Rockies To Consider Young Pitchers For Starting Rotation

There’s a likely scenario in which the Rockies enter the 2025 season with a rotation full of familiar faces: Germán Márquez, Kyle Freeland, Ryan Feltner, Austin Gomber, and Antonio Senzatela. All five of those pitchers have been in Colorado’s Opening Day rotation multiple times before. Yet, general manager Bill Schmidt is not ruling out the possibility that one of the team’s young pitching prospects could supplant an established arm (per Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post). Accordingly, the GM says his team is open to the idea of moving a veteran starter to the bullpen to accommodate a fresh face in the rotation. On a similar note, manager Bud Black told Saunders he’s also open to some young pitchers making the team – as long as they’re ready.

As Saunders lays out, the three prospects most likely to wiggle their way onto the Opening Day roster are Chase Dollander, Carson Palmquist, and Sean Sullivan. Dollander, 23, is a consensus top-100 prospect and widely considered the best pitching prospect in the Rockies system. He looks like a future frontline starter with the upside to be a perennial Cy Young contender. However, it has been less than two years since Colorado drafted him, and he only has one year of professional experience under his belt. Thus, there’s a good chance the Rockies would like their star prospect to get some more reps in the high minors before they expose him to big league competition – at Coors Field, no less. To that point, Schmidt made it clear that the Rockies have no interest in rushing Dollander to the show. They will not consider calling him up to pitch out of the bullpen; he won’t be in Colorado until he’s ready for a role in the rotation.

However, director of player development Chris Forbes suggested that Palmquist, 24, could see his MLB debut out of the bullpen (per Saunders). The team still envisions him as a starter long-term, and he could still impress enough to earn a starting role this spring, but he could also see time as a multi-inning arm in the ’pen. The young left-hander is not as highly regarded of a prospect as Dollander – he looks more like a back-end starter than an ace – but he could be closer to the big leagues. The Rockies took him with the 88th overall pick in 2022, and he has quickly risen through the ranks of their minor league system. He has made 46 starts across four levels, including nine starts at Triple-A. In 27 starts between Double-A and Triple-A last year, he pitched to a 3.98 ERA and 4.43 FIP with an impressive 29.0% strikeout rate, although his 12.1% walk rate was rather high.

Sullivan, 22, was Colorado’s second-round pick in 2023. Most evaluators have doubts about his long-term prospects as a big league starting pitcher. Baseball America describes him as a “depth starter,” while FanGraphs sees him working in middle relief. However, the team at Baseball Prospectus included him on their list of the Rockies’ top 10 prospects, suggesting he could become a “highly efficient” number four starter. If his 2024 performance is anything to go off, that outcome certainly seems possible. Over 21 starts between High-A and Double-A, Sullivan tossed 115 1/3 innings with a 2.11 ERA and 2.83 FIP. Most impressive was his pinpoint control; he walked just 3.4% of the batters he faced. After a year like that, it’s not hard to understand why the Rockies will give him an extended look this spring.

As for which of Colorado’s veteran starting pitchers could wind up moving to the bullpen, Senzatela might be the most likely possibility. The oft-injured 30-year-old missed almost all of the last two seasons recovering from an ACL reconstruction and Tommy John surgery. His last productive season was in 2021, and even then, he failed to pitch enough to qualify for the ERA title. It would not be surprising to see him struggle in camp after so much time away, in which case it might be best for all involved to ease him back into an MLB role via the bullpen. Márquez is another name to keep an eye on this spring, considering he has also missed most of the last two seasons due to injury. He was durable and reliable for Colorado over the previous six years, so he is likely to have a much longer leash than his fellow Venezuelan right-hander. In other words, the Rockies are highly unlikely to move Márquez to the bullpen. However, if he needs to go back on the injured list, a spot in the rotation would open up.