Colorado Rockies: What are the 25 best seasons by Rockies aged 25 or under?

Recently, MLB.com ranked their top 25 players that are aged 25 or younger entering 2021. That made us think of what are the 25 best seasons by Colorado Rockies that were in their age 25 season or younger? So we compiled this list.

Some things to note about this are that in the first five seasons of the Rockies, they will not have a single player represented in this countdown. Why? None of them were under the age of 25. For example, on the 1995 team, the average player age was 30 years old. For the Blake Street Bombers, while they had great seasons, none of them were 25 or younger when they were in their heyday.

In fact, the only one that even had a season with the Rockies when he was 25 or younger was Vinny Castilla, the youngest member of the Blake Street Bombers. However, that was in 1993 when he was 25 and the Rockies were in their inaugural season. He, however, had his worst year as a Rockie that year.

So how are we evaluating each of the Rockies on this list?

For analyzing each season, WAR is a good barometer but it is not the be-all, end-all. Part of that is because of the 2020 season. For those seasons (and to the cynics, yes, the Rockies did have multiple players that are on or were close to making this list despite the Rockies not playing well as a team), we considered how their stats would look in a full, 162-game season. But we will never know if that would have held up had they played 102 more games.

So while that will hurt them, it was still a full season for what could have been played. So, in other words, we could rank some of them very high or completely omit them because they didn’t have the whole amount of the other seasons. We took more of a middle ground with it.

Part of it is because defense is considered and before 2002, Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) was not calculated so the defensive metrics are suspect … at best.

To be considered age 25 or under for the season, they must be 25 or younger on June 30 of a season. This is the number that is used by any baseball stats site (Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs included) for determining their age for a season.

We also gave more weight to the Rockies team achievements that year. For example, if two players have identical stats in 2007 and 2012, the 2007 player will rank higher because that player was key to a playoff run when the 2012 team was the worst in Rockies franchise history. All stats are also from Baseball-Reference.

Let’s dive into the top 25 seasons by Rockies at or under the age of 25.