Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Team Preview: Colorado Rockies
Baseball is almost here! With an eventful offseason in the books and spring training underway, it’s time to preview all 30 teams in Major League Baseball. With the help of RotoGrinders PlateIQ Premium, DFS ownership trends from Chris Gimino, and our resident Premium MLB guru Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood), we take a look at some information that is definitely interesting and possibly helpful for the upcoming 2019 MLB season.
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Colorado Rockies Preseason Overview
— Vegas Win Total O/U: 84.5
— World Series Odds: 25/1
— Key Additions: Daniel Murphy
Other Noteworthy Players for DFS: Noel Cuevas, Tony Wolters, Raimel Tapia
— Outlook: The Rockies lost D.J. LeMahieu and Carlos Gonzalez, but will be more than fine on offensive with replacement Daniel Murphy (he’ll play 1B) and a cavalcade of bats “built for Coors” (shout out Davis Mattek and Fantasy Insiders). They have lefties (David Dahl, Charlie Blackmon) and righties (Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story) capable of capitalizing on the home field conditions, and all expectations should be that 2019 will feature the usual Coors Field fireworks. Only the uber-loaded Red Sox and Yankees scored more runs at home than Colorado did last season, which helps to justify the rising DFS price tags for the hitters in that park. The Rockies will once again be scoring runs at home in 2019, and we’ll just have to do our best to sort out the game theory associated with the high pricing and ownership that follows.
It’s a very interesting pitching staff that was very impressive in the face of harsh conditions last season. Kyle Freeland was strangely capable of generating soft contact, while Tyler Anderson was busy getting ground balls and German Marquez swinging strikes (12.5%). Jon Gray was an enigma, and according to PlateIQ’s perspective was the best of their pitchers for DFS by the numbers. His ERA tells a different story, but the indicators remain for him to be one of the better DFS pitchers on this team. Playing half your games in Coors field is never fun for any pitcher, and it’s remarkable that the top end of this rotation has found a way to manage it better than most pitchers in team history. We’ll see if they can continue to defy the difficult environment in 2019.
— DFS Ownership Trends: Surprise…The Rockies were only the third-most popular DFS team in 2018 thanks to some aggressive pricing by the sites. Coors Field was still the most popular park, and the lineups fielded by Rank 1 (NYY) and Rank 2 (BOS) surely had something to do with the Rockies minor drop in popularity. Nolan Arenado was the seventh-most popular hitter in baseball, and just signed a massive contract extension. Looks like we have more than few years to come sweating hard on any slate in which we fade him. His popularity isn’t going south any time soon.
Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Notes
— Against lefties at home, Nolan Arenado has a career .485 wOBA and .380 ISO. Only two players have a career wOBA better than .485: Babe Ruth (.513) and Ted Williams (.493). Nobody in MLB history – not even Ruth or Williams – has a career .380 ISO. Playing Arenado against a lefty in Coors is the DFS version of doubling down on 11: you just do it, and you worry about the results later.
— German Marquez during the second half at Coors Field: 1.74 ERA and a 37.5% strikeout rate. Prior to Marquez, the lowest K% in any half at Coors was 29.4% (Jon Gray, 2018). Prior to Marquez, no pitcher had EVER had a sub-2.00 ERA in any half of baseball at Coors. The idea that you can NEVER use a pitcher in Coors may be overstated, but let’s not overreact to one half of baseball: Coors still wins.