Friday Rockpile: Colorado governor jokes as Rockies still haven’t found ways to capitalize on altitude

Colorado Rockies news and links for Friday, January 31, 2025

On Thursday, the National Women’s Soccer League officially announced Denver as home to its newest expansion team. The new team’s ownership group unveiled their dreams and hopes for their 2026 debut, and politicians stated the importance of the city’s newest sports team.

Notably, Colorado Governor Jared Polis took the mic and stated, “We have this theory in Colorado that because we train at a mile high, we have a competitive advantage across competing at sea level and other places.” Polis then smiled and said, “The Rockies disprove that; nevertheless, we’re excited to bring women’s soccer to mile high.”

Being so excited for the new team, I eagerly watched the press conference before laughing out loud as the governor poked fun at the Rockies, who unlike the Broncos, Avalanche, and Nuggets, have never won a championship.

Polis, a big Rockies fan, delivered a tough-love truth. The Rockies haven’t figured out how to capitalize on playing half their games at 5,280 feet. It’s possible that baseball presents the hardest challenge compared to other sports due to pitch movement that affects pitchers and hitters alike. But, after 32 seasons, it seems like there would be some revelations about how to benefit from the elevation.

Certainly, the Rockies have tried to make adjustments to counter the altitude. From finding and developing ground ball pitchers and keeping balls low in the zone to programming pitching machines to simulate how pitches break at altitude and sea level, players constantly try to make adjustments. What’s missing is turning adjustments into an advantage that translates to winning.

It can be hard to know what happens in the Rockies front office in terms of strategy and philosophy, in the performance lab in Scottsdale, Ariz., and in the Research & Development department when the Rockies are less than forthcoming with strategic plans. However, at Rockies Fest on Jan. 25, panelists in a few different sessions, from players to R&D, talked about their approach to playing at Coors Field.

R&D’s role in altitude evaluation

When moderator Ryan Spilborghs asked Colorado’s director of R&D Brian Jones about the difference in pitches at Coors Field vs. other stadiums, Jones explained that the difference is monumental, giving the example of a fly ball in Denver vs. San Francisco. The movement would be incredibly noticeable to the human eye and a similar percentage change could be applied to pitches.

“How that pitch is moving, how much it moves right to left, up, down, that’s going to change to a relative percentage, as you might see on a fly ball, but just really condense,” Jones said. “It’s only 60 feet six inches, so every aspect of the game is going to change to a certain degree, and the key for us in our department is, how do we communicate that information so that it’s useful for the players and it’s something that they can take advantage of, as opposed to being concerned about or being fearful about those changes.”

R&D also uses the data it collects to help in profiling future prospects and possible free agents to see if they could be successful at Coors Field. Zach Rosenthal, the Rockies vice president and assistant general manager of baseball operations and assistant general counsel, said his philosophy is to see how R&D’s data compares to what scouts are seeing.

“I think it’s actually best when it is different than what our scouts are seeing,” Rosenthal said. “I think it forces us to ask the question, why? And really sit down and figure out, Is there something that we’re not doing right with the data, or something that we need to evaluate a little bit different, or is there a different type of conversation that we need to be having with our scouts?”

More than once Rosenthal emphasized R&D’s role of cultivating relationships and building trust with the front office, coaches at every level, scouts and players. Without that, the data is useless because it won’t be used. Rosenthal said he believes R&D has those relationships and it leads to fruitful disagreements.

“I think that’s the biggest challenge for us, but also it leads to really, really good discussions and good answers on players that might fit for us, that may not fit somewhere else,” Rosenthal said.

Pitching and hitting adjustments

In a panel with starting pitchers at Rockies Fest, Ryan Feltner and Austin Gomber touched on pitching at Coors Field. Feltner has made 28 starts at Coors Field, 15 of which came in 2024. The 28-year-old righty explained how he learned last season that he can capitalize on the home field advantage because some hitters are looking to take advantage of the thin air.

“Sometimes you can read that in terms of the mentality … just being able to read the hitter’s intention,” Feltner said. “Sometimes they’re a little more aggressive, and I might give those guys a few more changeups than other guys.”

Gomber has made 55 appearances (46 starts) at Coors Field as a Rockie in the last four seasons. He said it gets easier to pitch at Coors Field the more he does it and he’s changed his approach as he’s gained experience.

“I’ve noticed myself having an easier time throwing strikes here, but also making more mistakes here over the plate. Stuff just doesn’t get to the side, maybe how you’re used to getting so that’s kind of, I kind of transferred my game here to being a little bit more selective,” Gomber said. “… I’m not as worried about falling behind in counts or stuff that you worry about when we go to out on the road. … I’ve, over the years, kind of fine-tuned the way I attack hitters here differently than I do on the road.”

Just as pitchers have to learn and adjust to different pitch movement on the road and at home, hitters do the same on the receiving end. The ball might carry further at elevation, but it could be harder to get a barrel on it, or, even worse, readjust to road movement. This really shows up when, like Sam Hilliard pointed out, three of the Rockies division opponents are at sea level. Hilliard said adjusting to the road-to-home changes is intense at first, but gets better with preparation.

“All sudden, you’re playing in L.A. and guys’ breaking balls might be just breaking a little bit sharper. Their stuff is moving a little bit more, and that’s something that’s hard to deal with if you’re not trying to prepare for it,” Hilliard said. “You get in the box and you see for the first time, you’re like, ‘oh no.’ So we try and do work on that in the cage and try and prepare as best we can. We have some high-tech machines hitting sheets that we can program like, get exactly what we’re going to see in the game, and you try and do it out on the field before batting practice and stuff like that.”

It’s clear that the players are doing the best they can to succeed at Coors Field and R&D is offering data. How much it works and how much the organization is creatively working outside the box to make altitude an advantage remains the question.

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