Top 5 players to play for the Colorado Rockies and Texas Rangers

2. Ian Desmond

While I am not positive he will make the list when it comes time to talk about the Washington Nationals in September (seriously I may have to make a separate list just for former Expos players and Nationals players separately because that list is stacked), I will plan on talking more about the exploits of Ian Desmond in that article.

In short, he was an All-Star during his one season with the Texas Rangers in 2016. The Rockies signed him in 2017 and moved to first base as the team was overstocked with outfielders at the time. During the three seasons he has played for Colorado, Desmond had never produced a positive WAR for the team, but that does not mean it was all terrible. He was a part of both of the Rockies’ postseason runs in 2017 and 2018 and hit more than 20 home runs for both the Rangers in 2017 and the Rockies in 2018 and 2019. While not consistent, Ian Desmond showed power with both teams.

1. Yorvit Torrealba

Colorado Rockies

I have covered Yorvit Torrealba on another list already, so I will cover the broad strokes here. He was the primary catcher for the Rockies during the 2007 World Series run whose bat was clutch for the team’s playoff hopes in both 2007 and 2009.

On the Giants list, Torrealba was only number 5, he played more for the Giants (five seasons) than the Rangers (two seasons), so why put him so high here and not there? First, go back and look, that Top 5 Rockies/Giants list was absolutely loaded with Rockies greats. Second, Torrealba was the primary catcher for the Texas Rangers in 2011 for their second failed World Series run.

While not fantastic for the Rangers behind the plate, Torrealba was very good in front of it, producing the second-highest oWAR of his career during that season, even better than was when he was with the Rockies. While there are players who arguably should be in front of Torrealba on this list in terms of overall talent, he is easily the player on this list to contribute the most to both the Rockies and Rangers, specifically, making him the easy choice for number one on the list.

Note: Data for this article was found using Baseball Reference