The Colorado Rockies enter this draft in one of the stranger situations in baseball: ownerless, directionless, but somehow not entirely hopeless.
Unlike last season’s Seattle teardown — where the franchise was essentially stripped for copper wiring and handed a pile of draft picks as compensation — the Rockies are expected to remain mostly intact while the league temporarily oversees operations. Which, depending on your perspective, is either reassuring stability or a horrifying sentence.
Still, with no permanent ownership group yet in place, the safest assumption is that Colorado approaches this draft conservatively and simply takes the best player available.
And honestly? That’s probably the correct move anyway.
There are a handful of intriguing three-star pitching prospects still hanging around the board, and ordinarily I’d spend three paragraphs ranting about the importance of pitching depth before talking myself into another arm. But this is one of those spots where the hitter simply makes too much sense.
Mike Lowell gets the nod.
Lowell may not have the same superstar ceiling as Eric Chavez, but he’s close enough that we’re arguing over shades of excellent rather than debating whether the player belongs this high at all. At 23 years old and nearly fully developed already, Lowell comes with something several teams near the top of this draft desperately lack:
Certainty.
You know what you’re getting here.
Strong contact skills. Legitimate power. Excellent defense at third base. Zero speed whatsoever, which honestly feels almost refreshing in an era where every scouting report insists some lumbering corner infielder is “sneaky athletic.”
Mike Lowell runs exactly like a third baseman should run: carefully and with visible effort.
But the bat plays. The glove absolutely plays. And even if the remaining development stalls entirely, he’s still a valuable major league player immediately. That floor matters for a Rockies organization currently balancing instability at the ownership level with a roster that’s awkwardly constructed in about seventeen different ways.
And perhaps most importantly, this selection addresses one critical organizational issue:
Keith Lockhart no longer has to play every day.
That alone might make this pick worth it.
Colorado isn’t necessarily looking for a savior right now. They need stability. They need competence. They need players capable of anchoring a lineup while the organization figures out what exactly the long-term vision is supposed to be.
Lowell checks every box.
Maybe he never becomes a perennial MVP candidate. Maybe he’s “only” a championship-level third baseman who hits in the middle of your order for a decade while playing excellent defense.
That’s still an outstanding outcome at Pick #7.
PICK #7
Colorado Rockies select 3B Mike Lowell