Colorado Rockies: An exclusive conversation with Yency Almonte on 2019, his 2020 outlook

For the 2019 Colorado Rockies, the season ended much sooner than they had hoped as their win total dropped by 20 games. This was due to many things, but one of those things was a lack of consistent pitching.

That lack of consistent pitching was, arguably, the biggest downfall of the Colorado Rockies in 2019. Entering 2020, they will look to improve upon that as they posted their 3rd worst team ERA in franchise history (5.56) and their worst team ERA in this millennium.

One of the people that the Rockies may turn to in 2020 out of the bullpen is Yency Almonte, who will have a busy offseason as he has a few tasks for himself in the coming weeks and months.

“[I’m going to work on a] lot of mechanical work, honestly,” said Almonte, in an exclusive conversation with Rox Pile’s Jake Shapiro before Sunday’s season finale against the Brewers at Coors Field. “Just trying to repeat my delivery…I just feel like I was inconsistent [mechanically] this year.”

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While Almonte saw his number of appearances at the major league level double from 28 games from 14 games in 2018, he was not happy with his season overall.

“I feel like it could have went better,” said Almonte. “Honestly, I’m not satisfied with what I did this year. I know [that] last year was a way better year for me and this year, I had way more walks than I had last year so, for me, it’s not something I want to build off of, I want to have a better year next year and come up ready, like I’ve done in past years.”

At the major league level, Almonte’s walk rate increased from 2.5 BB/9 to 3.7 BB/9. In Albuquerque, his walk rate nearly tripled from 2.9 BB/9 in 2018 to 7.8 BB/9 in 2019.

Even though Almonte was a starter in the past but as we head into 2020, he’s got his mindset on to join Carlos Estevez and Jairo Diaz as three sold back-end of the bullpen guys,

“I played with Jairo when I was in Anaheim,” said Almonte, “and played against Carlos when he was a Rockie and being here a couple of years later and being here altogether and seeing their path and my path to getting here…and both of them had, pretty much, monster years this year and I know that I can be a third piece to that to build off of for next year and we could be a big three power house for next year.”“My mindset is on staying out of the ‘pen and I feel like I’ve got a good routine out of the ‘pen right now. [For example], getting called to get warmed up and into the game, I feel like I can get ready pretty well…[but] I need to be more consistent. Right now, I’ve got a two-piece combo, which is fastball/slider but I’m going to work on the changeup more this offseason to try to come back next year with three pitches.”

However, one thing that he has entering the 2019-2020 offseason is health. “This is the best year I’ve had, health wise, in baseball,” said Almonte. He also said that going into the offseason healthy is “probably one of the biggest things for us as pitchers.”

A lot of Rockies will have to improve heading into the 2020 season because, as you probably know by now, the Rockies have said that they are not going to spend a lot of money this offseason (you can read more about that below) but Almonte thinks that the Rockies have learned a lot from this season so that they can be competitive next year.

“I feel like we’re going to be the team to watch next year,” said Almonte. “I really believe that we’ve all learned a lot this season, from the way things went but, in baseball, you can be the best team and the next year, you can fall off. [Sometimes t]hat’s the way it works but I feel that we’ll build off of that next year and come back ready.”