DENVER – The Rockies’ Brenton Doyle plays center field with a fearlessness that won him Gold Glove Awards in 2023 and 2024, even if it leads to pain, like the left oblique injury that has him on the 10-day injured list.
For now, though, some activities daunt him.
“It’s super-painful when I sneeze,” he said. “Anytime I have to really brace my core for anything like coughing, sneezing, blowing my nose, it flares up. But yesterday was a good day, so we’ll go from there.”
It’s not as if there’s anything good about this fickle injury, which tends to take long to heal and can flare up when a player believes he is past it. But there is this: Doyle isn’t tinkering with his swing.
When he is past this injury and cleared to hit, Doyle said, the swing will be the one he had success with in '24. That season, he hit 23 home runs and stole 30 bases, with dramatic improvements over the previous season (his rookie year) in batting average (.203 to .260) and OPS (.593 to .763).
Last season, a poor start was the main reason for his .233 average, a .650 OPS and 15 homers. This year, before the injury, he was hitting .207 with one homer, and was often left out of the lineup against right-handed pitching.
Doyle acknowledged that after his good '24 season, he chased better -- then found himself on a hamster wheel of changes that always brought him back to square one.
“A lot of this game is mental more than physical,” Doyle said. “I feel I’m a pretty athletic guy, where I can go into any game with any sort of swing and still have some sort of success. But, I’m going back to the swing I had in ‘24 and some of ‘25 when I had good streaks.
“As a player, you’re always looking to get better -- never really satisfied with anything. That can be a good thing, but it can be a bad thing in some instances. I messed with different swings in Spring Training and the start of the season.”
Going into ‘24, Doyle found a connection to his swing mechanics with an unusual drill. He would assume his right-handed stance and trap a fitness ball between his hands and his right shoulder. If he took a swing and the ball fell straight down, it meant his swing was coordinated with his lower-body mechanics. He sought more power from his legs, but somewhere the swing itself went awry. And trying to make changes and corrections in-season is difficult.
Doyle will study video as he recovers, talk with coaches and formulate a plan. He said he has moved away from the fitness ball drill, but can easily regain the feel for his old swing. The challenge will be to keep things simple when he’s up to full speed.
“He seems to be better when you tell him, ‘Hit it in this area at this flight -- high or low,’ depending on what the pitcher is throwing,” Rockies hitting coach Brett Pill said. “So I try to boil it down to that.
“It kind of self-organizes the swing. If it’s a sinker guy or a guy with a lot of spin, we want to match that angle coming in and keep it off the ground. If it’s a fastball with some ride, then it’s maybe more on the ground or a line drive somewhere.”
Doyle is a long way from the crack of the bat. It’s more the gentle waves from pool exercises. Anything for a clean slate when he returns.
“You try to take any sort of positive that you can out of it,” Doyle said. “Personally, I’m using this as a good mental reset. I didn’t start the year how I wanted. So I’ll get healthy and then come back and be the player I know I can be.”