DNVR Exclusive: The Dom Nunez story has reached its tipping point

Let me give you a list of names: Kyle Parker, Casey Weathers, Greg Reynolds, Eddie Butler, Christian Friedrich, Tyler Matzek, Chris Nelson.

Now here’s another group: Scott Oberg, Raimel Tapia, German Marquez, Carlos Estevez, Jairo Diaz, Trevor Story.

Ok, let’s do one more: Tony Wolters, Chris Iannetta, Nick Hundley, Wilin Rosario, Yorvit Torrealba, Danny Ardoin, Charles Johnson, Brent Mayne, Joe Girardi.

What does each list have in common, you may ask.

The first group consists of players who were drafted and developed by the Colorado Rockies who had quite a bit of hype through either draft pedigree or minor league success or both. Unfortunately, they never amounted to much, if anything, at the MLB level.

The second went the other way. These are players who had little shine on them coming up with significant ups-and-downs in the minors—and in the majors, at times—before finally outperforming expectations in the majors.

You probably realized the last group, represents the spectrum from “oh yeah, him” to “oof, him” to “I guess he was acceptable” that the Rox have produced behind the plate dating back to their inception.

Now we come to a list with just one name on it: Dom Nunez.

In some ways, he has already walked the path of each of the players mentioned above and over the next few months, and maybe years, we will all find out which list he ends up putting his name on for good.

Born in Elk Grove, California in January of 1995, Nunez developed an early feel for athletics, particularly the game of baseball. Like most kids who show advanced skill, he played all around the diamond and before gravitating toward the most important positions.

Athletic enough to play the middle of the infield, Nunez grew an affinity for catcher during his days at Elk Grove High School. But when the Rockies took him in the sixth round of the 2013 draft, they found themselves in the crossroads of a career.

On the one hand, Nunez had the natural strength to hit for power and soft enough hands that his up-the-middle defense could be a great asset. His lateral quickness and foot speed also made more sense out in the field. And there are always questions about what putting the “tools of ignorance” on a player will do to their offensive game.

There are so many extra things on a catcher’s daily to-do list. You’ve got to study the other team’s lineups, develop a rapport with a staff of 13-plus pitchers, and make pitch framing, blocking, and quick throws to the bags a top priority. You also basically have to be a de facto assistant coach and team psychoanalyst.

So, in his first taste of professional baseball in Grand Junction, the club eased him in at second base and shortstop in what turned into a frustrating season at 18 years old. He slashed .200/.269/.323 over 55 games, though he did hit one monster home run that propelled his team into the postseason that year.

The next time I saw him was Spring Training 2014 and he was wearing catcher’s gear. And he could not have had a bigger smile on his face.

We spoke for a while about his refreshed outlook and his play on the field that next season proved his body language and words about feeling at home in his new position to be correct.

Nunez destroyed in Rookie ball redux with a .313/.384/.517 line for a 129 wRC+ and managed to walk almost as often as he struck out. He followed that up with another impressive campaign in Asheville where he posted a career-best 135 wRC+.

“It was a great change,” Nunez said years later of the move back behind the plate. “Great call by the Rockies. I embraced it and just ran with it.”

Graduating a level for the second straight year, he struggled a bit in 2016 at High-A with an 85 wRC+ but a few important details began to emerge.

First, there appeared to be some consistent patterns developing. For the third year in a row, he had a walk rate over 10 percent, was on a double-digit home run pace, and was continuing to improve as seasons went on, showing an ability to make in-season adjustments.

The second, and far more important development, was that Nunez really began to take leaps and bounds forward as a defensive backstop.

While young for the level, the Rockies challenged the then-22-year-old by promoting him to Double-A for the start of 2017. It was a questionable decision after his worst statistical full season in the minors but Nunez responded nicely.

He didn’t exactly blow down the doors in Hartford, hitting just .202/.335/.354. Oddly enough, in the offensively-suppressed Eastern League, that accounted for an improvement in wRC+ to 94. And again, the glove-work continued to grow.

Nunez attributes much of this growth to an ever-evolving mindset and some specific physical exercises.

“I think it all starts with, honestly, breathing,” he told DNVR. “Controlling your breathing has to do a lot with slowing the game down. Tony (Wolters) talks about it a lot and I talk to him a lot about receiving. He’s one of the best in the game. Breathing, taking things slow, catching strikes that look good and hopefully getting those ones on the border.”

The 2018 season was a peculiar one for Nunez. He stalled out at the plate in a repeat of Double-A, posting a wRC+ of 87 with a better batting average but worse on-base and slugging. He now had five straight seasons of walking at least 10 percent of the time, taking free passes 14.6 and 12.2 percent of the time in two years with the Yard Goats.

After keeping the strikeouts remarkably low in his first three seasons, though, he had begun to swing and miss a bit more, averaging around 20 percent over a three year period following a second campaign in Hartford.

This stagnation with the stick is likely why the Rockies left him open to being taken from the organization in the Rule-5 draft following his 2018 year. The same stagnation is also perhaps why none of the other 29 clubs decided to take him in that draft.

Still, he showed up to Major League Spring Training early in 2019 with the rest of the pitchers and catchers and got to the work of creating the most exhilarating year of his baseball life.

Suddenly, it all seemed to click for Nunez. The power potential finally became more power than potential, as he burst out of the gate with a brilliant spring that earned him a start at Triple-A despite back-to-back mediocre seasons in Double-A.

He answered the challenge with his best all-around season so far, putting up a 116 wRC+ buoyed by 17 home runs in 61 games and a 13.6 percent walk rate. The strikeouts did climb to over 26 percent but considering all the offensive setbacks, to see Nunez excel at the highest level of competition he had faced, just one step from the Bigs, gave renewed confidence to everyone involved.

“This goes back a few years that he’s been with us at Spring Training,” manager Bud Black told DNVR. “So that tells you our confidence in his ability to receive, to block, to game call, to throw. He’s doing what we thought he would do. And that’s handle the game.”

Now that the bat was coming around, it looked like the Rockies might have something after all in this player that so many in the prospect world had turned a blind eye to.

But Nunez never gave up on himself.

On August 13, 2019, after spending seven years working his ass off in minor league baseball, and less than a year after he was exposed to a draft in which almost any other team in baseball could have taken him for relative peanuts, Dom Nunez made his MLB debut against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Rockies got pretty well pummeled in that one thanks to a terrible night from starting pitcher Jeff Hoffman but Nunez made sure his debut would be remembered for more than that, smashing a no-doubt home run in the eighth inning for his first hit in the Bigs.

“The home run was the most surreal moment,” he said later. “My family was there in the stands and it was just awesome.”

As was easily anticipated, though, Nunez’s bat lagged behind just a bit. In 43 plate appearances over 16 games at the end of the season, he hit just .179/.233/.410 with a pair of home runs.

Putting aside for a moment that his home run pace would smash anything the Rockies have had behind the plate in quite some time, these paltry numbers and a whopping 39-percent strikeout rate probably don’t have too many fans chomping at the bit to see what he can do next.

But those who paid close attention to his work behind the dish may feel otherwise.

“So far, so good,” Black told us at season’s end. “We felt very comfortable bringing him to the big leagues.  We’re not worried at all about how he’s gonna catch the ball or his blocking ability. He has some things technically that Mike (Redmond) wants to do as far as throwing… and (having) that catcher spirit, right?”

The Rockies manager has been notoriously demanding of catchers but he likes what he sees so far out of the 24-year-old.

“As far as his hands and how he’s moving, I think there’s there’s room for improvement and I think he’s he’s got enough aptitude to excel in big league games,” he added. And a lot of that will just come with reps. “When he catches Marquez or Gray, the breaking ball is different than the blocking Chris Rusin’s breaking ball or Philip Diehl’s breaking ball… but we’re confident that he has that ability. And I think he will make the proper adjustments physically.”

Nunez knows he has experienced eyes on him at all times.

“He expects a lot from us,” he said of his manager. “We expect a lot as well. It’s been great, me and (Wolters) helping each other a lot as much as possible and coming together as a team.”

Even the star of the team was able to look past the rocky start with the bat and see a player doing what it takes to succeed at this level.

“He’s doing a good job,” Nolan Arenado told DNVR after the season. “He’s working. He’s understanding. Rookie seasons are always tough. You don’t know what to expect. There’s a learning curve and catching is tough. It’s not easy to catch here either. He’s caught some great games, he’s very in control back there, he’s very calm and that’s what you need.”

So, while this offseason has had many openly wondering about the Rockies plans at catcher, it is worth remembering that Nunez is likely to factor into this equation now.

And it makes a lot of sense when you look at the general landscape of catcher. Players like Martin Maldanado, Jason Castro, Robinson Chirinos, and Kevin Plawecki are all intriguing but carry with them essentially the same profile of being solid defensively and a bit of a mixed bag offensively.

He doesn’t have their experience, and that arguably matters more behind the dish than anywhere else on the diamond, but Nunez more or less matches that profile otherwise. In fact, both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs project Nunez to put up a better OPS next season than any of those guys’ career averages and roughly equal park-adjusted hitting stats.

Coors Field plays a factor here, but still a .247/.317/.449 slash line with nine home runs as projected by Baseball Reference would be perfectly acceptable from the still-rookie if he can manage to be a force on defense.

As shaky as they can be, so far the systems for rating defense at the aforementioned sites see Nunez as an asset behind the dish, just like his manager and leader do.

“We need guys to come up and step up and he did that,” says Arenado.

And Nunez will continue to show pride in that part of his game.

“There are two sides of the ball and you have to take your wins on defense just as much as your wins on offense,” he says. “Keep them separated. That’s something I learned in the minors and so far it has worked up here.”

Now, he says, the next step is to make playing in the big leagues a routine feeling experience. It helps that he is extremely familiar with most of the Rockies’ young pitching staff who he developed relationships with throughout their minor league careers.

“Pretty much everyone here I’ve caught,” he laughed. “And it’s starting to feel normal being here.”

Colorado recently added Elias Diaz to the roster from the Pittsburgh Pirates, giving them a third catcher to battle for playing time in Spring Training.

Diaz has achieved some success with contact hitting in MLB but there are a few more questions on defense which could leave the door open for Nunez.

At this point, no matter the tumultuous path behind him, Bud Black sees the sky as the limit for the rookie backstop from Elk Grove.

“He can improve because he’s young, he’s athletic, and his work ethic is such where he can do some things body wise and mentally.”

He pauses for a moment and looks out over an empty baseball diamond.

“But I’ll tell you what man, this kid is capable. He can do the whole…well, the whole everything.”

That’s exactly where Nunez has his sights set… the whole everything.

“I’ve got to take my game to the next level in all aspects and that’s going to be my main focus this offseason,” he says.

Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training approximately one month from now. And we will see if the work Dom Nunez has put in since our last conversation has paid off. We will see which list he is ready to write his name on.

Will he be another prospect brimming with potential that just never quite managed to reach his ceiling? Will he be that guy that we all look back on and wonder how he was so often overlooked? Will he join the long list of Colorado Rockies catchers who fade into the background?

Or can he take one more big step forward and become the most exciting thing to happen for this club behind the dish in a very, very long time?