San Francisco Giants 2017 Preview of NL West: Colorado Rockies

4 of 5

Sep 28, 2016; San Francisco, CA, USA; Colorado Rockies starting pitcher Tyler Chatwood (32) delivers a pitch during the first inning against the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park. Mandatory Credit: Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports /

Under the Radar Player

A lot of the young prospects the Rockies have could be considered “Under the Radar,” but the rest of the league has been taking notice of their farm system for a while now. They’ve attracted plenty of attention to their prospects in Gray, Anderson, Tapaia, Story, and Dahl. The one guy that doesn’t get a whole lot of credit is Tyler Chatwood.

Tyler Chatwood was pretty good for the Rockies last year, with his overall numbers being affected positively by how good his road splits were. Chatwood is a “Pitch to Contact” type pitcher. In Coors, that doesn’t go over very well. His overall season numbers came in at 12-9 with a 3.87 ERA in 158 innings. At first glance, not bad. Now take a look at his splits:

Home: 6.12 ERA, 78IP, 1.64 WHIP, 4.33 FIP
Away: 1.69 ERA, 80IP, 1.11 WHIP, 3.70 FIP

That’s pretty crazy! If I’m Chatwood, I can’t wait to go sign somewhere that’s not Coors Field. However, he’s still quite underrated. Chatwood will be in their rotation this year. If he can learn to strike a few guys out, or minimize the power of contact made on his pitches at Home, we could really see some great numbers from Chatwood. He’s underrated, and nobody really appreciates the way he works. So this has to be our under the radar player for 2017.