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October 14, 2009

Kiss'Em Goodbye

Colorado Rockies

by Baseball Prospectus

Baseball Prospectus' Pre-season Projection: 71-91, fifth place
Actual record: 92-70, second place

Coors Field is an advantage, sure, but this team can play some ball.

Buster Olney of ESPN.com's Take

What went wrong: It's really hard to find much fault in the Rockies' season, other than they didn't achieve the universal goal of winning the World Series. Led by manager Jim Tracy, the Rockies hoisted themselves out of a very deep hole in the standings and were arguably the best team in the NL for the last three or four months of the season. Young Rockies like Dexter Fowler thrived, the players acquired by Dan O'Dowd in the Matt Holliday trade mostly thrived, and pitchers Jorge De La Rosa and Jason Marquis stepped up and had big seasons. And they did all of that on what was a shoestring budget, relative to the rest of their competition; among the eight teams that qualified for the postseason, only the Twins had a lower payroll.

Biggest puzzler on the drawing board: Todd Helton's contract has hung on the Colorado budget like a 10-ton anchor for years; as a result, the Rockies have been diligent in maintaining payroll flexibility—and that means avoiding big-money deals or overpaying players. This means they will probably not be re-signing Marquis, unless he delivers himself unto them on a platter. Third baseman Garrett Atkins is a candidate to be non-tendered. The Rockies have to identify a rotation piece to replace Marquis, but there appears to be a reasonable chance that Jeff Francis will recover and be a productive member of the Colorado rotation next season. Huston Street will be looking for a multi-year deal this offseason, and it will be interesting to see if the Rockies give it to him; typically, small-budget teams like Colorado have avoided significant investments in closers. Moving forward, the Rockies are set up very well, because of the flow of strong talent coming out of the farm system.