FanPost

Why the offensive offense will fix itself organically, provided we re-sign Jonathan Lucroy

The 2017 Rockies offense was bad.

Duh. We know this already. On the year, the team produced a wRC+ of 87. That's really, really bad. For comparison, there have been six seasons with a worse team wRC+: 1993, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2015. That's the inaugural season, four seasons that were part of the black hole to start the century, and the year we traded Tulo. Outside of two players, not a lot went right. Carlos Gonzalez had the worst season of his career by a mile. Our big free agent signing flopped dramatically. Our pair of young catchers produced a 49 and -80 wRC+ on the year, and yes that is a negative number in there.Our prized young outfielder, the co-owner of the all-time longest hitting streak to start a career, did not see the field all year. The strikeouts... oh, the strikeouts! 2017 saw the two single player seasons with the most strikeouts in team history with Trevor Story and Mark Reynolds.

So when I way that the offense will improve organically, your first reaction might be "Well, duh! It kind of has to!" and you would be right to think so. Instead, I'm going to say that we need to sign exactly one position player to fix everything. We can have one of the best offenses in team history without doing much of anything. No need for Giancarlo Stanton, or even the Abreu/Hosmer/Santana trio that has been discussed ad nauseum.

Pre-Arbitration Players

In 2017, we had high hopes for pre-arbitration players. Indeed, it's likely that our pre-arbitration starting pitchers were the only reason we were any good at all, but the contributions we received from position players was downright pitiful. On the whole, we received 0.4 fWAR from all pre-arbitration position players combined. The only positive contributors were Trevor Story (mostly from defense) and Pat Valaika. Purely from an offensive standpoint, not a single one of our pre-arbitration players was even league average, with Valaika leading the pack at 92 wRC+. Nobody else broke 81.

In 2018, we get to look forward to a bunch of exciting young players. David Dahl will be healthy until he isn't. Trevor Story, Raimel Tapia and Pat Valaika will have another year of experience. Ryan McMahon will be ready for the big leagues. Christian Adames and Steven Cardullo will not be in a position to see any time of significance. Hopefully, neither Tom Murphy or Tony Wolters will be our starter (more on this later). All of this should add up to something on another stratosphere from 0.4 fWAR. If it doesn't, things have gone catastrophically wrong on a level not seen since June 13, 2013.

But, as we know, there are only so many at bats to go around. So where will these at bats come from? Glad you asked.

Addition by Subtraction

Carlos Gonzalez suffered through his worst year ever in 2017. It was painful to watch and saddening for many long time fans. He ended up with 534 plate appearances and a wRC+ of 84. He accumulated -0.2 fWAR.

Mark Reynolds had a wonderful first half, but faded drastically are the end of the year. He ended up with 593 plate appearances, a 104 wRC+, and 0.8 fWAR. After July 10, he produced a 82 wRC+ and -0.3 fWAR.

Both accumulated a very large number of plate appearances. Both were major contributors to our problematic offense in 2017.

Neither is likely to return and get anywhere near the playing time they did last year.

CarGo's plate appearances particularly will see a drastic upgrade in production, and the team has to do absolutely nothing to make it happen. To replace Reynolds' plate appearances, we need one of two things to happen: a successful transition to the big leagues for Ryan McMahon, or a rebound from Ian Desmond. This means that the team already has an in house plan A as well as an in house plan B. The chances of both plans failing are real, but the team needs two specific players to both fail, lowering the risk drastically.

The Catcher Situation

The catchers at the top of our depth chart aren't looking so great. Tony Wolters and Tom Murphy combined for -0.6 fWAR in 2017. If this is who they are, and I think it is, then two things are true: if this is our catching situation on April 1, this team is in serious trouble; and any upgrade at all is worth their WAR plus 0.6.

This presents an excellent opportunity for the Rockies to upgrade their offense drastically in one fell swoop. Jonathan Lucroy, after his trade to Colorado, produced 63 points higher in wRC+ than Tony Wolters, and a full 192(!) points higher than Tom Murphy. A full season from him would drastically reduce the plate appearances for both.

Here's something else to keep in mind: our last five years' team wRC+ are 87, 97, 87, 94, 87 in order. They fluctuate wildly from the best in team history (2014) to bottom feeders, and it's in a zig zag pattern. Now this is by no means predictive, but our does demonstrate that it's entirely possible, and not even unlikely, for the team's offense to flip it's production from year to year - without a drastic change in personnel.

Sign Jonathan Lucroy. Let the kids have their shot. Wave goodbye to the poor performers. Do these things and watch the problem fix itself.


Eat. Drink. Be Merry. But the above FanPost does not necessarily reflect the attitudes, opinions, or views of Purple Row's staff (unless, of course, it's written by the staff [and even then, it still might not]).