When they made the playoffs in 2017, they were still a third-place team.

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