On a May morning in 2019, exit interviews for Shepherd University baseball players were scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. sharp in coach Matt McCarty’s office.
At 8:30, junior center fielder Brenton Doyle walked in, wearing his workout clothes, dripping with sweat. The Rams had been eliminated from the Mountain East Conference tournament the day before, so Doyle had played his final game for the Division II school in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
McCarty was puzzled, but only for a moment.
“Brenton was the first one to sign up for a meeting,” McCarty recalled. “Then he knocks on the door, walks in, a half-hour early, and I asked him, ‘Why are you sweating?’
“He said to me, ‘I wanted to get a workout in this morning and get this done early so I could take some swings in the cages one last time with the guys before I head out of here.’ ”
After the meeting, Doyle said his goodbyes and departed McCarty’s office, leaving one, final, indelible impression.
“All of the coaches looked at each other and we said, ‘He’s going to make it big. That’s exactly why he is who he is,’ ” McCarty said.
Three weeks later, the Rockies selected Doyle in the fourth round of the draft. Now, four years later, Doyle, 25, has become the Rockies’ must-see player, creating a buzz with his bat, arm, speed and exuberance.
“He plays the game fast and he has fun with it,” McCarty said. “He plays like a 10- or 11-year-old kid.”
In his three seasons at Shepherd, Doyle slashed .380/.438/.647 with 32 home runs, 47 doubles and 11 triples in 159 games. He also stole 52 bases. In 2019, he hit .415, setting a Shepherd single-season record with 98 hits in 236 at-bats and did not have an error as the Rams’ primary center fielder.
“He was the most talented player to ever come through this program,” said McCarty, adding that he thought Doyle had the talent to be a second-round pick.
It’s way too early to start making projections, but since Doyle made his big-league debut April 24 in Cleveland, he’s played like a contender for the National League rookie-of-the-year award. Doyle entered the Rockies’ weekend series at Texas riding a wave of success. He was hitting .255, with four homers, 11 RBIs and a .839 OPS in 19 games.
The 6-foot-3, 205-pounder is the only player in Rockies history to hit four home runs and steal six bases in his first 17 games. And, he provided Colorado’s sluggish offense with the speed it was sorely lacking.
Last Monday, in Colorado’s 9-8 win against Cincinnati at Coors Field, he blasted two home runs, hit a double and drove in three runs. His 10 total bases tied for fourth-most ever by a Rockies rookie. On Wednesday, in an 11-6 win over the Reds, Doyle showed off his speed with a two-run triple.
“Two things are always exhilarating — power and speed,” manager Bud Black said. “It’s good for the team because it impacts your ability to win. And then you throw in Brenton’s defense, and his range in center, that type of talent is game-changing, in a lot of ways.”
Doyle has already pulled off a number of defensive plays that will likely end up on the end-of-season highlight reel. Leading the list is the throw he made against the Pirates on May 10 at PNC Park. With the game tied 6-6 in the sixth inning, Doyle caught a sacrifice fly for the second out and then threw a 98.1 mph strike to catcher Austin Wynns to nail Bryan Reynolds at the plate for the double play. The Rockies won, 4-3.
“I have always been a guy that takes a lot of pride in my defense and it paid off,” said Doyle, who in 2021 was named a MiLB Gold Glove Award winner with High-A Spokane.
Doyle, who once had a throw clocked at 100 mph in college, wanted to be a big-league player ever since his tee-ball days in Warrenton, Va.
“I loved all the sports, and still do, but the only one I wanted to play was baseball,” he said. “It’s always been my first love.”
Doyle, whose 29.8 feet-per-second sprint speed is considered to be in the 98th percentile among all major league players, has been speedy since he was a toddler. He earned the nickname “Turbo” when he was playing for his youth travel team. His mom, Andrea, and his dad, Joe, recognized their son’s athletic skills, of course, but there’s something else that sticks with Andrea after all of these years.
When Doyle was 10, his travel team played in a tournament at the Cooperstown Dreams Park in Cooperstown, N.Y.
“Brenton was awarded one of the sportsmanship tokens from one of the umpires,” Andrea recalled. “The umpire pulled us aside and told us that he wanted us to know that he loved the way Brenton respected the game. He loved his sportsmanship. That touched my heart. That was huge.”
At Kettle Run High School in Nokesville, Va., Cougars baseball coach Ty Thorpe first got to know Doyle as a soft-spoken, 5-foot-10, 160-pound freshman.
“He wasn’t unfriendly but he was quiet, and sort of in his shell a little bit,” Thorpe said. “He got the nickname ‘Baby Deer’ in high school because he was fast as lightning but he wasn’t close to as big as he is now.”
Thorpe originally planned to play Doyle on the junior varsity squad, but Doyle flashed such a good glove and showed such keen baseball instincts as a freshman that he ended up starting all four years at Kettle Run. He hit .443 as a junior and started garnering attention from colleges. As a senior, he hit .497 with 12 doubles, 12 triples and 27 RBIs, leading the Cougars to their first state tournament.
During his senior season, Doyle pulled off a play that gave Thorpe an inkling that the teenage outfielder might have major league talent. A batter whistled a drive to deep center field and everyone was thinking extra bases. Everyone but Doyle.
“So the ball goes over Brenton’s head and I was like, ‘OK, let’s see what happens,’ ” Thorpe recalled. “So Brenton went for the ball, full sprint, head down, laid out and he caught it as he slid across the warning track. For me, that was kind of that ‘wow’ moment that told me, ‘This kid’s got it.’
“Brenton was, hands down, the most talented player to come through this program.”
More than that, Thorpe, who still frequently shares texts with Doyle, remembers the kind of person Doyle was in high school and remains so today.
“Brenton always went about things the right way, and that’s a credit to his parents,” Thorpe said. “He was polite and never came across as entitled. He’d talk to anybody in the hallway. He knew he was good but he didn’t let that become his persona.”
Doyle’s original plan was to attend the Virginia Military Institute, but after getting a small sample of what collegiate life would be like at VMI, he de-committed and signed on at Shepherd. This fall, Shepherd will retire his No. 22 jersey.
Doyle moved up the minor-league ladder relatively quickly. Over his first three seasons, he hit .286, with 50 home runs, 49 doubles, 10 triples and 61 stolen bases in 280 games. Last season, he slashed .256/.300/.472 with 26 home runs, 77 RBIs and 23 stolen bases in 132 games (123 with Double-A Hartford, nine with Triple-A Albuquerque). The Rockies added him to their 40-man roster in November.
General manager Bill Schmidt, who drafted Doyle in 2019 when Schmidt was the director of scouring, is thrilled with how Doyle has performed, especially considering that the pandemic caused Doyle to miss an entire season in 2020 and the 500-plus professional at-bats he would have gotten.
“I think he’s shown, in his short time up here, the tools that he has and the skills that he has, that he can impact a game,” Schmidt said. “It’s his power, his speed and his arm. And one of the reasons why we have played better lately is because our defense in the middle of the field has improved and Brenton’s been a big part of that.”
But clearly, there is work to be done. Doyle’s 34.5% strikeout rate is too high (the major league average is 22.7%) and his 5.2% walk rate is too low (average is 8.8%). Black wants Doyle to be more selective at the plate and increase his .293 on-base percentage.
“I think getting consistent playing time is going to help me a lot,” Doyle said. “But I’m feeling pretty good right now. For me, a lot of it’s about preparation.”
To that end, Doyle has spent hours in the batting cage and has worked overtime with hitting coach Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens on pitch recognition.
“I have been doing a lot of time in the cage with our heater (pitching) machine,” Doyle said. “Actually, exaggerated heater machine, getting it going up to 100 (mph). That’s helped me be on time with fastballs lately.”
Black is not one to heap praise on rookies, knowing the obstacles ahead. Still, after Doyle hit his two home runs and made two web gems in the Rockies’ win over the Reds, Black was more than ready to laud his electric center fielder.
“With Brenton, it’s good stuff,” Black said. “It’s early in the year, a quarter of the way through the season. There are going to be peaks and valleys and ups and downs, but a night like tonight shows you what a young player can do.”
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