Rockies part ways with pitching coach Alon Leichman after one season

What happened

The Colorado Rockies have parted ways with pitching coach Alon Leichman after just one season, MLB.com's Thomas Harding reported. Ken Rosenthal and Keith Law of The Athletic reported the same.

Leichman joined the Rockies staff ahead of the 2026 season, making his departure a one-and-done tenure — the kind of arrangement that tends to say more about the surrounding circumstances than about any single person's work. The timing, arriving at the close of a historically difficult season, places this move at the front of what figures to be a substantial organizational review.

Why it matters

Pitching coach turnover is rarely a standalone event. It is, more often, the first visible piece of a broader offseason reassessment — the coaching staff being the most accessible lever a front office can pull before the harder conversations about roster construction begin in earnest.

For Colorado, the timing lands at the close of a season that left little ambiguity about where the organization stands. The Rockies finished eliminated from both the division race and the Wild Card race, and the departure of Leichman signals that the club is not inclined to run the same staff back and wait for different results.

What that reassessment looks like beyond this move — whether it extends to other members of the coaching staff, the front office, or the roster itself — is not yet known. But parting ways with a pitching coach after a single season is, at minimum, a statement that the 2026 approach to developing and deploying pitchers will not be the template going forward.

Pitching in Colorado carries structural challenges that no coaching hire fully neutralizes. The altitude and the particular physics of the ballpark distort both pitcher confidence and evaluator perception in ways that have long complicated the organization's ability to build and retain effective arms. None of that is new context. But a season of this magnitude prompts questions about everything, and the pitching staff is rarely exempt from that accounting.

The departure also raises a broader question about organizational direction. When a club finishes at the bottom of its division and moves on from a pitching coach after a single year, the natural follow-up is whether the philosophy changes alongside the personnel — whether the next hire represents a genuine shift in how Colorado wants to build its staff, or whether it is primarily a reset of the same approach with a new face in the dugout. That answer is not yet available.

Where the club stands

Colorado closes the books on 2026 at 58-104 (.358), parked in fifth place in the NL West, 42 games out of first. Their Wild Card ranking sits 12th, 30.0 games from the cut line. The streak reads L1 at season's end, though at this point the standings are less a live scoreboard than a final accounting.

There is no next series to circle on the calendar, no upcoming rotation slot to fill. The Rockies are in full offseason mode, and the Leichman departure is the first reported piece of what figures to be a substantial organizational review. A 58-104 record is the kind of number that prompts questions about everything — the roster, the development pipeline, the coaching staff, and the philosophy that ties them together. The pitching staff is rarely exempt from that accounting, and the move away from Leichman makes that explicit.

The questions now are about who fills the vacancy, what the broader coaching staff looks like heading into the next season, and whether the front office's approach to pitching acquisition and development shifts alongside the change in the coaching box. None of those questions have reported answers yet.

What we don't know yet

The reporting from Harding, Rosenthal, and Law establishes that the parting has happened — it does not detail the reasons behind the decision, whether the move was mutual, or what the search for a replacement looks like. No successor has been named in the material available.

It is also not yet clear whether this is the only coaching change Colorado will make this offseason, or whether Leichman's departure is the opening move in a wider staff restructuring. The club has not, per the available reporting, outlined a timeline for filling the position. Whether the decision originated with the front office, the manager, or some combination of the two has not been reported.

What the Rockies want from the next pitching coach — in terms of background, approach, or track record — is similarly unaddressed in the available reporting. That profile, when it emerges, will say something about how the organization diagnoses what went wrong and what it believes can be fixed from the coaching box versus what requires different personnel on the mound.

What to watch

The obvious follow-up is the search for Leichman's replacement — who the Rockies target, what profile they prioritize, and whether the hire signals a philosophical shift in how the organization wants to build and manage its pitching staff. Given the club's position at the bottom of the NL West, the new pitching coach will inherit a significant project, and the choice of who gets that assignment will be worth reading carefully.

Beyond the coaching staff, the Leichman move is worth watching as a leading indicator. Offseason roster decisions, potential front office changes, and the broader direction of Colorado's rebuild will all come into sharper focus over the coming weeks. The first move of an offseason rarely travels alone, and a 58-104 season tends to generate a long list of subsequent moves. Whether this one is the beginning of something genuinely different for the Rockies, or simply the first name off a list, is the question that will take the better part of the winter to answer.