The Colorado Rockies will play a double-header tomorrow to wrap up their series against the New York Mets after an unexpected off-day thanks to a rainy day in Queens.
Since there was no baseball game today, I thought we could play a little game instead. It’s time to remember some guys who played for our Rockies.
In this exercise, the goal is to come up with a lineup of players for your favorite team—in this case, the Rockies—comprised of players who posted between 20 and 40 wins above replacement (WAR)
according to Baseball Reference. This spread cuts out the team’s Hall of Fame players like Larry Walker (72.7 bWAR) and Todd Helton (61.8 bWAR), but still includes players who overall had strong careers.
The other stipulation is that players selected must be retired. For the Rockies, that means that DJ LeMahieu—their all-time second baseman—isn’t currently on the list.
For a team as young as the Rockies I found it both interesting and challenging. For older teams there are certainly a lot more players to choose from. However, I ultimately was able to come up with a full 10-player lineup, including designated hitter. For this lineup, I did not necessarily take into account how they performed with the Rockies, especially since they usually only played one or two seasons here. Instead, I went with their career WAR.
Lineup:
- Catcher: Charles Johnson, 2003 (22.6 WAR)
- First Base: Andrés Galarraga, 1993-1997 (31.7 WAR)
- Second Base: Mark Ellis, 2011 (33.5 WAR)
- Third Base: Jeff Cirillo, 2000-2001 (34.6 WAR)
- Shortstop: Juan Uribe, 2001-2003 (22.6 WAR)
- Left Field: Ron Gant, 2001 (34.1 WAR)
- Center Field: Charlie Blackmon, 2011-2024 (21.5 WAR)
- Right Field: Carlos González, 2009-2018 (24.5 WAR)
- Designated Hitter: Justin Morneau, 2014-2015 (27 WAR)
I decided to take things one step further and come up with a five-man starting rotation and a four-man bench.
Rotation:
- LHP Mike Hampton, 2001-2001 (28.2 WAR)
- RHP Pedro Astacio, 1997-2001 (25.6 WAR)
- LHP Denny Neagle, 2001-2003 (22.4 WAR)
- RHP Bill Swift, 1995-1997 (20.7 WAR)
- RHP Ubaldo Jiménez, 2006-2011 (20.4 WAR)
Bench:
- INF Marco Scutaro, 2012 (22.1 WAR)
- UTIL Howard Johnson, 1994 (22.2 WAR)
- OF Matt Kemp, 2020 (21.6 WAR)
- INF Ronnie Belliard, 2003 (20.8 WAR)
Of course, the methodology has some flaws. For example, this list of Rockies has no backup catcher. Chris Iannetta failed to make the cut with just 14.9 career bWAR. The WAR criteria also makes building a bullpen impossible. I discussed it with a few friends, and we decided that for a bullpen we could select players that had at least 10 career WAR. In true Rockies fashion, this leaves us with a bullpen that has only one lefty.
Bullpen:
- RHP LaTroy Hawkins, 2007/2015 (17.8 WAR)
- RHP Steve Reed, 1993-1997/2003-2004 (17.6 WAR)
- RHP Adam Ottavino, 2012-2018 (14.9 WAR)
- RHP Houston Street, 2009-2011 (14.5 WAR)
- RHP Dave Veres, 1998-1999 (12.9 WAR)
- RHP Greg Holland, 2017 (12.4 WAR)
- RHP Curtis Leskanic, 1993-1999 (12.1 WAR)
- LHP Brian Fuentes, 2002-2008 (10.5 WAR)
Overall this gives us a complete “remember some guys” 26-man roster! What names are you surprised to see? Who are you surprised to see not make the cut? Let us know in the comments. Feel free to come up with your own lineup or roster for either the Rockies or a different team as well!
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