4 bad surprises for the Colorado Rockies in 2022 so far

On Thursday, we took a look at four good surprises for the Colorado Rockies at the 20 percent mark in the season but today, we will look at four bad surprises for the team to start the season.

Here are four bad surprises for the Colorado Rockies in 2022 so far

1) Germán Márquez

In Spring Training, it seemed to be a foregone conclusion that Germán Márquez would be the Opening Day starter for the Colorado Rockies. After all, he was their Opening Day starter for the past two seasons.

However, the Rockies elected to go with Kyle Freeland and it has, seemingly, been the right choice.

Márquez has gone 0-3 with a 6.47 ERA in six starts. He has a 1.688 WHIP, a 4.96 FIP, and a strikeout rate that has dropped nearly 20 percent.

Even worse, he has been bad since the All-Star Game last year. Since then, Márquez has made 19 starts and he has an ERA of 6.23. He also has a 4.89 FIP in that span while allowing 1.7 homers and 11.1 hits per nine innings. That’s not something that is anything close to an ace, especially over two-thirds of a season of starts.

2) Kris Bryant

For being the $182 million man for the Colorado Rockies, Kris Bryant has spent more than half of the season thus far not playing. He has played in 15 games and entering Saturday, the Rockies have played in 32 games.

He has been out with a back injury and just before the injury, he told Rox Pile a few weeks ago that he was still adjusting to playing and recovery at altitude. As of now, if everything goes well, it will still be a little bit until he comes back because he will go out on a rehab assignment either this weekend or early next week.

When he was playing, he struggled defensively (-2 DRS in LF) and wasn’t hitting for power (.351 SLG).

3) Brendan Rodgers

This one is not necessarily based on his recent production (his production in May) but more for his production in April.

For the Colorado Rockies in April, Brendan Rodgers was hitting .078/.172/.098. Since May 1, he is hitting nearly .400 with two homers, 12 RBI, and four doubles.

The problem is that even with all of that production, he is still hitting under .200 with a sub-.600 OPS.

4) The overall team defense

The Rockies’ overall defense has been flat-out atrocious. There are no two ways about it.

In 2021, the Rockies had 61 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), according to FanGraphs. That was 5th highest in baseball. They were best in UZR (43.0) and 10th in Defensive Runs Above Average (Def) with 14.2.

Entering Friday, the Rockies had -8 DRS, which was 25th in baseball. Their UZR is 13th (0.7) and their Def is -6.6, or 27th. This was before the Rockies made two errors in Friday’s game and nearly at least two more errors that were saved by first baseman C.J. Cron

They have had some of their great defensive players struggle (like Ryan McMahon) but they knowingly took a step back defensively when they put Bryant in left field, Charlie Blackmon frequently being in right field, José Iglesias at shortstop instead of Trevor Story, and other moves too.

Part of it isn’t the players fault either. The positioning has not been good from the coaches either.

Entering Friday, they had -1 DRS as a team because of their positioning. This is a big improvement on where it was entering this week. Entering the Giants’ series earlier this week, it was -4 DRS due to their “non-shift positioning,” according to Baseball-Reference.

They have been better offensively but taking such a big step back defensively has been a big problem and it’s something that needs to be addressed soon.