How the 2016 Hartford Yard Goats impacted the 2021 Colorado Rockies

Take a look at the 2021 Colorado Rockies roster and you will see plenty of members of the 2016 Hartford Yard Goats. In and of itself, that’s not big news. After all, plenty of minor league teammates stick together and make their way to the Majors.

But there was something about that 2016 Yard Goats team that was … well … there are a lot of adjectives that can be used for that team, which endured an entire season on the road while Dunkin’ Donuts Park was undergoing construction delays in downtown Hartford.

Gritty. Tough. Determined. Overcoming. There are plenty of things you can say about a group of young men who head out on a bus trip to start the season in April and never play a home game that entire spring and summer. There wasn’t a choice. The Yard Goats, born after the New Britain Rock Cats moved roughly 12 miles to Hartford to start operations and continue the Double-A affiliation with the Rockies, had grand plans to start the home part of their schedule on May 31 inside Dunkin’ Donuts Park. It didn’t happen. Construction stopped in early June. By late July, the franchise knew it wouldn’t play a game at its new park until the following April.

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“A lot of the grit we demonstrate was born that year,” said Mike Abramson, general manager of the Hartford Yard Goats. “Our willingness to stand up for our beliefs, stand up to detractors, was born that year. The voice of our brand … proud, strong, confident … all born that year.”

There was something else born that year on the road throughout all 141 games away from Hartford. A bond between players who endured that season-long road trip that still exists today.

Among those on that Hartford 2016 Opening Day roster were Kyle Freeland, German Marquez, Ryan McMahon, Antonio Senzatela, and Raimel Tapia. During Rockies spring training in Scottsdale, I sat down for exclusive conversations with Freeland, McMahon, and then-hitting coach Jeff Salazar (now assistant hitting coach for the Rockies) and asked them about that season and how it changed them.

Ryan McMahon hit an even .300 at Class-A Modesto in 2015 with 18 homers and 75 RBI. The statistics and progress were enough to earn him a promotion to Double-A Hartford.

McMahon said he looked back on not only the Hartford road trip but his first years in the minors as a huge time of learning and growth.

“That time was so good for me,” McMahon said. ” I mean, I was a sheltered kid from Orange County. I learned a lot about the world in the minors and made a lot of great friends along the way. That’s a great thing about the minor leagues, honestly. It’s a melting pot, right? There are guys from all over the world, from Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Florida, California, so you get everybody else’s kind of different perspective. Because we are around each other so much, we just got to learn so much more about each other and kind of how the world works.”

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Working together to stay entertained and upbeat while also becoming better baseball players was a challenge, McMahon said.

“It was a grind,” he smiled. “The things that happened on that road trip molded us. We’re driving in the bus 10-12 hours every three or four days. It was a whirlwind, but we all got really close because we were around each other all of the time. We leaned on each other a lot.”

Kyle Freeland was in Modesto with McMahon and made the jump to Double-A with him as well. However, Freeland made just 14 starts for the Yard Goats before being promoted to Triple-A Albuquerque.

While he may not have been on the entire road trip, Freeland still remembers how it impacted him.

“It was a different kind of grind in the minor leagues for us. There was so much unknown. We didn’t know when the ballpark was going to open, where we were going to play, everything like that,” Freeland recalled. “As players, you already had the minor league grind and then on top of that, all of that made it even tougher.”

So what do you do on a road trip that lasts all season?

“A lot of card playing and stuff like that,” Freeland said. “Exploring the cities that we were going to be in because we didn’t have really have a home. We were living out of hotels constantly. There wasn’t ever that feeling of, ‘OK, we’re going back home and it’s going to feel good to be in our spot.'”

McMahon laughed when I asked him what kept him busy on the road.

“We did a lot of dumb things, pulled pranks on each other,” he said. “We had this other game where one person was the killer and you had to try to figure out who it was. We were just trying to have fun.”

Salazar was quick to remind me that technology has changed a lot in five years.

“There were guys with video game consoles in their suitcases,” Salazar said. “There was this one golf game we had where we could connect like eight to 10 phones together and guys were playing this race putt-putt type of game.”

Whatever it was, the team was doing it together … and was growing together as well. Maybe, just maybe, some of those lessons learned during tough times in 2016 can pay dividends if the Rockies hit more tough times in 2021.

“In baseball, you embrace challenges and you embrace them together,” Salazar said. “You’re not doing anything by yourself. You’re doing it as a team. You’re doing it as a family. That makes a difference.”