Can Rockies fix swing-and-whiff offense from disastrous 2025? New hitting coach keeps it simple

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer knows what his dream offense looks like.

He envisions a unit that consistently puts the ball in play and is fueled by speed and aggressive baserunning. He wants Coors Field to become a nightmare on Blake Street for opposing teams. Home runs are great, but Schaeffer is not conjuring up the second coming of the Blake Street Bombers.

He envisions the “Go Go Rox.”

“Since Day 1, that’s one of the things I’ve been preaching,” Schaeffer said. “It’s got to be part of our game. We have to be able to score runs in different ways, as opposed to just going station to station and trying to hit a home run. And we’ve got to be able to be more productive on the road.”

Reimagining their offense and making it a reality is a central theme of spring training as the Rockies try to rebound from a disastrous 119-loss season, one marred by a swing-and-whiff offense that was the worst in franchise history.

Brett Pill, the club’s new hitting coach, believes the Rockies will turn things around.

“It’s early, and it’s still a work in progress, and I’m still getting to know the players, and we tweak things all of the time, but we’re getting there,” said Pill, who spent the previous six seasons in the Dodgers organization, most recently as the minor league hitting coordinator from 2023-25.

Pill is an advocate of melding modern technology and data with old-fashioned, one-on-one teaching.

“Everybody looks at things differently,” he said. “So what we are trying to do is tailor information to the players without overloading them with stuff. We want to make it pretty actionable and enable them to walk to the plate with a clear head.”

Many of the players appeared muddleheaded last season when Colorado set franchise lows in batting average (.237), on-base percentage (.293), slugging (.386), and hits and runs in a full 162-game season (1,282/597).

The Rockies’ 1,531 strikeouts were the third-most in franchise history, and their 51.0 swing percentage, 31.7 chase percentage, and 29 percent whiff percentage were all the highest in the majors. In other words, there were far too many empty at-bats.

Colorado was shut out 18 times last season, a franchise-worst. During a three-game series at San Diego in April, the Rockies became the first team in the modern era to score zero runs, have fewer than 10 hits, and strike out at least 30 times in a three-game sweep.

Laying off bad pitches

To jump-start the Go Go Rox, Pill is urging his hitters to simplify things and focus on the “Go Zone.” Sometimes called the “hot zone,” the “Go Zone” is defined as the optimal area within the strike zone where a hitter has the highest probability of success. It is a mental and visual cue for hitters to aggressively attack specific, hittable pitches. The hope is that the Rockies’ young hitter will cut down on swinging at pitches outside the strike zone.

“It’s nothing groundbreaking,” Pill said. “It’s based mostly on the pitcher we are facing and where we want to hunt for a pitch. That way we can commit to an area and hopefully lay off the other stuff.”

The “other stuff” includes the “chase zone,” where pitches that start out as strikes but then bend away. It’s so named because pitchers who throw there are attempting to induce a chase. The Rockies have failed to recognize chase pitches for several seasons.

But catcher Hunter Goodman, Colorado’s lone All-Star last season, likes what’s being done during camp to rectify the situation.

“We are trying to simplify things a little bit to help us find the zone,” said Goodman, who slashed .278/.323/.520 with 31 home runs last season. “Plus, coach Pill has put an emphasis on being more aggressive early in counts, and being ready for the first pitch to hit and getting your swing off on that one.

“I think certain guys did a good job of that, but there were also times when guys were too passive and let the pitcher get ahead in counts. We took some pitches that maybe we could have gotten some good swings off early. We needed to tweak our approach.”

In an attempt to reduce Ks and limit their penchant for swinging at pitches outside the strike zone, the Rockies expanded their analytics department. Schaeffer, however, believes the club made other important changes.

“First and foremost, it’s about personnel,” he said. “A lot of guys can innately control the zone. That’s their gift.”

Schaeffer singled out infielder Willi Castro and outfielder Jake McCarthy as players who handle a bat and the strike zone well and can put the ball in play with some consistency.

Other players, however, need more help.

“So we work on it, and include everybody in the process,” Schaeffer said. “Our biomechanics guy (Brandon Stone, manager of performance science) works to get everybody in the right position. Maybe somebody is chasing a lot because their body is not in the right position. We examine that. Every guy is different.”

Added Pill: “Mechanically, maybe we pull a guy away from the plate a bit. And some of the problems could be that guys were trying too hard not to strike out. So, maybe, early in the count, they took a pitch that maybe they should have hit. Or they fouled off pitches they should have hit. Then they got down two strikes and found themselves in trouble. We want to eliminate those things.”

Simplifying things

Every team, of course, has detailed scouting reports on opposing pitchers. Players, to varying degrees, also watch videos on pitchers they will face. But information overload, resulting in paralysis by analysis in the batter’s box, is a real concern.

“Our job is to distill information to our hitters,” said Amir Mamdani, Colorado’s director of baseball operations. “That’s where the idea of the “Go Zone” comes in.

“I think that last year, and in the years prior, guys were trying to cover too many different things. Guys were trying to cover four pitches, three areas, and pitchers’ tendencies in certain counts. I think Brett wants to distill some of that and simplify things.”

When Paul DePodesta, president of baseball operations, and Schaeffer were putting together a new coaching staff and adding to the analytics department, they wanted communicators and teachers, not just analytics gurus.

“If the players are going to read these (scouting reports) but don’t understand them, and get nothing out of it, you might just as well throw them in the trash can,” he said. “It’s about making the information accessible to the players.”

Goodman said players need to marry data and athleticism when they go to the plate against big-league pitchers whose average fastball velocity has increased from 91.3 mph in 2008 to 94.4 mph in 2025.

“You have to do your own research,” Goodman said. “I think it helps walking up to the plate knowing that you have studied a little, knowing you’ve looked into this guy’s tendencies.

“So when I’m on deck, I’ll think about the pitcher’s stuff and maybe his percentages and what he likes to throw in a specific count. But once you step into the box, it’s about competing at that point.”

Schaeffer is confident the Rockies are finding a formula that will allow them to compete in 2026.

“At this level, pitching and hitting are a huge cat-and-mouse game,” he said. “It’s a huge thing to tackle. But I think we have brought in the personnel to help us solve this. I believe that.”

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