The B-Rod era in Colorado is officially over
Welcome to the 2024 edition of Ranking the Rockies, where we take a look back at every player to log playing time for the Rockies in 2024. The purpose of this list is to provide a snapshot of the player in context. The “Ranking” is an organizing principle that’s drawn from Baseball Reference’s WAR (rWAR). It’s not something the staff debated. We’ll begin with the player with the lowest rWAR and end up with the player with the highest.
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No. 10, Brendan Rodgers: 1.0 rWAR
Brendan Rodgers was drafted third-overall by the Colorado Rockies in the 2015 MLB Draft, and he lived up to the hype throughout his minor-league career until he finally broke the major-league roster on May 17, 2019. In his first season, Rodgers played just 25 games due a season-ending shoulder injury suffered in June. And that was just the beginning of what would be an injury-plagued career for the second baseman.
Rodgers broke the Opening Day roster in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, but still spent a month on the IL with a right shoulder capsular strain. In 2021, Rodgers played 102 games and hit an excellent .284/.328/.470 with 15 home runs. In 2022, he had a breakout year, playing 137 games and slashing .266/.325/.408 with 13 homers. He topped our Ranking the Rockies list that year with a 4.3 rWAR, and also won his first-career Gold Glove award. Unfortunately, though, that was the peak of Rodgers’ career.
During spring training 2023, Rodgers suffered a left shoulder dislocation and torn labrum on March 6 and would not rejoin the Rockies until July 31. He played just 46 games, slashing .258/.313/.388 with four homers. It was impressive given the extent of the injury, but it still hung some injury concerns over Rodgers’ head heading into 2024.
Rodgers overall had a fairly healthy 2024 season. He suffered a hamstring injury in June, but overall played 135 games and slashed 267/.314/.407 with 13 home runs. And obviously, he’s ranked 10th on this year’s RTR list, so something went pretty well for Rodgers in 2024. But if you do a deeper dive, you’ll see that his K% jumped up to 24.5% — the highest since 2020 — and his BB% still hovered around 6% for the second-straight year. In a year where the Rockies struck out a franchise-high 1617 times… striking out nearly one-quarter of the time just won’t cut it (although he trailed Ezequiel Tovar, Ryan McMahon and Brenton Doyle among qualified Rockies’ players).
Defensively, Rodgers suffered a -3 OAA and -4 DRS in 2024. Comparatively, he posted a 22 DRS and 3 OAA in 2022. The Rockies tried Rodgers at shortstop occasionally during his first three years, but it was obvious that he was second-base specialist so they moved him there full-time in 2022 and it paid off with the Gold Glove.
Brendan Rodgers hasn’t been a bad player for the Colorado Rockies over the past five years. In fact, he’s been fairly good (albeit streaky). But between his injury concerns and not quite living up to his full third-overall pick potential, the Rockies decided to move on at the end of the 2024 season and non-tendered him in favor of veteran infield utilityman Kyle Farmer.
The B-Rod era is officially over in Colorado.