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Escaping the dark cloud of the 2025 season is no easy trick. But shortstop Ezequiel Tovar and center fielder Brenton Doyle are giving it their best shot.
And the success of the two former Gold Glove winners will be central to the Rockies’ rebuild as they climb out of the ashes of a 119-loss season.
“Everyone, I think, has the same mentality,” Tovar said early in spring training. “What happened last year already happened, and we can’t fix it. We can’t fixate on it when we enter this year, because I think that’s when problems happen.
“All of us have to turn that page, but we can still learn from what happened last year.”
Doyle echoes Tovar’s silver-lining sentiments.
“It was a bumpy year for us — for me — highs and lows,” said Doyle, who’s been slowed by a sprained left wrist during this spring training. “We know those lows help show you what needs to be done to get back to the highs. It was a good learning year, and I was glad I ended it on a strong note.”
At this time last year, Tovar and Doyle were golden. Coming off breakout seasons, the duo seemed poised for stardom.
Tovar won his first Gold Glove in 2024, becoming the youngest shortstop to win the award in National League history. He led the NL with 45 doubles, hit a team-high 26 homers, and ranked second in the league with 75 extra-base hits.
“I think he’s one of the most — no, make that the most underrated player in the league,” Doyle said of Tovar last spring. “He doesn’t get a lot of attention, but the sky is the limit for that kid.”
The same could have been said for Doyle. In 2024, he slashed .260/.317/.446 and reduced his strikeout rate from 34.9% to 25.4%. He hit 23 homers, 24 doubles, and stole 30 bases. He became the first outfielder in National League history to win a Gold Glove in his first two major league seasons. In 2023, he became the first NL rookie outfielder to win the award.
Padres manager Mike Shildt raved about Doyle, who must patrol center at Coors Field, home of the biggest outfield in the majors.
“He does it all,” Shildt said. “He’s got instincts and takes the right routes and angles. He’s got a strong arm. He’s the real deal.”
A painful 2025 for Tavor
But the deal was pretty raw for both players last season, when the Rockies posted one of the worst seasons in major league history.
Tovar took a hit early. In the season’s third game, he suffered a painful left hip contusion on a sliding backhand play on the hard infield at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. Tovar tried to play through the pain but eventually spent a month on the injured list. Tovar later missed over a month due to a left oblique strain.
“The worst thing was just sneezing … I mean, I felt it,” he said of the oblique injury that turned him into a mere bystander. “You feel it in your stomach and all over. With that kind of injury, when you get up from bed, and you do all of the little everyday things … it hurts you.”
The one-two injury punch limited Tovar to 95 games, a .253/.294/.400 slash line and just nine home runs. His absence left a hole in a defense that posted a .981 team fielding percentage, the second-lowest in the majors behind Boston (.980) and the fourth-lowest in franchise history.
And, when the Rockies lost Tovar, they lost their sparkplug.
“When ‘Tovie’ is in the lineup doing his thing, he energizes people,” manager Warren Schaeffer said.
Tovar doesn’t have any grandiose plans to retool his game this season, though the Rockies want him to lower his 41.1% chase rate, which was well above the MLB average of 28.4%.
“It’s about keeping things simple,” he said. “I think last year I complicated things. I was doing too much, I was doing too much movement. I think I can do more by doing a little. It’s about understanding what I can do and not trying to push it.”
Doyle working to keep it simple
Doyle had to push through a lot of things last season. He suffered a left quadriceps injury in April. Later in the month, Doyle shared on social media the news that his wife, Shelby Rose, had a miscarriage. Doyle missed seven days on the bereavement list and later said he wished he had taken more time away to be with his wife and family.
Before the All-Star break, Doyle hit just .202 with a .576 OPS and seven home runs. After the break, Doyle hit .287 with a .779 OPS and eight homers. He reasoned that during the first half of the season, he hit a lot of hard shots directly at defenders.
“The back of the baseball card wasn’t looking like how you wanted it to,” Doyle told The Post in September. “But there were a lot of good underlying numbers, and you kind of just had to trust the process and trust that this game will even out at some point. That’s what it’s been doing in the second half for me.”
This spring, Doyle, like Tovar, has concentrated on keeping things simple.
“I liked my approach late last season,” he said. “So I didn’t feel like I had to make big adjustments.”
Doyle’s defensive metrics were not great last season, at least not compared to 2023 and ’24 when he won his Gold Gloves. In ’23, he posted a 13 outs above average (OAA), and posted a 14 OAA in ’24. Last season, that number slipped to six, according to Baseball Savant. OAA is a defensive metric that measures how many outs a fielder saves compared to an average fielder. It considers the difficulty of plays, distance, and time to reach a ball.
“I felt like I had a good year, defensively, last year,” Doyle said. “I didn’t get a chance to throw out as many runners, but they didn’t run on me as much. I never thought my (struggles) on offense affected me in the outfield.”
Schaeffer is all in with Doyle as his center fielder.
“Last year was his third year in the big leagues,” Schaeffer noted. “The first two years, he’s a Gold Glove winner in center field, in Coors Field. I mean, give the guy a break that he didn’t win a Gold Glove last year. He’s gonna be fine. ‘BD’ is a top-notch defender. I mean, he’s the best in the biz out there.”
Clearly, the Rockies have a mountain of work to do just to become a competitive team this season, but Schaeffer is confident that Tovar and Doyle will return to their gold standards.
“If they are both playing at the level we know they can play at, and if they are healthy for 162 (games), that absolutely makes us a better team,” he said. “Both of them are Gold Glove winners.,
“I feel like I say that all of the time, but I don’t want to diminish what that means. Because a Gold Glove defender in the middle of the diamond is special. Not every team has that. And then you add the offensive capabilities of both of them, with the power contributions that they can both offer n the lineup every day. It’s huge.”
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