Rockies move No. 2 prospect Dahl to Triple-A

July 5th, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO -- Onetime first-round Draft pick David Dahl immediately showed the maturity and tools that led the Rockies to promote him to Triple-A Albuquerque on Monday night.
Dahl, a center fielder, homered during the second at-bat of a 3-for-5 night with two runs scored in his Isotopes debut, a 7-2 home victory over El Paso.
The promotion came after the 22-year-old Dahl, the 10th overall pick in the 2012 MLB Draft, and the Rockies' No. 2 prospect as ranked by MLBPipeline.com, batted .278 with 13 home runs and 45 RBIs, along with 16 stolen bases, for Double-A Hartford.
On Tuesday, Dahl was added to the U.S. team for the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game, which takes place Sunday at Petco Park in San Diego (5 p.m. MT on MLB Network) as part of All-Star Sunday.
"He has shown his approach to be more consistent than ever, and that's something that he along with the staff has worked extremely hard on in a lot of different ways, and it's shown up in the numbers," Rockies senior director of player development Zach Wilson said.

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The Rockies put Dahl on the radar when they invited him to Major League camp this year, even though he appeared in just 79 Minor League games last year because of a ruptured spleen and a knee contusion. He hasn't had a chance to prove he can make a full six-month season -- 119 games is his career high -- but he earned a chance at the top Minor League level.
Since May 2, the left-handed-hitting Dahl hit .279 with a .363 on-base percentage and limited his strikeouts to 60 in 208 at-bats -- and that's including a 1-for-16 slump with no walks in his final four Hartford games. Over that 55-game stretch, he homered five times among his 22 extra-base hits. He's also playing for a Hartford club that has spent the year on the road because its home stadium hasn't been completed.

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Listed at 6-foot-2 and 195 pounds, Dahl brings potential five-tool athletic ability that shows up not just in the offensive numbers but in his defense. Wilson said Dahl is a prototypical center fielder, but has played both outfield corners just in case the Major League opportunity shows up in that manner.
"One of the things he's done over the last year [is] taken that God-given talent and made adjustments to turn that talent into skills," Wilson said. "It shows up in his approach. It shows up in his defense, his reads and his breaks, and it shows up in his ability to read pitchers and steal bases."