The Rockies are dealing with an injury concern for their top young pitcher. Chase Dollander left this afternoon’s start in Pittsburgh in the second inning on account of right arm tightness.
Dollander told Thomas Harding of MLB.com postgame that the club had not scheduled any imaging. “I don’t know; I’m not sure,” he replied when asked about his level of concern. “I don’t want to say too much before anything else happens – not to freak myself out or anyone else.”
The ninth overall pick in the 2023 draft, Dollander struggled at Coors Field as a rookie last season. He has taken a major step forward this year, entering today’s outing with a 3.35 ERA across 43 innings. He’d punched out 26% of opponents while averaging 99 mph on his four-seam fastball. Pittsburgh rocked him for five hits and three runs in an inning-plus today, although it’s fair to attribute the ugly start to the arm discomfort.
Dollander tells Harding he first felt some arm discomfort coming out of last Friday’s start in Philadelphia. He had a slight velocity dip this afternoon, sitting 97-98 mph with the heater instead of his usual 99. That’s not much of a concern in itself — it was the first inning and the game temperature was in the high 40s — but becomes more alarming in conjunction with the arm discomfort.
The Rox haven’t revealed whether Dollander will go on the injured list. It’d behoove them to exercise caution with the most important member of their pitching staff. Today’s loss dropped Colorado to an NL-worst 17-27 record. They’re still early in what’ll be a long-term rebuild, so the focus should be on Dollander’s health.
Tanner Gordon helped preserve the bullpen by tossing four innings of one-run ball in mop-up work. Gordon wasn’t even on the active roster until this morning, as Colorado recalled him from Triple-A Albuquerque before the game. That came as the corresponding move for reliever Jimmy Herget, who landed on the 15-day injured list with a shoulder impingement.
A waiver claim after the 2024 season, Herget provided the Rox 83 1/3 innings of 2.48 ERA ball a year ago. He has a less impressive 5.06 mark through 16 frames this year, albeit with similar strikeout and walk rates as he posted last season. Herget has always attacked the strike zone. He doesn’t have huge stuff but is missing a decent number of bats with a heavy dose of breaking balls from a sidearm delivery.
Herget is playing on a $1.55MM arbitration salary and has one year of control after this one. He’s not going to be any contender’s top bullpen target but could draw deadline interest as a deception-based middle reliever if he’s healthy. The Rockies would presumably be happy to move him for a lottery ticket prospect if the opportunity presents itself.
In other injury news, reliever Jeff Criswell was assigned to Albuquerque this week as he continues his rehab assignment. The righty is working back from Tommy John surgery which he underwent in Spring Training 2025. That interrupted a promising start to Criswell’s MLB career. The University of Michigan product struck out 31% of opponents with a 2.75 ERA over his first 19 2/3 innings back in 2024.
