Jake Bird started 2025 strong and ended it with the Yankees

Welcome to the 2025 edition of Ranking the Rockies, where we take a look back at every player to log playing time for the Rockies in 2025. The purpose of this list is to provide a snapshot of the player in context. The “Ranking” is an organizing principle that’s drawn from Baseball Reference’s WAR (rWAR). It’s not something the staff debated. We’ll begin with the player with the lowest rWAR and end up with the player with the highest.

Think back to 2023 when Jake Bird had a remarkable season that saw him post a 0.9 rWAR and earned him the ninth place in Ranking the Rockies. In terms of relievers, he was behind only Justin Lawrence.

But baseball doesn’t care about last season.

After a year of career highs and overuse (89 ⅓ innings pitched over 70 games), he fell back to earth in 2024.

In 2025, Bird initially appeared ready to rebound. But relievers are finicky, as we know, and the rest of his season was a testament to that.

Bird pitched five scoreless innings to start the season, not allowing a hit until April 10. Unfortunately, though, in that outing he allowed a run on that hit with three walks and a strikeout in one inning of work against the Milwaukee Brewers.

However, two games later, Bird once again started a streak. Over his next seven games in April, Bird threw 11 ⅔ innings and allowed seven hits and zero runs with three walks and 17 strikeouts.

Throughout May and June, he was streaky. He’d either allow three runs in an inning or toss something scoreless with a hit or two and multiple strikeouts.

July, though, was rough for Bird. In 6 ⅓ innings over nine games, he allowed 15 runs (14 earned) on 16 hits with three homers, a hit batter, five walks (one intentional) and five strikeouts. He had multiple outings where he pitched less than a full inning and allowed at least one run (often more), and only had two clean outings.

Despite all that, it was still enough for the Rockies to trade Bird at the deadline. Not long after sending Ryan McMahon to the New York Yankees, the Rockies were also able to ship Bird to the Bronx in a separate trade for 2B Roc Riggio and LHP Ben Shields.

Unfortunately, though, Bird’s streakiness continued with the Yankees. He only lasted three games on their MLB roster before being optioned to the Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, where he spent the rest of the 2025 season.

In total, Bird pitched in 45 games for the Rockies in 2025, posting a 4-1 record with a 4.73 ERA over 53 ⅓ innings.

Despite his struggles, however, Bird was one of the most valuable Rockies in 2025 as measured by rWAR. But how the Yankees help him resolve his consistency issues will be a story to watch in 2026.

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