Bud Black says the obvious about Rockies slugger Kris Bryant

Former National League MVP Kris Bryant’s time with the Colorado Rockies has been a disaster thus far but club manager Bud Black believes things could turn around in 2025.

The Rockies highest-paid player only appeared in 37 games last season after another injury-plagued year. The oft-banged-up former star has been to the injured list eight separate times signing a seven-year, $182-million contract to play for the Rockies ahead of the 2022 season. At this point, he’s missed 327 games out of the 486 games Colorado has played since the disaster signing of the former Chicago Cubs slugger. His injuries have been mostly foot and back injuries but his core became an issue in 2024.

Worse than the injuries, when Bryant has played it’s been bad. As a Rockie, Bryant has slashed an awful .250/.332/.381 with 17 homers and 60 RBI in 159 games of action, primarily as an outfielder but this season as a planned first baseman. Since joining the Rockies, Bryant has been ninth-worst in MLB with a -1.4 fWAR among players with at least 600 plate appearances. Funny enough, the worst player in baseball during that timeframe according to the metric played all the positions Bryant did for the Rockies—Elehuris Montero. The younger and worse should-be slugger has been worth a -2.7 fWAR since the start of 2022, he is now overseas. The only position player to sign a larger free agent deal the same winter as Bryant was Corey Seager at 10 years for $325 million and he’s been worth 15.2 fWAR, 12th-best in baseball, and brought the Rangers World Series rings. All of that is to say, Bryant has played much due to injuries but when he has he’s been one of the worst players in baseball.

“We need Bryant to be Kris Bryant, he’s still, in our opinion, very capable of that and he will be the first person guy to tell you he’s very capable,” Black told reporters at MLB’s Winter Meetings on Monday. The proof will be in the pudding but he’s having a great winter so far. He’s very adamant about his offseason conditioning program and he’s staying on top of that. Routine checks with our medical and training staff. I talked to him about ten days ago and he’s in good spirits.”

#Rockies manager Bud Black expects Kris Bryant to get bulk of at-bats in 2025 at DH with some right field and potentially first base mixed in.

Rehab from an ongoing back issue has gone well so far this offseason for the nearly 33-year-old.

“We need Bryant to be Kris Bryant.” pic.twitter.com/vzbPovU9XD

— Patrick Lyons (@PatrickDLyons) December 10, 2024

Black also told reporters that Bryant is a guy the team needs to bounce back, which is the understatement of the century for a team that has eclipsed 100 losses in consecutive seasons.

#Rockies Bud Black on @MLBNetwork today: (Kris Bryant) is a guy we really need to bounce back."

— Patrick Saunders (@psaundersdp) December 9, 2024