Colorado Rockies: 2022 projections for José Iglesias

The Colorado Rockies signed José Iglesias to take over for Trevor Story at shortstop. He will certainly be a downgrade offensively and almost certainly will be a downgrade from Story defensively (if Iglesias’s defensive metrics in recent years are any indication).

However, at least they addressed their shortstop need and on on a one-year, stopgap option, and, as they say, there’s no such thing as a bad one-year deal.

In 2021, he hit .271/.309/.391 with an OPS+ of 90. With his -22 Defensive Runs Saved (which was the worst of any defender in baseball), his rWAR was -0.7 and his fWAR was 1.0. His WAR had such a wide disparity between the two sites because his other defensive metrics (UZR, OAA, etc.) suggest that (while not good) were nowhere near as bad as his DRS.

The projections predict José Iglesias will have slightly better raw stats in 2022

ZiPS projects that Colorado Rockies shortstop José Iglesias will hit .294/.326/.412 (for an OPS of .738). That would be a 38 point increase on his OPS but with playing with the Rockies (and, therefore, half of his games being at Coors Field), his wRC+ would drop from 91 to 85.

Other projections are similar to ZiPS including Steamer (.289 AVG, .750 OPS, 88 wRC+) and Baseball-Reference (.276 AVG, .722 OPS).

In 2019, he was with the Cincinnati Reds, who also have a very hitter-friendly park and he hit .288/.318/.407 in 146 games. However, with the extremely high offense of the year (remember the ball that MLB said wasn’t juiced but really was?), his OPS+ was 83.

Defensively, he likely won’t be a -22 DRS player because the other metrics suggest that he was not the worst defender in baseball. But if you look at DRS for him from 2017 through 2020, he had -5, 0, 5, and -2 DRS, amounting to a total of -2.

In other words, he will likely be an average defender who will hit for a decent batting average but he won’t hit for much power and he won’t walk a ton.

Again, he’s a big dropoff from Trevor Story but it’s a one-year deal and, perhaps, he can keep the position warm for a prospect like Ezequiel Tovar, who is starting the 2022 season in Double-A Hartford.