The Rockies have signed Chasen Shreve to a minor league contract, as per the left-hander’s MLB.com profile page. Shreve was released from his previous minors deal with the Yankees just last Thursday, and he has now quickly landed with the ninth different big league organization of his 15-year pro career.
Shreve has seen action with seven of those teams at the Major League level, with 174 2/3 of his 356 career big league innings coming in two earlier stints with the Yankees. Minors deals with the Rangers and Yankees in 2024 didn’t lead to any time in the majors for the 34-year-old, so Shreve will look to crack the Rockies’ roster and officially appear in a game to lock in what would be an 11th MLB campaign.
For such a journeyman’s resume, Shreve has some solid results in the form of a career 3.97 ERA, 25.3% strikeout rate, and 10.8% walk rate. His most recent two seasons have been quite shaky, however, as Shreve had a 6.49 ERA in 26 1/3 frames with the Mets in 2022 and then a 4.63 ERA in 44 2/3 combined innings with the Tigers and Reds last year. A combined 3.64 SIERA over the 2022-23 seasons perhaps paints a better view of Shreve’s performance, as an uncharacteristically high homer rate in 2022 particularly hurt his numbers.
Shreve has looked sharp in his time at Triple-A this year, posting a 1.89 ERA in 33 1/3 total innings for the Rangers’ and Yankees’ top affiliates. His ability to pitch that well in the Pacific Coast League (with Triple-A Sugar Land) provides some hope that he can keep it up in another hitter-friendly environment in Albuquerque. It might not be long before Shreve is back in the majors, as the Rockies’ woeful bullpen needs all the help it can get, and the club doesn’t have a single left-hander in its relief corps.
I don’t disagree with the “woeful bullpen” comment about the Rockies, but they will add a lefty very soon as Lucas Gilbreath is close to returning from the surgery that cost him more than a year. He was starting to look like a pretty good bullpen arm before his injury, so if he can return to that form the Rockies will at least have one decent lefty in the bullpen going forward.
Not if he keeps walking people like he has during his rehab stint.
Rockies seemingly have no real upward trajectory. Trade deadline came and went. The few valuable, viable trade chips remained in Colorado and the Rockies remained 30 games under .500 with no change in sight. Last place teams generally try to initiate some sort of momentum (real or fake) but not the Rockies. They are just a filler in NL West.