Pacheco rejoins Rox as Triple-A hitting coach

DENVER -- Jordan Pacheco will begin anew with a familiar organization.

Pacheco was the Rockies' ninth-round pick in the 2007 MLB Draft and played for the club in four of his six Major League seasons. Now he will start his affiliated coaching career with the Rockies, as hitting coach at Triple-A Albuquerque under manager Warren Schaeffer, heading into his second season. An Albuquerque native who played at the University of New Mexico, Pacheco, 35, will work in his hometown.

“I’ll be learning how to be the best Triple-A hitting coach, and helping guys do things right, teach them how to become professional players at that next level,” said Pacheco, who was a teammate of Schaeffer in the Rockies’ system.

The full Triple-A staff, announced Tuesday, will consist of Schaeffer, Pacheco, bench coach Pedro Lopez and pitching coach Frank Gonzales.

A fan favorite with the Rockies from 2011-14, Pacheco’s biggest year was 2012, when he showed up in Spring Training searching for playing time at multiple positions and wound up playing regularly. He batted .309 over 132 games at third base, first base and catcher, and finished tied for sixth in National League Rookie of the Year voting.

“Your goal is to get to the big leagues and play every day,” Pacheco said. “They were putting me at third base and I had never really played third base. But [manager] Jim Tracy called me in a couple times after I’d made a couple errors, and I’d get double-switched for halfway through the game. But he said, ‘That’s how it is, and keep working hard to make the team better.’”

Pacheco also played with the D-backs (2014-15) and Reds (2016). Last season, he played in 15 games for Lexington in the independent Atlantic League before beginning his coaching career with the Grand Junction Rockies of the Pioneer League, an MLB Partner League.

While Grand Junction is no longer affiliated with the Rockies, onetime Rockies Major League operations director Bill Geivett has an equity interest in the club, former traveling hitting instructor Jim Johnson managed the team and onetime Rockies Class A manager Joe Mikulik was hitting coach last season. Pacheco enthusiastically took to coaching -- after a career that was naturally leading him in that direction.

“I found myself as being the oldest guy in the clubhouse and younger guys were asking me some questions about certain things,” Pacheco said. “I enjoyed helping them, giving them the best knowledge I could to help their career and might help them put on that big league uniform someday.”

Pacheco delved into advanced metrics during his career and melds that with hitting coaches he has had -- such as Dante Bichette and Turner Ward in the Majors and Kevin Riggs in the Rockies’ system. And his new goals are similar to the ones he held when he entered pro ball.

“We all have dreams as a kid, and I think we all have dreams as an adult,” Pacheco said. “I’m always a dreamer. I see myself doing things and I do see myself managing in the big leagues someday. But how I approach things and how I’ve always done it is I’m going to see where I’m at.

“But I’m not going to stop having those dreams, because I think that’s going to make me a better hitting coach. It’s going to push me to learn as much as I can, and it’s going to push me to evolve with this game and help these guys become better.”