The Colorado Rockies announced on Friday that right-hander Chase Dollander, one of the sport’s best pitching prospects, will make his big-league debut on Sunday against the Athletics. (First pitch is scheduled for 3:10 p.m. ET at Coors Field.) Dollander, 23, gets the call after appearing in a single Triple-A game. He struck out five batters and walked two over four one-run, six-hit innings. Although that stat line is unimpressive, clearly, he convinced the Rockies that he’s ready for primetime.
Dollander, the No. 9 selection in the 2023 draft by way of the University of Tennessee, entered the spring ranked by CBS Sports as the 16th best prospect in the game. Additionally, he was ranked as the fourth best pitching prospect in all the minor leagues, behind only Jackson Jobe (Detroit Tigers), Andrew Painter (Philadelphia Phillies), and Chase Burns (Cincinnati Reds).
Before Dollander takes a big-league mound for the first time, we here at CBS Sports wanted to provide a quick guide to his career and game. Below, you’ll find three things worth knowing ahead of Sunday.
1. Strong pedigree
Dedicated readers may recall that Dollander entered his draft cycle in consideration for the No. 1 pick. It’s true that he was coming off a season at Tennessee that saw him ride his fastball-slider combination to a 2.39 ERA and a 8.31 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Here’s what we wrote that spring:
Dollander joined the Volunteers prior to last season by way of Georgia Southern. That proved to be a wise decision, as he subsequently put himself in the running for the top pick by bullying good hitters with his elite arsenal. He struck out 108 batters in 79 innings, including 52 over 43 frames versus SEC foes. Dollander’s fastball touches into the upper 90s, but his best pitches are his devastating breaking balls: a curve he uses to change eye levels, and a slider he pairs well with the aforementioned heat. It is worth noting that Dollander’s fastball hasn’t missed as many bats as the velocity suggests it should. One veteran scout proposed that his lack of whiffs could be blamed on Tennessee’s predilection for pitching down in the zone; another said that collegiate hitters are likely sitting on the heater, knowing it represents their best chance to make contact. Whatever the case, the more pressing concern here has to do with his limited track record. Dollander hasn’t even thrown 120 innings in his collegiate career. For reference, Kumar Rocker threw more than that his final season at Vanderbilt. If Dollander can make a full slate of starts, it seems certain that he’ll be the first pitcher (and perhaps even the first player) picked in July.
Alas, Dollander struggled with his consistency throughout his platform year, causing him not only to fall behind Paul Skenes among right-handed starters, but to slide to the Rockies at the tail end of the top 10 selections.
Dollander has since made 24 minor-league starts, compiling a 2.58 ERA and a 3.55 strikeout-to-walk ratio. His command has been hit or miss: he’s averaged 3.6 walks per nine innings in those starts, and he issued 10 free passes in 17 ⅔ innings this spring with the big-league club.
Nevertheless, there’s ample reason to think Dollander could develop into an above-average starter — and, likely, the most productive Rockies first-round pitcher selection since Kyle Freeland in 2014.
2. Arsenal includes velocity, quality slider
Dollander showed off four pitches in that aforementioned Triple-A start: a fastball, slider, changeup, and curve. His heater was his most-used offering, notching a 55.7% usage rate while averaging 97 mph and topping out at 99.5 mph. Dollander’s fastball also featured more than 14 inches of induced vertical break from a release height that checked in just below 5.5 feet. For reference, a few pitchers with similar fastball traits included José Berríos and Luis Castillo, among others.
Dollander’s slider remains his best offering overall. As Marquee Sports pitching analyst Lance Brozdowski recently wrote in his newsletter: “The most attractive element of Dollander is that his fastball is good, yet his slider feel and shape are better. It’s a tight, hard pitch, reminiscent of the Warthen slider. It averaged 5″ vertical break and 5″ glove-side movement in the second half of last season at 87-88 mph (more rise and more glove-side than is standard for most sliders). He got strikes on this pitch at an insane 70% rate in the second half and generated average swing-miss at 33%.”
Dollander’s changeup, meanwhile, scored three whiffs on eight swings in his Triple-A outing. Compared to his fastball, the cambio features an eight-mph in velocity separation and about a foot more of vertical drop.
Of course, the biggest challenge facing Dollander isn’t his command or his arsenal quality. It’s his home-park environment.
3. Slider could be key in Coors
You’ve surely heard about how tough it is to pitch at Coors Field. This is a case where the reputation is well earned. According to Statcast’s three-year park factors, Coors Field has a 112 Park Factor. That’s 5% friendlier to offense than the second-place park (Fenway Park), and 7% friendlier than the third-place park (Great American Ballpark). In other words, Coors is in its own league.
The Rockies entered Saturday ranked 12th in staffwide ERA, and it’s probably not a coincidence that they’ve played all but one of their first seven contests on the road, away from the higher altitude and the thinner air. Expect them to drop now that they’ve opened up the home portion of their schedule.
Is there any hope for Dollander at Coors? Back in 2013, Dan Rozenson analyzed which pitches play best at altitude for Baseball Prospectus. Rozenson concluded the following:
There is strong evidence that the slider performs in absolute and comparative terms better than the curveball in Coors Field. Part of this can probably be attributed to the fact that sliders deviate from the “gyroball” trajectory of a pitch thrown in a vacuum the least of the major pitch types. Sinking fastballs also have a sharp drop-off in performance at Coors, and there is some evidence that using a cut fastball would be a good alternative.
Presuming Rozenson’s analysis holds up, that means Dollander’s slider — and, specifically, his feel for throwing the pitch for strikes — could end up being the key for him surviving at home. But enough about theory; come Sunday, Dollander will get to test that premise for real.
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