ARLINGTON -- It took just days into Jordan Beck's Major League career for him to show a borderline brash self confidence.
Beck was fresh from the 2023 MLB Draft, where the Rockies selected him 38th overall out of the University of Tennessee, and playing at Single-A Fresno. Beck spoke volumes in a brief conversation with Nic Wilson, then his hitting coach, who is now an interim hitting coach for the Rockies on interim manager Warren Schaeffer’s staff.
“It may have been one of his first few games [at Fresno], and a guy gets him out,” Wilson said. “I was like, ‘Hey, do you want to change your plan or anything?’
“And he’s like, ‘No. I’m just ready to start playing like myself.’ Then he goes out and he has a laser homer to left-center field. Not only did he talk about it, but he went out and put it on the field.”
The Majors are a long way from the California League, and further from Tennessee, where he was an All-American for a loud and confident program capable of winning the national title. But for the last month, Beck, 24, has spoken loudly enough with his bat that he’s looking like a keeper as the Rockies fight through their historic start (7-34) to the 2025 season.
Beck singled, stole a base and scored the team’s only run on Hunter Goodman’s first-inning single in Tuesday night’s 4-1 loss to the Rangers at Globe Life Field. Beck has hit safely in 12 of his last 13 games. The Rockies briefly sent him to Triple-A Albuquerque after a slow start, but in 23 games since returning on April 19 he has batted .291 (25-for-86) with six home runs, four doubles, three triples and 12 RBIs.
It took a small adjustment before his swing, a tilting wag of the bat to loosen his mechanics. The hits and the confidence are coming.
The Rockies lost Tuesday when Michael Toglia, Sean Bouchard and Owen Miller, all representing the tying run, struck out looking against Shawn Armstrong in the ninth. But Beck’s pregame attitude of speaking better days for himself and the Rockies still held.
“If I don’t think that, I don’t know why I’m here, to be honest,” Beck said. “I believe in what we got. I believe what this team can do. We’ve got a lot of good players that will make it happen.”
The Rockies, who lately have seen more struggles than successes in their draft-and-develop philosophy, need Beck to be a happening dude.
Beck struggled in Spring Training and flirted with not making the team before surge ahead of Opening Day. He began the year 3-for-23 (.150) with no extra-base hits when the Rockies optioned him to Albuquerque. The club tested Zac Veen, who Colorado drafted with their first-round pick in 2021, but he hit just .118 before being returned to Triple-A.
Beck didn’t characterize the send-down as a chastening event.
“There’s a sense of pride in how I go about every day,” Beck said. “Each day is a new day. Another day to get better, whether it’s there or here.”
Beck hit .143 in eight Triple-A games. His proper hitting form showed when he homered in the opener and went deep twice in the second game of an April 24 doubleheader in Kansas City, then went deep twice the next night in a home win over the Reds.
The power surge was the beginning not only of a hot streak, but the emergence of the player Beck had been both at Tennessee and while rising quickly through the Minors to debut last season. An injury to his left hand curtailed that first opportunity.
“When he came into this year after the winter and Spring Training, I specifically had a talk with him to tell him, ‘Dude, I’ve seen video of you at Tennessee, playing with your hair on fire, and last year I didn’t see that at all,’ said Schaeffer. “We’re just starting to find out who Jordan Beck is and what he’s capable of.”
Jordan Pacheco, the former Albuquerque hitting coach who was promoted to the Rockies with Wilson, sees a hitter who “never seems out of control, never seems panicked.”
Beck appreciates continuity at a time of change. Wilson, an Atlanta native, and Beck, from Alabama, are kindred spirits who talk through the offseason. Pacheco has extended experience with him. Rockies longtime figure Clint Hurdle, who in April replaced Hensley Meulens as hitting coach and now serves as Schaeffer’s bench coach, was a special assistant who educated prospects like Beck.
“The changes haven’t been anybody new that I’ve never met or haven’t seen, so the philosophies are pretty much familiar to me,” Beck said. “Honestly, I feel more normal than I did before.”
A big bat and big personality are what the Rockies hope become “normal” for Beck.