When Brenton Doyle provided a Coors Field classic with the grand finale it deserved, he also hard-launched his resurgence.
July was a steady build. A subtle return to form. His on-base percentage quietly turned a corner. His patience was rewarded. Nothing flashy. Almost nothing over the fence or into the outfield gaps. But a gnarly slump was mercifully over, at least.
August was an opportunity to issue a more formal announcement: Doyle was back. He made that clear on the first day of the month, when his two-run home run walked off a delirious 17-16 win over Pittsburgh. It was just his fourth homer since April.
By the end of August, Doyle had compiled seven home runs and seven doubles en route to a 1.028 OPS, ranking third in the National League. For one of the Rockies’ young building blocks, the turnaround has been emblematic of his team’s — the weight of a dismal start off his back, replaced by a sample small but tangible enough to build on.
“The back of the baseball card wasn’t looking like how you wanted it to,” Doyle told The Denver Post. “But there were a lot of good underlying numbers, and you kind of just had to trust the process and trust that this game will even out at some point. That’s what it’s been doing in the second half for me.”
A two-time Gold Glove winner in as many big-league seasons, Doyle’s ongoing mission is to swing the bat as dynamically as he covers ground in center field. It’s been an up-and-down pursuit. His offensive numbers seemed completely doomed at the end of June. He was batting .193, slugging .314 and had been reduced to platooning briefly. He was producing against lefties, not so much against righties.
But the entire time, he felt like his approach was better than his results showed. He was encouraged by high-minded stats such as hard-hit rate and barrel percentage, the ones that are supposed to be predictive.
They were.
“It was kind of something that was mentally tough to go through, just knowing that you’re hitting the ball hard, you’re doing everything you can to put the ball in play, put it in play hard and find barrels — but right at guys,” Doyle said. “You’ve gotta be happy with those kinds of results, especially at this level. … A lot of it was going right at people. I didn’t want to panic and literally change my whole swing or do anything like that.”
He has continued to tinker with his mechanics, though. A closer look at Doyle’s thrilling Aug. 1 walk-off home run reveals a stance that looks different from the one he used to hit his first seven homers of 2025. His hands start a couple of inches lower. His bat starts in a more upright position, as he describes it, rather than being angled way back behind his head and parallel to the ground. This has been his setup since right around that time.
“It kind of just eliminated the move I naturally make in my swing,” Doyle said. “And maybe that’s helped me get to some pitches (against right-handers) I was a tad bit late on in the past. … It was kind of something I did throughout my whole minor league career, and then last year I made a swing change. And then this year, I kind of went back to what was more comfortable for me, and it’s been good.”
Still, Doyle attributes most of his recent success to “those hard-hit balls just finding holes for me.” Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer sees the uptick in power as an indication of self-assurance. Whatever the main factor is, Doyle’s numbers are definitive since the start of July: a slash line of .349/.390/.559 in 46 games.
Nobody in the majors has a higher batting average during the two-month span.
“I think a high level of confidence (stood out), which comes with success sometimes,” Schaeffer said. “But he’s been hitting right-handed pitching a lot better. He’s hit left-handers all year. So just the confidence. It seems like his body’s in the right position to hit right now. Just the combination of those two things. Confidence is huge at this level.”
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Originally Published: September 3, 2025 at 5:45 AM MDT