2025 ZiPS Projection: Colorado Rockies

For the 21st consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Colorado Rockies.

Batters

Are the Rockies a good team? No, they are not. Are the Rockies even a middling team? Again, no. But things may slowly be getting better. Colorado will still have a lousy offense in 2025, but you can at least see the light at the end of a (very) long tunnel, most obviously when looking at the lineup. No one would confuse the Rockies with the Rays in terms of the cleverness with which they construct their roster, but the utter disaster that is the Kris Bryant signing does appear to have to had some kind of effect on their organizational decision-making. Since the start of 2023, they’ve done some very un-Rockies things. Jumping on the opportunity to snatch up an upside play like Nolan Jones isn’t something this team would have done in the late 2010s. The old Rockies would have found a way to play a mediocre veteran over Ezequiel Tovar, and there’s no way Brenton Doyle would have been given anywhere near enough rope to stick around for a possible breakout. Can you imagine past Rockies teams being patient with fringy prospects like Michael Toglia, giving an opportunity to a veteran journeyman like Jake Cave, or releasing Elias Díaz, a veteran catcher who made the All-Star Game the year prior, to find playing time for a prospect? Now, it hasn’t all worked out, but it at least represents some movement away from the strategies that slammed the competitive window of the last good Rockies team closed. You can’t get out of a hole until you stop digging.

That said, if these projections are accurate, there is still an awful lot to do to turn a better process into better results. It takes a lot of time to restore that ’79 Corvette that’s been rusting in your garage for 25 years. But Tovar, Doyle, and Jones — the last of whom is a good bounce-back candidate after a season ruined by injury — are a good start, and there are actually players here who you can see contributing to the team three or four years down the road. ZiPS is a big fan of Kyle Karros and Cole Carrigg long-term, and it likes Ryan Ritter as an underrated Joey Wendle type. And even if you don’t see it in the bottom-line projection, Adael Amador has a lot of upside scenarios. If the team can keep doing what it has been doing, and avoid any more Bryants or Ian Desmonds, there’s a chance this is a real lineup in a few years. I mean, it had to happen eventually. Rockies ownership isn’t cheap like a John Fisher and it does care about the team. It’s just that the organization’s way of thinking has led to it dropping about half a billion dollars on free agent signings over the last decade (including Bryant) that brought just about nothing to the team.

Pitchers

While the Rockies have found a few cornerstone offensive talents, the pitching isn’t there yet. I believe (but do not have an easy way to check) that this is the first team rundown I’ve done in all these years that doesn’t have a single pitcher with a median-projected ERA+ of at least 100. Even the White Sox have Garrett Crochet (though we’ll see if they still do when that projection set goes).

But weirdly enough, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. While no one crested a 100 ERA+, the Rockiers still have a lot of hurlers in the 90s, meaning they at least have a good selection of better-than-replacement options, which is something. Just to compare them to the White Sox again — sorry Pale Hose, but you’re a comparison tool for lousy teams now — the preliminary ZiPS projections have Chicago with just one pitcher with an ERA+ between 90 and 100. The Rockies have an entire team above that! And there are pitchers with upside, too. Before blowing out his elbow, Germán Márquez was a terrific pitcher, and both Antonio Senzatela and Kyle Freeland have had their moments. ZiPS sees a lot of paths for Chase Dollander to break out, and it has some interest in fringier prospects like Carson Palmquist and Sean Sullivan as well. It won’t be a good rotation, but like the lineup, there are reasons to think they might at least be less depressing than the last few years.

After you get past the amusing notion that the player currently listed as the closer on the depth chart, Tyler Kinley, has one of the worst projections of anyone likely to be in the bullpen, there are some arms of note among the relievers too. While nobody got a 100 ERA+ projection for 2025, four relievers with a reasonable chance to get innings currently hit the century mark when looking at the three-year projections: Victor Vodnik, Seth Halvorsen, Zach Agnos, and Angel Chivilli. Justin Lawrence’s projection is underwhelming, but I think you should get 10 ERA+ points just for being a sidearmer based solely on the cool factor. A few seasons down the line, the Rockies might just find that they built a credible bullpen from scratch. It’d be a welcome departure from their usual approach of chucking money at any reliever with a recognizable name who was good three years ago.

The Rockies are very likely to finish in last place in the NL West again, but it wouldn’t be crazy to see the team approach 70 wins. Hey, sometimes the arrow of time doesn’t move that quickly.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

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Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky.

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