An in-depth preview of the 2022 Colorado Rockies season

New Colorado Rockies shortstop José Iglesias

Filling Trevor Story’s void at shortstop for the Colorado Rockies is José Iglesias. He’s someone who, as a hitter, is a little hard to get a good read on in terms of projections.

In the COVID-shortened 2020 season, he hit for a 160 wRC+ with Baltimore, but that seems to be an outlier compared to nearly every other season of his career besides 2013 (his only other season with a wRC+ above 100). He hit for a wRC+ of 82 with the Angels last season and was eventually traded to the Boston Red Sox where he hit for a 148 wRC+ but that was in only 64 plate appearances.

So can we expect that he’ll hit as he did for the Red Sox last season? Probably not given the sample size and his prior seasons, but a wRC+ around 91 would be OK to expect. While it’s a dropoff from Story’s production, it’s a slight increase from Tapia’s production, particularly when you adjust for park factors.

He’s not going to rip the cover off the ball at all, but he gives you much of what Tapia did (low K%, low BB%, lots of contact with few HRs) but doesn’t have the same dramatically high groundball rate. He’s not going to blow you away, but he shouldn’t be detrimental to a Rockies’ lineup that only put up a wRC+ of 82 last season.