Some rough outings overshadowed what was a pretty decent season
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. 34, Tyler Kinley, -0.3 rWAR
At the end of the 2023 season, we discussed how important Tyler Kinley figured to be in Colorado’s bullpen going forward.
Well, that was…sort of true in ‘24.
See, it’s true that the Rockies relied on Kinley – in fact, he appeared in more games than any other pitcher (64) and collecting 12 saves, the team-high and a personal best mark. That’s good! The issue is that, like much of Colorado’s relief corps, Kinley weathered his fair share of storms throughout the season.
The 33-year-old posted a 6.19 ERA, the highest in his seven-year MLB career. In fairness, Kinley ended the campaign better than he started, as particularly-brutal April and June outings inflated his numbers (a 16.20 and 8.71 ERA in those months, respectively).
He was much more consistent in the second half of the season, and most of the damage came in the form of rough individual games, rather than stretches. For example, in a stretch from the end of July to the end of August. he put together 13-straight outings of one run or less allowed (12 of those being scoreless) before a tough, four-run outing against the Marlins ballooned his stats again.
Overall, Kinley’s season followed the formula of hot streak, big inning, hot streak, big inning. The majority of his appearances were fine, but the veteran found himself susceptible to some crooked numbers more often than he’d like.
So what caused the issues? It was his fastball, which was beat up to the tune of a .349 opponent batting average. His primary pitch, meanwhile, was his slider, and this pitch saw far better results as opposing hitters could only muster a .200 batting average against.
Despite throwing it almost twice as often as his four-seamer, Kinley’s slider kept hitters off-balance and remains a plus pitch. The right-hander has also started working in a changeup, which actually did not get hit once (he only threw it 42 times so it’s a small sample size, but hey).
If he can hone this third option, he’ll have a legitimate one-two punch with which to baffle hitters. A slider that generates whiffs at a 41.3% rate paired with a changeup that gets swings-and-misses 66.7% of the time? Now that’s something to be excited about.
At the end of the day, Kinley is still a solid reliever and certainly one of the best on Colorado’s staff. Entering the last year of his contract, he’s going to continue to be an integral part of Bud Black’s bullpen, and a successful start to the season could make him a target for competitive teams at the trade deadline.
Either way, Tyler Kinley will be someone to watch in 2025.
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