Welcome to the 2026 edition of Ranking theRockies, where we take a look back at every player to log playing time for theRockies in 2026. The purpose of this list is to provide a snapshot of the player in context. The “Ranking” is an organizing principle that’s drawn from Baseball Reference’s WAR (rWAR). It’s not something the staff debated. We’ll begin with the player with the lowest rWAR and end up with the player with the highest.
No. 25, Mickey Moniak (0.1 rWAR)
The Colorado Rockies made it clear that they had wanted to have Mickey
Moniak in their organization since before he was drafted. When they finally got the chance to bring him in just before the 2025 regular season they wasted no time in signing him.
Moniak’s first year in purple was arguably the best in his now journeyman career. He entered the 2026 season looking to build upon that and cement himself as a regular for the Rockies moving forward.
After missing the first two series of the season due to a sprained right finger, Moniak made his season debut in the Rockies home opener, batting third against the team that drafted him. While he only managed a single in that first game against the Philadelphia Phillies, he went on to have probably the best month career so far.
Over the course of 25 games in April, Moniak hit an incredible .315/.361/.652 with eight home runs.
What’s more, his power came in bunches. Moniak had three multi-home run games by the start of May.
Moniak slowed down in terms of getting on base after April but his power remained. While his batting average slipped to .230 in May he slugged .514 with another four home runs.
Moniak’s most memorable game of the season came on his birthday, May 14. Not only did he hit the Rockies first three-run homer of the season, but he also followed that up with both a double and a triple. At the end of the day, he became just the second player in MLB history to come a single shy of the cycle on his birthday.
Early in the season when the Rockies pitching staff was at its best but the rest of the lineup had yet to really gel the way it eventually would in June, Moniak was hitting like the All-Star he was drafted to be.
Then came his trip to the injured list.
Moniak would remain on the IL for a full month until eventually returning on June 22.
In the first week after returning from the IL, Moniak appeared to have lost his early-season momentum and had only three hits during his eight games in June. Once he was able to get his timing back, however, he was back to being a key run producer for the Rockies in July. On the month, he slashed .320/.338/.560, good for a 128 wRC+.
By mid-summer, it looked like Moniak was potentially in the midst of a breakout season — the sort that can never be fully written off when it comes from a player drafted first overall.
Given his surging performance, his age, and the Rockies place in the standings it was reasonable to assume Moniak would be dealt at the trade deadline. Rumors swirled around his name, especially in connection to the Houston Astros who were searching for an outfield bat, but the deadline passed without any news of a Moniak transaction.
This lack of movement was befuddling to many but in president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta’s words “We had a set price in mind of what it would take to acquire any of our players.” None of the teams interested in Moniak met that price.
Given the fact that the Rockies still had Moniak under team control for another season after 2026, their urgency to move him if not getting the sort of return they wanted was limited. Following the trade deadline, however, the front office quickly pivoted and extended him for an additional season beyond 2027.
Ultimately, the price of buying out a single would be year of free agency for Moniak was pretty modest at $9 million in 2028. Given the inability to extract the level of return they wanted in trade and the way in which Moniak had hit all season, pivoting to a cheap extension may have been seen as the next best option to capitalize on the potential breakout of a once highly ranked prospect.
In the immediate aftermath of the extension, however, things did not play out as anyone had hoped.
After riding high for most of the season, Moniak came crashing down to earth in the final two months of the season. In 26 August games, he hit .188/.226/.365 and then followed that up by only collecting nine hits in the entire month of September.
If you just look at Moniak’s basic first half vs. second half splits, you can see the preposterous divide in his season, despite the fact that his second half numbers are propped up by part of a good July.
- In 227 first half plate appearances, Moniak hit .278 with 15 home runs which was good for a 130 wRC+.
- In 209 second half plate appearances, he hit .195 with eight home runs which was good for a 46 wRC+.
While the full reason for Moniak’s uneven performance is likely a combination of many smaller factors, there are two that are pretty obvious and not yet particularly worrying.
First, his batting average on balls in play plummeted from .312 in the first half down to .231 in the second half. For a player that has a .300 BABIP for his career, that second-half figure would seem to be the outlier. Speculatively, the right ankle injury that sent him to the injured list in May could have made him unable to beat out close plays at first that he otherwise may have.
Second, a higher percentage of his plate appearances came against left-handed pitchers. For his career, Moniak has a 103 wRC+ against righties as opposed to only a 35 wRC+ against lefties. Despite taking fewer total plate appearances in the second half, he actually faced left-handed pitchers more total times than he had in the first half of the season. Overall, he faced lefties in 5.5% more of his total plate appearances in the second half. That may not sound like much, but for a player that has always struggled so immensely against them, every at-bat matters.
With an offseason to rest his ankle, some positive regression, and the team treating him as the platoon player his numbers (and modest contract) indicate that he is, there is every reason to think that Moniak’s second half struggles are not a harbinger of what is to come for him.
For his part, Moniak has expressed both comfort with and affection for the Rockies organization. From the two-minute mark forward in the video interview below, he elaborates on his history with the Rockies franchise and how they have always shown extreme confidence in him.
Moniak has seen his share of ups and downs in his short MLB career but has felt consistently embraced by the Rockies through it all… even when he was a member of other teams.
Given that, the extended stretches of good performance these past two years and his contract status being locked in for the next two seasons, we shouldn’t be surprised if Moniak ends up wearing purple for some time to come.
Join the conversation!
Sign up for a user account and get:
- Fewer ads
- Create community posts
- Comment on articles, community posts
- Rec comments, community posts
- New, improved notifications system!
Download the SB Nation app on iOS or Android.
Please keep in mind our Purple Row Community Guidelines when you’re commenting. Thanks!
