Predicting the Colorado Rockies 2024 team award winners

The beginning of the baseball years calls for team projections, player projections and all sorts of hopes and expectations. We get award predictions, power rankings and everything that gets us excited about the season coming up. This Rockies team should be an exciting team and, though they won't be in contention for the postseason, hopefully they have a few players in contention to win some awards.

Team Cy Young - Kyle Freeland

In a depleted and inexperienced pitching staff, it is a hometown kid and veteran, Kyle Freeland that will be the best in the rotation. That is not to take anything away from Freeland, however, as he looks poised to bounce back in a big way this year.

Freeland has struggled to dominate hitters, with an underwhelming fastball that has decreased in velocity (when everyone's velocity is increasing). His strikeout numbers have decreased pretty much every year since his really good 2018 season, and he hasn't been able to post an above average season since 2018 (aside from a 2.5 fWAR season in 2022).

This spring, Freeland's velocity has returned to a similar mark as it was in 2018, and this spring he has looked like his former dominant self. Freeland should have a really solid bounce back year, as the Cy Young winner for the Rockies.

Reliever of the year - Justin Lawrence

Justin Lawrence was the second most called upon reliever by Bud Black in 2023. He made 69 appearances and was really solid with a 3.72 ERA. He also put up a really good strikeout rate of 9.4 per nine innings. He throws from a funky arm angle that makes it really hard to elevate against him as evidence of his elite home run rate of .6 HR/9.

With the departures of a number of guys from last year's team, including Pierce Johnson, Brent Suter, Connor Seabold (who combined for 157.2 innings last year), plus a number of other guys who filled in occasionally, there are going to be a lot of innings to cover. Justin Lawrence may not throw more innings, but I expect him to continue to grow. I expect Lawrence to return to double digit strikeouts while cementing himself as the go to, high leverage arm this season that Bud Black can depend on.