Overview:
Ryland Scholes was raised on baseball, but the Colorado Rockies have crushed his spirit. Can the game be saved in the Mile High City?
Growing up, there were few things I loved more than baseball, especially the Colorado Rockies. I was around the game a lot at an early age, with my Grandpa playing minor league baseball within the Boston Red Sox system when he was younger. I was fortunate to grow up around many current and former Big Leaguers, which inspired me to strive to be like them.
I’d rush home from school every day and run right from the bus to turn on the MLB Network. I rarely missed a Colorado Rockies game. I would beg my parents to let me skip school to go to games and see my favorite players like Todd Helton, Matt Holliday and Troy Tulowitzki. I even modeled my swing after my favorite player as a kid, Carlos Gonzalez.
Decades later, I couldn’t care less about baseball. I haven’t sat down to watch a baseball game in years. You can’t even pay me to sit down to watch a game.
How did I get here? The game that I grew up loving is now an afterthought in my mind, and the Rockies and owner Dick Monfort are solely to blame for that.
That’s because the Colorado Rockies aren’t just bad; they’re unwatchable. Their record of 7-35 is the worst start to a season in Major League Baseball history. With a projected final record of 47-115, the prospect of being the worst team to ever play in the MLB is not impossible for this year’s Rockies squad.
The 2025 Rockies are seemingly allergic to good baseball. In fact, they appear to have an insistence on being the worst in every possible facet of the game.
They have the worst pitching in the league, evidenced by their league-worst 5.76 earned run average (ERA). As for hitting, the Colorado Rockies have the second-worst batting average in the MLB and have the worst run differential. That’s especially bad considering that Coors Field is known for being the most hitter-friendly ballpark in the Big Leagues.
This season isn’t a fluke either. 2025 will almost certainly be the Rockies’ third consecutive season with 100+ losses, along with their seventh consecutive losing season. Their last winning season came in 2018, when they lost in the National League Divisional Series to the Milwaukee Brewers.
The days of Larry Walker, Dante Bichette, Andres Galarraga and the Blake Street Bombers are long gone. Over the last near decade, the Rockies have looked more like Black Street Goners.
The Rockies are undeniably in a bad spot, but the question still remains: where do we go from here? At the very least, changes have been made due to the team’s failure so far, as Monfort relieved long-time manager Bud Black of his duties on May 11.
“Our play so far, especially coming off the last two seasons, has been unacceptable,” Monfort wrote in a press release following Black’s firing. “Our fans deserve better, and we are capable of better. While we all share responsibility in how this season has played out, these changes are necessary.”
Black, who’s been the manager of the Colorado Rockies since 2017, has become the scapegoat for organizational incompetence.
“Bud Black was not the problem,” said Denver Sports analyst and reporter Jake Shapiro. “When you get into this situation, firing your coach or firing your manager makes sense, because you just want to shake the apple cart and let guys know that the results ultimately do matter in pro sports. But Bud Black’s process was very good, generally speaking. And no one has had more success at developing pitching at Coors Field than Bud Black.”
As a former Rockies beat writer, Shapiro is no stranger to the woes that have plagued the franchise for years. He believes the team is struggling because ownership is prioritizing money over winning.
“Ultimately, the Rockies are stuck thinking in ways that are opposite to many people in Major League Baseball,” Shapiro said. “That leads many people to be befuddled by the way the Rockies think and operate as an organization, and this has been an issue for a long time. It covers multiple general managers and managers under Dick Monfort’s ownership.”
According to Shapiro, a series of poor and short-sighted decisions over the last seven years have led the Colorado Rockies to these unthinkable lows. Specifically, Shapiro attributes the beginning of the decline of the Rockies to when Monfort traded away superstar third baseman Nolan Arenado, widely regarded as one of the best players to ever put on a Rockies uniform, receiving only fringe prospects in return.
“I think this all comes back to the Nolan Arenado trade,” Shapiro said. “That’s when the team signaled that they cared more about money than Arenado, who is the greatest player to play for this franchise in terms of talent, after he [led the team to the playoffs].”
Since dumping Arenado as a way to save cash, Monfort has fielded cheaper, below-average rosters as a way to cut spending. Fans seemingly haven’t cared too much, as the Rockies have averaged around 30,000 fans per game due to Coors Field’s reputation as a fun place to spend an afternoon and drink.
“Coors Field is the best outdoor bar in Denver,” said an anonymous Rockies fan. “You get to go hang out on the rooftop [bar] and drink beer in a cool environment… The baseball is an afterthought.”
This means that many fans don’t care that the Rockies are bad at baseball, as long as they can spend an afternoon in the sun at the ballpark with a beer in their hand. In turn, this signals to Rockies ownership that they can continue to field subpar teams because fans will still pack the stands.
Another fan backs that up, saying that he only goes to Coors Field for the social aspect of the experience.
“I don’t care at all if [the Rockies] are bad,” said the anonymous source. “I just like going to the games because it gives me an excuse to drink a couple beers outside and go down to Denver for the night.”
Shapiro pushes back on the narrative that the drinking culture at Coors Field is a main reason that the Rockies are bad, but does say that it likely has played some factor.
“No, I don’t [think drinking culture is dragging the Rockies down], but it’s a fun narrative to spin,” Shapiro said. “People in this city love baseball and would go to see this baseball team play regardless of where the ballpark was. In a way, it accelerates the issue because there’s so much loyalty going to the ballpark despite the record, which gives Monfort a lot of pull within MLB meeting rooms.”
Shapiro believes that Monfort’s decision to prioritize profit over winning could have further unintended consequences, such as declining numbers in Denver’s Little League and a loss of interest in the game altogether for the next generation.
“I’m not a Rockies fan and I personally don’t care that they’re bad, but I’m offended for the City of Denver,” Shapiro said. “As someone who has worked with Little League in the area, as well as wood bat college baseball, I’ve seen baseball become less interesting and something that people are less involved in over the last five to seven years since the Rockies have become bad.”
Now, without a manager and a fan base that doesn’t seem to care about the team, the Colorado Rockies face a pivotal moment in the coming weeks. With the New York Yankees coming to town for a series from May 23-25, fan apathy levels will be put to the test.
If fewer than 30,000 people show up to Coors Field when the Bronx Bombers play in Denver for the first time since 2023, we’ll know that baseball in Denver is in a dangerous place. Even so, Shapiro believes that baseball in Denver is already in a hard spot.
“It’s funny to say, given that the Rockies are drawing 30,000 fans to games all the time, but I think baseball is more dead than it’s ever been in Denver,” Shapiro said. “Which is really, really sad because I know a lot of great people who worked very, very hard to get this city a major league team that it deserves. But ultimately, this city doesn’t have a major league baseball team right now, and fans are starting to respond in terms of their care level and apathy towards the organization.”
The solution to all the problems that the Rockies have caused is clear: the Monforts need to change. Many fans agree, as there’s been loud calling for him to sell the team. Even if he doesn’t sell, Shapiro says there’s a road forward to lead the Rockies to glory, but it involves fewer profit-first decisions and a hands-off approach from ownership.
“The Rockies certainly have enough money to field a great baseball team,” Shapiro said. “The problem is that they don’t make the right decisions with that money. So if there ever comes a day where Dick Monfort or the Monfort family is a little more hands-off with the decisions that get made about the baseball team, the Rockies can turn the corner.”
Shapiro is right. The change starts from the top, being Monfort himself. If ownership can demonstrate that they’re willing to change their ways and give Denver the baseball team they deserve, I’ll hopefully be back in the stands someday. Until that day comes, you won’t see me catching a game at Coors Field, enabling the Monfort family to field a subpar product and continue to line their pocketbook.
I know that deep down, my love for baseball isn’t completely gone. I’m just hoping that someday, Dick Monfort will find it in his heart to prioritize the fans over his own bottom line and reignite it. If not, I’ll stick to watching the Savannah Bananas, who are coming to Coors Field this August. Now that’s a game I’d love to see in person. Baseball players wearing stilts and unlimited Banana Cream soda? Sign me up!
