Fantasy baseball drafting patterns can act as a massive crowdsourced opinion poll. Every season, millions of people participate in drafts where they select the players they think will play well that season. The majority of those draft selections are recorded and publicly accessible in the aggregate.
Some skillsets are more valued in fantasy than in reality (hitters who steal a lot of bases for example) and some less (strong defenders), so this shouldn’t be used as a serious method of determining real-life
player talent. The sheer number of people contributing to the data each year, however, does make it an interesting means of assessing public perception of talent.
At a glance
FantasyPros collates the average draft position for every player from each of the most popular fantasy platforms to create an overall industry average ADP (Average Draft Position). I’ve taken the past ten seasons of Rockies that were within the top 500 players picked in their given season and generated the chart below:
A quick look confirms some things we all already knew:
- Opinion on the overall talent of the Rockies has declined noticeably over the past decade.
- The Rockies have not fielded anyone perceived as an elite level player since Trevor Story in 2021.
- The general public doesn’t think the 2026 Rockies will be very good.
That being said, I do think there are a couple less obvious insights that can be gleaned from this data.
Rock bottom
The decline appears to have tapered off. Coming into each of the past three seasons, the overall number of fantasy-relevant Rockies has remained relatively static.
The front office spent this offseason attempting to raise the floor by bringing in capable veterans to plug holes, but the only additions from this offseason that rank within the top 500 of ADP are Willi Castro (302.6) and Jake McCarthy (437). While the team may be marginally better from a depth perspective, the fantasy playing public doesn’t think it’s enough to move the needle.
If there is a silver lining, it’s that there is likely a lag between actual talent and perceived talent. For example: fantasy ADP would indicate that 2019 was the highpoint of the past decade for the Rockies when, in reality, it was the year that their previously competitive team fell apart. It wasn’t until the following season that ADP trends started catching up to the real-life downward trajectory.
It’s possible, though optimistic, to think that a similar thing could happen on the way back up.
Little year-over-year staying power
Since 2022, the Rockies haven’t had more than one player reach the top 100 ADP in any season. None of those that have reached that mark have done so again in any other season for the Rockies.
- 2022: Kris Bryant joined the team with big expectations of how he’d perform at Coors reflected by an ADP of 61.4.
- 2023: No Rockie was picked in the top 100 on average.
- 2024: Nolan Jones was almost 150 spots better than the next best Rockie with an ADP of 53.8.
- 2025: Brenton Doyle rocketed up to an ADP of 73 (over 200 spots better than he ranked in ‘24).
- 2026: Hunter Goodman has taken the lone Rockies top 100 spot at 72.4.
What’s more, Ezequiel Tovar is the only player to have had an ADP of 250 or better each of the past three seasons. Everyone else who has reached that mark at some point has also dipped below it within the same timeframe.
We already knew the Rockies have struggled to find and maintain any all-star caliber talent recently, that’s not news. Speculatively, however, this recent track record of players looking like flashes in the pan may mean that future Rockies that perform well could be viewed with skepticism.
Conclusions
All told, most of this shouldn’t come as a surprise to people following the Rockies. The 2026 Rockies will probably be bad. As it turns out, most people agree.
There is, however, something to be said for backing up an anecdotal sense of what the public believes with some actual hard data.
Why Paul DePodesta thinks he can fix the Rockies | ESPN
Alden Gonzalez sits down with Paul DePodesta and digs into what his plans for the organization are. Much of this will be familiar to folks who have followed the team closely this offseason, but there are still a number of interesting and revealing anecdotes. The penultimate section on their plans for pitching in particular was worth the time of the read all on its own.
As they have every season since 2022, the Athletic is polling it’s readership on a single simple question: Are you optimistic about your team? They will then compile the results of this question for fans of all thirty teams and generate what they call the “Hope-O-Meter.” I’m especially interested in what that looks like for the Rockies after this transformative offseason. Their previous high water mark came in 2022 when 17.2% of respondents were optimistic.
Effectively Wild Episode 2453: Season Preview Series: Dodgers and Rockies | Fangraphs
As part of their yearly series previewing all thirty MLB teams each spring, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley talk with Patrick Lyons. The questions asked in this series are always an interesting look at what folks who follow baseball, but not specifically the Rockies, know about the team heading into spring. The Rockies preview segment begins at the 1 hour 30 minute mark.
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