The Rockies have released veteran lefty Austin Gomber, per a team announcement. (Thomas Harding of MLB.com reported the move just minutes prior to its announcement.) He was reportedly placed on outright waivers earlier this week. Given that he’s now being released, it’s clear he wasn’t claimed. Colorado will give his 40-man spot to lefty reliever Lucas Gilbreath, whose contract has been selected from Triple-A Albuquerque. The Rox also placed righty Dugan Darnell on the 15-day injured list due to inflammation in his left hip and recalled righty Angel Chivilli from Triple-A.
Gomber, 31, was the lone remaining player from the Rockies’ return in their trade of Nolan Arenado to the Cardinals. He was only a few weeks from reaching free agency anyhow, as he crossed six years of major league service earlier in the season, but he’ll now head to the open market a bit earlier than previously scheduled.
A shoulder injury kept Gomber on the injured list from Opening Day into mid-June. He’s since made 12 starts and struggled more than he has at any point in his career. Gomber has been a fifth starter over his time with the Rockies, pitching to a middling 5.08 ERA in 544 innings from 2021-24, but he’s been tattooed for a 7.49 earned run average in 57 2/3 innings with the Rockies in 2025.
Though he’s never thrown hard, Gomber’s average fastball this year is sitting at a career-low 89.5 mph. That’s down one mile from last year and down a bit more than two miles per hour over his first season with Colorado back in 2021. His already low strikeout rate has bottomed out at a career-worst 12.5%, and his 7.2% swinging-strike rate is tied (with teammate Antonio Senzatela) for ninth-worst among the 257 pitchers who’ve tossed at least 50 innings in 2025.
Despite Gomber’s sub-par results through his four seasons in Denver, the Rockies opted to tender him a contract this past offseason. He’s being paid $6.35MM this season, with about $1.26MM of that sum yet to be paid out over the final month-plus of the year. The Rockies will remain on the hook for the entirety of that amount, minus the prorated league minimum for any time Gomber may spend on another team’s big league roster.
Gilbreath, 29, posted solid numbers with Colorado in his first two seasons from 2021-22: 85 2/3 innings pitched, 16 holds, one save, 3.78 ERA, 25% strikeout rate (albeit with an ugly 13.2% walk rate). He looked like he’d carved out a role in the Rockies’ bullpen, but a UCL tear during spring training in 2023 wiped out his entire season and limited him to just one big league inning in 2024. The Rockies passed him through waivers earlier this season, and he’s now back in the majors for the first time this year and will look to get back into just his second MLB game since the conclusion of the 2022 campaign.
It’s been a tough year for Gilbreath in Albuquerque. Granted, that’s an extremely hitter-friendly setting, but a 6.21 ERA, 11.8% walk rate and 1.91 HR/9 rate can’t solely be blamed on league environment. He’s been a bit better of late (5.29 ERA in his past 17 innings), but the results still aren’t all that encouraging — nor is the fact that a heater that averaged 93.8 mph in 2022 is now sitting 89.8 mph three years and one major surgery later. Be that as it may, he’ll be summoned to the majors to give the Rockies a fresh arm and perhaps to audition for a 2026 spot in the season’s final few weeks.
Arenado trade didn’t turn out well, did it?
I guess you could argue the Rox got out of a bad contract. Arenado had one great, and one good year before the decline started.
Not much comfort for Rockies fans though.
Even in his decline, he’s still been an above-average player (including both offense and defense). Meanwhile, the Rockies got practically nothing out of trading him save for partial (and ONLY partial) salary relief.
21: above average
22: great
23: average
24: slightly above average
25: below average
Pretty underwhelming altogether.
No, it goes like this:
2021: Excellent
2022: Outstanding (3rd Place NL MVP)
2023: Above average
2024: Above average
2025: Average
Are you forgetting to account for Arenado’s defense? Even if you are, you’re really underrating his offense for his 2021-23 seasons.
Every franchise in the league has a few bad trades on their docket. The Rockies got five years of a decent starting pitcher and two years of a prospect that didn’t work out. Could have gone better, could have gone worse.
“Decent” is well open to interpretation.
Well he was up and down for sure, but he averaged out to be about an average Coors Field starter compared to other Rockies pitchers through their run. Probably right around Kevin Ritz. He pitched enough innings to keep the team in the game most of the time. No one is going to confuse him with a Cy Young contender by any means, but he was good enough to start games in the bigs for five years. That has to qualify as decent.
Decent starting pitchers usually last longer than 5-6 years in MLB. His career may not be over yet, but getting released at Age 31 isn’t a good sign no matter which team does it.
If he was decent, I have to wonder what you consider lousy. One of the worst trades ever., Rockies paid a good amount of Arenado vcontract and got nothing of value in return.
This type of stupidity still lingers, proof I’d in Rocks W-L record. MAs long as fans support this, it will continue.
Wonder no more. Lousy would be NOT staying in the big leagues for 5 years. I don’t care what the owners pay. It’s not my money. I am not the GM, I am a fan. I only care about what happens on the field, not how much it cost or the logistics of how it got there.
The Rockies don’t trade much, but when they do…
Angel Chivilli has been awful this year. They should have called up Carson Skipper or Collin Baumgartner instead of Chivilli.
No reason to start the clock on guys who are not on the 40-man roster yet, especially if they could benefit from more seasoning at AAA. If Chivilli continues to be bad, maybe they drop him from the 40-man in the offseason.
Maybe the service clock isn’t an issue at this point, but every young player they add to the 40-man now reduces their flexibility in the offseason.
Maybe the cards bring him back on a low one year deal? Next year is gonna be rough and he pitched okay when he was here. Couldn’t be worse than mikolas who i hope is released after today’s start
Cardinals should have released Mikolas 2 years ago. If they haven’t by now, they aren’t going to.