Every Spring someone tricks you. Someone shows up in the best shape of their life or adds a tick of velocity, someone hits eight or nine homers, someone looks incredible defensively. All of these things happen and require you to demand this guy makes the roster. But it's important to remember that every spring is False. These are practices, they are often facing guys that are just now getting to AA level. Sometimes managers are intentionally stacking the lineup against a certain guy to see what happens, other times its an intentional look at a pitcher that is obviously not going to pitch well just to see how the defense reacts to hard hit balls. It's practice. They are practicing.

Unless...

Why shouldn't we dream a little? After all, we deserve it. We go through a lot, all the time. We have minor inconveniences and things of that nature. Perhaps we should dream a little dream as Cass Elliot once said. Here are a few things I am looking at, respectfully of course, as we roll into week two of Spring Training.

It’s probably easy to forget now, but Chase Dollander arrived in Denver last spring with a ton of fanfare. Possibly the most singularly talented pitcher the Rockies have had come through their system since German Marquez, Dollander wore some real lumps through his first tour in the majors. He was pummeled many nights, finishing with an ERA close to seven and a prospect shine completely worn off.

Coming into the spring, Dollander was one of the guys I had my eye on as a projected improver under the important change to “competent coaching.” Many would argue that he was rushed to the majors, forced to pitch over his weight because of an incompetent front office. They might be right! But I think Dollander was also subjected to odd game strategy and an over indexing of a pitch that wasn’t working.

I can’t say for sure why the Rockies coached Chase this way, maybe they wanted him to work on his fastball in a lost season, but he threw that thing nearly 49% of the time and it got creamed. 13 homers allowed, .548 slugging against. Dollander's struggles were vast but a poor pitch mix and a predictable, hittable fastball caused a great many of them.

So you can see why I wondered, will a new coaching staff highlight this as a possible issue? And well, folks, it's plausible.

Dollander has only pitched two innings so far, but his pitch mix was incredibly different than any start he made in 2025, via Savant:

Out of 32 pitches, he was much more varied mixing in his sinker and cutter for something that I like to call, actually fooling hitters. Throwing all six of his pitches, Chase's mix drew five swings and misses and limited his contact to just two hard hit balls and one base hit. It's just two innings, and it's just spring training, but a varied pitch mix like this probably spells a more successful turn for Dollander in 2026 than relying on a fastball that hitters seemed to smell out every at-bat. Further, Eno Sarris called out in a post on Bluesky that Dollander's work carried a 126 on his Stuff+ rating, the third best rating in spring so far.

Last season, and basically every season of his career, Antonio Senzatela has carried one of the worst whiff% in baseball, generating a swing and miss under 20% of the time. This largely drove him to be one of the worst pitchers overall in the league and a confounding exercise by the Rockies in continuing to throw him out there with largely no improvements to speak of. This seemed to continue in his first outing of the year, a two inning start in the first spring training game where he gave up FIVE hard hits of over 100MPH off the bat and just two whiffs on 15 swings. Not good!

But then, in a three inning outing out of the bullpen on Wednesday, something…occurred. Out of 21 swings, Senza had NINE whiffs. On his fastball alone, which he has historically thrown nearly 60% of the time for bad results, Antonio had more swings and misses (4) than batted balls (3). He gave up just two hard hits and the average exit velocity off his pitches was just 79.4 MPH, a 10 MPH drop off his average last season.

Again, this is just three innings in spring training, but considering Senzatela’s history of having some kind of chemical rejection to missing the bat, this was a sight to see. I am looking respectfully at the remainder of Senza’s results this spring to ask the question, can they fix the unfixable?

There is a new, weird offshoot trend going around the Manosphere that is called “Looksmaxxing". Essentially, guys with body image issues are putting these mental illness symptoms into the idea you should constantly be trying to maximize your facial structure and body shape. One of the more famous of these types is an influencer named “Clavicular”. This is an offshoot of the Andrew Tate type of thinking that you shouldn't care about anything but making money and filtering it even further into you should only care about looking as beefy and cut as possible. Clav is pro-facial surgery, he is pro-hitting your chin with a hammer, he is anti-caring about world events or any other human being unless it helps him mog. It's essentially Zoolander's parody of model culture placed into reality. It's all very stupid and likely damaging our culture to an unknown degree.

Enter Zac Veen. He is not looksmaxxing and he may not even know who Clavicular is, but he is beefy now. From last September when we last saw Veen playing professional baseball he has claimed to gain 40 pounds. You might think that is an insane lie, but look at this clip showing he has indeed gone Beefcake Mode.

That looks like he consumed the original Zac Veen. Forty pounds might be a lie, but he certainly has bulked up to a level I didn't realize he was capable of. He's claimed this was due to kicking a substance abuse habit an replacing this substance with protein. Which, hey, good for you guy. But also, what the hellllllllllll

The new Looksmaxxed version of Zac Veen showed up in a big way on Monday with a 486 foot walk off home run that was 113 MPH off the bat. This came in a left on left matchup on White Sox reliever Shane Murphy. Murphy isn’t some kind of Cy Young winner but in 135 innings across three minor league levels last year (A,AA,AAA), he carried a 1.13 ERA. So it’s not like he was cannon fodder. Important to caveat all things here as spring training, but I think we have to look respectfully at bulked up Zac Veen hitting the ball that hard and that far.

Last season, Charlie Condon was a very divisive prospect in the Rockies system. He wasn't bad, per se, but he wasn't good at the things you would like him to be good at. For the Rockies, they took Condon because he had some of the best power grades in the draft and throughout the first half of his season last year, he only had one home run. His second half was better, smashing 11 homers in Hartford and overall looking much more likely to drive the ball, but this didn’t stop him from tumbling down prospect boards across the industry and coming into this year as more of a guy that might be the next victim in the Rockies poor hitting development track record than any type of exciting prospect.

Unless…

One day after Zac Veen astonished the masses by launching a massive homer, Condon ripped his own 108MPH blast that went over 440 feet. Two days later, he ripped another homer, opposite field in fact! Condon should be in the mix for major league time soon and a solid spring certainly pushes the issue as he tries to break in as a first baseman or left fielder. Guys like Jordan Beck and TJ Rumfield certainly wouldn't want Condon’s homers sitting in the back of Rockies evaluators minds if they were to start April cold. But for me, guy who wants to see Charlie Condon smack 30 or so homers for the Rockies, this is pretty neat.

I am looking respectfully at the Charlie Condon phoenix rising from the ashes.

I wrote about it in the Lindy’s NL West preview (in stores now), so I am on the record that the Rockies bullpen is poised to breakout. I truly think they are about to have three, maybe four arms that should excite. At the forefront of that is Juan Mejia. In 61 innings last year, Mejia’s statcast looked like this….

In Baseball Prospectus last May (subscribe to BPro), Mario Delgado Genzor highlighted Mejia’s package as something that could be a late inning darling in the league soon. I fully agree and Mejia’s first two innings this spring have done nothing to slow down my hype train. Victor Vodnik and Seth Halvorsen are going to have first crack at the ninth inning this year, but I don’t think you can rule out Mejia finishing the year there. Three strikeouts, zero hits. I am looking, perhaps not just respectfully, at Juan Mejia leading a very good and exciting bullpen for the Rockies this year.

Despite what you may believe, you are allowed to have a little fun about Spring Training and the Colorado Rockies don't have to be doom and gloom all the time. Let’s continue to look respectfully.

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