Commence Rockies Roster Crunch 2017

For the first time in many years, the Colorado Rockies have too many good players and too few spots.

Already this season the Rockies have put players on the disabled list, most recently, Chad Qualls that they would’ve had that player play through in the past. There have been a few other of semi-phantom DL moves including to Mike Dunn, Adam Ottavino and a very short stint by Trevor Story.

These issues—if you want to call having too much talent an issue—are about to be exacerbated by Jon Gray and Tyler Anderson‘s respective returns. Each made rehab starts in the past three days in Triple-A. Both will most definitely come onto the big league roster the question becomes how do you get them into the rotation. That question may be too hard to answer with the Rockies being very coy about their maneuvers and using the disabled list much to their favor. So the question then becomes, ‘not what do they do with seven arms and five spots’ but rather how do they keep all seven in the big leagues.

The makeup of the current Rockies bullpen has only two players that can be optioned and that’s Scott Oberg and Carlos Estevez. The latter is up replacing Qualls, who the Rockies expect to be back by week’s end. Optioning Oberg isn’t an easy call either as he has huge upside and has made some strides—albeit slow ones—as well as, the Rockies have shown a lot of trust in him being the third righty behind Greg Holland and Ottavino. But Estevez probably deserves to be on this roster just as much as Oberg does.

Keeping Gray and Anderson up doesn’t have the easiest of solutions, none of the starters deserve a demotion and German Marquez might move to the bullpen but the club would still need to create a roster spot. This is where Jordan Lyles bummer of a season may cost him. Lyles is on the outside looking in with his production and Marquez can fill Lyles’ role right away if not bump Qualls or Oberg into it.

While the pitching staff is an unmitigated mess of many good options the position players are even tougher.

Ryan McMahon is on the onest of ones and yet there is no spot for him in the big leagues. Take the lineup of Ian Desmond in left, Charlie Blackmon in center, Carlos Gonzalez in right, Tom Murphy catching and Mark Reynolds at first base. This leaves Pat Valaika as the lone right-handed bench bat. While McMahon does play the infield, hinting that he does indeed throw right-handed, he bats lefty. The Rockies aren’t going to move catchers Tony Wolters or Murphy, let alone Raimel Tapia who is finally come into his own at the show. Alexi Amarista isn’t going anywhere either. So this leaves the Rockies with the question of, do you demote Valaika who has earned his spot to push up McMahon?

None of these moves even factor in that Tapia is up here replacing an injured Gerardo Parra or that the highly-touted David Dahl has yet to play a game in 2017. With everyone healthy, it’s hard to say exactly how Tapia fits into the fold let alone McMahon.

And there are even more guys at Triple-A that should portably be in Denver. Dustin Garneau has proved to be a big league capable backstop while several bullpen pieces and two more position players have clamored for a spot this season. But this is what happens when you’re club is 20 games over .500 with a deep farm system, you have too many good players and too few spots.

A projected roster for the Rockies assuming health for next week:

On paper, it’s a six-man rotation but in reality, it would be five with moving parts. Estevez would continue his yo-yo every time someone DL’d and Qualls would be in the bullpen.

Assuming full health this is what the roster should look like in late July:

I used the DL in this full health scenario as a shuttle in the bullpen for Estevez and DL moves.

All in all, the Rockies are in pretty good shape.