New Year’s Resolutions for these Colorado Rockies

Oh, like you didn’t know one of these articles was coming for the Colorado Rockies.

Next year (2022) is knocking on the door and that means we need to come up with resolutions that we’ll start for a month and then lose interest in shortly after. But that’s us, not professional ballplayers who will most certainly apply more focus to their resolutions than we will. And while we’re currently in the middle of a lockout, we’re hoping these players stay locked in to these resolutions I will be suggesting for them (which I know they will read and take extremely seriously).

So let’s get these Colorado Rockies New Year’s Resolutions churning and burning and ready to go!

Raimel Tapia: Hit the ball in the air more

I wrote about this previously but Tapia could become a significantly more productive hitter if he was able to lift the ball in the air more. As the owner of the highest single-season ground ball percentage over the past 20 years (67.4%) and the lowest launch angle since Statcast started recording it in 2015 (-4.4 degrees), there’s literally nowhere to go but up (Launch Angle joke: Check).

In 2021, he had a wRC+ of 27 on ground balls and a wRC+ of 104 on fly balls. Quite simply, the more productive hit is in the air. And when he does it’s usually a great result, especially when facing guys like Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer (both of whom he hit homers off of this season). Given his launch angle, if he just gets a bit more under balls and turns more grounders into line drives then he’ll have even more success (316 wRC+ on line drives in 2021). So let’s try to get some air under it Raimel and watch your productivity soar!