For five years, the Rockies rotation featured what I am going to call “the core.” From 2017-2021, the Rockies depended on three starters who came up through the system — Jon Gray, Kyle Freeland, and Antonio Senzatela — and Germán Márquez, who arrived via trade as a promising 21-year-old in 2016.
The core helped the Rockies earn back-to-back playoff appearances in 2017-18 for the first time in team history and clearly became the foundation to build around. For many of us who thought that foundation was also structured around stars like DJ LaMahieu, Nolan Arenado, and Trevor Story, we were wrong.