The Colorado Rockies should use 7 starting pitchers. That’s right. 7

The Colorado Rockies have had themselves a crisis of pitching the past few years. It seems every year is the year that they finally cracked the code … and then it all inevitably falls apart. As I watch the Rockies flounder through their games, I think back to 2017 and 2018 when it all just clicked and wonder, what would it take to make the rotation click again?

Unfortunately, the Rockies’ “greatest rotation ever” window seems to have slammed shut. The problem seems to always be in the splits. A pitcher is good at Coors or good everywhere else, rarely can a pitcher be good at both.

Look at Chad Kuhl. He has the best ERA+ (101) on the team and has been great at Coors Field, yet on the road it looks like he is a position player pitching. An ideal world would see him never pitch on the road, but that couldn’t happen, right?

Right?!?!

The Colorado Rockies should use 7 starting pitchers

Well, here’s a crazy idea: he could and he should. It would benefit the Colorado Rockies to run home and away squads for their starting pitching. The Rockies have spent lots of time trying to minimize the Home/Away splits and downplay their effect. But the stats are simple, it is hard to pitch at Coors Field, only a special type of pitcher can do it successfully, and that combination of tools might only work at Coors Field.

I say that the Colorado Rockies use that to their advantage, lean hard into the pitching splits, and have the squad become a force to be reckoned with, rather than a joke.

How would the Colorado Rockies make this work?

It’s simple to put this squad together. Look at the potential starting rotation for the Colorado Rockies and choose the 2-3 pitchers with the most even home/away splits (unless they are generally bad). This will act as your core rotation. They are the pitchers who will almost always pitch in their spot in the rotation no matter where the Rockies play.

After you have your core rotation set, look to round out your rotation for Coors Field. These are your high groundball percentage, low fastball spin rate pitchers that aren’t really built for much outside of Coors Field pitching. I’ve talked extensively about what makes pitchers work at Coors in my previous pitching articles. Keeping that ball out of the massive outfield is the absolute priority. We know what to look for at this point but if you don’t, this article by Rox Pile’s Tyler Paddor examines it in depth.

Boom. Home rotation is set, but they are only effective at Coors Field, so who should make up the road warriors? Easy, do what works everywhere not in Denver, something that Dick Monfort has tried and failed at for a very long time. High strikeout, high spin rate. Think pitchers like Wade Davis and Bryan Shaw before they were on the Rockies.

But I’m sure you are wondering, if there are more starting pitchers, there must be fewer relievers, right? Well yes, but your off-series starters can be used as bullpen arms as needed. They are getting large amounts of rest, anyway. The days of the long reliever for the Colorado Rockies would be over.

It also provides easy opportunities for spot starts and through schedule manipulation (because you have so many starters on the roster) no pitcher would have to pitch on short rest. The facsimile of a five-man rotation would still exist, but seven pitchers would carry that role, four of them simply would swap places every Home/Away stand.

The Rockies rotation on the road

Let’s set up away pitching. The ones that could start at Dodger Stadium, but only be a desperate relief at Coors Field.

For this, we have a solid choice in Chad Bettis and a surprising choice in Tim Melville. Tim Melville allowed only four earned runs and a single home run in the three games he started on the road for the Colorado Rockies in 2019.

Honestly, he is one of the few Rockies pitchers to pitch super well on the road while being absolutely atrocious at home (with .519 OPS and a .213 BABIP, lowest among all Rockies starting pitching the last 5 years on the road, but that OPS jumps to second worst when you look at home). But I would still seek to swap him out with someone else in free agency because sustainability would be in question.

Chad Bettis had a very similar home/away split to Melville but with a significantly larger sample size. Both pitchers seem built for Coors Field (low spin, high groundball rate), just never seemed to put it together at home, but really performed when on the road.

With that, the ideal Colorado Rockies starting rotation would be: Jon Gray, Germán Márquez, Kyle Freeland, Chad Kuhl (home), Antonio Senzatela (home), Chad Bettis (Away), and Tim Melville (away).

Conclusion

Yes, I think this 7-man rotation is something that the Colorado Rockies can do extremely effectively. It may seem crazy, but I think they could actually achieve the super-rotation that we have heard about for so long by doing this.

By leaning into the splits so hard, the Colorado Rockies could actually become a much better baseball team, even with pitchers that they have had over the past five seasons. They may not be the most analytically minded team, but doing something like this would be extremely forward-thinking on their part. It all just depends on if they want to listen to the data.

Colorado Rockies: It’s time to let some players go

If there is any hope of this team being competitive any time soon, the Colorado Rockies need to stop thinking about the present and focus on the future.