Colorado Rockies: Zach Wilson on instructional league, MiLB status

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.