Chase Dollander

Rockies Make Several Roster Moves

By Steve Adams | June 3, 2025 at 12:57pm CDT

The Rockies announced a slate of roster moves Tuesday, reinstating young righty Chase Dollander from the 15-day IL and placing fellow right-hander Tanner Gordon on the 15-day IL in his place, due to a strained left oblique. Gordon’s IL placement is retroactive to May 31. Colorado also placed righty Zach Agnos on the bereavement list and recalled right-hander Angel Chivilli. Additionally, infielder Aaron Schunk and outfielder Nick Martini cleared waivers and were assigned outright to Triple-A Albuquerque, per the MiLB.com transaction log. Martini elected free agency. Schunk has the right to do the same, by virtue of a prior outright assignment earlier this year, but there’s no indication he’s done so.

Dollander, 23, was the No. 9 overall pick in 2023 and entered the season ranked as one of baseball’s top pitching prospects. He’s had a handful of rough starts since making his MLB debut in April but looked to be righting the ship prior to landing on the IL due to forearm tightness. Dollander held opponents to two runs or fewer in three of his four appearances prior to the injury and had rattled off 10 2/3 innings with three runs allowed (2.53 ERA) and a 13-to-5 K/BB ratio in a pair of road starts against the Rangers and D-backs.

Dollander will slot right back into the Rockies’ rotation and start tonight’s game in Miami, per the team. As one might expect, the right-hander has been far better on the road in his young career than at Denver’s hitter-friendly home park. Dollander has made four starts at Coors Field and four on the road, working to an 8.66 ERA at home compared to a 4.29 mark in other venues. Overall, he carries a 6.28 ERA with a roughly average 22.1% strikeout rate, an elevated 10.5% walk rate and a massive 2.33 HR/9 mark (with six of his ten home runs allowed coming at home).

The 27-year-old Gordon was a sixth-round pick by the Braves back in 2019. He landed with the Rox alongside reliever Victor Vodnik in the trade that sent Pierce Johnson to Atlanta a couple years back. Gordon was rocked for an 8.65 ERA in eight starts during last year’s debut campaign but has provided a more serviceable 4.24 ERA with a 14.1% strikeout rate, 4.2% walk rate and 41.4% grounder rate in three starts (17 innings) so far in 2025. The team didn’t specify the severity of Gordon’s strain, nor was a timetable for his return provided.

Martini, 34, was designated for assignment last week. He totaled 111 plate appearances as a Rockie and hit .225/.288/.294 despite being deployed almost exclusively in platoon-friendly situations. Only five of the lefty-swinging Martini’s plate appearances came versus southpaws.

Over a six-year span from 2018-23, Martini batted .268/.362/.412 with an 11.2% walk rate in 412 plate appearances in the majors. He’s always walked at a huge clip and has been an on-base machine in the upper minors, playing parts of eight Triple-A seasons churning out a .294/.399/.454 batting line in that time. He’ll be a depth option for teams looking for left-handed bats, but he’ll probably need to sign a minor league deal after struggling at the plate in both 2024 and 2025.

The 27-year-old Schunk went 6-for-28 with a double in 29 plate appearances in his second year of partial MLB work with Colorado. The 2019 second-round pick hit .234/.265/.330 in 98 big league plate appearances last year. Schunk shows solid contact skills in Triple-A and has played all four infield spots — primarily third base — but doesn’t walk often or provide much power.

Schunk is a career .291/.346/.469 hitter in 880 Triple-A plate appearances, but given the intensely hitter-friendly nature of the Pacific Coast League (and Albuquerque’s home park, in particular), that’s actually about 12% worse than league-average, by measure of wRC+. Assuming he sticks with the organization, he’ll give the Rockies some righty-hitting infield depth at multiple positions.

Rockies Place Chase Dollander On IL With Forearm Tightness

By Darragh McDonald | May 22, 2025 at 5:00pm CDT

5:00pm: Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post relays that the club doesn’t consider Dollander’s issue serious. Gordon will start tomorrow’s game and they expect Dollander to return after a minimal IL stint.

12:35pm: The Rockies announced that right-hander Chase Dollander has been placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to May 19th, due to right forearm tightness. Fellow righty Juan Mejia has been recalled as the corresponding move.

To this point, the Rockies haven’t provided any specifics about Dollander’s injury or how long they expect him to be out. He started for the club on Sunday and everything seemed fairly normal at the time. He tossed 98 pitches over 4 2/3 innings, striking out six Diamondbacks. He allowed one earned run, which came on a solo home run off the bat of Ketel Marte. His velocity was in line with his previous starts.

Perhaps the Rockies are just being cautious with a young pitcher. After all, they have nothing to play for in the short term. Their 8-41 record is easily the worst in baseball and puts them on pace for one of the worst seasons ever. Dollander is one of the best prospects in baseball and only debuted last month. It would make sense for the club to pump the brakes on any minor issue with his throwing arm.

However, there’s always concern when a pitcher’s throwing arm is in the spotlight like this. If Dollander requires any kind of lengthy stay on the injured list, it would further dampen the mood for the Rockies, if that’s even possible with their current status. His 6.28 earned run average through eight starts doesn’t look too impressive but at least his 22.1% strikeout rate and 10.5% walk rate are close to average. His .260 batting average on balls in play, 62.8% strand rate and 18.9% home run to flyball rate are all on the unfortunate side of average. Some ERA estimators indicate he has deserved betters results, with his SIERA at 4.35.

Ideally, the one silver lining of this frustrating season would be plenty of opportunity for young players to develop and emerge as key pieces for the next competitive window. If this is just a precautionary breather for Dollander, he could still get a lot of starts under his belt in the remainder of the season. But a lengthier stint on the IL would obviously be unwelcome.

Perhaps the club will provide more information in the coming days. Regardless of the details there, they will have a rotation spot to fill. Germán Márquez, Antonio Senzatela and Kyle Freeland have three spots. Rookie Carson Palmquist has recently been promoted and will presumably stick around. Ryan Feltner and Austin Gomber are both on the IL with uncertain timelines. Bradley Blalock and Tanner Gordon are both on the 40-man and have made big league starts this year, so one of them will probably get the call.

Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images

Rockies Promote Chase Dollander

By Darragh McDonald | April 6, 2025 at 11:58am CDT

TODAY: The Rockies officially selected Dollander’s contract, and optioned Bradley Blalock to Triple-A in the corresponding move.

APRIL 4: The Rockies are going to promote their top pitching prospect, reports Patrick Lyons of Just Baseball. Right-hander Chase Dollander will make his major league debut when he starts for the club on Sunday. There’s already an opening on the 40-man roster, so the club will only need to make a corresponding active roster move.

Dollander, now 23, has been a hyped-up name for a while now. He put up big numbers for Tennessee and was ranked as one of the top players available in the 2023 draft. The Rockies selected him with the ninth overall pick and then signed him to a slot-value bonus of $5,716,900.

He made his professional debut last year in impressive fashion. He tossed 118 innings over 23 starts, going from High-A to Double-A in the process. He allowed just 2.59 earned runs per nine, striking out 33.9% of batters faced while giving out walks at a 9.4% clip.

Going into 2025, the industry consensus is that he’s one of the top prospects in the league. Baseball America currently lists him #7 overall and MLB Pipeline #24. FanGraphs had him at #12 to start the season, but with the now-graduated Dylan Crews as one of the guys ahead of him. ESPN had Dollander at #14, though also behind Crews. Keith Law of The Athletic was more bearish, putting Dollander down at #75, with concerns about some of his results in Tennessee.

The Rockies reportedly gave some consideration to having Dollander in the season-opening rotation. They sent him to Triple-A Albuquerque instead, where he made one start, allowing one earned run over four innings. The big league club started the season with just four games before their first off-day, having Kyle Freeland, Antonio Senzatela, Ryan Feltner and Germán Márquez start those.

Austin Gomber likely would have had a fifth spot but he started the season on the 15-day injured list with shoulder soreness. He made a rehab start for Albuquerque but was scratched from making a second due to inflammation in that shoulder, per Thomas Harding of MLB.com. Perhaps due to Gomber’s setback, Dollander will get an early-season call-up.

The big unknown will be how Dollander handles the challenges of pitching at Coors Field, the most hitter-friendly venue in the big leagues. Geoff Pontes of Baseball America believes Dollander is well-positioned to succeed, even though plenty of other talented arms have struggled there. Pontes points out that pitchers with low release heights, such as Dollander, have previously fared well at Coors. The piece also cites the spin efficiency of Dollander’s fastball, which sits between 96 and 98 miles per hour, as a factor that could work in his favor. In addition that fastball, he throws a changeup, a curveball and another breaking ball that is characterized as either a slider or a cutter by various sources.

If Dollander can thrive at Coors, he could become the most important arm in the rotation for their next competitive window. The club has been losing for a long time now but have seen some young players come up and establish themselves as building blocks, such as Ezequiel Tovar at shortstop and Brenton Doyle in center field.

In the rotation, there’s little long-term certainty. Márquez and Gomber are impending free agents while the contracts for Senzatela and Freeland are only guaranteed through 2026, with options for 2027. It’s possible the Rockies sign new deals with those pitchers but they’re all in their 30s now regardless. At 23 years old, Dollander could potentially be the rock of the group for many years to come, if everything breaks right.

Though he wasn’t on the Opening Day roster, he is getting called up early enough to potentially earn a full service year in 2025. A baseball season is 187 days long but a player needs only 172 days on the active roster or injured list to get a full year. If he’s not optioned down to the minors at any point, he would be on track to qualify for free agency after the 2030 campaign, though a notable optional assignment would push that trajectory by one year.

If he does stay up, the Rockies would be eligible to potentially receive an extra draft pick. The current collective bargaining agreement introduced measures to combat service time manipulation. One such measure is that a team can earn an extra draft if they promote a top prospect early enough to earn a full service year. To qualify, a player must be on two of the three Top 100 lists of BA, ESPN and MLB Pipeline. The player must then win Rookie of the Year or place in the top three of MVP or Cy Young voting in their pre-arbitration seasons.

Those will perhaps be factors later in the year. For now, one of the best young pitchers in the game is coming up to the majors. Facing big league hitters for the first time is always a fascinating challenge for any pitching prospect but the interest level is arguably even higher in this case, given the unique circumstances of Coors Field and Dollander’s potential importance to the franchise.

Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri and Steven Branscombe, Imagn Images

Rockies To Consider Young Pitchers For Starting Rotation

By Leo Morgenstern | February 9, 2025 at 3:31pm CDT

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.

Rockies Agree To Terms With First-Rounder Chase Dollander

By Steve Adams | July 17, 2023 at 1:32pm CDT

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.

2023 MLB Draft, First Round Results

By Mark Polishuk | July 9, 2023 at 10:58pm CDT

The 2023 MLB Draft begins tonight, and this post will be constantly updated with each team’s selections from the first round. The Mets and Dodgers are the only teams without a first-rounder, as their top picks were each dropped 10 places overall as part of their punishment for exceeding the highest luxury-tax tier in 2022. As a result, the Mets won’t have a selection until the 32nd overall pick, and the Dodgers won’t select until 36th overall.

The first-round selections….

Pittsburgh Pirates: Paul Skenes, RHP, LSU
Washington Nationals: Dylan Crews, OF, LSU
Detroit Tigers: Max Clark, OF, Franklin Community High School (IN)
Texas Rangers: Wyatt Langford, OF, University Of Florida
Minnesota Twins: Walker Jenkins, OF, South Brunswick High School (NC)
Oakland Athletics: Jacob Wilson, SS, Grand Canyon University
Cincinnati Reds: Rhett Lowder, RHP, Wake Forest
Kansas City Royals: Blake Mitchell, C, Sinton High School (TX)
Colorado Rockies: Chase Dollander, RHP, University of Tennessee
Miami Marlins: Noble Meyer, RHP, Jesuit High School (OR)
Los Angeles Angels: Nolan Schanuel, 1B/OF, Florida Atlantic
Arizona Diamondbacks: Tommy Troy, SS, Stanford
Chicago Cubs: Matthew Shaw, SS, University of Maryland
Boston Red Sox: Kyle Teel, C, University of Virginia
Chicago White Sox: Jacob Gonzalez, SS, University Of Mississippi
San Francisco Giants: Bryce Eldridge, 1B/RHP, Madison High School (VA)
Baltimore Orioles: Enrique Bradfield Jr., OF, Vanderbilt
Milwaukee Brewers: Brock Wilken, 3B, Wake Forest
Tampa Bay Rays: Brayden Taylor, 3B/SS, TCU
Toronto Blue Jays: Arjun Nimmala, SS, Strawberry Crest High School (FL)
St. Louis Cardinals: Chase Davis, OF, University of Arizona
Seattle Mariners: Colt Emerson, SS, Glenn High School (OH)
Cleveland Guardians: Ralphy Velazquez, C, Huntington Beach High School (CA)
Atlanta Braves: Hurston Waldrep, RHP, University of Florida
San Diego Padres: Dillon Head, OF, Homewood-Flossmoor High School (IL)
New York Yankees: George Lombard Jr., 3B/SS, Gulliver Prep High School (FL)
Philadelphia Phillies: Aidan Miller, 3B/SS, Mitchell High School (FL)
Houston Astros: Brice Matthews, SS, University of Nebraska

This year’s draft will again be 20 rounds long, and split over three days. Rounds 11-20 will take place on Tuesday, rounds 3-10 on Monday, and the draft’s first 70 picks will be made tonight. Those 70 picks cover the first two official rounds, the two Competitive Balance Rounds, the two sets of compensatory rounds (giving picks to teams who lost qualifying offer-rejecting free agents), and the first-ever Prospect Promotion Incentive Pick. The Mariners received the PPI selection at 29th overall, since Julio Rodriguez filled the criteria of winning the Rookie Of The Year Award, being part of his team’s active roster from Opening Day onwards, and he ranked as a preseason top-100 prospect by at least two of Baseball America, ESPN, and MLB Pipeline.

The PPI is one of several new wrinkles to the 2023 draft, as this is the first draft held under the new guidelines established by the 2022-2026 Collective Bargaining Agreement. The process for determining the 14 teams in the Competitive Balance Rounds was also tweaked, though the teams (all in the bottom 10 in market size or revenue size) will still have their picks split up over two mini-rounds sandwiched around the second round. The most obvious change came at the very top of the board, as this was the first year of the lottery process to determine the draft’s top six picks. This is how the Pirates ended up with the first overall selection, even though the Nationals and A’s each had worse records in 2022.

This year’s draft class is considered to be one of the deepest and most talent-laden in years, so several potential franchise-changing players could be starting their pro careers tonight. More details and scouting reports on all these young players are available in pre-draft rankings from Baseball America, Fangraphs, MLB Pipeline, The Athletic’s Keith Law, and ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel. As well, Pipeline has the breakdown of the slot values assigned to each pick in the first 10 rounds, as well as the bonus pool money available to all 30 teams.

Show all

Headlines

Chase Dollander

Navigation

MLBTR INFO

Connect