On one of the strangest Opening Days in all of Colorado Rockies history, they face the Tampa Bay Rays in the New York Yankees Spring Training facility.
There will be a lot about this first series that looks and feels unusual but the Rockies roster looks largely the same.
The first lineup of the season starts with the two best players from a year ago, Brenton Doyle and Ezequiel Tovar, hoping to maintain or even build upon fantastic campaigns and perhaps even enter into All-Star conversations.
Next comes stalwart third baseman Ryan McMahon. He’s been a roughly league-average hitter throughout his career who can run in extremes of hot and cold. He’s followed by Kris Bryant whose history before his time with the Rockies has, apparently, earned him one more shot at the cleanup spot.
A strong finish a year ago earns first baseman Michael Toglia the fifth spot in the order, a nice place for the switch-hitter to potentially show off his power.
The bottom of the lineup features a pair of veterans in Nick Martini (RF) and Kyle Farmer (2B) who played well in the spring but are also likely placeholders for high-end prospects expected to arrive during the season.
The ninth spot goes to one of the prospects who has already arrived at MLB in Jordan Beck. In an incredibly small sample size, his monster minor-league numbers have yet to translate but as long as he is healthy, he will get his chance to improve, and prove, himself.
There is only one surprise in the day one lineup and it is in the sixth slot of the order with catcher Hunter Goodman.
He was ridiculously productive during Spring Training, slashing .444/.500/.822 for a 239 wRC+ and also showed some tremendous growth defensively behind the dish.
Still, Jacob Stallings had a perfectly decent spring, of course, has the much longer resume, and was honestly one of the Rockies’ best players a season ago. Many fans and media fully expected Stalling to be there because of his veteran status, but the Rockies are instead going with a guy who a year ago was primarily an outfielder.
Goodman still has a lot to prove at this highest level and it looks like he may get more chances to do just that in the early going than many of us thought.
If he can ride a hot bat from the exhibition games into the games that count, he can win the starting job outright and gives the Colorado ballclub a potential 30-home run catcher that very few people were expecting.
