The Athletic recently compared Injured List stints of all MLB organizations since 2024, and the Rockies placement shocked me: They have had a total of 10,906 days lost to the IL throughout the entire organization in that span.
This seemingly huge number ranked them . . . seventh fewest in the league.
That’s counting the bulk of the rehab for the rash of Rockies pitchers needing Tommy John surgery in 2023, the lost 2024 of Nolan Jones and Jordan Beck, the significant time Ezequiel Tovar and Thairo Estrada
lost in 2025, and Kris Bryant as a whole, of course. All that and yet the Rockies still fared remarkably well compared to most of the league.
That trend of comparatively few injuries, however, has not continued into this year.
In 2025, the Rockies had a total of 26 major league injured list stints. So far, roughly a third of the way into the 2026 season they already have 22.
At the start of play on Wednesday, the Rockies are tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the league lead in players on the Major League injured list with 14. I guess it’s just nice to be tied with the Dodgers in something.
Digging deeper than that and looking at the organization as a whole, however, shows that the injury trend extends beyond the major-league club.
Of the 285 players in the Rockies organization, currently 54 of them are on the injured list. That means almost one-fifth of the entire organization’s entire player populace that is unavailable right now.
With publicly available information, it is impossible to forecast with an accuracy the total number of games these players will miss. But with some rough napkin math, it’s obvious that the Rockies will be much further up the games missed leaderboard this season than they have been the past couple.
Not all injuries impact teams equally. The New York Yankees losing Aaron Judge for an extended period of time will remove more total wins above replacement from their season than the Rockies losing Victor Vodnik for a few weeks. The players the Rockies are currently missing are, however, some of their best players, even if they aren’t household names around the league.
- Chase Dollander is generally considered the pitcher with highest ceiling in the entire organization, and he appeared to have turned a corner against major-league hitting to start the season.
- Mickey Moniak had been putting together a potentially all-star start to the season and was arguably the Rockies biggest trade chip this year.
- Ethan Holliday (No. 2 PuRP) is has the most star potential of any player in the organization and was in the midst of a strong start to what would have been his first full season in professional baseball.
There are more injured players, but you get the point: Losing players to injury impacts both the short- and long-term future of the organization even in a season in which there are no real expectations to win.
The only solace that can be taken from this uptick in players getting hurt comes from taking another look at the research done in the The Athletic article that started this us down this rabbit hole.
Since 2024, six of the ten teams that lost the most MLB days to the IL have made the playoffs at least once in that time. Meanwhile, among the teams that had the fewest days missed are the Rockies and other recent poor-performing teams such, as the Los Angeles Angles, St. Louis Cardinals, and Washington Nationals.
This is not to say, that teams should be trying to have more injuries, just that the correlation between success and injuries is not simple.
For instance, there has been speculation in recent years that the Dodgers, and the Tampa Bay Rays before them, have specifically targeted pitcher archetypes that they believe have high injury risks and have pushed for higher velocity and spin in ways that they believe lead to more arm injuries. While I’m sure no executive would be willing to go on the record admitting to it, the crux of the argument is that because they have the resources and development acumen to assemble enough depth to cover for injuries, they are less averse to taking on the risk of high-performing characteristics that may also increase arm strain.
With the Rockies front office turnover this offseason, it’s fair to wonder whether this recent uptick in injuries could be tied to that changing of the guard.
Even if there is not some concerted effort towards more risky behavior, it’s possible that an uptick in injuries is a downstream effect of some innocuous process changes. Another possibility is that the new personnel are more aggressive with monitoring for injuries and officially utilizing the injured list in a way that the previous regime may have just unofficially benched players.
In a game fueled by numbers, it is tantalizing to try and ascribe meaning to them. It is natural to look at trends and formulate an explanation. When zooming in closer to the context of the individual events that those numbers and trends are collating, however, it is sometimes hard to reconcile those big-picture theories with the messiness of the small data.
Mickey Moniak landing awkwardly when making a catch against the outfield wall and hurting his ankle isn’t a the result of any process change. Tyler Freeman getting hit in the head by a fastball certainly wasn’t anything but awful luck.
The signal of an injury spike is messy and complicated both in its potential causes as well as its ramifications for the team. If the recent uptick in Rockies players getting hurt becomes a years-long trend, then we can responsibly try and find a cause. For now, we’re best off just taking the news of each injury in on its own merits and hoping for the best.
On the Farm
Triple-A: Tacoma Rainiers 11, Albuquerque 1
The Albuquerque Isotopes struggled to get anything going against the Rainiers (SEA) after the first inning tonight. 2B Vimael Machín singled to score Drew Avans with two outs, and that was it. The Topes were limited to five hits and struck out 11 times. Five players had one hit, but none had more than one. DH Kyle McCann went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts.
Pitching wise, Valente Bellozo threw three innings and gave up seven runs, all earned, on five hits with three walks and two strikeouts. He also gave up two home runs — a two-run show in the first and a three-run shot in the third. He took the loss, and is 0-6 with an 8.83 ERA on the season. Evan Shawver gave up another run on three hits with a walk and two strikeouts in three innings. Jimmy Herget made his first rehab appearance, and gave up two runs on two hits with a walk and a strikeout in 0.2 innings. Both runs came on a two-run homer by Hogan Windish in the seventh inning. And TJ Shook made his first appearance since being optioned, pitching the final 1.1 innings and allowing one run on two hits with two walks and three strikeouts.
Double-A: The Yard Goats had a double header last night!
- Game 1: Hartford Yard Goats 4, New Hampshire Fisher Cats 3 (F/7)
- In Game 1 of the doubleheader, the Yard Goats came out on top. New Hampshire (TOR) jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the first inning when catcher Aaron Parker hit a two-run homer, but the Yard Goats chipped away with one run in the third and then tacked on three in the sixth. The Fisher Cats scored again in the top of the seventh, but it wasn’t enough.
- Dyan Jorge hit a sac fly in the third to score the single run. In the sixth, things got going with a Zach Kokoska RBI groundout, then Benny Montgomery doubled to score Bryant Betancourt and Cole Messina (No. 26 PuRP). All three runs were charged to Konner Eaton (No. 28 PuRP), who came out on top after throwing 6.1 innings and allowing just two hits with three walks and six strikeouts.
- Game 2: New Hampshire Fisher Cats 7, Hartford Yard Goats 5 (F/7)
- The Yard Goats weren’t as lucky in the second game, as they gave up taco’s. New Hampshire put up a four spot in the third — one run on an RBI single by Jay Harry, and the other three on a three-run homer by Victor Arias. Eddie Micheletti hit a two-run homer in the sixth to run up the score 6-0, but then Cole Messina doubled to score the Goats’ first run. Jose Torres then singled to score Jimmy Obertop and Messina, which cut the score in half. In the fifth, Jackson Hornung singled to score Arias, which was the final score for the Cats. Messina hit a two-RBI single in the sixth, but it wasn’t quite enough and the Goats fell 7-5.
- Pitching wise, Davison Palermo took the brunt of it. He pitched three innings, allowing four runs on five hits with two walks and three strikeouts. Cade Denton came in next, allowing three runs on four hits with two walks and three strikeouts in two innings. Fidel Ulloa finished with a scoreless inning with a strikeout.
High-A: Spokane Indians 10, Eugene Emeralds 9
It was a back-and-forth affair in Spokane, but the Indians trounced the Emeralds (SF) 10-9. Spokane struck first when Max Belyeu (No. 15 PuRP) homered. But then Zander Darby singled to tie things in the bottom of the second. Eugene scored again in the fourth and fifth, but then Kevin Fitzer hit a two-run homer in the sixth to put the Indians back on top. Lisbel Díaz homered to put Eugene up 5-4 in the bottom of the sixth, and then Roynier Hernandez singled to tie things up in the seventh. Jack O’Dowd then followed that up with a three-run homer to blow it open 8-5, but then Jakob Christian hit a grand slam to put Eugene up again 9-8. In the eighth, Kelvin Hidalgo doubled to score Juan Castillo and tie it at 9, but then Tommy Hopfe singled to score Hidalgo and end the game.
Austin Strickland took the brunt of it on the pitching side, giving up six runs on seven hits with one strikeout in just two innings of work. But starter Niko Mazza gave up three runs (one earned) on five hits with six strikeouts in his 5.1 innings of work.
Low-A: Visalia Rawhide 5, Fresno Grizzlies 1
Visalia (AZ) jumped out to an early lead in the first three innings and never yielded. Carlos Virahonda homered in the first to put them up 2-0. In the second, JD Dix hit an RBI groundout and then Virahonda was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to put the Rawhide up 4-0. In the third, Pedro Blanco homered.
The Grizzlies scored just once in the fourth, when Roldy Brito (No 11 PuRP) grounded out to score Cameron Nelson.
Grizzlies’ starter Austin Nelson threw just 2.2 innings, allowing five runs (three earned) on four hits with four walks and a strikeout. Bryson Van Sickle threw 3.1 scoreless innings, striking out four. And Jhon Medina allowed just one hit over two innings with a walk and two strikeouts.
The most exciting Rockies related news this week has obviously been the call up of No. 4 PuRP Cole Carrigg. On Purple Row, Renee Dechert wrote up excerpts from Carrigg’s pre-debut media availability yesterday and Patrick Lyons follows that up with this piece in which he dives into Carrigg’s debut and the adjustments the team had him working on in the minors before the call up.
Rockies’ latest transactions have low-risk, but perhaps not high reward | SI.com
The Rockies made a couple of very low profile moves on Monday in order to increase depth at the minor league level. Matt Postins takes a look at the Rockies newest farmhands and digs into what they can reasonably be expected to provide moving forward.
Do catchers challenge well where they frame well? | FanGraphs
Davy Andrews looked into the connection between locations that catchers are able to frame pitches well and the locations that catchers have had ABS challenge success on. The basic conclusion is that there is potentially an inverse relationship between the zones where a catcher is better at framing vs challenging. It’s a quick, interesting read that I mostly call out because it sheds light on the fact that Hunter Goodman does his best pitch framing at the top and arm sides of the zone.
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!
Please keep in mind our Purple Row Community Guidelines when you’re commenting. Thanks!
