The national pastime is past its bedtime.
Baseball delivered a huge win with the All-Star Game. Yet the Rockies keep losing.
Major League Baseball is evolving, and the Rockies are not, asleep at the wheel as the franchise careens into a ditch.
The importance of change was on full display Tuesday night. Whether you like commissioner Rob Manfred or not — and you will not when there is a work stoppage after the 2026 season — he has revived baseball with new rules like the pitch clock and limits on pick-off attempts and defensive shifts.
At the Midsummer Classic, a national audience was introduced to the automatic ball strike system, in-game interviews with pitchers and catchers and a home run derby to determine the winner. This is what good businesses do. They grow. They expand. They change.
And then there are the Rockies. Their idea of forward thinking is installing a pitching lab in Scottsdale five years too late and promoting the owner’s son to president. Walker Monfort insists the Rockies want to win, and have the resources to do it.
Why don’t we believe him?
Maybe because the old president Greg Feasel wasn’t fired when Monfort was promoted. Instead, he was given until the end of the season to get his affairs in order as if his ownership stake wasn’t already a golden parachute. Or maybe because general manager Bill Schmidt remains employed.
Things have gone south since he took over on May 3, 2021, because of limited homegrown prospects, horrible pitching, abysmal hitting and zero trades beyond spare parts. And he’s the guy you want making trade deadline acquisitions to build up the farm system?
Sorry, just trying to keep up.
In the business world, they call this negligence.
The Rockies have been living off their back-to-back playoff berths in 2017 and ’18. They want you to believe that this historically bad season — they must go 20-46 over the final 66 games to avoid the worst record in modern baseball history — is a fluke. They fail to reveal they own MLB’s worst record since 2020 and are 274-441 with Schmidt in charge.
Tuesday in Atlanta provided evidence why.
Every NL West team featured a star like Freddie Freeman, Manny Machado, Logan Webb or Eugenio Suarez. The Rockies offered Hunter Goodman. Goodman is a promising slugger, but ranks among the league’s worst catchers in the field. On cue, he committed the game’s first error, firing a throw into center field on a stolen base attempt.
And if your explanation is of course other teams have big names because they have bigger payrolls, then how do you explain the Reds’ development of starter Andrew Abbott or the Rays trading for Junior Caminero or signing first baseman Jonathan Aranda out of Tijuana, Mexico? The Rockies’ recent feel-good stories are Jake Cave and 31-year-old Wynton Bernard hitting a home run in 2022.
This is a direct reflection of their scouting and refusal to invest heavily in analytics, where they are woefully understaffed.
You think Royals closer Carlos Estevez became an All-Star just because he left altitude? Riiiiight. He went to organizations that could help him better understand his strengths.
The excuses for the Rockies’ failures are silly. They don’t draft and develop well. Period. Dick Monfort has shown over and over again that he would rather remain comfortable, seeing the ballpark as the main attraction, not the players. You know what that makes him? A real estate mogul, not an owner. An owner, much to fans’ dismay, who has shown no indication he will ever sell the team.
What’s the point? To fill a stadium with beer drinkers and sunset watchers? Or win?
As rookies reported on Wednesday, it drew into focus the stark differences between the Broncos and Rockies. Co-owners Greg Penner and Carrie Walton Penner are no longer novices. They are entering their fourth season. They never hesitate to make difficult decisions. They fired a coach in his first season. Hired a Super Bowl-winning coach. Cut ties with Russell Wilson. They splurged in free agency twice, and took a prudent approach once when it was important to hit the reset button around a first-round quarterback.
They have spent $100 million on stadium renovations,ushered in sleek new uniforms — nothing like the Rockies’ gender reveal City Connect jerseys — and are inching closer to a stadium decision that will define their legacy. They come from the corporate world of Walmart. They don’t have stockholders in the NFL. That, however, is how they view their season ticket holders.
They conduct surveys, ask questions, constantly seeking ways to improve the fan experience. And they realize what fans want — real fans, not ones who go to 20th and Blake Street to cheer the opponent — is success. Since August of 2022, they have built trust that they can execute a vision on and off the field. It’s never about keeping the train moving, but where the train is going and how fast it gets there.
The Broncos owners see themselves as custodians of a public institution. The Monforts treat the Rockies like a trust fund for their children. Accountability over loyalty. What a concept.
Pro sports are cutthroat. Adapt or die. The All-Star Game, like the Broncos, showed the importance of innovation. Walker Monfort claims the goal is to win. There is no other way to prove it than by embracing dramatic change.
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