The Colorado Rockies are a team in the midst of a rebuild. With this in mind, the staff at Purple Row thought it would be useful to revisit the “State of the Position” series that we ran in March to see where things stand. We’ve asked authors of the spring articles to re-evaluate their earlier remarks with an eye toward the August 3 trade deadline.
Where things stood pre-season
In March, the Rockies handed the starting third base job to Kyle Karros. At the time I wrote the following about where the position looked to be headed
for the club:
What you think about the Rockies third base situation almost entirely depends on what you think of Kyle Karros.
Do you buy into his minor league performance and hot spring? Well, then maybe by next year we’ll all be saying that the Rockies have the position locked down for the foreseeable future.
Do you think the scouting reports and his month of play in the bigs last year are more indicative of the player he’ll be long term? In that case, third base (unless Ryan Ritter happens to break out) is in for a transitional period that may well last a couple full years.
With 93 games under his belt in 2026, has Karros done enough to quell that uncertainty?
For Karros, 2026 began the same as 2025 ended
The first two months of the 2026 season showcased the same player profile that he’d had during his debut last season. This profile was built around three pillars:
Good plate discipline
Karros’ calling card offensively last season had been his plate discipline. Even when he has struggled to impact the ball, his chase% on pitches outside the zone has maintained around 24%, good for 80th percentile in the league this season. This lack of chase was on full display in March and April when Karros earned a great 16.1 walk percentage.
The discipline is also the reason Karros is able to work deep into counts. The inevitability of another Karros 3-2 count has become a running joke in game threads here at Purple Row. In terms of pitches seen per plate appearance, Karros ranks 24th in all of MLB at 4.08, which is comfortably the highest among Rockies hitters.
Solid defense
In terms of defense, Karros has continued to look like a capable defender at the hot corner. There have been some signs that he is maybe not quite as good with the glove as his limited sample in 2025 indicated — he’s earned fewer defensive runs saved and is committing errors at a higher rate than last season — but his overall defensive value is still calculated by FanGraphs to be among the top ten qualified third baseman in MLB this year.
Poor quality of contact
The league average isolated power this season is .158. Through April, Karros’ ISO was only .065, which was only marginally better than the .051 that he’d managed in 2025 after reaching the majors. Through the start of the 2026 season, this lack of being able to do damage when he made contact had been the persistent downfall of his short big league career.
The lack of quality contact was so severe that it threatened to act as an anchor to Karros’ entire offensive profile. In March and April, his overall wRC+ (a stat that weights total offensive performance with one hundred being league average) was an abysmal 63 despite his great walk percentage.
Changes at the plate have led to impressive results
Karros had entered the season trying not to overreact to his poor hitting performance after his big league debut in 2025. As April came to a close and he continued to struggle to make productive contact at the plate, it became clear that his current approach wasn’t working and adjustments were needed.
To understand the adjustments that Karros made, we need to look at his swing from early April:
Compare that to his swing from just before the All-Star break:
At the start of the season, his stance was closed off and upright, but is now much more open and tensed. His leg kick timing mechanism has not changed much, but the starting position of the front foot has shifted dramatically further back in the box. This leads to a more crouched stance and a more explosive hip rotation as he unloads his swing.
Corresponding with these mechanical adjustments has been one specific major change in his peripherals: Hard Hit %
Karros adopted his new batting stance in mid-May, roughly when his Hard Hit % was bottoming out. Since then, it has climbed significantly above league average and has, so far, stayed there.
This sudden ability to access more of his power has not just been theoretical but has correlated with an obvious surge in his results at the plate.
- March/April: .207/.330/.272 with a 63 wRC+
- May: .225/.295/.380 with a 73 wRC+
- June: .357/.444/.586 with a 166 wRC+
- July: .289/.385/.644 with a 164 wRC+
This version of Karros looks like a genuine force to be reckoned with in a major league lineup. The question is this: Can he sustain it for more than six weeks’ worth of games?
We won’t know until the games are played, but this is a stark increase in production backed up by a noticeable change in his underlying metrics which can be explained by a visible process adjustment. Outside of a larger sample size, this is everything you would want to see to begin to believe a player had made a potentially lasting improvement.
It would be foolhardy to assume that Karros is going to be able to sustain a 160 wRC+ forever, but he never needed to be an all-star-level hitter to become a fixture in this lineup.
His established foundation of good plate discipline and defense meant that he didn’t need to improve his quality of contact that much in order to become a quality major league starter. He has now done that and shown a tantalizing glimpse of what the best-case scenario for him going forward could be.
The organizational depth beyond Karros
As with many positions in this series, the second option at third base has proven to be Willi Castro.
Castro has provided flexibility for the club with his ability to play capable (if not smooth) defense anywhere, including third base. He has gotten full-time at-bats and has managed to hit .260/.331/.378 with an 85 wRC+. That’s not the offensive output of a star but is enough to comfortably fit into the back third of a lineup given his defensive abilities.
Even if Castro is not dealt at this year’s trade deadline, which is very possible, his time in purple is not expected to extend particularly far into the future, as his current contract expires at the end of 2027.
When Castro departs, the players in the minors that could eventually be looked at to either fill in for Karros (or replace him should he regress) would be:
- Ryan Ritter: Having battled injuries, Ritter has only managed to play in 34 games at Triple-A so far this season. In his limited time on the field, he’s hit respectably and produced a 106 wRC+ for the Isotopes.
- Wilder Dalis (No. 24 PuRP): The surface level production during his second run at Low-A has looked even better than his initial cup of coffee at the level late last season. His 25.6% strikeout rate remains a cautionary flag considering the level.
- Ethan Hedges (No. 29 PuRP): As a 22-year-old in High-A, Hedges’ decent but not great offensive performance this year has not been encouraging. Just like Dalis, his high strikeout rate in the low minors will need to be monitored.
- Ethan Holliday (No. 2 PuRP): In 33 games to start the season at Low-A, Holliday was starting to show signs of why he was so highly thought of prior to the 2025 draft. Like Dalis and Hedges, his strikeout rate being in the mid-to-high twenties is concerning, but everything else had been clicking for him before his season ending injury.
- Kamuel Villar & Eriel Dihigo: Two recent international amateur signings for the Rockies, both Villar and Dihigo are hitting very well in their first season in the Complex League at ages 18 and 19 respectively. Neither yet has much public scouting hype but are worth keeping an eye on to see how they progress.
Other than Ritter, there aren’t really any third base prospects waiting in the wings in the high minors. It will be a couple of seasons before anyone currently expected to have a real shot at being a starting-caliber third base replacement is ready to hit the majors should Karros’ hot summer turn out to be a mirage.
Closing thoughts
Just like before the season started, the Rockies third base situation comes down to what you think about Karros. The difference now is that he has given much more reason to believe in his offensive upside.
Given his torrid pace post-swing change, Karros has solidified himself as the Rockies starting third baseman through the start of the 2027 season. Even if he were to slump for the rest of this year, the position would still be his to lose going into next spring. Beyond the start of next year, however, nothing is guaranteed. Karros will need to continue to perform to keep his spot but he would need to struggle quite a bit to lose it, given that there are not any in house options banging down the door to take it from him at the moment.
Karros has earned a leash long enough to be, at minimum, a bridge between Ryan McMahon and the next franchise third baseman for the Rockies. It has, however, become a very real possibility that he may be able to simply take up that mantle of franchise third baseman for himself.
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