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DENVER — Rockies rookie Warming Bernabel has filled the box score — and driven up one fan’s pulse.
“My dad, after every game, he calls me and says he’s gonna get a heart attack, just watching me out there doing what I’m doing,” Bernabel said in Spanish, with Edwin Perez interpreting.
Bernabel’s hitting has allowed the Rockies to have a change of heart at first base. He is the second player in the modern era to record 14+ hits and eight-plus extra-base hits through seven career games, joining Mitchell Page in 1977.
Struggles returned, however. The difference this time is Bernabel came up from Albuquerque and in one week supplanted Toglia, who was optioned back to Albuquerque to get regular playing time and address his strikeout rate — 38.3 percent at the Major League level.
Toglia’s first option was fretted, since he was a first-round pick in 2019 and the club didn’t have a viable option.
But like Toglia in the Draft, Bernabel represents an investment by the organization — $900,000 to sign out of Bani, Dominican Republic, in 2018. Bernabel ranked as high as No. 6 on the MLB Pipeline Rockies Top 30 in May 2023.
A back injury slowed his progress. The Rockies removed him from the 40-man Major League roster at the start of last season, but kept developing him. A switch from third base to first base put him in position for his chance.
“It’s a very good thing, competition — it’s a good thing when you have a guy like Bernabel that came up here and basically earned a spot,” interim manager Warren Schaeffer said. “That’s what you want, especially in a team in our situation. You want guys to force their hand and earn a spot. Then guys that lose their spot, they need to go to work and get better so they can come back and get their spot back.”
It’s how Bernabel, 23, revived his prospect status.
“It comes to my offseason work on every aspect of the game — the mental, my swing, everything I worked on,” Bernabel said. “I also credit a lot of my Triple-A work. I learned from a lot of the veterans there who gave me lessons and taught me a lot.
“And I credit my whole Minor League career. I had a lot of at-bats, so you get confidence. You get the confidence and the talent that you have to have when you have so many at-bats in the Minors.”
Schaeffer detailed how Toglia can imitate Bernabel, and go from outcast to back in good graces.
“Michael doesn’t need to be here and sit on the bench — no good comes from that,” Schaeffer said. “He needs to work on flattening his bat path out. He needs to handle the top third of the zone, where he’s swinging and missing a lot. He knows all these things. He just needs to go and force our hand.”
