The Rockies have agreed to terms with right-hander Chase Dollander, the No. 9 overall pick in this year’s draft, Jim Callis of MLB.com reports. The University of Tennessee right-hander will receive his full slot value of $5,716,900.
A breakout season in 2022 positioned Dollander as one of the top arms in this year’s draft class. Dollander’s sophomore season with the Vols was sensational, as the 6’2″ righty pitched 79 innings of 2.39 ERA ball with a 35.3% strikeout rate against a 4.2% walk rate. However, Dollander’s junior season in 2023 was shakier. In 89 frames, he posted a 4.75 ERA with a diminished (though still strong) 31.3% strikeout rate and a 7.8% walk rate that nearly doubled his rate from the prior season. Dollander also plunked eight hitters after hitting just two the year prior.
Despite the uneven performance, Dollander still rated as one of the top arms in this year’s class. Baseball America rated him as the draft’s No. 6 overall prospect — the No. 2 pitching prospect behind LSU ace and eventual No. 1 overall pick Paul Skenes. FanGraphs ranked him eighth in the class, while MLB.com ranked Dollander as the class’ No. 9 overall prospect and Keith Law placed him No. 15 at The Athletic.
Scouting reports on Dollander will universally praise a mid-90s fastball that topped out around 99 mph at his most dominant in 2022, but Law and others note when breaking down his 2023 season that the shape of the right-hander’s slider changed for the worse in ’23. Dollander’s command also wasn’t nearly as sharp, and he’ll need further develop his curveball and/or changeup in pro ball to give him a third consistent offering.
Dollander adds some substantial upside to a Rockies system that is generally devoid of top-end pitching prospects. He’s not as polished or MLB-ready as Skenes, who went with the top pick, but he entered the 2023 season widely regarded as the top college arm in this year’s class and should immediately become the system’s top pitching prospect.
huge fan.
hate seeing pitchers go to Coors tho
Yeah, Chase is gonna find that there is a huge difference in pitching at Rocky Top and the Top of the Rockies.
Let’s see if he can even make it to Coors most don’t
Let’s see if he can even make it to Coors, most don’t
Let’s see if he can even make it to Coors, most don’t even get there
It’s not just pitching at altitude but who’s instructing these guys in the Rockies farm system. The coaching group is not very well known for being successful.
I would say poor kid but 5.7 million dollars is a lot of money. Good luck. Gonna need it……
Welp, that might be the last big pay day he ever sees Maybe by the time he gets in his mid 30’s after being a top prospect then getting ruined at Coors and becoming a journey man, he can luck out one year with a team witha good pitchers park and pitching coaching team can get another 6mil contract.
Please relocate the reply mute and flag buttons. They always get accidentally pressed when scrolling on iPhones it’s terrible.
I thought it was just me…
It’s not I honestly don’t use this site as much because it’s so terrible and annoying. Every few seconds I’m interrupted from reading and presented with a nuisance reply box I never requested. Something is up with the construction of the site idk what caused it but it was a few months ago when the buttons were reordered. Now any sort of movement over those links causes the drop down to appear. We have to scroll on the phone to read the article this is making that impossible to do because as you scroll your constantly opening the dialogue box for comments or flagging or whatever. I promise if you fix this god awful implementation I will subscribe for a year.
If you’d scroll on the right edge of the screen like God intended, that wouldn’t happen.
Seriously, since different people scroll differently there is no place that wouldn’t be a problem for someone.
But it all of a sudden got worse, I consciously try to scroll at the edge of the screen. I’ve worked with mobile devices for a career for a good part of my life I assure you I’m not misusing the device. Still regardless when using safari on an iPhone it’s a consistent experience. Maybe a collapsed box that expands when you want to reply flag or mute could be an option idk I’m not a web developer. However I’ve taken a few classes and don’t run into this issue on any other website except this one. The only other solution I see is to download an app, and I’m rather opposed to downloading apps that are effectively just the website no offense, if it offers savings I’m usually for it.
Strange, that never happens to me. Occasionally it opens an ad when I’m scrolling on a story, which is annoying.
Of course one might argue that they should just remove the Mute button from the phone app since it doesn’t work right and they seem to have no interest in fixing it.