The veteran righty spent the majority of the year in Albuquerque
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. 37, Geoff Hartlieb, -0.4 rWAR
One of the main tasks for the Colorado Rockies following the 2023 season was improving their pitching depth. While waiting for the youngsters to break through, the team typically adds arms with some big-league experience on minor-league deals with the intention that they could turn to them as needed. One of their first of the offseason was signing veteran righty Geoff Hartlieb to a minors contract.
Hartlieb, 31 in December, spent parts of four seasons in the Majors with the Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Mets and Miami Marlins since debuting in 2019. He joined the Rockies with the hope that he could return to the big leagues and be a helpful bullpen piece. While he spent the majority of the year in Triple-A Albuquerque, Hartlieb made a brief five-game appearance with the Rock Show in June.
In need of a fresh arm in the bullpen, the Rockies designated Matt Carasiti for assignment and selected Hartlieb on June 8. He made his Rockies debut the next day in St. Louis, pitching two innings of relief and allowing one run on two hits with a walk and two strikeouts. Over his next two appearances, he would throw 2 2⁄3 innings, giving up just one earned run on three hits. He appeared to have everything working and could carve a space out for himself in the pen for the rest of the season, but then he ran into some trouble.
On June 17 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Hartlieb entered in the seventh inning and last 1 2⁄3 innings, allowing four runs on four hits with three walks. His final appearance for the Rockies came on June 21 when he threw three innings of relief against the Washington Nationals where he gave up three runs. He was designated for assignment the next day as the team selected Austin Kitchen (who was DFA’d the day after that in favor of activating Kyle Freeland), and sent to Albuquerque where he remained.
In Triple-A, Hartlieb made 41 relief appearances where he pitched to a 5.47 ERA in 54 1⁄3 innings. He struck out 56 while walking 24 with opponents batting .272 AVG against him which isn’t terrible in the Pacific Coast League all things considered. In his final 19 games, Hartlieb had 15 scoreless appearances having given up three or more runs in three other appearances.
There are things to like about Hartlieb as a reliever on the surface like the fact his fastball can reach 97 mph while his other pitches play in the low 90s with a slider at 87 mph. However, he has tended to have issues with walks and he doesn’t generate much swing and miss as evidenced by the .950 OPS against him by big league hitters this season. His 39.4% groundball rate is decent, but his 30% flyball rate was concerning and he ultimately fits the bill as an extremely average and unexciting reliever who just ate a few innings for the Rockies in the summer when they needed him.
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