Thursday Rockpile: The few seeds planted by Bill Schmidt that are now bearing fruit

Letting Hunter Goodman catch

Hunter Goodman was always a bat-first prospect. He had raw power and was able to access it in games. The question about him as a prospect was just where he would play because most evaluators did not see his glove as viable behind the plate.

Going into 2025, the Rockies made the decision to let him focus on being a full-time catcher. He responded by breaking out both offensively and defensively while catching more games (104) than he had in the rest of his prior professional career combined (103). He’s unlikely to ever contend for a Gold Glove to pair with his Silver Slugger award, but Goodman has turned himself into a perfectly fine defensive catcher.

What’s more, he has hit better when catching both last year and so far this year. In 2025 Goodman sported a 130 wRC+ on days he was catching compared to 85 when he was the DH. So far in 2026, it’s been even more exaggerated at 165 as a catcher and -59 as a DH. The previous regime took a chance on letting him catch in a way not everyone would have, and it has absolutely worked out for the best.

Making the Nolan Jones trades

The Cleveland Guardians front office has long been seen as shrewd given their ability to remain consistently competitive despite preposterously low payroll allowances from ownership. Despite that, Bill Schmidt was able to get the better end of not one but two separate Nolan Jones trades with them. The net results of the two deals have a pretty obvious winner.

The Guardians received:

• Juan Brito hitting decently in the minors while seeing his prospect stock drop due to defensive limitations, followed by a poor MLB debut where he’s hitting just .171/.244/.244 so far in limited at bats this season.
• A .211/.296/.304 Nolan Jones 2025 season followed by a demotion to AAA.

The Rockies, on the other hand, got:

• A 3.8 fWAR season from Nolan Jones in 2023.
• A roughly replacement-level Tyler Freeman based on a good but essentially empty batting average (.281 in 2025 and .294 in 2026) combined with poor defensive ratings.

Taking a flyer on Mickey Moniak

Just before the 2025 season, Mickey Moniak was released by the Los Angeles Angels. He signed with the Colorado Rockies just two days later and has been arguably their second most-productive hitter (behind Goodman) since. That’s not to say he’s a superstar living up to his well-documented draft position, but a 110 wRC+ in 2025 and 137 so far in 2026 is absolutely a starting-caliber bat.

Moniak has found a (probably temporary) home in Colorado despite having been available for negotiations with any other team in the league. Schmidt saw the potential and wasted no time bringing Moniak on board, and that has made the team more watchable in the short term and could potentially bring in prospect talent via trade in the long term.

Conclusions

It’s telling that DePodesta and company did not make a flurry of trades when they came in this offseason.

For everything that Schmidt’s tenure failed at in terms of infrastructure and development, they did show an ability to identify talent beyond just the obvious high draft picks of Dollander/Condon/Holliday. The actions of the new front office indicate that they believe the existing talent can show improved results (and eventually trade value) when given different tools, information, and coaching (the things the old front office clearly struggled to provide). The early returns on that strategy seem promising.

We all know that, at the end of the day, the previous front office never got close to putting a winning product on the field. That doesn’t mean, however, that they did everything wrong which is worth acknowledging as we enjoy the start of this new era of Rockies baseball.

On the Farm

Triple-A: Albuquerque Isotopes 6, Sacramento River Cats 0

Zac Veen and Charlie Condon each did a little bit of everything on Wednesday night. Each had a hit (Condon a double and Veen a home run), both walked (Veen twice), and both stole a base. They provided the bulk of the offense. Parker Mushinski, Keegan Thompson, and Sammy Peralta combined to scatter six hits and four walks over nine scoreless innings to nail down a convincing win against the PCL West leading River Cats.

Double-A: Hartford Yard Goats 13, Portland Sea Dogs 8

This was the Roc Riggio breakout game. After struggling mightily with a 40% strikeout rate to start the season, Riggio went three for four with his first two home runs of the season. Outside of Riggio, Andy Perez had four hits (including a double) and Connor Staine struck out ten Sea Dogs despite only making it through four innings due to inefficiency.

High-A: Spokane Indians 5, Everett Aquasox 7

The pitching side of things struggled with Jackson Cox only going four innings and allowing five runs on two homers. Francis Rivera did keep Spokane in the game by pitching scoreless frames in both the seventh and eighth but there wasn’t quite enough offense to make it matter. Speaking of the offense, Jacob Humphrey had a couple doubles, Roynier Hernandez had three hits including a double, and Ethan Hedges hit a homer.

Low-A: Fresno Grizzlies 7, Rancho Cucamonga Quakes 6

After trailing from the third inning on the Grizzlies rallied in the bottom of the ninth to score three runs and walk-off the Quakes. On the hitting side the key performer was Tanner Thach with his three hits, two of which were doubles. On the mound it was Manuel Olivares that got, and deserved, the win after pitching the final three innings and only allowing a single baserunner.

Rockies’ shift in bullpen philosophy paying early dividends on heavy workload | Denver Gazette ($)

Kevin Henry digs into the Rockies long-reliever-bullpen-usage strategy that they have been employing in 2026. The piece makes it clear that this was the plan heading into the season in an effort to combat late-season exhaustion of the bullpen.

A Dream — and a Family Tradition: Webster Alum Joins Rockies Broadcast Team | Webster University

This is a nice piece on Zach Goodman that explains how his collegiate experiences prepared him for his new role as color commentator for Rockies radio broadcasts. It’s a good look behind the curtain that gives some insight on Goodman as a person beyond just “Drew’s son”.

What is life really like for MLB players on the road? We answer your questions | The Athletic ($)

Not strictly Rockies related, but this Stephen J. Nesbitt piece is a fascinating, wide-ranging look at what players do and do not like about the minutiae of the constant travel that comes with an MLB schedule. It goes into everything from cities players like travelling to the least, to how they adjust to get-away day games, and how teams choose hotels.

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