The Iron Man did improve down the stretch, but it might’ve been too late
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. 17, Jake Bird: 0.3 rWAR
Jake Bird had an outstanding 2023 season where he finished ninth on our Ranking the Rockies list, and posted career highs in appearances (70, including 3 starts) and innings (89.1). He entered 2024 with high expectations, similar to Justin Lawrence. In 2023, Bird was the Iron Man (also the man who fought Bryce Harper).
In 2023, like Lawrence, Bird fell back down to Earth.
The 28-year-old made only 35 appearances and pitched 40 innings — less than half of his 2023 numbers. That said, Bird did spend substantial time on the injured list, dealing with right elbow inflammation in May and a groin strain in June. He was also optioned and recalled six separate times between June 10 and September 20.
Bird was just unable to find his wings in 2024.
The biggest takeaways here, other than the sharp differences in pure usage, are the big increase in WHIP, HR/9 and BB/9. One thing that helped Bird in 2023 was the sharp decline in BB/9, which then ballooned to a career-high in 2024. His WHIP also skyrocketed from 1.354 to a career-high 1.700. The HR/9 was brought back up to his 2022 debut season numbers, but still an entire 0.5 increase from 2023.
Bird did improve after his final stretch in late August. Over his final 11 games, Bird only allowed three runs on 15 hits through 15 innings. Considering he rode the I-25 roller coaster, it’s certainly possible that Bird was able to figure some things out that will serve him well in 2025.
Relievers are always quirky, especially with the Rockies. If a reliever has a good year, like Bird and Lawrence did in 2023, they tend to be featured (and overused) in the following season. Then, they crash back the following year after that. It’s certainly possible that happened to Jake Bird in 2024, and we will certainly see how he’ll bounce back in 2025 — with the Rockies or otherwise.