Rockies pitcher to make MLB debut vs. Pirates

The Rockies will promote pitcher McCade Brown to make his MLB debut on Sunday against the Pirates, reports Thomas Harding of MLB.com. The 25-year-old will step into the rotation spot vacated when the Rox released Austin Gomber. General manager Bill Schmidt tells Harding that the Rockies weren’t going to make an effort to re-sign Gomber, a free agent, and preferred to take a look at Brown to see if he should be part of next year’s Opening Day roster. They’ll need to clear a 40-man roster spot this weekend.

Brown was a third-round pick out of Indiana in 2021. Colorado left him exposed in last winter’s Rule 5 draft, where he went unprotected. The 6’6″ righty has had a breakout minor league season that might’ve garnered him legitimate consideration in the upcoming Rule 5. Colorado was going to add him to the 40-man roster at the beginning of the winter, regardless. They’ll select his contract a couple of months earlier to evaluate him over six or seven starts down the stretch.

On the one hand, they’ll give him a soft landing with a debut against the league’s worst lineup at PNC Park. He won’t have much margin for error, though, as the Bucs will send Cy Young favorite Paul Skenes to the mound. Brown will skip past the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League and make the jump from Double-A. He has logged 43 innings with a 3.14 earned run average, striking out 33.5% of opponents. He’d punched out more than 35% of batters faced with a sub-2.00 ERA over nine High-A starts earlier in the year.

That production came against mostly younger competition, largely because of injury. Brown only made 18 appearances over three college seasons. He lost all of 2023 and the first half of last season recovering from Tommy John surgery. He was all over the place with his command when he returned last year, which isn’t uncommon for pitchers working back from surgery.

Brown has never been placed among Colorado’s top 30 prospects at Baseball America. Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs gave him an honorable mention in his write-up of the system in January, writing at the time that he was likely to end up in the bullpen. That could still be the case, but the Rox have nothing to lose in trying him out as a starter. Ryan Feltner leads their rotation with a 4.75 ERA, and he’s been limited to six starts by injury. Kyle Freeland is their only other returning starter who has allowed fewer than six earned runs per nine. Brown doesn’t need to show much to have a chance at cracking the ’26 rotation.