Justin Lawrence’s sweeper is great, but it wasn’t enough to carry him through the 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. 53, Justin Lawrence: -1.7 rWAR
Justin Lawrence entered 2024 with high expectations. Following an impressive third season in MLB, there was a healthy amount of excitement around his continued progression and potential evolution into a true wipeout closer. With the understanding that he’d be called upon to finish games off in April, the Lion of Panama was poised to cement himself as the late-inning option for Colorado.
It didn’t go down that way. A downright brutal second outing of the season seemed to give a glimpse at what would turn out to be a year of struggle for J-Law.
It seemed Lawrence just wasn’t fooling anyone this time around. The right-hander tallied 11 hits per nine and a career-high 1.4 home runs per nine, illustrating the ease with which opposing batters were seeing his pitches. Maybe most worrying is his strikeout ability, which — sitting at over 9 strikeouts per nine each of the last three seasons — fell to just below seven this year.
A glance at Lawrence’s Baseball Savant page tells the story: his signature sinker-sweeper combo is still moving, but it’s ending up in the middle of the plate.
Courtesy of Baseball Savant
Want some good news? His sweeper is still a plus pitch, garnering just a .182 opponent batting average against and exhibiting a good amount of vertical movement. The issue is his sinker, which was absolutely hammered for a .393 batting average against, and was actually the pitch he threw more often (about 30% more, in fact).
In looking at his repertoire, we see that Lawrence’s two pitches exist in stark contrast to each other: a sweeper that’s still got a ton of life, and a sinker that’s just sort of sitting there. So what’s to be done?
Well, the easy answer would be for him to only throw his excellent sweeper, but we all know that’s much easier said than done. Maybe he should consider adding a third “bridge” pitch, as my colleague Mario suggested a couple years back. I’m not pitching coach, of course, but it seems something will need to be done to return Lawrence to his prominent spot amongst last year’s relief corps.
That’s especially important as we look to next season, because J-Law isn’t going anywhere. He’s in his arbitration years and figures to be just about a lock in the Rockies bullpen of 2025. While it’s not impossible for Colorado to trade the Panamanian hurler — especially with so much team control remaining — I’d say it’s far more likely that he will be looked upon to make adjustments and be involved in the relief game next year.
And that’s the thing — he’s still got plenty of time to bounce back and be the late-inning star that some have viewed him as. Lawrence is just four years into his big-league career and can absolutely become “that guy” for Colorado. He’ll need to do it soon though — the Rockies seem to be deciding on their core for the future, and with Lawrence entering his age-30 season, he’s no longer a young cub looking for an opportunity. He’s definitely got the stuff to be a part of the future, but it will be on the “Lion of Panama” to roar back to life next season.