Welcome to the 2020 edition of Ranking the Rockies, where we take a look back at every player to log playing time for the Rockies in 2020. 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. 16, Joe Harvey: 0.1 rWAR
What if I told you that Joe Harvey was the best pitcher in the 2020 Rockies bullpen? What if after you wrote me off as some sort of lunatic I had numbers to back it up? After all, he had a 2.89 FIP, best on the team, and a 0.90 WHIP. That's pretty good no matter how you slice it. Are you ready, like Dr. Strange at the feet of The Ancient One, to have me teach you?
Well, if that were the case you'd be sadly disappointed. Those numbers above are true, and they are enough to help Harvey rack up 0.1 bWAR. But there are bullpen arms ahead of Harvey in this series, and deservedly so.
More to the point, Harvey faced just 14 batters in 2020, which is just over a tenth of what bullpen stalwarts like Yency Almonte and Carlos Estevez faced. So while he allowed just three hits and no walks in 2020, he also managed just two strikeouts.
So, no, last year's big trade deadline acquisition didn't do much for the Rockies in 2020. He spent the first part of the season at the secondary camp at Metro State before he got called to to the big club. He made his season debut on August 10 and his final assistance on August 20, finishing it the rest of the season on the injured list. The Rockies were 0-4 in games in which Harvey pitched.
So unfortunately there isn't a lot to say about Joe Harvey's 2020 season, which is why I tried to juice it up at the beginning. In fact, there's so little to say that I imagine a few years from now many of us will have forgotten he even spent time in a Rockies uniform, even if he remains a viable bullpen arm waiting in Triple-A for the 2021 season.
So let's close this out with a little discussion. Who was one player who played for the Rockies and always surprises you when his name is brought up?
Or, maybe, who is your favorite otherwise anonymous player in Rockies history?