The Colorado Rockies have the most underrated lineup in baseball

Hard-hitting research for you: Last year, after four days of the regular season, every National League team that would eventually make the postseason was over .500. Every team that was under .500 after three games missed the postseason. From this, we can infer that the undefeated Braves, Reds, and Rockies are going to the postseason.

This has been An April Baseball Analysis Moment. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Man, I hate writing baseball analysis in April, probably as much as you hate reading it. However, we’ve learned a few things already about the 2015 season:

We’re here to talk about that last one. The Rockies swept a series on the road against the Brewers to start the season. You might think, “Big deal,” but you’re the one who clicked on something with “Rockies” in the headline, dummy. And if you did that, you probably have an idea of what the Rockies did on the road last year. They were 21-60 on the road last year.

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I mean, hold your computer or phone to your nose and just smell that number. Lick the screen and taste it. The Rockies played 81 games on the road last year and lost 60 of them. It’s even worse than that, though. After sweeping the Giants in a three-game series at AT&T Park, the 2014 Rockies were 15-21 on the road -- bad, but a standard kind of bad. After that, they were 6-39. They didn’t win another series on the road until this week.

Let’s not pretend that this is a sign that everything is different. They still have to hit at Coors and then go on the road and face pitchers whose breaking balls actually move the way nature intended. The Coors hangover is the widely accepted theory of why the Rockies stink so much on the road, and it’s definitely an easy theory to buy into. Coors Field messes everything up, humidor or no.

But this is a fantastic opportunity to point something out about the Rockies, something I wasn’t giving them enough credit for in the offseason. When healthy, they just might have an exceptional lineup.

1. Charlie Blackmon - CF
2. Carlos Gonzalez - RF
3. Troy Tulowitzki - SS
4. Justin Morneau - 1B
5. Nolan Arenado - 3B
6. Corey Dickerson - LF
7. Nick Hundley - C
8. D.J. LeMahieu - 2B

It goes six deep before you get to anything close to a below-average hitter, and Hundley might even be average if he’s healthy. Don’t forget that Wilin Rosario is still supposed to hit 30 homers one of these years, defense aside.

When healthy, that’s an outstanding group of hitters.

When healthy, they should be a bunch of up-and-comers, alright.

When healthy.

When pelicans yodel songs of unrequited love, it’s hauntingly beautiful.

Yeah, it’s sort of like that. When healthy, Mark Prior was one of the greatest pitchers in the world. When you affix that disclaimer to the start of a sentence, it’s a good sign that the rest of the sentence is going to be something extraordinarily tough to buy into. The games played in 2014 for the folks up there:

1. Charlie Blackmon - 154
2. Carlos Gonzalez - 70
3. Troy Tulowitzki - 91
4. Justin Morneau - 135
5. Nolan Arenado - 111
6. Corey Dickerson - 131
7. Nick Hundley - 83
8. D.J. LeMahieu - 149

Arenado’s injury was a broken finger on a slide, something that doesn’t exactly suggest he’s injury prone. Still, you can see the problem. Gonzalez has missed huge chunks of the last two seasons and Tulowitzki has missed chunks of the last three. It’s a strong lineup until the good hitters are in the infirmary, at which point it’s filled with hitters who are probably outclassed at Coors Field before they have to deal with the extra burden of going on the road with a Coors hangover. That’s why the Rockies lost nearly 100 games last year. It’s why they’re not projected to finish higher than fourth place by almost anyone.

But of all the teams off to an unexpectedly fast start, this is the one that intrigues me. If Hundley and LeMahieu can hit -- even just a little below the league average -- this could be the best lineup in baseball. Yes, that needs a “when healthy” disclaimer, but pretend it doesn’t. Pretend you’re given a glimpse of a future where none of those players up there have to miss anything more than a week or two.

If the Rockies stay healthy, can they beat the Dodgers and the rest of the NL West?

Probably not. Not as currently constructed. We like to laugh at Kyle Kendrick being the Opening Day starter, but the laughing obscures a larger truth: No, seriously, Kyle Kendrick started Opening Day for the Rockies. And won! But we’ll assume that 0.00 ERA will go up and he won’t be a rotation revelation. The Rockies don’t have the pitching to contend right now, not unless they have two or three young pitchers transform into rotation stalwarts. The Rockies have developed just a handful of pitchers in their franchise history, so it seems like it’s asking a lot for them to develop two or three right now.

However, if the Rockies stay healthy, they can stay close to the top of the NL West. They can be annoying and hang around. They have the lineup to do that. And while we’re here in April wondering what the Rockies could get for Tulowitzki, we might look up in July and wonder which pitchers would transform them into a legitimate threat at the trade deadline.

The Brewers have already figured this out, but the Rockies have the most underrated lineup in baseball. They were supposed to be also-rans, except they have half of the roster-building business down. It’s a little too easy to sell the Rockies short because of the whole “pitching” thing. They’re a team without balance right now, but at least there are weights on one side of the scale. That makes them a little more interesting than the typical team picked to finish in the bottom of their division. If they can stay healthy.

If they can stay healthy ...

★★★

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