Luke Wortman | May 2, 2025

Triple-A is the final proving ground for most prospects. Being a call away from realizing your dreams and making life-changing money means each player is going to give their app each day. Getting to this level means that you’ve had to succeed at multiple places, from high school to here. Many players have already played in the big leagues and are looking to get back. With that being said, in today’s article, we are going to be looking at how the Albuquerque Isotopes roster was constructed and what trends it may reflect on the Colorado Rockies’ organizational approach as a whole. For this article, I will be using their roster from April 23, as a reference. In total, there is 33 dudes on the roster

MLB Draft or UDFA

14 Players (44%)

• Overall, almost half of the players on the roster were selected in the draft, (or UDFA), by the Rockies.

Day 1 Draft Pick 

7 Players(22%)

• It’s not an overstatement to say this is the most talented team in Isotopes history in a while. After years of having a roster filled with non-prospects and veterans, we are finally getting to see Colorado’s draft efforts to get closer to the Show. Zac Veen, Sterlin Thompson, Drew Romo, Ryan Rolison, and Karl Kauffmann lead the way for Rockies draft picks, while former Brewers Day 1 picks Keston Hiura and Antoine Kelly are on the roster as well. Not to mention that former first-rounders Chase Dollander and Jordan Beck have played on the roster as well this season.

Day 3 Draft Pick (Past 10th Round)

7 Players (22%)

• This metric is always a really good indicator of how well a team drafts or develops. The best teams in the business are always very successful at getting Day 3 picks to the upper level of the minors and the Show. MLB vet Sam Hilliard (15th round), Trevor Boone(18th round), Daniel Cope(13th round), and undrafted free agent Dugan Darnell lead the way for in-house picks. Acquired prospects, Connor Van Scoyoc (11th), Bradley Blalock (32nd), and Brendan Hardy (31st), were all day 3 picks out of high school.

Alumni from Power 5 Schools

10 Players (31%)

• The emergence of the transfer portal will likely skew this statistic over the coming years, as more talented non-P5 players will likely transfer to a P5 school. Somewhat surprisingly, each alumnus is from a different school; a list that includes Kentucky, Florida, Miami, and Ole Miss.

Alumni from Non-Power 5 Schools

7 Players (22%)

• The rost includes alumni from Adrian College (D2), Wabash Valley JC, and 2 alumni from Cal State Fullerton, (former teammates Daniel Cope and Andrew Quezada). 

Drafted Out of High School

5 Players (16%)

• The Rockies tend to avoid drafting prospects straight out of high school, so the 2020 draft where they selected Zac Veen and Drew Romo in the first round. Both have reached the majors. The other three (Van Scoyoc, Hardy, and Blalock); were selected by other organizations.

International Free Agent Signing

10 Players (31%)

• The Rockies have had quite a lot of success with International free agent signings. Yanquiel Fernandez, Warming Bernabel, and Juan Mejia are some of the top prospects the organization has acquired in recent years. 

Most Common Country of Origin

USA: 22 (69%) Dominican Republic: 6 (19%) Venezuela: 2 (6%)  Cuba: 1 (3%) Australia: 1 (3%)

MLB Veterans

17 Players (53%)

• With a strong mix of prospects, it was a bit surprising to me to see that over half of the roster has played in the big leagues. Veteran right hanger Diego Castillo leads the squad with over 7 seasons of big league expierence. Sam Hilliard leads the hitters with 312 games played at the big league level. Besides Keston Hiura and Anthony Molina, who each spent a full year on a big league roster; most of the guys are prospects who just played in the big leagues within the last year.

Acquired from Outside the Organization 

12 Players (38%)

While this number may seem a bit high, this is actually much lower than usual Isotope rosters. This includes prominent vets like Keston Hiura and Diego Castillo, as well as Bradley Blalock and Tanner Gordon. The Rockies try to keep their rosters as in-house as possible, and they were able to do a bit better at that for this roster this year.

Written by Luke Wortman.