Historically Bad Colorado Rockies Refuse To Change Their Process
The Colorado Rockies are a laughingstock. Just one season after the Chicago White Sox lost the second-most games in Major League Baseball history, the Rockies are on pace to be even worse. Much, much worse.
Colorado enters play Wednesday an astonishing 7-35. A woeful, miraculous .167 winning percentage. Over the course of a 162-game season, that translates to 27 wins and 135 losses. The most losses ever? The 1899 Cleveland Spiders with 134.
This year's Rockies team, in an era of extreme parity in the sport, could be one of the worst in the nearly 150-year history of professional baseball.
You'd think, given how bad things have gotten, that ownership and team management would be engaged in a far-reaching evaluation and overhaul of their process, development strategy and internal analytics department. You'd think. But that's not how the Rockies do things. And a new report confirms that, far from revamping their decision-making and evaluation, their ownership and front office actually think the rest of the league has it all wrong.
The rest of the league that is better than 7-35.
Apr 6, 2025; Denver, Colorado, USA; Colorado Rockies starting pitcher Chase Dollander (32) pitches in the first inning against the Athletics at Coors Field. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images
Colorado Rockies Continue To Refuse To Adapt To Modern Baseball
Rockies owner Dick Monfort is notoriously loyal; not a bad quality to have in an era of cutthroat corporatism. Yet in a performance business, like baseball, it's easy to compare your results to those of similar organizations. And by almost every measure, the Rockies have fallen short.
Their last playoff appearance was 2018. They've made the World Series just once in their 32-year history. Their farm system continually lags behind, despite routinely drafting near the top of the first round. And their front office has in recent years made a series of bewildering free agency signings and internal extensions.
After the 2018 season, for example, they handed out several large contracts to relief pitchers, despite having glaring holes offensively.
- $17 million to Wade Davis
- $9 million to Bryan Shaw
- $9.5 million to Jake McGee
They gave Charlie Blackmon $43 million for just two seasons, with player options attached, despite his defense and skill set declining.
Unsurprisingly, 2019 was a disaster. They changed nothing about their process afterward.
2025 has been much worse thus far, but instead of realizing the flaws in their roster construction and development, they decided to fire manager Bud Black and make him the scapegoat instead.
READ: Colorado Rockies Dump Longtime Manager After Rare Win
As if any manager could win when their entire outfield roster is Jordan Beck, Sean Bouchard, Brenton Doyle, Nick Martini and Mickey Moniak. Or when a catcher, Jacob Stallings, ranks eighth out of 21 Rockies pitchers in ERA. Nothing to improve on there.
For years, the Rockies have struggled to find and keep quality pitching. Pitching at altitude in Denver is difficult enough. But modern front offices have developed advanced pitch-grading systems and models designed to predict how well a pitcher's arsenal will work against big league hitters. The only team in baseball without an internal pitch-grading system and model? Per Yahoo Sports, sure enough, it's the Colorado Rockies.
Even worse, their front office thinks they're doing great.
"My favorite part of it is they think they are doing a good job," said one evaluator to Yahoo Sports. "They question everyone else doing things differently."
According to that same story, the Rockies' best hope of fixing their problems is a league-wide salary cap, covering all off-field investments in technology and analytics. When your competition does things better than you do, guess the answer in MLB is to force your competition to get worse.
It's embarrassing for the league and for the sport that the Rockies are this bad, this cheap, and most importantly, this hopeless. And based on their lack of self-awareness, it's only going to, somehow, get worse.