On Tuesday afternoon the Colorado Rockies officially announced their new major league and organizational pitching staff hired for the 2026 season.
The announcement comes on the second day of Winter Meetings
following rumors the Rockies had a pending pitching coach hire on Monday evening. The Rockies largely cleaned house following the end of the 2025 season with pitching coach Darryl Scott, bullpen coach Dustin Garneau, pitching coordinator Doug Linton and strategist Flint Wallace departing the organization. Former pitching director Steve Foster left the Rockies prior to the 2025 season to pursue a role with his alma mater, Texas Tech.
Confirming yesterday’s speculation, the Rockies have hired Alon Leichman as their major league pitching coach on manager Warren Schaeffer’s staff.
Leichman, 36, served as the assistant pitching coach and assistant pitching director for the Miami Marlins in 2025 after doing the same with the Cincinnati Reds in 2023 and 2024. Before that he held a variety of pitching-related roles in the Seattle Mariners organization starting in 2017. The Israel native has also served as the pitching coach for Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic and is expected to do the same in 2026.
Praised for his innovative approach to pitching and coaching, Leichman worked with a young pitching staff in Miami last season and even experimented with calling pitches from the dugout.
Gabe Ribas will serve as assistant pitching coach under Leichman.
Ribas, 45, spent the last five seasons as the director of pitching for the Detroit Tigers. Prior to his time with the Tigers, he served for four seasons as a pitching coordinator for the Los Angeles Dodgers. With the Dodgers, he worked in the areas of player development, performance, and analytics. He also assisted with the creation and execution of comprehensive pitching development programs.
A former pitcher for the San Diego Padres organization, Ribas posted a career 4.13 ERA over four minor league seasons. Ribas also has collegiate coaching experience with Santa Clara University, the University of Northern Colorado, College of the Holy Cross, and Northwestern University.
Matt Buschmann, 41, will serve as the Rockies’ new bullpen coach after spending the last two seasons as a special advisor of player development with the Chicago Cubs. He also previously served as both a bullpen coach and director of pitching development for the Toronto Blue Jays and as an assistant director of player development with the San Francisco Giants.
Buschmann posted a 4.20 ERA over 11 minor league seasons with the San Diego Padres, Tampa Bay Rays, and Oakland Athletics organizations, along with a handful of other teams. He made three appearances with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2016, making his major league debut and striking out three batters over 4 1/3 innings.
The Rockies’ new director of pitching is 34-year-old Matt Daniels, who joins the organization by way of the Minnesota Twins. Daniels served as the Twins’ pitching development and acquisitions specialist for three seasons. From 2019 through 2022 he worked with the San Francisco Giants as coordinator of pitching sciences. Daniels has also worked with Driveline Baseball—a data driven player development facility—and was one of their first full-time employees.
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