Former Toronto Blue Jays bullpen coach hired by Colorado Rockies

The Colorado Rockies have taken a little bit longer to fill out their coaching ranks due to them needing to hire a President of baseball operations. Now that Paul DePodesta has filled that void, the rest of the dominoes are starting to fall.

After confirming that Schaeffer will return as manager after taking from Bud Black midway through last season, the Rockies have confirmed that a trio of new coaches will be joining his staff for 2026.

The Rockies were one of eight teams that had a managerial opening since the start of the offseason. Six had been fired since the final game of 2025.

Colorado finalized their previous announced hiring of Alon Leichmann as pitching coach. He will lead a team of new coaches that include Gabe Ribas as assistant pitching coach, while Matt Buschmann will lead the relievers as bullpen coach.

It's the first big league coaching job for Ribas, who spent the past five seasons as the director of pitching for the Detroit Tigers.

Buschmann however, has been here before. An 11-year minor league veteran - with a brief major league cameo with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2016 - Buschmann spent four seasons as bullpen coach with Toronto Blue Jays, where he assisted pitching coach Pete Walker and helped turn around the careers of several pitchers.

He spent the last two seasons in the Chicago Cubs organization as an advisor to their player development department.

The bullpen was a big weakness for the Rockies last season, as the team's bullpen ERA was 5.18. They were also last in the league with a 19.7% strikeout rate.

While he will get to work with a few big arms at the back end of the Rockies pen, Buschmann's main focus will be to increase the strikeouts, lower the amount of inherited runners scoring, as well as improve the general overall health and effectiveness of the staff.