Colorado Rockies: Where will Kris Bryant play in 2022?

The Colorado Rockies shocked the baseball world on Wednesday when they came to terms with free agent Kris Bryant on a seven-year deal for $182 million.

Most baseball fans who don’t follow the Rockies closing might think that Kris Bryant would play third base for the team but that won’t be the case.

Kris Bryant will play left field for the Colorado Rockies

Colorado Rockies manager Bud Black confirmed on Wednesday that Kris Bryant will primarily play left field for the team in 2022.

In 2021, Bryant played a slew of positions for the Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants and, while he is best known for playing third base, he didn’t play third all that often. While with the Cubs in 2021, he played 29 games at third base, 29 games in left field, 28 games in right field, 14 games in center field, 12 games at first base, and one game at shortstop.

With the Giants, he played 26 games at third base, 19 games in left field, 11 games in right field, and five games in center field.

So, in total, he played in 55 games at third base, 48 games in left field, 39 games in right field, 19 games in center field, 12 at first base, and one game at shortstop.

For Rockies fans, it was easy to see that Bryant would play somewhere in the outfield for two reasons:

1. The Rockies desperately needed an outfield bat. They need an infield bat but not to the extent they needed an outfield bat.
2. The Rockies have Ryan McMahon at third base. He has played a lot of second base before but the Rockies don’t want to move Brendan Rodgers back to shortstop. There’s a reason why they signed José Iglesias earlier in the week: to play shortstop.

However, we didn’t know if the club was thinking left, right, or center field. Left field is where he has played the most and the opening that seemed most likely but the Rockies could have considered him to play one of the other outfield spots as well.

Bryant could see some playing time at other positions but, as of now, he will be their primary left fielder and their best bat moving forward.