Tyler, that’s a great question. Let me start with a reality check. Because of Coors Field and baseball at altitude, I don’t see the Rockies ever having a top-10 pitching staff. A top-10 offense? For sure, they have done that several times before.
As for what’s important, right now, the priority has to be upgrading the pitching. There were too many games lost last season when the starting pitching was so bad that the Rockies really never had a chance. Bad starting pitching sucked the life out of the team. Consider: Colorado starters had a 6.65 ERA. That’s the worst since ERA became an official statistic in 1913. The Rockies were outscored by 424 runs. That minus-424 run differential surpassed the previous modern record of minus-349, set by the 1932 Boston Red Sox.
In the first inning, the Rockies’ opponents scored 142 runs. The Rockies scored 53. Ouch. Colorado’s first-inning ERA was 3.61, and hitters raked them at a .322 clip. Double ouch.