Friday Rockpile: What does Brody Brecht bring to the Colorado Rockies?

Colorado Rockies news and notes for Friday, July 19, 2024

When the Colorado Rockies drafted University of Iowa pitcher Brody Brecht as the 38th pick in the MLB Draft, he tweeted this:

Okay, this is the kind of content we at Purple Row are very here for.

Mac Wilcox wrote a quick analysis on Sunday, and I wanted to follow up on some of the ideas laid out in his article.

What can you tell us about him?

The 21-year-old (he’ll be 22 in September) is 6’4”, 235 lbs., and grew up in Ankeny, Iowa, where he attended Ankeny High School and was a multi-sport athlete (football, baseball, and track). He finished high school as Iowa’s Gatorade Player of the Year in baseball. (He finished his season with a 0.57 ERA with 126 strikeouts.)

Even though he could have gone pro in the 2021 MLB draft, Brecht turned the pros down. Instead, he committed to the Hawkeyes to play both football (wide receiver) and baseball.

He redshirted in football as a freshman and saw little playing time as a sophomore (nine passes in 11 games). His baseball, however, was cooking.

As a freshman, he made 17 appearances out of the bullpen, and moved into the rotation as a sophomore. That season, he led all D-I pitchers with a .143 batting average against. Add to that, he also struck out 12.7 per nine.

Brecht’s way forward was clear, but making the choice was hard.

“It was definitely the toughest decision I’ve had to make in my life,” Brecht told Jonathan Mayo. “Football is and probably will be my number-one love. It’s always what I wanted to do when I was a kid, just go play football. To give that up, or to chase something that I think I can be great at was definitely a tough decision for me that I had to make.”

He continued to improve in 2023, making 16 of his 17 appearances as a starter. In 77 IP, he recorded a 3.74 ERA with 109 strikeouts and 61 walks.

That’s also the year he threw his fastest pitch to date:

He was a bit uneven in 2024.

In 78.1 IP, he earned a 3.33 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, allowing 36 runs (29 earned). He gave up only three home runs, struck out 128 (37.2% K%), and walked 49 (14.2% walk rate, a career low). He also hit 12 batters. That translates to a .165 batting average against and a 14.7 K/9.

Brecht told Mayo that part of his second-half change came from working with a mental skills coach:

“Honestly, it was all mental approach,” Brecht said. “I started working with a mental performance coach named Brian Cain and he really changed the whole way I go about executing a pitch and committing to a pitch at a time. His big things are intention and execution. The only thing you can do as a pitcher is control executing one pitch at a time. That’s the only thing you should be worrying about.”

Two points are in order here.

First, there’s some debate in baseball about drafting players who devote themselves solely to baseball while bypassing other sports. (One interesting note from RockiesFest was that of prospects in attendance, only Jaden Hill had played another sport.) Some believe that playing in multiple sports allows players to develop a different skillset.

Second, in the Day 1 media availability, Marc Gustafson, Senior Director of Scouting Operations, said this:

You can say he has a fresh arm, but at the end of the day, [Brecht is] a guy that had some football in his background, and he wasn’t truly on the circuit, if you will, throwing a whole bunch of pitches and maybe going to that extreme fatigue level at a younger age.

Gustafson added:

He’s first-round talent, and we’ve got him at pick number 38. So, holy cow, what a get for us. We’re happy with it. We can’t wait to roll up our sleeves and get to work, and he’s equally excited as well.

The Rockies, then, see his time spent playing other sports as reducing hours on his pitching arm, and they’re eager to work on the mechanical issues.

Sounds intriguing. How’s the stuff?

It’s good, if a bit uneven.

Here’s MLB Pipeline:

When he’s on, Brecht’s fastball and slider are comparable to those of Paul Skenes, the No. 1 pick in last year’s Draft. He can sit at 96-99 mph and touch 101 with his heater, which has explosive running action and superior shape to Skenes’ fastball, though Brecht doesn’t locate his nearly as well. All that said, his best pitch is a slider that parks at 87-89 mph and peaks at 91 with plenty of horizontal and vertical action.

See for yourself:

There were questions, however, about Brecht’s development with the Hawkeye staff, both in terms of his mechanics and his pitch usage. For example, he threw more sliders than fastballs. That decision didn’t help him develop fastball command.

His splitter remains a work in progress.

Because he pitches from a higher release point and three-quarter arm slot, Brecht induces ground balls. (Sound familiar?) As Blake Street Banter’s Tyler Paddor puts it, “Brecht may be the first pitcher the organization has had to combine such groundball inducing qualities with elite velocity.”

The stuff is real. Gustafson said, “The fastball is real.” And the slider, Gustafson said, is “dirty” with “some teeth to it.” When Brecht is timed up, the slider is “unhittable.”

The question, now, is whether the Rockies can continue Brecht’s development.

Vice President and Assistant General Manager of Scouting Danny Montgomery thinks they can.

We have Zooms, and we talk with these kids a lot. We always talk about him breaking down his mechanics and the things of pitching [and] when he may be out of sync, what is he able to do? What’s he not doing? And he really spoke extremely well about it.

Montgomery also likes Brecht’s physicality.

For a guy that’s just so physical, body control, does all the little things that you want to see as a pitcher in our league with a guy that’s big and physical like that. He should be a tight end in the NFL right now. But everything’s going to translate to our league. It’s just as Gus mentioned, he’s just a young on-the-mound guy that throws extremely hard with a very, very good slider. We’ve got to harness a little bit of command and control, and he’ll be fine.

For another opinion, here’s Mario Delgado Genzor, Purple Row’s own in-house pitching evaluator:

******* LOVE this pick. Go for the ceiling for once, thankfully. Brecht has a borderline 80 grade slider and has been up to as high as 104 in the past. Also has a solid splitter. The fastball plays down and his command/control are well below average at the moment, but it’s still frontline starter stuff and a jolt of arm talent and upside to a system that really needed it.

I trust Mario in these matters.

Can you tell us something cool?

I can.

You may access his opendorse page here if you’d like to arrange, say, a birthday greeting for someone.

Closing thoughts

There’s no doubt about it: Brody Brecht is one of the most exciting picks the Rockies made in the draft.

The question now is whether the Rockies can help him take that next step.

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This week on the internet

The next time you’re riding the train at DIA, be sure to listen for Gold Glove finalist Ezequiel Tovar.

Very here for it!

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Looking forward to 2025

Yesterday, the Rockies announced their 2025 schedule, and they picked a pretty awesome way to do it.

What’s your favorite rendition? I’m with Kyle Freeland’s Baltimore Oriole.

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“I really think it’s just the beginning”: Brody Brecht and Trey Yesavage on climbing into the first round | FanGraphs

This piece is vintage Michael Baumann: Smart analysis with the sharpest metaphors of any writer in baseball. Brecht discusses at length the mental adjustments he’s made.

Doyle Rules! | Purple Row

Just a reminder that we’ve got some Brenton Doyle swag via Breaking T. Order from this link, and Purple Row makes a small commission.

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