What Bill Schmidt’s comments mean for the Colorado Rockies in 2023

In terms of situational hitting, it’s questionable whether Schmidt has actually looked at the stats. As our own Noah Yingling pointed out over the weekend, the Rockies actually hit better with runners in scoring position than with no one on. Their full season wRC+ is 87. Their wRC+ with no one on is 83 and with RISP their wRC+ is 96. They followed a similar pattern last season.

The bigger problem here is that each of those numbers is below league average, but who am I to judge a team that hasn’t had a wRC+ above 90 since 2016? Part of that is because of their well-known struggles on the road (with many factors out of their control), but I’m more worried about how Schmidt thinks the Rockies can fix things on the road.

“We have to play the game better than we do, and that really comes back to situational hitting. That means getting on base, getting the guy over and getting the guy in.”

What Schmidt’s describing here is simply known as playing baseball. So, by “situational hitting” I can only assume that he means their hitting in general needs to improve.

This brings us back to an even more worrisome point that’s been a continuous thought since Bridich’s tenure at GM, which is that the Rockies just need to play better. The problem is that you simply can’t do that when your roster isn’t good. And nothing about the current roster points towards major improvement next season.

By expected statistics, the Rockies have been a touch lucky on offense (.314 wOBA and .303 xwOBA) and a touch unlucky with pitching (.342 wOBA and .332 xwOBA). Neither of those gaps point towards an incredible jump in production, specifically from the pitching side. And based on prior years, there’s more of a correlation with the Rockies when it comes to better pitching as the hitting as been pretty much the same from year to year:

Pitching is hard enough to come by for the Colorado Rockies without drafting and developing. Chad Kuhl started well but has since regressed into a slightly worse version of who he was with the Pirates in 2021 (117 ERA-, 122 FIP-, 117 xFIP- in 2022).

José Ureña has given almost nearly identical results as Kuhl. Neither should be on this roster next season. Ryan Feltner, the only starter with a strikeout percentage above 20% (just barely, though, sitting at 20.1 percent) has been unlucky by park-adjusted stats (132 ERA-, 112 FIP-, 109 xFIP-) but results have been true according to expected stats (.349 wOBA, .347 xwOBA).

Schmidt did mention that Peter Lambert and Ryan Rolison should be viable options to go in 2023. However, Peter Lambert’s time in the majors has been less than inspirational (151 ERA-, 131 FIP-, 120 xFIP-) and he has been recovering from an elbow injury.

Rolison really struggled in Triple-A in 2021 and hasn’t thrown a pitch in 2022 after dealing with a shoulder strain all year. So, if Lambert and Rolison do pitch next season, there likely won’t be a whole lot to expect from them.

Each of the Rockies’ big three in their rotation (Freeland, Senzatela, Márquez) regressed this year also. I guess the answer is simply to pitch better instead of looking at certain warning signs, such as Márquez having his worst K/9 since his rookie season. Or seeing Senzatela being in the bottom two percent of the league with a .386 wOBA.

The rotation, which was once the most stable piece of the Rockies, is starting to fall apart and adjusting the lineup won’t help cover up the holes. But, if we’re reading into Schmidt’s comments correctly, then nothing will happen because his plan is one of two options:

1. What they have on the roster is good enough to compete and they will go for it in 2023
2. This is a retool, not a rebuild, and they won’t come out and say it in fear that they’ll lose fans

The optimist in me hopes it’s more of the second plan listed, but nothing we’ve been told publicly (or anything they’ve done in terms of the roster) leads me to believe they’re willingly going down a retool/rebuild path. Rather, they view Kris Bryant’s injuries as a major reason this team wasn’t better.

“I thought he was an aircraft carrier for us,” Schmidt said in regards to Kris Bryant. “Losing Bryant not only affected him, it affected the rest of the lineup.”

There’s some validity here. For the most part, Bryant played only in April and July. Excluding five games he played in the middle of those months, the Rockies were better in April (98 wRC+) and July (93) than their season-long wRC+ of 87. They were 12-9 in April and 13-14 in July. Overall the Rockies were 20-22 in games that Kris Bryant played in. The Rockies’ worst offensive months have come in August (79 wRC+) and September (80 wRC+).

There’s no denying that a healthy KB would help this team. He had a 125 wRC+ this year, on par with what he’s done every season since 2018 (excluding his subpar 2020 season). However, his WAR would be either 2.1 fWAR or 1.4 bWAR had he played 150 games. That estimates his value would have been somewhere between C.J. Cron and José Iglesias, for reference.

All that’s to say that Kris Bryant very obviously isn’t the reason they aren’t competing. They are a sub-.500 team with him in the lineup and would remain so had he been healthy. This team needs many pieces to jump into an area where they’re competitive, which will require about a 20-win improvement.

And if the plan is to run it back next season (which it sounds like it is) they could potentially be without:

• José Iglesias
• Carlos Estévez
• Alex Colomé
• Chad Kuhl
• José Ureña

With the biggest losses being Estévez and Iglesias, that’s a good chunk of players that had considerable playing time in 2022 that will be gone. It’d point most teams towards a rebuild and opportunities for players like Ezequiel Tovar to get a full season in the majors under their belt.

But this is the Colorado Rockies. And if Schmidt’s comments are telling us anything, they won’t go down that road and instead just ask their players to play better because why not. So if you’re wanting change in 2023, don’t expect it. That’s not the Rockies way.

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