SAN DIEGO -- The feeling that Rockies rookie right-hander Chase Dollander has carried through his pitching life officially dawned on him Monday night on the mound at Dodger Stadium.
"I’m the best pitcher in the world,” Dollander said prior to the Rockies' 2-0 loss to the Padres on Thursday at Petco Park. “I’m going to go out there and believe and have the confidence that I am. I truly think I have the mentality, the stuff -- the everything -- to be the best pitcher in the world.
“I know I’m looking forward to showcasing that next year, and that start was a glance at that.”
Dollander held the Dodgers to one hit and one run over five innings with five strikeouts before leaving in the sixth of Colorado's 3-1 loss with a left patellar tendon strain. Interim manager Warren Schaeffer said Dollander will be placed on the 15-day injured list before his scheduled start on Saturday in San Diego.
With an IL placement this late in the season, it seems likely that his next pitch will come in 2026.
A sequence against Shohei Ohtani during Monday’s third inning can serve as the proverbial one to build upon for Dollander, who turns 24 on Oct. 26.
"A guy like Shohei, he has a lot of strengths,” Dollander said. “You can’t play around with it. Just go straight at him and see what happens.
"First pitch, inside fastball. That can be dangerous at times, especially first pitch. People get scared to do that. And I’m like, ‘Here it is. I want you to swing. I dare you. He swung and missed.”
Dollander proceeded to set Ohtani up for his best pitch -- the curveball, on consecutive pitches for his second strikeout of the Dodgers' superstar.
After a head-spinning year of promise, struggles (especially at Coors Field) and a good enough display of raw stuff to justify the Rockies’ decision to select him ninth overall in the 2023 Draft out of the University of Tennessee, Dollander heads into his first Major League offseason with a concept of who he is in the Majors so far.
More importantly, he has a vision of what he will be.
Last year, his first in pro ball, Dollander posted a 2.59 ERA with 169 strikeouts in 118 combined innings at High-A Spokane and Double-A Hartford. Invited to Major League camp this spring, Dollander was impressive at times but also struggled to stay in the strike zone -- a profile that suggested a need for development time in Triple-A Albuquerque.
As was the case during a season that went downhill almost immediately, plans changed in a hurry. After one Triple-A start, Dollander joined the rotation because the left shoulder problem that Austin Gomber fought during Spring Training had not subsided. Dollander defeated the Athletics at Coors in his first start, but the issue that landed him in Triple-A to start the year didn’t magically disappear.
Through 15 starts, Dollander was 2-9 with a 6.68 ERA when the Rockies optioned him to Triple-A Albuquerque just before the All-Star break. Dollander made three Triple-A starts and spent a few days working at the team’s performance lab in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Results after Dollander’s return were mixed -- a 6.14 ERA in 29 1/3 innings over six starts. More accurately, the performance was divided -- a 1.69 ERA in three road starts (at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Daikin Park in Houston and Dodger Stadium) and an 11.48 ERA in three starts at Coors Field.
To lead the staff in the future, as he and the Rockies fully expect, he’ll have to adjust to his home ballpark.
"Specifically, after he got sent down and came back up, that was a huge time period for him in terms of getting it with reality, coming back up and deciding to make an adjustment,” Schaeffer said. “He did, in terms of his mound presence, the way he handles himself on the mound, and all the stuff in difficult environments.
"For him, it’s determining how he wants his arsenal to play at home as opposed to on the road. There have been adjustments that have been made in season trying to discover that -- looking at the analytic data.”
One such pitch is his slider, which he uses against left-handed hitters, as a backdoor pitch on the outer corner as well as both low and high and inside to left-handed hitters. However, a mistake on the higher pitch (which registers often as a cutter), gets tagged at Coors -- where he gave up 12 home runs in 46 innings, as opposed to six homers in 52 innings on the road.
But Dollander also believes he will be better once he regains his best pitch -- the four-seam fastball at the top of the zone, inside to right-handed hitters and outside to lefties. His 97.8 mph overall (four- and two-seam) fastball velocity is in the 94th percentile in MLB, according to Statcast. But an inability to reliably command the four-seamer, which averages 97.9 mph, interjected difficulty into his rookie season.
"I’m not sure where it went,” Dollander said. “It could have been that early in the season I was trying to get the ball down at Coors. It could’ve been a multitude of things. But I’m pretty freaking confident going into the offseason that I’m going to get it back.
"It’s going to be game over after that.”