The Colorado Rockies All-Time Bullpen

The Colorado Rockies have been known for a lot of pretty cool things over the years.

For whatever is made of the ballpark and its impact on stats, nobody denies it is a beautiful place to take in a game. Sure, there has never been consistent winning for the franchise but there have always been a handful of incredible ballplayers to come watch.

And there have been those moments where it all came together and we, on five occasions, have gotten to experience Rocktober.

You could make a long list of what the Rockies are known for and get deep into it before you even considered “great relievers” at all. It is still true that the ‘pen has often been a bugaboo for the boys who play ball in Denver, but it is also the case that those individual seasons of brilliance are almost always accompanied by outstanding work from the relief corp.

When you consider the task in front of them – especially if applying counter logic given to Colorado hitters – the best relievers in Rockies history have been far more impressive than the surface numbers might suggest and than they are often given credit for.

Here are my picks for the all-time Colorado Rockies bullpen.

Huston Street

Street is sadly known for two things during his time with Colorado: Going an entire regular season where he only blew two saves and generally dominated… and following that up by blowing two games in the 2009 NLDS against the Philadelphia Phillies. He even came in 25th in MVP voting that season, though he did not make the All-Star team. Street participated in the midsummer classic twice after leaving the Rockies.

He put up a 134 ERA+ over three seasons in Colorado (a 154 in 2009) and is still third in franchise history with 84 saves despite spending a relatively short time with the club.

Since winning the Rookie of the Year award with Oakland in 2005 through a full decade to 2015, Street was never a below average reliever. It wasn’t until his final season with the Angels that he finally put up a sub-100 ERA+ in 22.1 innings of work. He pitched four more the following year before hanging them up.

Whether it was any of his stints in California or his one in Colorado, Huston Street is the most decorated, and simply the best, reliever to ever don Rockies’ purple.

He gets the nod for our Dream Rox closer.

Steve Reed

If anyone could challenge Street for the title of best reliever in Rockies history, it is probably Steve Reed. Long before there was a humidor in Denver, he found a way to tame, and during one incredible season dominate, Coors Field.

His average ERA+ over five years of 149 – in the mid-90s – is absolutely stunning. Even more mind blowing is his 1995 campaign in which he appeared in 71 games, pitched 84 innings, and put up an ERA of 2.14 for a staggering ERA+ of 251.

(That suggests he was 151 percent better than the league average pitcher that season.)

So why isn’t he the closer on this dream team? Simply because he was never a closer in his career in Colorado either. Like a few other players in this group, he was best and most comfortable as a set-up guy, only stepping in to pick up 15 saves in his half-decade in Denver.

That makes him perfect to bridge the gap to the guy with the best save percentage in team history.

Sadly, Reed was never an All-Star in his career.

Brian Fuentes

The third man who belongs in this conversation about the best ever is Brian Fuentes.

Purely by the numbers, he could even top the list. He spent seven seasons dealing with the dangers at altitude and mostly fared phenomenally. His 144 ERA+ and 115 saves over that time made him an All-Star on three occasions. That sets the franchise mark for saves and reliever appearances in the classic.

So why do I have him in a set-up role and not as a closer? Two words: consistency and traffic.

Fuentes could get ugly swings out of great hitters and would go on some ridiculous strikeout streaks but he often needed them because he had already loaded up the bases with walks and base hits. Anyone who remembers watching him pitch remembers how tense about 70 percent of those 115 saves were. He almost always got the job done but it was almost never comfortable.

This is reflected in his career 1.260 WHIP compared to Street’s 1.066.

His value also fluctuated a bit more than the others. His 2004 campaign saw him produce an 88 ERA+, the worst individual season of the three relievers we’ve discussed, and he famously lost his closer gig in the team’s best season, falling apart in the middle of 2007 before settling down a bit into a set-up role.

But those blemishes aside, Fuentes absolutely belongs in the all-time bullpen and as a fireman at the back-end of it.

Rafael Betancourt

Rounding out a clear Top 4 is the ever-reliable Rafael Betancourt.

Like Reed, he was never counted on as a closer until, oddly, the final two years of his career.

But his 1

88 ERA+ over five years with Colorado speaks for itself. He was the steadiest hand the bullpen tucked into right-center field has ever seen.

The only real negative on his Rockies’ resume has to do with his ultimate value and leverage. Because he was only a primary closer at the very end once Colorado had run out of other options, and because that came during a team when the team had trouble sniffing competitiveness, Betancourt’s overall production gets lost quite a bit more than if he would have done the same thing but in more intense situations.

Still, if our e

xercise here is simply to assemble the most talent and worry less about the specifics, you could easily argue that Betancourt – despite the lack of saves or big moments in big games – is actually the best reliever in Rockies history.

Just make sure you’ve got a game of solitaire on hand for the minute-and-a-half he takes between each pitch.

Bruce Ruffin

Our second of three pre-humidor pitchers, Bruce Ruffin managed something that only Steve Reed (and one other) can also claim: He pitched consistently well out of the Rockies bullpen for multiple years in the mid-90s.

What is perhaps even more impressive is that, like a reliever version of Jorge De La Rosa, Ruffin actually found his groove in Colorado. He had been mediocre to poor in Philadelphia for six seasons and was downright dreadful in 1992 for Milwuakee.

But the next season he put on a Rockies uniform and finished his career with five excellent campaigns of work. In that time, he averaged an ERA+ of 146 and he picked up 60 saves as the go-to backup closer.

The big lefty put up his best season when the Rockies needed it most, posting a 255 ERA+ in 1995 as a huge part of a postseason team.

Darren Holmes

And now we’ve arrived at the other man who managed to tame the 90s. Darren Holmes may be more famous to current Rockies fans for the work he did as pitching coach, helping to usher in a new era of young Colorado pitchers like Jon Gray, German Marquez, and Kyle Freeland.

But he was also an original Rockies who once stood where they stand now. He was never dominant but typically good, an arm that literally any Colorado bullpen over the years would be happy to add to their ranks. He averaged a 118 ERA+ over five years in Denver and secured 46 saves, 14 in 1995.

None of his peripherals will jump off the page at you, maybe one of the more clear signs that success at Coors Field is as much mental as it is physical. But it would probably be worth studying the DNA of Darren Holmes success and doing everything the Rockies can to try to recreate it.

Matt Belisle

Every ‘pen needs a workhorse with a great attitude who can get the job done and doesn’t care about the glory. Welcome to the team Matt Belisle.

I could scour the stat pages and find a few relievers with more sparkling numbers, especially in smaller sample sizes. But none of them would be anywhere near as reliable as Belisle.

He was practically a unicorn in baseball; a middle reliever who made a ton of appearances and the fans were happy to see him each and every time.

He only made 24 appearances in his first season in Denver but averaged 73 a season over the next five, putting up an ERA+ of 117. He led all NL relievers with 80 games pitched in 2012.

And in all those chances, only a handful of times in his career in Colorado did it feel like he had cost his team the game.

Manny Corpas

For the eighth and final spot in our Dream Bullpen, I’m going a big with the heart over the head.

If we were going just on absolute peak and individual seasons, Wade Davis and Greg Holland would both have strong cases to make the squad. But consistency is extremely valuable and rare for a reliever and both showed far too much inconsistency in their time in Colorado.

A similar principle can be applied to Franklin Morales who had his best season as a reliever for the Rockies in their 2009 run but could never recapture the magic.

Apologies go out to Jose Jimenez and Seattle Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto both of whom pitched admirably out of the Colorado bullpen but neither of whom ever truly dominated. The numbers just weren’t quite enough to edge out the competition.

But Manny Corpas closed out the most important games Colorado has ever played and he did so in astounding fashion.

Bursting onto the scene as a rookie in 2007, having pitched fewer than 33 innings at the MLB level, Corpas was thrust into the closer role after a mid-season collapse from Fuentes and somehow managed to dominate from the get-go all the way through the NLCS.

He put up a staggering 2.08 ERA over 78 innings that year, good for an ERA+ of 232 and collected 19 regular season saves and five in the postseason.  He gave up a single earned run over 10.2 innings of work that postseason.

He was never anywhere near as good ever again and was off the team after the 2010 disappointment but if any member of this franchise ever picked the exact right moment to catch lightning in a bottle to help his team win important baseball games, it was Manny Corpas.