Robert Stephenson showed flashes of potential

The weekend is a great time to kick back and reflect. This Week in Purple is the place to catch up on the news from our team at Purple Row. You’ll find links to Rockpiles and other content below as well as a platform for community discussion in the comments.

27 degrees. Snow blanketing the field. A random late January Tuesday. Sounds like a good time for baseball doesn’t it?. Against everything logical, it actually was. It was the day I ventured to LoDo to take a tour of Coors Field. The offseason and chilly temps weren’t a hindrance as I was one of eight people let inside the gates at 20th and Blake to get an early taste of baseball.

On Tuesday afternoon, former Colorado Rockies centerfielder Dexter Fowler announced his retirement from Major League Baseball after a storied 14-year career. “It’s here. I’m hanging up my cleats,” Fowler said on his social media accounts. Dexter Fowler was selected by the Rockies out of Milton High...

19. Hunter Goodman (254 points, 24 ballots) Our first unanimous Purple Row Prospect is the 23-year-old Hunter Goodman. The first baseman/catcher/DH (based on playing time in 2022, in that order) possesses excellent raw power that he’s been able to get into games (36 homers, 71 extra-base hits across three levels in 2022). The ability to at least fake it at catcher also provides Goodman’s profile a bit of extra juice, though it’s unlikely he ends up behind the plate full-time at the big-league level.

It has been four years since Major League Baseball had a ‘normal’ spring training. Baseball looked (relatively) normal until March 11, 2020, when an uncharacteristic Arizona rainstorm canceled a full slate of Cactus League games that day — only for COVID-19 to shut down the world that night.