The 2020 season fizzled for the Rockies in a way that will force some tough decisions. But their long-term plan for prospects — topped by Brendan Rodgers, Ryan Rolison and Ryan Vilade — remains intact. For the most part. They hope.
Those promising, young players will figure prominently in Colorado’s attempt to climb back into contention. So where do they stand? Without a minor-league season, did they fall behind? Is there any help coming soon?
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We talked with The Athletic’s prospects expert, Keith Law, for a look into the Rockies’ farm system and what help it might offer soon and into the future. How does their system look going into 2021?
Note: Conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Brendan Rodgers, the Rockies’ top prospect, now has parts of two seasons in the majors and has yet to break through. Part of this is circumstantial. But how impatient should Rockies fans be right now? On one hand, he only has 37 games at Triple-A. On the other, he’s 24 and has yet to show anything to force his way into a regular role.
Impatient probably isn’t the right word, but it’s fair to wonder what the Rockies’ plan is for Rodgers when they didn’t commit to playing him in a lost season until it was half over, after which he hurt his right shoulder for the second time in two years. It’s time to either give him regular playing time, assuming his shoulder is healthy (and maybe that’s why he looked bad at the plate in the majors?), or move on. I happen to think he can really hit, but he needs to be more selective at the plate to get to that hit tool.
My concern with Rodgers is, we have not seen him doing anything yet that makes you say “whoa!” I can nitpick his defense and strike zone awareness or whatever, but it seems that by now we should have seen something — anything — that reminds us why he was a No. 3 pick. How much should we attach “special-ness” to a prospect? In this age of risk-aversion among general managers, is there room for that wow factor? Or is the primary goal to find high floors more than high ceilings?
He’s already in the system now, so the organization’s approach should be to evaluate what he is rather than what he might have been — he was an elite prospect out of high school, someone who hit everywhere, even against the best pitching his own age, but that’s no longer relevant to what he is five or six years on. He’s hit well enough in the minors, at least for average and power, to profile as a regular at second base, but the Rockies’ system is so full of hitters’ parks that it can mask some hitters’ flaws, and sending him back to Albuquerque in 2021 would waste everyone’s time. He’s not going to improve there, and any stats he posts will be suspect because of the ballpark and altitude.
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A general manager once told me there is no such thing as a pitching prospect, just a pitcher with a small chance to pitch in the big leagues and a big chance of getting hurt before he does. But the Coors Field factor limits how the Rockies can build a rotation. Free agency is a non-starter, so they have to build with draft picks. They’ve done well recently, but how big a risk is it putting all their hope on drafted pitchers?
They did take position players in the first round in 2020 and 2019, so I wouldn’t say they’re pinning all their hope on pitchers, although they have obviously leaned pitching more than hitting with high picks. They’ve had success with college arms, and run into trouble with high school arms, who are just an incredibly risky class of players in the first round. (I wrote about this at some length in “The Inside Game,” but the executive summary is that high school pitchers have the highest failure rate of first-rounders.)
Targeting college pitching is great on paper, but the college pitching crop and the draft have to cooperate. The Rockies will pick 8th in 2021, and in that spot they should have a few good college arms left for them, but that’s not always going to be true in draft position or in the talent available. I’d rather see them draft the best player available in the first round and try to trade for pitching later if they end up with a position player surplus.
That said, how much hope should the Rockies attach to 23-year-old lefty Ryan Rolison? He looked mature in spring this year. And he did well in the Cape Cod League. I might put too much stock in the Cape, but it can be a good testing ground. So far he’s only climbed as far as High-A. How does anybody know what a pitcher can do from the California League? What a brutal hitters’ league.
I’m a fan. Ole Miss messed with his delivery his draft year and I think the Rockies were smart to buy low and believe they could fix him, getting him back online to the plate enough for him to work to his glove side and get right-handers out. He has the stuff to be an above-average major-league starter right now. In a normal world, he would have spent the year in Double A, maybe getting a cup of coffee in September to set him up to join the rotation in 2021.
Minor-league realignment is its own quagmire, but the elimination of the Rockies’ High-A franchise in Lancaster is a win for everyone. You can’t take any stats seriously there, and it’s ruined a couple of pitchers over the years (not Rolison, fortunately). It’s so homer-friendly that you have to disregard the stat line and focus on what scouts saw. Rolison had about a 125-point home/road split in his OBP allowed and the same in slugging allowed. That’s not helpful.
Have you thought much, or heard from teams and scouts, about how this year will hurt young players in the long run? Will we look back in 15 years and see an enormous development gap? Not an easy answer, obviously. You could write a book about this. Literally, of all people, you could write a book about this.
I’ve written a few pieces about player development during the lockdown and at the alternate sites, but the most honest answer I can give you is that we just don’t bleeping know. My best guess is that it’ll hurt more players than not, but some players will seem unaffected because they’re just that talented or used the time away to do something that helps them on the field, and others might step up because a player ahead of them suffers from the time off. I’m trying to stay optimistic and think about, say, young pitchers who were wearing down and maybe headed for serious injury, and then get a full year off to recover. No pitcher really ever gets that opportunity until the injury or damage is already severe.
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The Rockies’ farm system has generally rated toward the bottom of the league in recent years. There’s probably no way this throwaway year changes anything, huh?
Not much. They traded a few decent prospects, but added a potential superstar in Zac Veen and had a strong 2020 draft overall. That doesn’t move the needle much but I’d say they’re slightly better off now than they were last winter.
The Rockies tend to overvalue their own prospects, which makes them gun-shy in trades. It’s like they worry too much about what they would lose and never enough about what they might gain. So it was odd seeing them trade two top prospects — Tyler Nevin and Terrin Vavra — to the Orioles for reliever Mychal Givens. Givens is a nice add and all, but they certainly weren’t immediately needy for a right-hander. The Orioles must have been pretty happy about that trade.
They were, and I thought it was a big overpay in talent. The Rockies have a poor track record in recent years of spending too much, usually in money but this time in prospects, for relief help. I know developing pitching in that system is hard, but you have to create your own relievers. Their strategy hasn’t worked for them.
Your No. 3-rated Rockies prospect, 21-year-old Ryan Vilade, a second-round pick out of Stillwater, Okla., was drafted as a shortstop, moved to third base, and is now playing through instructs in Arizona as an outfielder. In spring, he really did look like a budding Matt Holliday. I guess we should be talking about his bat and let his defense go where it goes?
I guess so. I never thought he would stay at shortstop but I was confident that he’d stay on the dirt. Maybe it’s because they have guys locked in at third and short, and have multiple candidates for second? I know, of that whole draft class, I heard some of the best notes on a player’s instincts and work ethic on Vilade.
Is this the development reality now? More players than not are position-less? Hell, two of the Rockies’ top catchers were drafted as infielders. Is versatility that valuable? I might come to miss the shortstop lifer or the center fielder who gets lost if you ask him to run to left field.
Catchers are funny things — I feel reasonably certain that we have had more successful conversions to catcher, where a player moved back there and turned out to be good at the job, than any other position. J.T. Realmuto was a shortstop in high school. Carson Kelly was a third baseman and pitcher. Tony Wolters was an infielder, as you said, and I think he’s only a major-leaguer because he worked his tail off to become a capable backstop. It makes the drafting of Drew Romo, a glove-first catcher, a bit more of a gamble in my mind, because it seems like it’s easier to move a player back there and develop his defensive skills than take a catcher who’s a huge asset on defense and develop him into an adequate hitter.
As for other positions, though, I don’t think we’ll lose the shortstop or center-field lifer because teams value defense so highly at those positions … but we may lose the player who used to be a good-enough glove at those spots because I think the bar for average has shifted up at both spots. If you have a shortstop who is fringe-average on defense, and you’re trying to contend, you are probably actively searching for a better solution. That’s sort of how it’s always been, but the caliber of major-league players is so much higher than it’s ever been that we’re almost numb to how good it is.
To end on a Rockies note, I suppose, the left side of their infield has two guys you’re not moving or trying to replace (unless they choose to trade one), because they are That Good. But they’ve been searching for a legit center fielder for a while now, which is so important in that ballpark, and maybe that’s where they need to find a conversion candidate to address that need.
(Photo of Brendan Rodgers: Dustin Bradford / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)