Colorado Rockies: Zach Wilson on instructional league, MiLB status

The Colorado Rockies instructional league went on for five weeks without a hitch.

One thing that did not change was the Arizona Instructional League, which was normal in comparison to previous instructional leagues, according to Wilson.

“This year was sort of a regular scenario for instructional aide that goes on every year,” said Wilson. “It just happened to be that the Arizona Fall League was canceled, obviously, and so in terms of the instructional league itself, I think [it was] very similar to years past outside of, you know, all the COVID protocols that we had to follow and and really enforce and quite frankly our players and our staff did an unbelievable job with making sure that they were protecting each other, protecting the sanctity of instructional league. We took over 600 tests, and we had zero positives… [That] allowed us to be able to go through our five-week program with with good continuity. That was especially important when you know you’re playing games for the first time all year, and, particularly these pitchers, to be able to throw in some sort of consistent way.”

Wilson added that they tested the players coming into the instructional league and, while he was “wasn’t sure” on whether or not they would be able to start on time since they had “intake testing” before starting the camp, they all came back negative and none ever tested positive throughout the camp. They ended up forming a “soft bubble” that “worked to perfection” and they played roughly 20 games.

Coming into the program, he was also concerned that players might not be in shape. After all, they haven’t played with a team since, at the latest, Spring Training back in early March. However, they were more than ready to come back.

“I’ve got to give our players a lot of credit, they came into that program in even better shape than I was expecting,” Wilson said. “Many of the pitchers, really all of the pitchers, quite honestly, were in midseason form when it came to their velocities. Of course, [they hadn’t faced live hitters in months so] that took some time to knock the rust off but their arms were in tremendous shape.”

As Wilson explained, each instructional league is different, depending on what they think needs to be accomplished each year. This year, Wilson said that since the minor leaguers didn’t play games, it was “the most important instructional league ever and I’ve been around conducting these things for 20 years.”

Last year, Wilson said “we played no games, on purpose, and it was only a two-week program.” This year, since they played no games, they purposely made the program longer (five weeks) and had them play roughly 20 games.

The state of the minor leagues is still up in the air, as are who the Rockies minor league affiliates will be in 2021.

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While the minor league season was cancelled in 2020, regardless of what happens, Wilson says that “without a shadow of a doubt, there’s going to be minor league baseball next year.” Things, as you probably expect, are still very fluid, though, but the Rockies are making sure to communicate every piece of information that they know onto the players.

“I think the best thing that we can do for our players is being completely honest and transparent with all the information that we have and we’ve done that with them,” said Wilson. “The best thing we can do is communicate to them exactly where things stand and where things stand. “Where things stand right now, there’s a lot of unknowns. A lot of unknowns about spring training is going to look, how a season is going to look. I do believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that there’s going to be minor league baseball next year and we’re going to be playing a lot of games, but I can’t sit here and tell you how that’s gonna look and I told our players the same. I’m not sure what the structure is going to look like but there’ll be minor leagues, and we’ll be playing games next year it’s just a matter of how it shakes out.”

He also said that he thinks that COVID will “almost certainly not” impact the major leagues and minor leagues like it did in 2020.

One of the other questions surrounding the minor leagues is the Rockies affiliates. They will only have four minor league affiliates, like the other teams as well. They have already lost their Rookie-level minor league affiliate, the Grand Junction Rockies, that is partially owned by Rockies owner Dick Monfort and they could be moving some other affiliates too, like their Advanced-A California team, the Lancaster JetHawks. The Cal League is going to likely move to low A-ball and Lancaster may not have a team at all, depending on the Fresno Grizzlies, most recently the Nationals Triple-A affiliate.

MLB demanded that they move to the California League after the Nats dropped Fresno in favor of Rochester, New York, who was dropped by the Minnesota Twins, who now are going to have their Triple-A games played right by them in St. Paul, Minnesota.

However, Fresno has yet to make a decision. The remaining Rockies remaining minor league affiliates are yet to be determined as well.

Wilson spoke about much more in the exclusive conversation, including his thoughts on some of the Rockies top prospects, other minor leaguers, and much more. Stay tuned to the site for more from Wilson in the coming days.