Due to the high altitude factor that the Colorado Rocky Mountains bring, pitching has been a struggle for the Rockies for the entirety of the 22 years of their existence. So offense has been heavily relied on in order to get the team to the playoffs. For example, the only NL pennant that the Rockies won back in 2007 featured an offense that produced a batting average of .280 that had hot bats, in which carried the Rockies to sweep the NLDS and NLCS, but because of lack of pitching, they in return got swept by the Red Sox in the World Series (Sox had a team ERA of 3.87). Because of this unfortunate factor that Colorado has always had to deal with, staying healthy on offense is their key to success, but health was an issue when wearing purple and black in 2014.
This past season, the Rockies had numerous amounts of injuries at the plate including: Carlos Gonzalez (70 games), Troy Tulowitzki (91 games), Michael Cuddyer (49 games), Nolan Arenado (111 games), etc. The Rockies rocketed off to a hot start in 2014 though for the first month and a half including a 20-11 record at one point, but then injuries took over. By the end of a ruffed up season the men at Coors Field ended up with a record of 66-96 (28 games behind the first place Dodgers). Despite the Rockies finishing with the highest batting average in the NL, injuries to their key players hurt them, as manager, Walt Weiss, had to shuffle the lineup like a deck of cards. Weiss found a couple young backups that filled the missing roles nicely and hit for high averages, like Justin Blackmon, but the continuance of good hitting was only due to high altitude. The lack of presence from their stars on the field played significant role in plummeting to a .407 win-loss percentage.
Now with the departure of Michael Cuddyer to the Mets, other stars such as Cargo and Tulo will need to stay healthy to be able to lift the team high enough over the lack of pitching obstacle in order to compete in the NL West division for 2015. Staying healthy like the Rocky offense did for the first month and a half of 2014, usually gives plenty of run support to the high ERA of the pithing staff, so in result the NL Wild Card would not be out of reach. In 2015, if Walt Weiss is able to keep a lineup, like the following, together for the whole season, then the Rockies could be looking at 85 wins and a potential wild card spot.
1. Charlie Blackmon 5. Nolan Arenado
2. Carlos Gonzalez 6. Corey Dickerson
3. Troy Tulowitzki 7. Wilin Rosario
4. Justin Morneau 8. DJ LeMahieu
