2023 MLB Futures: Best Bets For Colorado Rockies

Colorado Rockies Futures Bets

The 2023 MLB season begins on March 29 and BetQL is your one-stop shop for daily best bets, expert picks, public data, written analysis, and more from the first pitch to the last. Before the season begins, I’m going through all 30 teams, detailing futures to target for every club and touching on some of the most intriguing storylines from around the league.

Three major rule changes will come into play this year, as a pitch timer, shift restrictions and bigger bases will be introduced. The pitch timer helped reduce game length by 25 minutes in the minors last year, shift restrictions increased batting average and decreased strikeouts, and bigger bases not only improved player safety but resulted in more steals and a better product. These changes can and most likely will have major on-field impacts, which makes predicting outcomes even more difficult in 2023.

Let’s take a look at the 2023 Rockies.

Colorado Rockies Roster

I'm not sure that there is any front office in baseball that is as clueless as the Rockies are. I simply don't understand what their plan is for the future. After the Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story and Charlie Blackmon years where the team looked like they were a contender, they decided to sell off most of their assets in order to rebuild, or so we thought. Instead of tearing it down to the studs, they decided to sign Kris Bryant and keep an aging Blackmon, despite the rest of the roster being in shambles. That led them to a pathetic 68-94 record last season, last in the NL West. This is a team that is in one of the toughest divisions in baseball that features the Dodgers and Padres, and they are going nowhere fast. Terrible contracts, a lack of young talent, and an offseason that featured almost no hope for fans is all too familiar for one of the most embarrassing franchises in sports.

The rotation will feature the same group from last season that got shelled: Germán Marquez, Kyle Freeland, Jose Ureña, Austin Gomber, and Connor Seabold. This rotation is probably one of the five worst in the sport, and there is zero reason to beleive it will get any better. The bullpen doesn't seem to be that inspiring either. Daniel Bard, Pierce Johnson, Dinelson Lamet, Lucas Gilbreath, Justin Lawrence, Brent Suter, Nick Mears, and Jake Bird are the listed options. No one in that group besides Bard gives much inspiration. Bard closed out 34 games last season, and if this organization was smart, they would have traded him for a good return last season.

The lineup, as I have mentioned previously, is a mess of random players. Ryan McMahon and Brendan Rodgers are solid young players, and Kris Bryant has obvious talent and can be a real difference-maker if he can actually stay on the field. Other than those guys, It’s hard to say anything is really a strength of this roster. Taking a look at Fangraphs’ Depth Charts projections, they have almost every position ranked as the worst in MLB. Ryan McMahon has the best overall projection, but he’s one of just a few guys on this roster that is likely to produce at an average rate. There are actually teams that are totally rebuilding right now that have better projections than this Rockies team, such as the Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds. Yonathan Daza is probably a bottom three center fielder in baseball, and Elias Diaz has to be the worst starting catcher.

If the lack of offseason moves tells any story at all, it's that this is not a team that wants to contend for anything this season. Everything is just a mess, and this is going to be one of the worst teams in the league.

Colorado Rockies Best Bets

Under 67.5 regular season wins (-110, BetMGM) seems like a no-brainer here to me. They are telling you by doing absolutely nothing in the offseason that they are trying to lose because they have to know what a disaster this team is. Last season, here are just a few of their ranks in key stats: 9.9 launch angle (lowest in MLB), pitching staff allowed 1516 hits (worst in MLB), .272 average allowed (worst in MLB), 41.9% hard hit rate (worst in MLB), 89.5 exit velocity (worst in MLB), 5.39 runs allowed per game (worst in MLB), 59.6% first pitch strike rate (2nd worst MLB).

All of this adds up to a team that is going to be quite terrible, and they have done nothing to improve it. Coors Field will be another factor here, as they need to launch the ball up in the air on offense and limit fly balls on the mound, two things that they've been unable to do.