Rockies Outright Edouard Julien

The Rockies announced that infielder Edouard Julien has cleared waivers and been sent outright to Triple-A Albuquerque. He had been designated for assignments earlier this week when Colorado recalled outfielder Zac Veen.

Julien, now 27, once seemed like a potential building block for the Twins. As a minor leaguer, he wasn’t a strong defender and he struck out a lot, but he was good at the plate apart from that with an approach that featured a lot of walks.

His major league debut showed how valuable this could be. He got into 109 games with Minnesota in 2023 and stepped to the plate 408 times. His 31.4% strikeout rate was very high but he also drew a walk in 15.7% of his trips to the plate and hit 16 home runs. That led to a .263/.381/.459 line and 134 wRC+. He got some help from a .371 batting average on balls in play but he would have still been in a good spot even with some regression there. Defensively, he split his time between second and first base.

It’s been downhill since then, unfortunately. Julien is still drawing walks but hasn’t been able to have as much as impact when swinging the bat. In 785 plate appearances since the start of 2024, he has just 14 home runs and a .208/.307/.313 line. He exhausted his final option season with Minnesota last year, which led to him being traded to the Rockies. The move to Coors Field hasn’t helped him and his stock is now down enough that all teams passed on the chance to grab him off waivers.

This is Julien’s first career outright and his service clock is still shy of three years, so he doesn’t have the right to elect free agency. The Rockies will therefore get to keep him as non-roster depth and will see if his bat can get back on track with the Isotopes.