Shortly before the 2025 All-Star break, a combination of personal tragedy, injury, and on-field struggles had Colorado Rockies center fielder Brenton Doyle on the back foot.
The Rockies’ most-valuable player in 2024 with 4.0 wins above replacement per Baseball Reference, Doyle ended the first half as baseball’s least valuable qualified player. Worth -2.0 rWAR as late as July 5th, both his bat and his glove suffered under the weight of poor performance.
The two-time Gold Glove winner out of Division II Shepherd University had been proclaimed the Rockies’ potential franchise center fielder before the season started. Before the trade deadline there were serious concerns about his future in Rockies purple.
“It was a bumpy year for me,” Doyle told Purple Row on Saturday, “and just being able to reset after those lows and get back to those highs was the biggest thing and finding ways to do that.”
Doyle indeed found the highs again in the second half. He turned things around both at the plate and on defense in the final 56 games of the season to finish with a positive wins-above-replacement score.
Looking much more like the Brenton Doyle of 2024, the center fielder looks to continue his “reset” and help the Rockies find their way forward in 2026 after an organizational overhaul.
“I just want to win some games,” Doyle explained of his goals for 2026. “Honestly, my personal goals are always going to intertwine with the team goals, and that’s to win more more games for this ball club.”
The Rockies finished 2025 with a brutal 43-119 record. Losing only 100 games would mark a substantial improvement for a rebuilding ball club looking to establish a solid foundation.
As part of the off-season program, manager Warren Schaeffer wanted some players—such as Kyle Karros and Ryan Ritter—to bulk up.
“Guys lose weight, especially here in altitude, and when a young player loses his weight, and he’s not accustomed to playing a long season with that toll on your body, it’s just not a good combination,” Schaeffer explained at the end of the 2025 campaign.
For Doyle, that’s already part of his regular routine. Patrolling the cavernous outfield at Coors Field is an exhausting job. Doyle lost over 20 pounds during his Gold Glove rookie season in 2023 and was reported to have lost over 10 pounds during the course of the 2025 season.
“I always try to work on my speed, putting on weight,” Doyle said. “I lose so much playing center field during the season. So [I worked on] packing on some good weight and just always trying to stay fast.”
During the off-season, Doyle also worked with his personal hitting instructor Kevin LaChance in Virginia. LaChance is a former minor league player and is currently a minor league hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers. This coming season he will be the hitting coach for the High-A Great Lakes Loons.
Doyle has experimented with and adjusted his hitting mechanics since his rookie year, often in real time during the regular season. He credited mechanical adjustments made mid-season last year with helping him find his form at the plate again.
“It just eliminated the move I naturally make in my swing,” Doyle said. “And maybe that’s helped me get to some pitches (against right-handers) I was a tad bit late on in the past … It was something I did throughout my whole minor league career, and then last year I made a swing change. And then this year, I went back to what was more comfortable for me, and it’s been good.”
Doyle hit .282/.307/.462 through the last 56 games of the 2025 season with 11 doubles, eight home runs, nine stolen bases, and 27 RBIs. He felt confident enough to not make any additional major changes over the off-season.
“Nothing too major this year, just some very, very subtle changes,” Doyle said of his work with LaChance.
Now that spring training is fully underway, Doyle has praised the new coaching staff assembled by Schaeffer and new president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta.
“It’s been awesome,” he said. “I’ve had some really good conversations with with them. We have a really good plan in place and and we’re all on the same page, which is awesome.”
A major part of that plan in place is a focus on fundamentals. This includes Doyle’s work with new first base outfield coach Doug Bernier alongside the rest of the outfield group.
“A lot of stuff we’ve been working on has been reaction stuff. So just making sure we’re making the right first quick step, [and that] moves are super efficient. That’s basically been the focus of the work so far.”
Doyle made his first appearance of the Cactus League on Saturday afternoon against the Arizona Diamondbacks. He started in center field and went 3-for-3 at the plate with two doubles and three RBIs.
“I just had a good game playing against the guys I was facing,” Doyle said after the game. “I [was trying] to stay as stubborn as possible up there at the plate, getting the pitches I wanted to swing at and put some good swings on everything I fired at.”
Brenton Doyle is one of just a handful of Rockies guaranteed a single starting spot for the upcoming season, but his future with the Rockies has yet to be set in stone. He could be extended as the franchise center fielder for the foreseeable future, or he could be traded at the deadline to clear way for younger players and help restock the farm.
Whichever path the 2026 season leads him down, his reset from a miserable start to 2025 will continue to be a critical part of the Rockies’ season.
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