The Colorado Rockies need to start “cutting bait”

The Colorado Rockies have played really bad baseball in the last 3+ weeks

From May 6 through Saturday, here’s how the Colorado Rockies stack up in comparison to the rest of baseball on offense.

• .263 batting average (6th)
• .318 on-base percentage (12th)
• .361 slugging percentage (26th)
• 91 runs (15th)
• 81 wRC+ (29th)
• 71 wRC+ on the road (29th)
• .596 OPS on the road (29th)
• 6.8 percent walk rate (25th)
• 6 stolen bases (28th)
• 14 home runs (T-25th)
• 0.4 fWAR (29th)

Overall, it’s a very dismal picture. Furthermore, their team BABIP in that span is .317, or second-highest in the sport. That shows that the Rockies, essentially, have had good luck with how they are hitting … and still hitting that badly.

The starting pitching has had some bad luck (as the advanced stats show) but they have not had good results

• 5.79 ERA (29th)
• 4.00 FIP (13th)
• 1.7 fWAR (T-9th)
• 3.68 BB/9 (24th)

Their main problem has been the walks … and the guys behind them in the bullpen aren’t picking them up.

• 5.40 ERA (26th)
• 4.78 FIP (27th)
• -0.1 fWAR (23rd)
• 8.85 K/9 (16th)
• 4.48 BB/9 (28th)
• 64.2 percent of inherited runners stranded (26th)

Particularly for the bullpen, this has been a recurring theme for years now. It’s time that the Rockies bring in some new faces on the team.

In fact, they already have done it twice and it has worked well so far.

Brian Serven has been a success so far for the Colorado Rockies

The Colorado Rockies have started to see that they need some new faces on the team to see how they will play. For position players, catcher Brian Serven was recently called up and he has been a welcome addition defensively and offensively (120 wRC+) in six games.

For the bullpen, the Rockies called up Chad Smith, who made his MLB debut on Sunday. Smith, who was acquired by Colorado from Miami in exchange for Jesús Tinoco in August 2020, had a sub-3.00 ERA in 36 relief appearances in 2021 in Triple-A Albuquerque and a sub-2.00 ERA in 17 appearances in Albuquerque this year before being called up.

The problem with that is that the corresponding move was sending Justin Lawrence back to Triple-A. He had a rough outing in Pittsburgh on the road trip (1 IP, 4 ER) that ballooned his ERA up from 3.29 to 5.52 but he still was one of the better relievers in the bullpen.

His FIP is 3.97, which is fifth-best of any pitcher on the team that had more than 10 innings pitched entering Sunday.

There are some other players in the minor leagues that should get a shot at some playing time in the majors over veterans who aren’t cutting it.

These include Elehuris Montero, Ryan Vilade, and Wynton Bernard offensively and Brandon Gold, Jake Bird, and Zach Lee as pitchers (all playing well with Triple-A Albuquerque). They may not play well in the majors or may not be part of the future but they may be better than what the Rockies have currently.

The Rockies, if they think that they can make the playoffs (which is a bit far-fetched at this point), should also consider some cheap outside options as well.

They made some decent moves on the cheap this past offseason (Chad Kuhl, José Iglesias, Randal Grichuk, Alex Colomé) so they could definitely make some in-season as well.

But something has to change for the team and getting in some new faces on the roster should be the way that they do it and to do that, they will have to “cut bait” with some veterans who aren’t pulling their weight.

The 2 players that should be on thin ice with the Colorado Rockies

There are two players that should be on thin ice with the Colorado Rockies because they have done little for a long time: Garrett Hampson and Sam Hilliard.