Rockies can win if healthy, but time is running out

After four straight losing seasons, averaging 93 losses per year, Colorado Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich isn’t fazed by the big offseason splashes being made by his club’s National League West rivals.

“When you make wholesale changes like the Padres and Dodgers have, there’s no guarantee you’ll be any better than you were before,” Bridich said while watching two of his key players -- Charlie Blackmon and Justin Morneau -- work with Utah little leaguers last week. “It’s not the magic solution that people make it out to be.”

Bridich and his staff have orchestrated an offseason that has been a polar opposite from that of his intra-division contemporaries. With less than a month until the start of spring training, Bridich has added just three players -- Daniel Descalso, Nick Hundley and Kyle Kendrick -- to a major league roster that won 66 games last season. That, combined with the Rockies having several notable pitching prospects not far away from the big leagues, makes it easy to assume that the team is passing on trying to contend in 2015 in hopes of setting itself up for success in the future.

That isn’t the case, according to the first-year GM.

“You have to give credence to what happened last year and the talent that is on our roster,” Bridich said. “We have two players still in their prime and able to play at the top of their game when healthy.”

The problem is, Rockies fans have grown tired of hearing about what could have been in regards to those players. Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez are two of the best hitters in the game when they’re in the lineup, which isn’t often. The star duo has combined to miss 393 games since the start of 2012. Colorado is 78 games under .500 during that time. The recent struggles were enough to finally push Dan O’Dowd, the team’s architect for 15 mostly losing seasons, and co-GM Bill Geivett out the door.

Bridich, a 37-year-old Harvard graduate who had served as the Rockies’ director of player development since 2011, steps into a situation unlike almost any other in the team’s history. Colorado had only two GMs before Bridich and employed most of the same front office personnel for nearly two decades. The changes, which also included the dismissal of longtime executive Jay Alves, seem to have reinvigorated the organization on multiple levels. Similar shakeups with the big league roster seemed imminent -- until recently.

Tulowitzki and Gonzalez have been surrounded by trade rumors since the middle of last season, when the former led the league in almost every offensive category before succumbing to a season-ending hip injury. The latter dealt with a bothersome-but-benign tumor in his left index finger before knee surgery ended a disappointing, injury-riddled campaign. That didn’t stop near-constant reports about large-market teams trying to pry the All-Star tandem away from Denver. Despite their issues staying on the field, Bridich is confident enough in both players getting healthy that he’s “highly, highly unlikely” to deal them.

“We never felt the need to blow things up,” Bridich explained. “I think it’s a misnomer to say that we’re not playing for this year. That glosses over the improvement we expect to see with some of our younger players based on the experience they got last year.”

That young talent is what could eventually get Colorado over the hump once reinforcements begin to assert themselves at the big league level. Nolan Arenado, Corey Dickerson and Tyler Matzek all performed well in 2014, and each player will play a pivotal role for the Rockies going forward.

Arenado won his second consecutive Gold Glove award and was a force on offense in his sophomore season. Along with Tulowitzki, he makes up perhaps the best left side of any infield in baseball. Dickerson did what he did at every level of the minors: hit -- to the tune of a .312/.364/.567 line in 478 plate appearances. And Matzek posted the best walk rate of his entire professional career en route to a 4.05 ERA/95 ERA- in his MLB debut. He ended the year on an eight-start stretch during which he struck out 52 batters in 53⅓ innings and recorded a 2.53 ERA.

Matzek is part of a rotation that is undoubtedly a question mark. Jorge De La Rosa, the staff’s de facto ace, has been solidly above average since fully recovering from the Tommy John surgery he underwent in 2011, but he’ll be 34 on Opening Day and survived on an abnormally low batting average on balls in play last season. Jordan Lyles is just 24 years old but hasn’t proven to be an effective major league starter, posting a 128 ERA- in parts of four seasons.

Then there’s Jhoulys Chacin.

Chacin missed most of 2014 with a mysterious shoulder injury, one that plagued him two years prior. Between the two essentially lost seasons, Chacin put up 5.8 rWAR in 2013. Since his first full season in 2010, Chacin ranks 17th among all MLB starting pitchers (minimum 500 innings) with an 84 ERA-. Chacin is very good, and perhaps one of the most underrated hurlers in the game, when he’s healthy. But, like Tulowitzki and Gonzalez, injuries have been an issue.

“Frankly, [Chacin] knows — it’s no surprise — that he didn’t put in the work that was necessary at this time last year,” Bridich said. That was evident in the results; Chacin stumbled his way to a 5.40 ERA with almost four walks per nine innings and became a non-tender candidate. But instead of parting ways with Chacin, or trying to negotiate a lesser deal, the Rockies gave him $5.5 million in his final year under team control on faith that he’ll get his act together.

“When the front office change happened, he was literally one of the first people we sat down with,” Bridich said. “We basically cut a deal and said ‘OK, this is how this offseason is going to go. We’re going to buy into this and help you and make sure you are doing everything to put yourself in a good spot,’ and he agreed to everything.”

Chacin has kept weight off, something he’s struggled with at times, and his arm is in “great shape,” according to Bridich. The 27-year-old right-hander is expected to be ready for the start of the season. Whether he can remain healthy is a different question, but if he doesn’t, the Rockies might be forced to call upon their minor league system.

Fortunately for the Rockies, in the realm of pitching prospects, they -- like Chacin -- are in better shape than they’ve been in a long time.

Top prospect lists have been surfacing all over the Internet and beyond over the last few weeks, and one thing is a constant: the Rockies are well-represented with promising hurlers. Jon Gray, Eddie Butler and Kyle Freeland -- all of whom were draft under Bridich’s time overseeing the minors -- are considered top 100 overall prospects. With Gray, at least, there’s top-of-the-rotation potential, despite a challenging season in Double-A.

“He’s a year deeper into his career and he was thrown into the fire last year at a tough level,” Bridich said of Gray. “He did some great things and had some struggles that will ultimately be beneficial to him.”

Rockies fans have long heard stories of promising pitching prospects sure to make an impact at the big league level. From Greg Reynolds and Franklin Morales to Drew Pomeranz and Alex White, those expectations have rarely been fulfilled. Part of the reason for that is because those pitchers -- and many others -- failed to harness the beast that is hitter-friendly Coors Field, but the new front office regime vows to do things differently.

“From now on, there will be no fear about sending our pitchers to Triple-A,” Bridich said. Colorado in the past has had many of its highly regarded pitching prospects skip that level, which, in the Pacific Coast League, is known for extreme offensive environments -- ones that can help Rockies pitchers prepare for what they would see in the big leagues, according to Matzek.

“I had enough experience in Colorado Springs throwing at elevation to where I don’t think it’s too much of an adjustment to pitch [at Coors Field],” Matzek said before a game last August. “The ball actually moves a little bit more here but sometimes starting your pitches at a different spot helps.”

The Rockies might always struggle to limit runs in Denver, but they’ve never had an issue scoring their own. Along with Tulowitzki, Gonzalez, Dickerson and Arenado, Colorado received strong offensive outputs at altitude last season from Blackmon, Morneau, Drew Stubbs, and Wilin Rosario. Most of those players did that in full-time roles, either because they were the planned starters or because they were forced to do so.

If the Rockies can remain healthy in 2015, the latter four players could be effectively utilized in platoon situations. Blackmon -- a .296/.347/.454 hitter when facing right-handed pitchers in 2014 -- could platoon with Stubbs (.328/.395/.550 against lefties) in center field.

The same situation applies at first base where Rosario, who has spent the offseason working on a move to that position after a failed three-year stint behind the plate, would be a solid platoon partner to Morneau. Rosario had a down year overall at the plate as a result of injuries last season but still hit .317/.346/.644 against southpaws. Morneau, the reigning NL batting champion, clubbed righties to the tune of a .341/.389/.538 line.

Not unlike many other teams in the league, the Rockies can contend -- as soon as this year, even -- if everything breaks right. But, unlike a lot of other teams, the breaks Colorado receives are most often the bad kind. Injuries and poor luck have become a trend in Denver, a fact that is not lost on Rockies manager Walt Weiss.

“We are at a point where we’ve got to turn it around,” Weiss told Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post during the Winter Meetings in December. “If it doesn’t happen this year, yeah, you’re probably looking at going a different way at that point.”

Colorado has enough talent to complete a turnaround in 2015, but good health and big steps forward from the team’s top prospects are going to have to accompany that talent. Otherwise, the “wholesale changes” Bridich wanted to avoid this offseason could take shape a year from now.

Until then, the Rockies might not be done tinkering with their roster. In addition to the recent signing of Kendrick, Colorado acquired fringe major league hurlers David Hale and Gus Schlosser in exchange for a pair of catching prospects last week. The moves perhaps came in an attempt to prepare for a repeat of 2014, when 15 different starting pitchers -- most of them ineffective -- were used.

“We’re looking to build depth knowing that it’s going to take a village to win,” Bridich said. “That’s how it works for us; it takes 40 to 50 guys in any given season to help us win and then, hopefully, to have success through the playoffs.”

That is a lofty goals for a team that still has weaknesses throughout its pitching staff, but there’s still time.