This story was excerpted from Thomas Harding’s Rockies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The Rockies’ 2022 plan didn’t involve outfielder Yonathan Daza being their leader in batting average and second in OPS heading into the season’s final days. But Daza had his own idea.

“Obviously, it’s uncomfortable,” said Daza, who was expected to be mainly a defensive replacement. “But I’m a guy that works hard, stays focused and helps the team any way that I can. I feel I’m proving myself as a player.”

Daza took a .303 batting average into his 111th appearance -- Saturday night’s second contest of a six-game, season-closing series against the Dodgers.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Daza said. “I’ve done .300 every year in my career in the Minor Leagues. It’d be nice to do it in the big leagues. But my goal is to help the team every day.”

Much can be said about what went wrong for the Rockies -- who planned to dominate at home and hit enough road homers to make up for the expected dip in other offensive performance -- by the fact that Daza went from a defensive reserve to one of the team’s offensive leaders. But it also shows that Daza didn’t accept limited expectations and excelled when playing time came his way. From his Sept. 6 return after a dislocated left shoulder that cost him 22 games to Thursday night in San Francisco, Daza batted .320 with seven doubles, a triple and a home run.

Daza understands that there is value to hitting balls harder. He increased his muscle mass last offseason toward that end, and expects to grow in the slugging categories.

The Rockies are expected to pursue a proven center fielder in the offseason. But Daza, who exhausted all his Minor League options before breaking in last year (.282 in 107 games), has made himself hard to keep off the field.

“The step forward is that he has done it for a full season against all that good pitching,” Rockies manager Bud Black said. “He led off the game [Thursday] against a guy who is leading the National League in strikeouts [the Giants’ Carlos Rodón]. So he’s proven he can get hits, and base hits, against Major League starting pitchers, Major League bullpen arms. It’s an on-base percentage of .350 -- a lot of that is average, but the goal of an offensive player is to get on base.

“His challenge has been, in the last couple years, to get in the lineup, and he’s done what he’s capable of doing. He’s answered that challenge, which for a lot of players doesn’t happen.”