The second-year center fielder built upon his successful rookie season in every possible way.
Welcome to the 2024 edition of Ranking the Rockies, where we take a look back at every player to log playing time for the Rockies in 2024. The purpose of this list is to provide a snapshot of the player in context. The “Ranking” is an organizing principle that’s drawn from Baseball Reference’s WAR (rWAR). It’s not something the staff debated. We’ll begin with the player with the lowest rWAR and end up with the player with the highest.
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No. 1, Brenton Doyle: 4.0 rWAR
When Brenton Doyle emerged onto the scene in 2023 and seized the throne in center field, he made quite the first impression.
Doyle stole 22 bases and hit ten home runs in his rookie campaign, all while playing some of the best center field defense in the depths of Coors Field that Rockies fans had ever seen. He was statistically not only one of the best outfielders in the league, but one of the best defenders in the league overall with 19 defensive runs saved and a 24.5 ultimate zone rating. He even set a record for the fastest throw from the outfield in the Statcast era.
Doyle became the first National League rookie outfielder and second Colorado Rockies rookie to take home a well-deserved Rawlings Gold Glove Award. He was also the first pure center fielder to take home the award in franchise history.
Photo by Isaiah Downing/MLB Photos via Getty Images
However, there was still work to be done for the lightning quick center fielder from a small Division II school in West Virginia.
Doyle showcased obvious contact and power skills in 2023 with his 16 doubles, five triples, and ten home runs. However, he finished the season hitting just .203/.250/.343 and a 45 wRC+. If he could become even a league-average hitter, his career in Major League Baseball could be quite long indeed.
“If the bat comes around, Doyle could quickly become one of the best players on the roster,” surmised MLB.com’s Manny Randhawa.
Doyle had already started adjusting his swing mechanics in real time during the 2023 season, which is no small feat. During the off-season he dove head first into a program with personal hitting coach Kevin Lachance to further overhaul his swing.
“The biggest thing was trying to minimize the movements in my swing,” Doyle said. “That allows my body to stay quiet and it allows my eyes to work a little bit better. Also, when things aren’t going well — and that happens all the time in this game — if your swing is really simple, it’s easier to make little adjustments. You don’t have to work so hard on it because there aren’t so many moving parts to fix.”
Doyle even used medicine balls wedged “between his hands, his bat, right shoulder, head and neck to keep his hands high and his head steady.”
The work Doyle put in during the off-season paid off in spades. The improvements were staggering.
Photo by Rachel O’Driscoll/Colorado Rockies/Getty Images
In 2024 Brenton Doyle hit .260/.317/.446, showcasing an improvement of over 50 points in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. His wRC+ skyrocketed up to 97—one of the biggest improvements from 2023 to 2024 in the league.
Doyle also cut down on strikeouts, decreasing his strikeout percentage from 35.0% in 2023 to 25.4% in 2024, adding only two more total strikeouts in 172 more plate appearances.
Finishing the season with 24 doubles, 4 triples, 23 home runs, and 30 stolen bases, Doyle became the first Rockies center fielder to accomplish a 20/20 season and is already in the team’s top 15 for career stolen bases (tied with Garrett Hampson and Ellis Burks with 52) after just two seasons.
At the same time, Doyle continued to be one of the league’s premier center fielders. A fearless defender who never met an outfield wall he couldn’t conquer, Doyle made spectacular catch after spectacular catch throughout a long and arduous campaign.
“Every single ball that’s hit remotely close to me, I feel like I have a good chance at getting,” Doyle told Manny Randhawa. “I’ve run into the wall plenty of times and I’ve had a couple of injuries while running into the wall. People ask me all the time, ‘Is this injury going to stop you from playing like you are?’
“And I’m like, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Doyle’s 11.4 ultimate zone rating was the best among all MLB center fielders and second-best among all MLB players in 2024. He was also worth an impressive 16 outs above average and 14 defensive runs saved. He took home the Fielding Bible Award for center field and won his second Gold Glove. He’s the first Rockies defender to win back-to-back Gold Glove Award since Nolan Arenado did so in 2019 and 2020.
Brenton Doyle took a tremendous leap forward in 2024 to become a legitimate threat at the plate. Already one of the best center fielders in franchise history, Doyle was without a doubt the Rockies’ most valuable player in 2024 and earned every single one of his four wins above replacement. If he can continue to play like he has—and continue to learn, adjust, and improve—he could eventually become one of the team’s all-time greats.