The Rockies provided a brutal injury update on Friday night. Manager Warren Schaeffer tells Kevin Henry of The Denver Gazette that Chase Dollander is expected to require surgery to repair UCL damage in his elbow. The Rox haven’t finalized those plans yet, as Schaeffer indicated the righty has one more pre-operation appointment in the coming days.
Dollander has been out since the middle of May with an elbow sprain. They transferred him to the 60-day IL this afternoon when they promoted Sean Sullivan. Schaeffer indicated that while the team was initially optimistic that Dollander could avoid surgery, the injury hasn’t healed as they hoped.
It’s about as bad a development as the Rockies could have. Dollander is arguably the most player in the organization. The ninth overall pick in the 2023 draft, he has the highest ceiling of any pitcher on the club. Dollander struggled with Coors Field as a rookie. He had seemingly figured things out in year two, working to a 3.89 ERA while striking out a quarter of opponents across 44 innings.
The Rockies used Dollander behind an opener early in the season. They had moved him into a more traditional rotation role shortly before the injury. Dollander had a couple clunkers — most notably a six-run outing against Atlanta on May 2 — but was clearly Colorado’s best starting pitcher. His four-seam fastball and sinker were both in the 98-99 mph range as he got swinging strikes on 12% of his offerings.
It was too small a sample to know if Dollander had truly arrived as a top-of-the-rotation arm. He’s the only Colorado pitcher who has anything close to that kind of ceiling. Assuming he undergoes surgery, he’ll be done for the rest of this season and a good portion of next year. An internal brace procedure usually comes with a 12-14 month return timeline. If he requires a full Tommy John reconstruction, there’s a chance he’ll miss the entire ’27 season.
The Rockies are trending toward a fourth straight 100-loss season. They’re very unlikely to be competitive next year either. The development of young players like Dollander is the primary focus for the Colorado fanbase as they remain near the nadir of their rebuild.
Dollander is under club control for the next six seasons, barring changes to the service time structure in the next collective bargaining agreement. He’ll collect an MLB salary and service time while he’s on the injured list. Colorado will need to carry him on the 40-man roster over the offseason but can place him back on the 60-day IL when Spring Training begins next year.
The Rox have arguably the worst rotation in MLB for a second straight year. Kyle Freeland, Tomoyuki Sugano, Michael Lorenzen and Jose Quintana are all going to hit free agency. Ryan Feltner will be back if he’s tendered an arbitration contract. Tanner Gordon, McCade Brown, Gabriel Hughes and Sullivan are also among those on the 40-man roster. They all profile as back-end or organizational depth types. They’ll need to completely overhaul the rotation next winter while trying to acquire any kind of controllable pitching in their deadline approach.
