After a dominant summer in Triple-A, Zac Veen is coming back to the bigs.
The Rockies’ 2020 first-round pick debuted last season but appeared in just 12 games before being sent back down to Albuquerque. He’s spent all of 2026 there, posting strong offensive numbers with a .325/.400/.637 slash line along with a 1.037 OPS and 25 homers in 99 games.
In a corresponding move, the Rockies designated infielder Edouard Julien for assignment. Julien, a left-handed hitter like Veen, is struggling with a .208 average and hasn’t been playing much lately.
A major-league source confirmed the transactions, which have not yet been announced by the club.
Veen will join the Rockies ahead of Colorado’s Tuesday game against the Diamondbacks in Phoenix. The outfielder is coming off a historic game over the weekend, when he went 5-for-5 with three homers, a double and a triple in Albuquerque’s 10-1 win over Sugar Land at Isotopes Park. Those 17 total bases marked a rare feat that’s only been achieved six times in the minors since 2005.
After being drafted at No. 9 overall six years ago out of Spruce Creek High School in Florida, Veen had a bumpy road throughout the minors leading into his 2025 MLB debut. He had to wait nearly a year to make his professional debut after the COVID pandemic wiped out the 2020 minor-league season, and missed large parts of the 2023 and ’24 seasons with injuries.
Veen also dealt with substance abuse issues before getting sober this past offseason. The 24-year-old was smoking marijuana every day and also drinking excessively, and got in trouble with the Rockies last season when he was caught smoking during a game at Isotopes Park. But he showed up to spring training this season clean and with added muscle on his 6-foot-3 frame.
Through all those tribulations, the Rockies didn’t lose faith in Veen’s talent, but they wanted to see more maturity in the outfielder who signed for a $5 million bonus out of high school. Veen told The Denver Post in April that his goal for this season was to stay healthy and start to fully realize his potential on the diamond.
“Best-case scenario is I get 500 to 600 at-bats and I play in the most games that I’ve ever played in,” Veen said. “That is the ultimate scenario for me. In a perfect world, I’m obviously in the major leagues (at some point in ’26), but in an even more perfect world, I’m just being the best version of myself every day. And at the end of the year, the pieces fell right where I wanted them to.”
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Earlier in this season, Rockies president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta said that the club wanted to see more plate discipline from Veen before he got another chance in the majors. During Veen’s cup of coffee with the Rockies last year, he hit just .118 with 14 strikeouts at a 37.8% K rate while looking consistently overmatched at the plate.
“If he can rein in that (aggression) in a little bit because big league pitchers are better equipped to take advantage of that, he can do so much damage on so many pitches,” DePodesta said in April. “So if we can bring him in a little but still allow him to be aggressive on the right pitches, he has a really, really bright future. He’s still showing all the same tools. He’s got big power, he can run. He’s versatile defensively.”
But Veen has shown more command of the strike zone this season with the Isotopes, with a 20.4% strikeout rate as well as a 10.8% walk rate. In his return to the Rockies, he will be a platoon outfielder who will likely see most of his at-bats against right-handed pitchers.
With Veen back in the majors, Rockies fans are still waiting on the debut of another heralded prospect, first baseman/outfielder Charlie Condon. The 2024 No. 3 overall pick is slashing .282/.397/.542 with 22 homers in Triple-A this season, and Colorado farm director Chris Forbes told The Denver Post last month that he would be surprised if Condon doesn’t debut at some point down the stretch of 2026.
The emergence of both Veen and Condon are important pieces to the Rockies’ rebuild following three straight 100-loss seasons. A few other recent first-round picks, outfielder Jordan Beck as well as starting pitchers Chase Dollander and Gabriel Hughes, also could be impactful in a turnaround over the next few seasons.
The Rockies (46-73) have lost six of their first seven series of the second half of 2026. They need to go 17-26 over their remaining games to avoid becoming the fifth MLB franchise with four consecutive seasons of 100 or more losses.
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