The Rockies recently announced a batch of non-roster invitees to spring training, including several of the club’s incumbent prospects and previously reported minor league signees. One new name on the list was right-hander Tommy Doyle.
Doyle, 29 in May, is a familiar face for the organization but was elsewhere in 2024. He signed a minor league deal with Atlanta going into last year and spent most of 2024 with Triple-A Gwinnett. He logged 40 1/3 innings for that club, allowing 3.57 earned runs per nine. He paired a 24.9% strikeout rate with a 9.8% walk rate. Despite those fairly solid numbers, he never got the call to join the big league club.
Prior to that, Doyle had spent his entire career with the Rockies. He was drafted by Colorado in 2017 and was in the organization through the end of 2023. He managed to toss 26 big league innings, though he allowed 24 earned runs, giving him an unsightly 8.31 ERA at the moment.
That’s obviously a small sample size and Doyle put up much better numbers on the farm. He tossed 161 2/3 innings across various minor league levels during his previous time in the Rockies’ organization, with a 3.56 ERA, 26.1% strikeout rate and 8.1% walk rate.
The Rockies have a fairly wide open relief mix at the moment. Of the eight guys projected by RosterResource to be in the Opening Day bullpen, Tyler Kinley and Justin Lawrence are the only two with more than 100 innings in the big leagues. They are also the only two that can’t be sent to the minors. As the club continues its ongoing rebuild, plenty of young arms will get opportunities this year but not all of them will succeed.
Doyle gives the club another depth option to potentially rely on throughout the year. If he gets added to the roster at any point, he still has one option year remaining, which would allow the club to shuttle him between the majors and minors with regularity. He also has less than a year of service time and can be cheaply retained beyond this year if he’s holding a roster spot at season’s end.
He’s no Sir Arthur Conan.
Not even a Brenton.
I’m not taking my sneakers off!
I was not sure Colorado was still in MLB. Great organization, Loyal Owner, Fresh Air, I remember now
I still say if the Rockies want a chance at this they need to completely abandon conventional pitching theory and just go back and forth filling innings with “healthy” multi innings arms on/off the 40 vs spending a time convincing anyone they can pitch in Colorado.
They should have an entire pitching staff that makes the league minimum or trade for guys who are already paid from another team. Just get guys with options or constantly DFA and play the wire and put their entire payroll into a ferocious lineup. I wonder what they could build offensively for 150M?
It takes a lot of creativity on and of the 40. Just treat the entire pitching staff like a revolving business door. Pick and pluck and be creative. It is possible and financially realistic vs market competition and results per dollar.
The wheel doesn’t work. It’s time to reinvent to give this team a shot in the nl west. Abandon any and all obligation to scouting, drafting, spending and development on the pitching side below the mlb level. Focus on the farm and build the international pipelines up advertising the best offensive wheel house available in arbitration.
The offense is coming and intriguing around the board. Specifically looking at Calaz today out of the group. I think this kids going to be scary good. I’m just afraid they will fumble him like tapia that’s my risk on him.
You have to play to your strength vs burning money at a problem that really is further away from solving than world peace is. Politics aside.
I hope just maybe somebody in that Colorado office takes a hard look at this vs being ya know Colorado today. But I’ve been on this train for years now. I’m in the minority but certainly not alone. And Bud Black has been the biggest lame duck manager for years and these are the fruits on that labor. It’s embarrassing at this point.
I’ve been a Rox fan since ’94 and I LOVE this idea. It’s been painful watching them toil in mediocrity for so long – even the “good” teams were quite flawed. It would be so fascinating and exciting to see them completely min-max the whole operation and go all-in on their strengths.
It’s so crazy it would work @Turkey. It’s much better than banking on reselling sp
Three Juan Soto’s!!
A Soto would never come to Colorado. But to these young kids having a home ball park to exploit arbitration is very interesting in appeal.
The problem is the organization has gone against this for years and now by how barren the rosters been specially in blacks tenure you have to rush these guys or throw an over the hill veteran below market worth outright to fill your active roster.
The roster is not his fault, but player treatment and roster development most certainly is on the mlb level up under his watch.