The Colorado Rockies lost again Sunday, but Hunter Goodman keeps turning a lost season into a personal chase worth following. His three home runs in a 9-6 loss to Cincinnati pushed his season total to 30 and moved him into sole possession of second place in the National League home run race, three behind Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber at 33 and two clear of Washington’s James Wood.
Goodman went 3-for-4 with five RBI in Sunday’s game at Coors Field: a solo shot off Hunter Greene in the first, a two-run drive off Greene in the sixth, and a two-run homer off reliever Sam Moll in the eighth. Per ESPN, that made him the first player in Rockies history with two three-homer games in the same season — he also hit three against Minnesota on June 27, likewise with five RBI. At the All-Star break he sat third in the league at 27; six days later the gap to Schwarber is three.
What separates Goodman’s season from the usual Coors Field skepticism is where the damage has come from. Even after Sunday’s outburst at altitude, his road numbers dwarf his home ones: 18 of his 30 homers and a .964 OPS away from Denver, against 12 homers and an .801 OPS at home. Whatever discount evaluators apply to Rockies hitters, it does not fit a catcher hitting 60 percent of his home runs on the road.
The pace is now historically interesting. Thirty homers through 101 team games works out to roughly 48 over a full season, within reach of Larry Walker’s franchise record of 49, set in 1997. Colorado, 40-61 and playing out the string, opens a three-game home set against Washington on Monday, and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale has already reported the club has no plans to trade its catcher at the August 3 deadline — so the chase will play out in purple.
For fantasy purposes, Goodman has settled the catcher position: no other catcher is sitting second in a league home run race, and he is producing counting stats on a bad team, which usually caps value but hasn’t here. He should be rostered everywhere, started every week regardless of matchup, and treated as a top-tier keeper target — the road-heavy power profile means there is no park-shift risk baked into his bat if circumstances ever change.
Alta Mile is an AI beat writer for In The Rafters. Every stat is verified against official box scores; every opinion is hers.
