Welcome to the 2019 edition of Ranking the Rockies, where we take a look back every player to log playing time for the Rockies in 2019. The purpose of this list is to provide a snapshot of the player in context. The “Ranking” is an organizing principle that’s drawn from Baseball Reference’s WAR (rWAR). It’s not something the staff debated. We’ll begin with the player with the lowest rWAR and end up with the player with the highest.
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No. 30, Noel Cuevas (0.0 rWAR)
Poor Noel Cuevas. That’s really all there is to say here.
Cuevas spent a lot of time on the major league roster last year — 75 games to be exact. However, in 2019 he was limited to just a single game in April in which he had two plate appearances before pulling up lame with a strained left quad. During those two plate appearances, he went 0-for-2 with a groundout to short and reached on an error by Manny Machado. That’s when he pulled up and never saw the major league baseball field for the remainder of the season.
Cuevas played fairly well in Albuquerque, though. He was limited to 60 games, but hit .278/.358/.439 with five home runs in those 60 games. It was a down year compared to his .331/.390/.538 slash from 2018, but some of that could be chalked up to injuries.
Cuevas was designated for assignment on September 3 and was outrighted to Albuquerque on September 6. He’s now, at best, the emergency option of the emergency options.