Ezequiel

Tovar

He also knocked in run with a sac fly. It’s the sixth time in those 500 games that Tovar has both homered and walked. He has eight homers and 17 walks while batting .209/.252/.345 in his 321 plate appearances this year.

Tovar has struggled since missing a pair of games with a calf injury in mid-June, hitting .133/.167/.244 over his past 14 games with just one homer and one stolen base. Willi Castro is handling shortstop today.

Tovar was held out of Colorado’s lineup for a pair of games against the Athletics in Las Vegas due to left calf soreness. He went 3-for-6 with an RBI during Sunday’s offensive explosion. The 24-year-old is back at shortstop and hitting fifth on Monday night at Wrigley Field.

Tovar joins Matt Wallner, teammate Willi Castro and Kyle Schwarber with five-strikeout games this year. Give this one some extra credit, though, as the rest of the Rockies combined to go 10-for-30 with five extra-base hits, 10 walks and just six strikeouts in scoring nine runs against the Angels. Tovar is hitting .216/.267/.328 in 221 plate appearances and might benefit from a Triple-A stint if it would do anything to encourage him to show even a tiny bit of discipline at the plate.

Tovar homered in the eighth to get the Rockies to within a run at 4-3. The 24-year-old gave the Rockies the win and also improved his homer total to four with a two-run blast off Caleb Kilian that completed the comeback win for Colorado, as the Rockies entered that inning trailing 6-3. Tovar has struggled for most of the year, but he’s homered three times this week, and he’s shown the ability — in spurts anyway — to be a fantasy factor.

A rare appearance from Tovar’s bat this season. The 24-year-old has long displayed some of the game’s worst plate discipline, but his contact this year has been weaker than usual, even though one would think he’d be getting a little stronger as he approaches what should be his peak years. The homer was his second in 195 plate appearances. Two years ago, he hit 26 in 695 plate appearances.

They can only drop him one spot further. Tovar opened the season batting cleanup for Colorado and also hit second and third on occasion, but he hit seventh for the first time on Friday and eighth for the first time Sunday. The 24-year-old is still chasing every pitch he sees and batting .193/.228/.294 through 114 plate appearances. There’s no giving up on him for the long haul, but the Rockies could consider sending him down for a spell to try to motivate him to show even a modicum of discipline at the plate.

Well, he made contact against Mason Miller. That’s not nothing. Tovar is batting .204/.245/.323 in 98 plate appearances. Statcast thinks he’s been unlucky not to hit closer to his career averages, but it’s not like his career averages are anything special. Tovar was a quality player as a 22-year-old sophomore in 2024, but he took a major step backwards last season and hasn’t shown any signs of rebounding. It’s really disappointing, especially for a Rockies team committed to him through 2030.

It appears to be nothing more than a routine night off for the 24-year-old shortstop. Utilityman extraordinaire Willi Castro will cover the position in his stead and bat sixth for the Rockies against Randy Vasquez and the Padres.

Of course they did. The Rockies were up 2-1 through five before erupting for seven runs in the sixth. They then piled on with five runs off catcher Tyler Heineman in the final two innings. Tovar is used to mostly batting first and second for the Rockies, but he’s opened the season in the cleanup spot, which really makes more sense given his total absence of plate discipline. His three hits all left his bat in excess of 101 mph, and his double off Heineman in the eighth would have been a homer in nine ballparks.