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Hotter weather seems to help Doyle advance as a hitter

By Bob Madison - For the Chronicle | Jul 8, 2022

Brenton Doyle may become the first player from Shepherd University in the modern age of baseball to ever make it to the Major Leagues. Courtesy photo

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Fanciful name: Hartford Yard Goats.

Power numbers advancing steadily into July: 10 home runs and 10 doubles.

Maintaining his projected trajectory toward arriving in the major leagues, outfielder Brenton Doyle coursed through this summer in Class AA professional baseball as a just-turned 24 year-old.

Doyle is the former Shepherd player whose meteoric rise from Kettle Run High School in Warrenton, Va. to a fourth round draft selection of the Colorado Rockies was chronicled following his junior year in college.

The 2022 season in Hartford hasn’t been as satisfying as Doyle’s other two years in Colorado’s minor league system. After all, he batted .383 in his first season in the professional ranks at Grand Junction, Colo.

Next came a season when he hit .280 at Spokane in the Class A ranks, where he had prominent power numbers, a bushel of stolen bases and impeccable fielding stats.

The Yard Goats play in the Class AA Eastern League, which is divided into two divisions.

Hartford is in a first-place tie with Somerset, both with records of 46-29, in games through July 3. Also in the same Eastern League division are Portland (Maine), New Hampshire, Reading and the Binghamton Rumble Ponies.

Yard Goat baseball takes place at Dunkin’ Donuts Park.

The Eastern League schedule has the teams in both divisions playing regular season games up until late September instead of stopping around Labor Day, which was once the case in the minor leagues.

Doyle has been employed as both a center fielder and a right fielder and had yet to make an error in games up until Independence Day.

In his 68 games and 275 plate appearances, Doyle had scored 39 runs, had 57 hits, had been successful on 14-of-15 stolen base attempts and showed 40 runs batted in.

His batting average was .225, a slight improvement in the last two weeks of play.

Should he spend the remainder of the 2022 season at Hartford, he would be projected to play Class AAA baseball in 2023 and graduate to the big leagues at age 26 in 2024, making him the first player from Shepherd in the modern age of baseball to ever make the Major Leagues.

He is a meaningful investment in terms of money for the Rockies, receiving a signing bonus in the area of $500,000. Politics being an always-present section of Major League Baseball, Doyle’s signing bonus will be hugely important in his journey toward the big leagues.

With his obvious skills other than just hitting, his predicted upward path will be less burdened, because his baseball acumen and “feel for the game” are so well developed. He runs well and fields well, including an above-average throwing arm.

There are still nearly three months left in the Yard Goat schedule, and Doyle has hit well in the later stages of both his earlier professional seasons.

Landing in Denver in two more seasons seems to be a logical path for his career to follow.