The Rockies are staring at a winter full of pitching questions, and the biggest one sits right at the top of the rotation.
Colorado heads into free agency with four pending unrestricted free agents, and three of them were major pieces of the starting staff to open the 2026 season. Tomoyuki Sugano, Kyle Freeland and Jose Quintana accounted for the first-, second- and seventh-most starts on the team, a heavy workload for a rotation that still finished as one of the worst in baseball.
That leaves president Paul DePodesta and GM Josh Byrnes with a choice that looks obvious on paper but gets messy fast in practice: keep trying to patch together a group that posted an MLB-worst 6.28 ERA, or turn the page and hope better answers are out there.
Colorado already took a swing at stabilizing things last winter by bringing in Sugano and Quintana. The results never really took hold.
Sugano finished with a 5.37 ERA and gave up 33 home runs, while Quintana stayed healthy for only 11 starts and never gave the club much beyond that. Both pitchers will be 37 and 38 next season, which makes a return feel unlikely.
Freeland is the trickier call. His 6.65 ERA was the highest of any pitcher with at least 26 starts, but he’s also a homegrown local product who has spent all 10 years of his career in Colorado. That gives him a different kind of pull than the typical free agent.
Even if one or more of those arms comes back, the Rockies still appear headed for change. At minimum, there should be at least one opening in the 2027 rotation, and a bigger overhaul looks more likely.
Internally, Colorado can lean on Ryan Feltner, rookie Mason Adams and depth option Tanner Gordon. Chase Dollander could also enter the picture if he recovers from right elbow internal brace surgery he had in June.
The external market offers a range of possibilities, though the Rockies are not expected to chase the very top names such as Tarik Skubal and Michael King. Beyond that tier, there are plenty of directions they could go, from Freddy Peralta to Kevin Gausman to Sonny Gray. Sandy Alcantara would be a dream trade target, but he’s likely to be off the board after a stellar 2026 season with the Miami Marlins.
All of that, though, comes back to money. After nearly a year running the show, it still isn’t clear whether DePodesta and Byrnes have the green light to spend more than a club that already carried the 27th-highest payroll in baseball.
The bullpen has its own decision to make, and Jordan Romano sits at the center of it. He’s the fourth pending unrestricted free agent, and the only one who isn’t a starter. The 33-year-old closer may have rebooted his value with Colorado after being released by the Los Angeles Angels.
Romano didn’t debut for the Rockies until July, but he still finished as the team’s saves leader with 11. He also struck out 27 batters in 25.2 innings, enough to make a reunion make sense if the sides want one.
If Romano leaves, Colorado has at least one internal fallback. Brennan Bernardino was the club’s most dependable reliever this season, putting up a 2.81 ERA across 74 appearances. The Rockies could keep him in a setup role, but they also have other late-inning names to consider if they want to look outside, including Raisel Iglesias, Ryan Helsley, Kenley Jansen and Aroldis Chapman.
The Rockies are going to have a hard time luring marquee pitchers this winter. Still, DePodesta and Byrnes have a sales pitch: a strong young lineup, an improved farm system, and the promise of a Chicago White Sox-like improvement. They just have plenty of work ahead of them.
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