Rockies ‘reimagining’ their pitching strategy in wake of 2025 disaster

ORLANDO Fla Is the piggyback making a comeback Not necessarily but the Rockies new leaders are changing the club s pitching philosophy strategy and teaching Tuesday night at the winter meetings the club declared its pitching staff Alon Leichman as pitching coach Gabe Ribas as assistant pitching coach Matt Buschmann as bullpen coach and Matt Daniels as director of pitching Manager Warren Schaeffer gushed about the new hires In terms of Rockies history this is one of the majority exciting moments for us he revealed Four guys have been brought in who are game-changers and have a good feel for the encounter They know tech know the analytics and know how to give guys new arsenals and know how to deal with pitch shapes The whole gamut Earlier in the day new general manager Josh Byrnes was requested if the club was reimagining its pitching strategy He replied Very much so Reimaging it and just thinking what might work what might not work Several of it runs across any ballpark and specific of it is specific to Coors Field There is the home-road aspect to this the touch and feel and recovery all of that Reimagine is a good word and that s presumably the road we are on Whether that road leads to something like the paired-pitching piggyback system Colorado used for part of the season remains to be seen But clearly an improved rotation is a critical step to lift the Rockies out of their doldrums In en journey to a -loss season Colorado s rotation posted a ERA the worst for a starting staff since ERA became an official stat in Lefty Kyle Freeland and right-hander Ryan Feltner coming back from injuries are the only two established pitchers who appear to be locks for the rotation in After that there are multiple questions including how radical the Rockies will be in solving their dilemma Part of the reason we are so excited about this group is that they are all very creative and very open-minded new club president Paul DePodesta reported shortly after the Rockies disclosed their pitching staff We kicked around a lot of ideas during this process that we would like to explore further I can t say exactly where it s going to end up as of this day but I think we are going to be looking at a lot of different things There was one thing that Leichman petitioned me in particular He commented Is this on the table I reported Absolutely Last season Schaeffer reported he was interested in using an opener to start games but stated he didn t think the Rockies had the pitching personnel to make it work The Rockies only used an opener in just one tournament on June when lefty Ryan Rolison started for struggling right-hander Antonio Senzatela vs the Mets But there is a new attitude and a new staff Nothing is off the table Schaeffer called Leichman top notch adding I think you would be hard-pressed to find a better pitching coach Leichman served as assistant pitching coach for Miami last season and held the same post with the Reds the two previous years Late last season Marlins pitching coach Daniel Moskos and Leichman called pitches from the dugout Whether or not the Rockies will go in that direction remains to be seen though Schaffer has announced he s open to a few experimentation Like Paul DePodesta reported anything is on the table Schaeffer reported We are going to be creative How creative we get initially we ll see In June the Rockies got ultra creative but it didn t work out Former general manager Dan O Dowd looking for avenues to solve the Rockies chronic pitching woes in Denver s mile-high altitude introduced Project so named within the executive offices at Coors Field in honor of the ballpark s base elevation The headline-grabbing part of the plan was instituting a paired pitching system featuring four starters working on a -pitch limit and four piggyback relievers We felt like the greatest hazard to take right now was no liability at all O Dowd described season-ticket holders on a conference call that summer If we were going to do something do something bold because nothing is ever rewarded if you are going to try to do something that is meek The idea of using a nontraditional approach first surfaced among Rockies officers in Former Triple-A pitching coach Bob McClure talked of creating a wolf pack pitching staff using a convoy of relievers to ease the burden on starters and address the impact of pitching at altitude In manager Jim Tracy was never settled with the idea of paired pitching and it revealed as he struggled to articulate the plan from the outset Several starting pitchers bristled at the system The Rockies went back to a five-man rotation on Aug when Jhoulys Chacin returned from the disabled list Related Articles Rockies Journal Manager Warren Schaeffer through the roof about group s new direction Rockies looking at doable free agents to fill gaping hole at first base How Harvard shaped Paul DePodesta the Rockies new front-office boss GM Josh Byrnes joined the Rockies for the challenge and to company with Paul DePodesta Rockies Journal Paul DePodesta Josh Byrnes face three big tasks as winter meetings begin Part of the difficulty with the piggyback system was that the National League did not have a designated hitter in which made the set pitching system unwieldy Plus pitchers were used to owning their starts and hated the idea of getting a mandatory hook on days when they were pitching well But baseball has changed a lot in the past years Multiple teams have used openers bullpen-pitched games and shortened innings by starters Plus the rise of analytics has changed the meeting forever But one thing has remained constant about baseball in Colorado Altitude makes it a different ballgame But DePodesta is confident his new pitching gurus are eager for the challenge They are all really excited about tackling altitude he mentioned They had specific different theories and we talked through different things about pitch shapes arsenals recovering and the different things that might work They all had really absorbing takes on it Rockies pitching planners The Rockies revealed their new pitching staff on Tuesday Following is a snapshot look at the four hires Alon Leichman pitching coach Comes to Colorado from the Marlins where he spent the season as the assistant pitching coach and assistant pitching director after spending two years with the Cincinnati Reds - in the same role Before his time with Cincinnati Leichman spent six years in Seattle s organization as a pitching coach at various levels Gabe Ribas assistant pitching coach Spent the past five seasons as the Tigers director of pitching after being hired in Before his time in Detroit he spent four seasons as a pitching coordinator in the Dodgers system where he worked across a large number of areas within participant enhancement including coaching staffs performance science strength and conditioning and baseball analytics Matt Buschmann bullpen coach Spent the past two seasons as a special adviser of athlete rise in the Cubs system Before going to Chicago he served as the Blue Jays bullpen coach from - where he also took on the role of director of pitching growth before the season Matt Daniels director of pitching Spent the past three seasons as the pitching rise and acquisitions specialist for the Twins Daniels also spent four seasons in San Francisco as the Giants coordinator of pitching sciences a role he was first hired for in He joined the Giants from Driveline Baseball a data-driven contestant advance facility based in Seattle where he was one of the company s first full-time employees Patrick Saunders The Denver Post Want more Rockies news Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis