SAN DIEGO \u2014 Before every pitch, Alon Leichman delivers a message.<\/p>\n
The Colorado Rockies\u2019 first-year pitching coach stands on the top step of the dugout, glances at a card in front of him and flashes a sequence of numbers toward home plate. The catcher reads the signs, checks his wristband and punches a selection into his PitchCom device. Then the pitcher makes a decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a way for me to almost talk to them,\u201d Leichman said. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018I\u2019m thinking slider here.\u2019 Rather than \u2018Throw a slider.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Leichman is 36 years old, grew up in a kibbutz in Israel<\/a> and never pitched professionally in North America. Through the first three weeks of this season, he has suggested virtually every pitch the Rockies throw, an analytically driven approach that has produced one of the more surprising early pitching performances in the National League.<\/p>\n In 2025, the Rockies finished with 119 losses and the worst ERA (5.97) by any big-league club this century. So far in 2026, Colorado has gone 7-12 while logging a much more respectable 4.00 ERA, including a 3.67 mark in its notoriously hitter-friendly home ballpark. On Friday, Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers visit Coors Field for the start of a four-game series. It will be the toughest test yet of a practice that, until this season, no big-league team had attempted full-time.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll steal this from Peter Bendix,\u201d Leichman said, referring to the Miami Marlins\u2019 president of baseball operations. \u201cWithin five years, two-thirds of the league could be doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n The pioneering strategy arrived in Denver via Miami, where, for the final nine games of last season, Leichman ran the same experiment as the Marlins\u2019 assistant pitching coach. Rockies interim manager Warren Schaeffer heard about it as it was getting underway; the two men, then acquaintances, spoke in the Coors Field outfield before a game in September.<\/p>\n Several weeks later, Schaeffer was retained as manager and tasked with assembling a coaching staff.<\/p>\n Leichman\u2019s name kept coming up. Then, in the interview process, so did the concept of calling pitches from the dugout.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very obvious that this is something he believed in and wanted to do,\u201d Schaeffer said. \u201cThat being said, I wasn\u2019t convinced yet. We hired him with the premise that he was just going to be our pitching coach. That was it.\u201d<\/p>\n The convincing happened gradually during spring training, through conversations with starting catcher Hunter Goodman, the team\u2019s pitchers and an overhauled front office. The Rockies conducted a trial run over the final week of Cactus League play. Coming off three consecutive 100-loss seasons, they were not in a position to be precious about convention.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re open to a lot of things, just because things have been going so poorly for us,\u201d said left-hander Kyle Freeland, the Rockies\u2019 longest-tenured player. \u201cWe\u2019re looking to go in different directions as a team and then throw out a lot of ideas and see what works.\u201d<\/p>\n The system is not entirely foreign. College baseball coaches have long called pitches from the dugout. Current Rockies assistant pitching coach Gabe Ribas called pitches for several years, most recently as the pitching coach at Santa Clara University. Before Colorado drafted him in the first round in 2023, right-hander Chase Dollander had most of his pitches for the University of Tennessee called by Frank Anderson, now the San Francisco Giants\u2019 director of pitching. (The Giants considered calling pitches from the dugout during spring training but ultimately didn\u2019t take the idea into the regular season.)<\/p>\n For now, though, the Rockies and the Marlins are the only clubs doing it under big-league scrutiny. At Coors Field, where the elevation turns fly outs into home runs, every pitch of every inning belongs to Leichman in a way that no coach at this level has experienced.<\/p>\n \u201cYou better be locked in for nine innings and every pitch,\u201d said Ribas, who charts each game as he stands beside Leichman in the dugout. \u201cAt the end of the day, he and I are both pretty wiped, and him more than me.\u201d<\/p>\n Leichman doesn\u2019t downplay the cost. \u201cWhen things go well, it\u2019s a lot of fun. When games end like it did last night, it stings,\u201d he said last weekend after a walk-off loss to the San Diego Padres. \u201cSometimes I feel like I\u2019m going (a complete game) every game. It feels like I\u2019m in there with them, which I love and hate.\u201d<\/p>\n Even when he first raised the idea to the Rockies, Leichman acknowledged he didn\u2019t want to be the one suggesting pitches.<\/p>\n He has done it anyway.<\/p>\n \u201cDoes Alon think that this will help the Rockies?\u201d Leichman remembers asking rhetorically. \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n Leichman does not issue mandates; the word the Rockies consistently use is suggestion. Freeland recalls operating in a \u201cBig Brother-type\u201d environment while pitching at the University of Evansville, where he would have to explain himself in the dugout after shaking off a coach. In the big leagues, Freeland said, \u201cthat would never fly. And Alon, that was the first thing he said. Like, \u2018This is not me saying you have to throw this pitch or getting on your ass because you shook me off. It\u2019s strictly a suggestion.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Dollander, 24, has heard a similar message: \u201cAlon is like, \u2018Dude, if you want to shake, shake. You\u2019re not going to hurt my feelings. I\u2019d rather you throw a pitch you\u2019re convicted in than one you\u2019re not.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Goodman, who called his own games at the University of Memphis, said he doesn\u2019t \u201creally look at it as the coach calling pitches. We\u2019re kind of doing it as a team. We\u2019ve got Alon in the dugout, me behind the plate and the pitcher. If all three agree on one pitch, that\u2019s pretty good. If you get two out of three, that\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n More often than not, all three seem to agree.<\/p>\n Leichman estimates he has been shaken off only once or twice per game. Although he does not have a catcher\u2019s view of pitch locations or swings, the Rockies have built in ways for their backstops to relay certain details to the dugout \u2014 say, if a pitch missed badly, or if an opponent has moved up or back in the batter\u2019s box. And the card in Leichman\u2019s hands might provide what even the most experienced catchers cannot.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have nine hitters in a lineup, and then you have a starter, and then you have eight or nine guys in the \u2019pen,\u201d Goodman, 26, said. \u201cYou can\u2019t remember every bit of it. No matter what you do, you\u2019re not going to be able to hold all the information that you do in your pregame work and studying those lineups.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving that stuff in front of him makes it a little bit easier for him to see, like, this pitch is a little better to this guy, or let\u2019s stay away from this spot on this guy.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Lorenzen, one of the oldest members of the roster, learned about the system in spring training after signing a free-agent deal with the Rockies. The right-hander was already friendly with Leichman; the two men met years ago<\/a> through a shared interest in movement training and stayed in touch as Lorenzen moved through several organizations.<\/p>\n That hasn\u2019t guaranteed better results. Through five regular-season appearances, including four starts, Lorenzen has pitched to an 8.10 ERA. (Freeland, a fellow veteran, recorded a 2.30 ERA in three starts before landing on the injured list with shoulder inflammation.)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, no matter the outcome, Lorenzen\u2019s relationship with Leichman creates permission for candor.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re able to have honest conversations between innings,\u201d Lorenzen said. \u201cNot afraid to ruffle one another\u2019s feathers. That\u2019s a big deal, because that\u2019s how you get better.\u201d<\/p>\n At the moment, the remaining 28 teams have yet to follow suit.<\/p>\n Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez, who pitched for the Rockies for a decade before signing with San Diego, faced his former team for the first time Saturday, throwing five innings of four-run ball in a 9-5 win. The following morning, the right-hander was asked about what Colorado is now trying.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s working, it\u2019s going to be good,\u201d M\u00e1rquez said. \u201cBut I feel like you have to have confidence in your catcher.\u201d<\/p>\n New York Yankees starter Carlos Rod\u00f3n was more blunt.<\/p>\n