A look at the standings on the morning of April 27 show the Colorado Rockies in last place. In other news, water is wet. Or, is it? The Rockies may be in last place, but their 13-16 record would put them tied for third in the National League East and alone in third in the American League Central. They currently have a minus-11 run differential, which is better than the likes of the Phillies, Mets and Astros. They're currently on a three-game winning streak after sweeping the Mets and are 6-4 over their last 10. They took two of three from the Dodgers in Coors and nearly did the same thing against the Padres, if not for allowing San Diego to become just the fourth team in the history of Coors Field to come in and win a game 1-0. What they're doing is beginning to get some well-deserved attention:
I want to dig into the Rockies' surprising competence, because this has fantasy implications. We know the axioms when it comes to Rockies: avoid the pitchers when at all possible, stack the hitters when they travel to Coors, even if it's more Coors Light these days, and simply avoid the bullpen. Yet I
A look at the standings on the morning of April 27 show the Colorado Rockies in last place. In other news, water is wet. Or, is it? The Rockies may be in last place, but their 13-16 record would put them tied for third in the National League East and alone in third in the American League Central. They currently have a minus-11 run differential, which is better than the likes of the Phillies, Mets and Astros. They're currently on a three-game winning streak after sweeping the Mets and are 6-4 over their last 10. They took two of three from the Dodgers in Coors and nearly did the same thing against the Padres, if not for allowing San Diego to become just the fourth team in the history of Coors Field to come in and win a game 1-0. What they're doing is beginning to get some well-deserved attention:
I want to dig into the Rockies' surprising competence, because this has fantasy implications. We know the axioms when it comes to Rockies: avoid the pitchers when at all possible, stack the hitters when they travel to Coors, even if it's more Coors Light these days, and simply avoid the bullpen. Yet I find myself with both Chase Dollander and Victor Vodnik on a roster with both in my lineup while Brenton Doyle sits on my bench. I know I'm not the only one looking at the Colorado pitching pool from time to time either, but the Rockies do indeed look competent after years of futility. In short, Bill, strange things are afoot at Coors Field on the corner of Circle & K Street.
| Offensive Stats | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Walk Rate | 6.7% | 7.9% |
| Strikeout Rate | 25.9% | 25.1% |
| Stolen Base Success Rate | 69.0% | 68.4% |
| Out of Zone Swing Rate | 31.4% | 34.7% |
| Zone-Swing Rate | 68.5% | 68.2% |
| Out of Zone Contact Rate | 49.3% | 54.1% |
| Zone Contact Rate | 83.1% | 85.9% |
There are marginal improvements here in areas where I thought I would find some more noticeable improvements. The improved walk rate would seemingly be a by-product of the trend around the league, as that rate remains north of 9.7 percent league-wide so far this season. There have been some improvements by the hitters in terms of their plate discipline and in-zone contact, but again, nothing really jumps off the page here.
At the player level, this success is happening despite some underperforming players. Ezequiel Tovar is doing his thing in the field, but he's been a complete disaster at the plate, hitting .200/.236/.305 through his first 110 plate appearances this season. Brenton Doyle has also been slow to rebound from last year with a .208/.274/.273 line through 84 at-bats, while Kyle Karros has either walked, struck out or grounded out this season, with a .188/.333/.263 line in nearly 100 plate appearances. The offense has been carried by Mickey Moniak (168 wRC+), Hunter Goodman (130 wRC+) and Troy Johnston (116 wRC+), who is tied for the team lead in RBI with fellow youngster TJ Rumfield.
Let's look at the pitching:
| Pitching Stats | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Earned Run Average | 5.99 | 4.07 |
| WHIP | 1.58 | 1.37 |
| K% | 17.2% | 20.3% |
| BB% | 8.7% | 8.3% |
| K-BB% | 8.5% | 12.0% |
| BABIP | .323 | .296 |
| Average Against | .291 | .256 |
| First Pitch Strike % | 60.5% | 60.4% |
| Swinging Strike Rate | 9.8% | 11.2% |
| Contact Rate | 79.4% | 76.6% |
| Stolen Base Rate | 80.4% | 83.3% |
The pitching came into the season the butt of many jokes. The signings of Michael Lorenzen, Tomoyuki Sugano, and Jose Quintana were lambasted and treated like a rebuilding dynasty team drafting arms which would help them get better draft picks as well as meet innings mimimums. Lonrenzen and Quintana have been rather ineffective, but Sugano has pitched effectively through five starts with surprisingly good ratios. Chase Dollander always had the talent, but until now, was just a road streamer. He has flipped that script this season while working as a bulk pitcher behind an opener most outings, with 39 strikeouts and just nine walks in 32 innings of work while scattering three home runs. The club has used nine different pitchers as the starter in games this season while using several pitchers as openers. Brennan Bernardino, Juan Mejia and Jimmy Herget have each come in as an opener in front of another arm on the team. This strategy was rarely employed by last year's club, as only 12 pitchers even started a contest last season, and 10 of them were used as as traditional starters.
More surprising may be Antonio Senzatela, who, after posting back-to-back seasons with an ERA above 6.50, has pitched to a 0.50 ERA and a 0.67 WHIP through his first 18 innings this season. The move to the bullpen has worked out extremely well for him thus far, and he has even grabbed two saves in matchup situations late in games. The rest of the saves have been shared by Zach Agnos, Juan Mejia, Jimmy Herget and Victor Vodnik, depending on matchups and previous usage. All in all, we're seeing things we rarely saw from the previous version of the Rockies. It has been rather impressive to look at the bullpen usage and see how there is no clearly defined role for any reliever. For example, Juan Mejia threw 45 pitches on Thursday and came back to throw 30 more on Sunday while the Rockies were busy sweeping the Mets in a doubleheader. Agnos threw 67 pitches in the Thursday game and was still able to come in and give the club 11 more in that doubleheader. It cannot be as simple as the coaching staff now calling pitches from the dugout, but it's impressive to see how the combination of actual data usage from the front office to the dugout is helping somewhat normalize things for Rockies pitchers, since they have to deal with a situation at home unlike any other in baseball due to the combination of altitude's effect on breaking balls and the largest playing surface in the league in the outfield.
PItching matchups against the Rockies should not scare fantasy managers as much as they may have in previous seasons, especially with several regulars struggling to find their bats thus far. However, the new influx of data-driven decisions in the front office is working out well on the pitching side, and matchups against the Rockies aren't exactly an auto-lock for lineups. While the club's 4.62 home ERA is a full run higher than its 3.62 road ERA, this is a big improvement from the 6.50 ERA and 5.44 ERA which made up those home/road splits last season. Things will obviously adjust as the weather settles down in Denver, but Dollander has a 98 percent ownership rate and a 56 percent start rate in Rotowire Online Championships. Vodnik is owned in two-thirds of leagues and is started in nearly 40 percent of them, and even Senzatela is owned in 13 percent of those leagues while starting in six percent.
