Colorado Rockies: A conversation with Ian Desmond on playing center field

The Colorado Rockies new center fielder Ian Desmond has had a good start to spring training for the team and yesterday, we had a chance to speak to him.

In five games thus far in Spring Training, the Rockies new center fielder Ian Desmond has been excellent as he has 1 home run, 2 RBI, and a .375/.583/1.000 slash line.

Yesterday, after the Rockies 9-3 win to the Giants in which Desmond started in center and hit fifth in the lineup and went 2-for-2 with an RBI single, a triple, and a run, Desmond spoke to the media, including our own Kevin Henry, about his spring training and his offseason.

He said that he had a really good offseason and he said that he feels like his body is prepared for playing center field at Coors Field, something that he has not done on a regular basis.

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However, he says that he understands that it may not be a walk in the park.

"“Obviously, I understand the challenge of it, watching Charlie [Blackmon] go through it for the past few years,” said Desmond. “Charlie earned every bit of that contract that he got because playing out there in center field is not an easy task. I’m leaning on him and leaning on the training staff and strength coaches to keep my legs in shape and try to do what we can.”"

Part of the reason why Blackmon is being moved to right field from center field is that he struggled mightily in 2019 on defense. He had the worst Defensive Runs Saved of any player in baseball last year, according to Baseball Reference, at -28. For comparison, in 2017, his DRS was -5.

For Desmond, in the 133 career games that he has played in center field, defensively, he has -4 DRS but in a very small sample size of playing center field with the Rockies (3 games), he actually has 2 DRS.

Obviously, there is still plenty of spring training but it is nice to see Ian Desmond playing well to start out spring training. As we all know, he hasn’t been stellar for the Rockies the last two seasons but hopefully, he can stay in the groove that he’s in throughout spring training and into the regular season that starts in about 3 1/2 weeks.