Tuesday Rockpile: A letter to Santa for the Colorado Rockies

Colorado Rockies news and links for Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Dear Santa:

As you prepare to leave the North Pole with your sleigh packed with gifts for good children everywhere, we here at Purple Row wanted to add a few requests for our friends, the Colorado Rockies.

True, they were not a very good team in 2024, but they seem like nice folks, and we’re hoping you can help make them better — maybe over .500! — in 2025.

So, here’s our list.

• Good health — The focus has been on keeping Kris Bryant, the Rockies’ $182 million man on the field — and that request is evergreen — but we’d add the same wish for the pitching staff. Germán Márquez, Antonio Senzatela, and Lucas Gilbreath are all coming off Tommy John surgeries, and we hope they can bounce back in 2025.

Photo by Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Also, for those young relievers who threw so many innings in 2024 [coughs: Victor Vodnik], please have a restful offseason.

We realize asking an entire baseball team to stay healthy is unrealistic (world peace would probably be easier). But these guys getting to play a full season would be a great start.

• A Nolan Jones revival — We’re pretty sure no one was more disappointed in his 2024 performance than Nolan Jones was. In 2025, Santa, it would be great if he could return to his 2023 form — all those dingers, all those stolen bases, all those jaw-droppingly-good throws from the outfield. Plus, watching Jones and Doyle in the outfield is just fun. If the Rockies intend to compete in 2025, they’re going to need some serious NoJo. So we hope you can help with this.
• More Gold Gloves — The Rockies are not a very good team, but we were so happy to see Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle taking home some much-deserved hardware in 2024.

We appreciate that Ryan McMahon keeps getting noticed, but we hope that he — and some other players [coughs: Michael Toglia] — bring home the gold in 2025.

• More dingers — The Rockies lack of offensive power is something we’ve written about a lot over the last few years. As Joelle Milholm recently pointed out, the news is improved on that front. We get that 179 is trending in a positive direction, and we hope for more in the coming season. If Bryant and Jones can stay healthy, if Tovar and Doyle pick up where they left off, and if Toglia continues to swing like he did in the second half, that would be great.
• More kids playing — We’ve been all in on the kids since the beginning, and those feelings have not changed. In 2025, we hope more prospects get their call-ups — and get playing time! (Please, Santa, give Hunter Goodman regular playing time because he has earned it. Plus, he could help with our previous request for additional homers.) We realize that as a team, the 2025 Rockies may not be that much better, but seeing the future arriving at Coors Field would do all of us a world of good.

And if you could find any way to encourage Roki Sasaki to sign with the Rockies, that would be great!

That said, we did want to thank you for the excellent gifts we received in 2024.

That young bullpen has so much potential — may the rest of baseball continue to overlook how good those youngsters are.

Thanks, too, for those excellent draft choices: Charlie Condon is gonna be good, and we are very here for “Snake Farm” pounding over the Coors Field sound system. (Maybe it will be the new “Your Love.”)

Thanks, too, for Charlie Blackmon’s final season. We’ll miss Chuck Nazty, but we appreciated getting to wish him well as he drove that Tundra out of Coors Field.

Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images

It wasn’t the season we wanted, but it also wasn’t without its moments. Plus, baseball is awesome.

This is getting long, and you’re a busy person, so we’ll bring this to a close. Thank you for considering our requests.

Know that when you arrive at 20th and Blake tonight, we’ll be sure to leave you a Helton Burger and some Berrie Kabobs in the Rockies dugout along with some #Coors to take with you for later when you’re done flying through the night. (The reindeer can graze a bit in the outfield before you head into the next part of your evening. Don’t worry about the coyotes in the infield. They’re just cardboard.)

If you’ve recovered by April, we hope you can join us for our Opening Day Breakfast. Purple Row’s 20th anniversary is next year, and we’re excited about it. Hope to see you there!

Sincerely,

Purple Row

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Holiday greetings from the Rockies

The Colorado Rockies sent their seasonal card last week. (Spoiler: It involves Dinger wrapping packages with echoes of Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory.)

Just needed a Lucas Gilbreath cameo. (The Rockies usually call on him for these kinds of things since he winters in Colorado.)

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Needle pointing up for 8 breakout stars of 2024 | MLB.com

One of them? Ezequiel Tovar.

Red Sox signing former Rockies pitcher to minor-league deal | Sporting News

Last week, the Boston Red Sox signed Noah Davis to an MiLB contract, and according to Mike Masala, Davis has been working with the folks at Driveline to improve his game. The Rockies old-school approach to pitching was a bit fit for Davis, but I have no doubt that Andrew Bailey (who discourages the fastball over breaking stuff) has some ideas.

As for Davis, he seems pretty enthused.

Who is baseball’s best baserunner? Statcast’s newest metric tells us | MLB.com

One of the great things about Statcast is that it’s always showing new ways to measure player performance. Last week, David Adler reviewed what we know now about baserunning.

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