John Brebbia is back in the Rockies organization less than a week after he walked away. Colorado signed the veteran right-handed reliever to a minor league contract Thursday, and he’ll report to Triple-A Albuquerque. That’s the same level he just left.
The timing is weird if you think about it. Colorado designated Brebbia for assignment last week to clear a roster spot for Gabriel Hughes, the former first-round pick they’re trying to develop. Brebbia elected free agency instead of accepting an outright assignment. And now, a few days later, he’s back on a minor league deal. The Rockies essentially swapped him out, let him test the market, and then re-signed him when nothing better materialized. That tells you something about how other teams view him right now.
Brebbia is 36 years old and has been around. He originally signed with Colorado in late May after a strong run at Triple-A for the Twins organization. That earned him another big league look. But his latest MLB stint was rough: three appearances, 4 1/3 innings, five earned runs, seven hits. He struck out two guys and relied mostly on a slider and a fastball that sat around 92 mph. Not exactly the kind of stuff that makes you think he’s about to turn back the clock.
His Track Record Says More Than This Year Does
Brebbia has tossed just under 400 innings across nine major league seasons with a 4.12 ERA. That number doesn’t jump off the page, but his best work came early. With the Cardinals from 2017 to 2019, he posted a 3.14 ERA and struck out 198 batters in 175 innings. His rookie year in 2017 was especially sharp: 2.44 ERA, 51 strikeouts in 51 2/3 innings, and he led all MLB rookie relievers in both ERA and WHIP. That version of Brebbia was a legitimate weapon.
He’s bounced around since then. San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, and now Colorado twice. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2020, came back to pitch for the Giants, and logged a league-leading 76 appearances in 2022 with a 3.18 ERA. That workload probably cost him some arm health, but it also showed what he’s capable of when everything clicks.
This season he’s split time between the Twins and Rockies Triple-A affiliates. In 29 1/3 innings at that level, his ERA sits at 4.30 but he’s striking out 29 percent of opposing hitters. For whatever reason, the strikeout stuff hasn’t fully translated to the majors this year. Before his brief promotion to Colorado, he put together seven scoreless innings for Albuquerque with 10 strikeouts. That was enough to convince the Rockies to give him another look.
The big league team is bad. The Rockies are sitting at the bottom of the NL standings with not much to play for except player development and organizational depth. Bringing back a guy like Brebbia isn’t about winning this year. It’s about having a warm body at Triple-A who can eat innings and maybe help the big club if someone gets hurt or traded. It’s a low-cost bet on a guy who has shown he can be effective at times.
Nobody is pretending this move changes the trajectory of anything. But for Brebbia, it’s another chance to pitch his way back to the majors. For the Rockies, it’s a minor league signing that costs them nothing. Sometimes that’s all it is.
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