Hunter Goodman Stays in Colorado: Rockies Keep Their Record-Setting Catcher Past the Trade Deadline

The 2026 MLB trade deadline passed at 6 p.m. Eastern on Monday, August 3, and Hunter Goodman did not move. The Colorado Rockies kept their All-Star catcher — in the middle of a power season that has put him in the record books alongside Johnny Bench and Mike Piazza — while trading three other veterans off a last-place roster.

Photo of Hunter Goodman — Photo: FanDuel, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, 2025

Key facts

Rockies kept catcher Hunter Goodman past the August 3 trade deadline despite interest from the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays.
He’s hitting .256 through 103 games with 33 home runs (tied for second-most in MLB), 66 RBI and an .878 OPS.
Colorado traded three other veterans instead: Brenton Doyle (White Sox), Antonio Senzatela (Brewers) and Victor Vodnik (Marlins).
Goodman is under club control through 2029 and earning about $810,000 this year.
The Rockies are 45-68, last in the NL West.

Why Colorado said no

The interest was real. Pre-deadline reports from Bleacher Report and others named the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays as the clubs most interested in Goodman. The Rockies never actively shopped him — they listened, and MLB.com reported that Colorado kept an extremely high asking price and never took him completely off the table. Jon Heyman of the New York Post put the odds of a trade at less than 50-50 before the deadline.

And Colorado held the leverage. Goodman is under club control through the 2029 season — three more years after this one — and he is cheap while the club waits, earning about $810,000 this year, with salary arbitration not due until after the season. So the asking price stayed where Colorado set it. No deal got made.

The other trades Colorado made

Colorado sold elsewhere instead. Center fielder Brenton Doyle went to the Chicago White Sox. Pitcher Antonio Senzatela went to the Milwaukee Brewers. Reliever Victor Vodnik went to the Miami Marlins. Back in each case came young pitchers and infielders, and ClutchPoints described those returns as modest. The team is 45-68, last in the National League West.

The season other teams were calling about

By ESPN’s count, Goodman is hitting .256 through 103 games with 33 home runs — tied for second-most in the majors — along with 66 RBI and an .878 OPS. On August 1, he went 4-for-5 with two home runs and five RBI in a 12-6 win over Kansas City. The first of those homers, his 32nd, broke his own franchise record for home runs by a catcher in a season — the 31 he hit in 2025 — and the second made it 33. It was also his sixth multi-homer game of 2026, the first time a National League catcher has had six in a season since Mike Piazza in 1995.

The milestones pile up fast, so here are the two worth keeping:

His 27 home runs before the All-Star break were the most by an NL catcher since Johnny Bench in 1970.
He is the first Rockies player ever with two three-homer games in one season — the first on June 27 at Minnesota, where he hit three home runs and drove in five in an 8-5 win; the second, another three-homer, five-RBI night, came later in July.

None of it is simply a Coors Field effect, either: by NBC Sports’ count in late July, 18 of his 31 home runs to that point had come on the road.

About those lineup scratches

Goodman sat out Sunday, August 2 against the Royals, one day before the deadline, and reporters covering the team addressed the obvious question head-on: was a trade the reason? It was a planned rest day: triple-digit heat in the forecast, a midday start after a night game, and no day off since July 18.

An earlier scratch was different: he bruised his left hand and wrist sliding into home plate in a loss to the Dodgers on July 6, and sat out the next day. X-rays were negative, he was listed day-to-day, and he has played regularly since — the record-breaking night on August 1 included.

Who he is

Goodman is 26. The Rockies drafted him in the fourth round out of the University of Memphis in 2021, and he made his major league debut in August 2023. Three years later he is a two-time All-Star — he played in the July 14 All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia — and the reigning NL Silver Slugger at catcher, the first catcher in franchise history to win the award.

What’s next

Colorado lost to Tampa Bay 13-9 on Monday, with Goodman going 0-for-4 with an RBI. On Tuesday the Rays won again at Coors Field, 9-7 in 11 innings; Goodman caught the game and went 1-for-5. Tampa Bay is now 67-46, Colorado 45-69.

The longer question is what happens down the road. Goodman is under club control through 2029, and ClutchPoints reported Tuesday that the Rockies have not opened extension talks even though he is open to a long-term deal — a single report the club has not confirmed. For now, nothing has changed: he is still catching in Colorado, and still hitting home runs at a pace no Rockies catcher has matched.