Final Countdown: Five first impressions from the Rockies' opening day roster

While not completely official, the Colorado Rockies and manager Bud Black have announced that the 2025 Opening Day 25-man roster is set.

Of course, there were plenty of players that will be to no one’s surprise when it’s officially released later this week, and there will be plenty of recognizable faces when the Rockies take on the Tampa Bay Rays this coming weekend.

However, Black and the Rockies have made a few big splashes in the last week, most notably trading Nolan Jones to the Guardians last weekend. The Jones’ trade also created a chain reaction of circumstances that ended up shaping the opening day roster.

That said, the Rockies are about to break spring training camp and head to Florida, with a stop at Minnesota along the way, and the roster they’ll be bringing to Tampa has plenty of intrigue.

Here’s my top five takes from Colorado’s opening day roster.

5. Bullpen and closer roles still to be determined?

While Black announced that the roster is set, and it’s pretty easy to determine who the 8-9 relievers the Rockies will carry to start the season are, he still hasn’t gone into specifics. Seth Halvorsen appears to have won the closer job, and it does look like Brady Blalock made the big-league club, but, Black hasn’t fully elaborated on what will be a right-hander dominated bullpen this season, so, some of that news is yet to be announced.

4. Gomber will be ready to go by April 8, and that might have led to not bringing Dollander up

The Rockies are going to start the season with a four-man starting rotation, and now we know why. While Austin Gomber will start the year on IL, he pitched last Saturday against the Cubs and said he feels really good after taking nearly three weeks of Cactus League play off. Gomber will join the rotation in mid-April, bringing the Rockies back to full strength. And because Gomber appears to be ready to go, it made even more sense that the Rockies reassigned Chase Dollander to AAA.

3. Jordan Beck is a player the Rockies are sticking with

The Rockies honestly could have traded several different players for Tyler Freeman. But the fact that they traded Nolan Jones and are intending to start Jordan Beck in left field shows just how much they believe in Beck. Both Beck and Jones struggled at times last season, and Beck struggled for much of the spring. But his power is impressive and he’s come on strong at the plate. Still, trading Jones was a big gamble, especially since Thairo Estrada will come back from his injury, and then, how much will Tyler Freeman be needed? And by the same token, the jury is still out on Beck. So we’ll see in a few months if the Jones’ trade, and keeping Beck a starter was the right move or not.

2. Nick Martini over Zac Veen was an interesting choice

Martini had been optioned to AAA earlier in the spring, despite hitting very well since he was brought in. Meanwhile, Veen stayed with the big club right up until the last week of spring, and for a moment last weekend, it looked like Veen’s window to the big leagues was finally opened. That all changed on Sunday. Since Sam Hilliard was always going to be kept on the big league roster, it likely came down to Veen and Martini, and Black went with more experience. And that’s fine. The Rockies are young enough and Martini has had stints in the majors since 2018, with over 500 career at-bats. However, there’s no question that Veen seemed like the more talented player throughout spring, and that was evidenced by him being named the team’s Spring MVP last Saturday. So once again, we’ll see if that was the right call.

1. Experience over youth won out

The Rockies have two Top 100 prospects, they have a host of young talents that played really well against big-league competition this spring. And yet, literally none of them made the opening-day roster. Of course, some of that has to do with service time, no matter how much the front office tries to deny it. But it also appears that roster decision after roster decision, even the slightest bit of experience won out. Whether it was the outfield, the starting rotation, or the catcher position, the Rockies went with major league experience over raw talent to start 2025. And we get it, Colorado is trying to improve on a 61-win season, and they didn’t see relying on 21-23 year-olds as the way to go. Again, time will tell if that was the right call. If it wasn’t, don’t worry, we’ll see the youth playing in Coors Field soon enough.