Colorado Rockies Quick Hits: TV Broadcast Schedule, Parra, Hampson

Today is the first day of workouts for pitchers and catchers at spring training in Scottsdale for the Colorado Rockies. Here are some items of note involving the Rockies in the past few days.

The Rockies and AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain announced on Tuesday that 150 of the club’s 162 game schedule in 2018. Some of the games will be not be on AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain because they will be nationally televised (e.g. April 7 against the Dodgers will be on Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN) but some will not be televised at all. They are all weekday, day games. As of now, they are May 2 in Milwaukee, May 23 in Pittsburgh, June 20 in Arizona, June 26 in San Francisco, July 17 at Coors against the Giants, August 21 in Arizona, and September 18 at Coors against the Mets.

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Yesterday, the San Francisco Giants signed former Rockies outfielder Gerardo Parra to a minor league contract with an invite to Spring Training. Parra, who’ll be 32 in May, spent the past three seasons in a Rockies uniform, taking part in 359 games and playing to an OPS+ of 80 and to a WAR of -1.4. Parra will likely be a starter in the Giants outfield as currently, the Giants don’t have a single outfielder in their depth chart that has played more than half a season in the outfield at the major league level.

ESPN’s David Schoenfield published an article on Monday about one thing or player to watch for in Spring Training for each team and for the Rockies, he picked Garrett Hampson. He contends that Hampson should actually be playing center field for the Rockies, not Ian Desmond, and Ryan McMahon should play second base, at least until Brendan Rodgers. For each team, he also has a level of excitement in which each team is at entering spring training. Ranking it from 1 to 5, Schoenfield has the Rockies at 4, which, to me, is a bit high. Granted, the Rockies have made the playoffs for two straight seasons but given the Rockies run differential last year, the Rockies should have won 85 games.

With their offseason moves, I personally don’t view the Rockies as getting much higher than that.