Meet Benny Montgomery: Tooled-Up Rockies Outfielder Hoping For A Breakout Season In 2025
Image credit: Benny Montgomery (Photo by Bill Mitchell)
There have been few high-level high school prospects more divisive over the past few draft cycles than the Rockies’ Benny Montgomery.
Though he was considered one of the best athletes MLB scouts had seen in years, the 2021 draft cycle was a continuous push and pull between those that saw the immense upside in Montgomery’s profile and those that believed his unusual swing and ever-changing timing mechanisms simply wouldn’t work.
Three full seasons into Montgomery’s professional career, the talented outfielder still boasts some big-time tools—his 110.4 mph 90th percentile exit velocity ranked second in the minor leagues amongst players aged 21 or younger as of last season—but his long-term future is still just as murky.
Over 196 professional games—mostly spent at the A-ball levels—Montgomery has hit .277/.354/.419 with a 27.3% strikeout rate, 9.1% walk rate, 68 extra-base hits and 35 stolen bases on 42 attempts. In Montgomery’s one full-healthy season in 2023, he spent the entire campaign at High-A Spokane where he produced a league-average line as one of the five youngest qualified hitters in the Northwest League. Over the course of that season, Montgomery showed significantly-improved swing decisions, as he cut his chase rate by 43% (18.1 points ) between 2022 and 2023. He followed it up with a strong showing in the Arizona Fall League where he hit .333/.436/.500 over 19 games.
Ranked the Rockies’ No. 5 prospect in 2022, Montgomery has slipped down to 12th in the organization heading into 2025. He entered last season ready to re-establish his prospect pedigree with Double-A Hartford and got off to a hot start in the Eastern League, going 13-for-46 with six extra-base hits and 10 RBIs in his first 11 games. Unfortunately, Montgomery injured his left shoulder that spring and underwent season-ending surgery in May 2024.
Heading into the upcoming season with a long, six-month recovery from injury behind him, Montgomery had one key thing in mind.
“The obvious (focus) for me this offseason was getting healthy,” Montgomery said. “That was number one.”
Part of the return from the shoulder surgery was a trip to the Puerto Rican Winter League to get much needed game reps and “get the kinks out” against live pitchers. Montgomery hit .254/.329/.324 with three extra base hits over 19 games while posting a 27% strikeout rate despite being nearly six-and-a-half years younger than the average age of competition.
After six weeks of offseason cage work, Montgomery felt his swing is in the best place it’s been in his career.
“A lot of my work was approach oriented,” Montgomery said. “I focused on swinging at the right pitches in batting practice and trying to compete in BP harder.
Montgomery believes honing in on swinging at the right pitches with the right timing feels is paramount to his future success.
“I’d do a lot of drills where my coach would call out a number which was tied to a location, and we’d just try and attack just those zones,” he said. “We’d work the locations and one through seven, just honing in on the right locations over and over again.”
A big part of Montgomery’s work this offseason was training his eyes to get back to where they were, as his missed time put him behind the eight ball when it came to valuable game reps. A long-time tinkerer, Montgomery has had a variety of loads and timing mechanisms over the years. Now, he’s once again feeling comfortable with his setup and timing.
“In the 2023 Fall League, I worked with our hitting coordinator to get my swing to a point where I have full confidence,” Montgomery said. “We made some adjustments to my timing mechanism, so now I start a little earlier all the time. Since then, I figured out how to really be on time all the time. It feels great. I feel I can hit everything and the flow in my movements is there.”
Asked about his goals for 2025, it would have been easy for Montgomery to give a canned response about wanting to stay healthy and on the field. Instead, he gave a confident— and surprising— response: “I have no goals!”
Montgomery recalled a critical moment from his offseason while chatting with his high school best friend. Asked then, too, what his goals for the upcoming season were, he answered that he of course wanted to stay on the field, but that he’d also been stressed out about it.
The conversation served as a mindset shift for Montgomery.
“(My friend) said, ‘Why are you thinking that? Don’t you think if your No. 1 goal is to stay healthy, that’s going to stress you out?'” Montgomery said. “Ever since that, I’ve thought, ‘Yeah, that’s a dumb goal. I’m not going to go out there and worry about something I can’t control.’”
In the end, Montgomery came to a new conclusion about his priorities for 2025.
“I just want to have fun and play baseball,” he said. “Because if I do that, everything will fall into place.”
