Why can’t the Rockies acquire & develop more mashers?
It's more than lack of commitment from ownership
The 2025 Rockies are bidding to have the worst season of any team in the modern era. The Chicago White Sox have not even held that title for one year (losing the most games since 1900), following their incredibly awful 41-121 campaign in 2024. To be fair the 1962 Mets won only 40 games, finishing 40-120, and had a lower winning percentage (25% compared to 25.3%) than the 2024 Pale Hose.
What is somewhat surprising is that the 2025 Rockies are one of the worst hitting teams in memory. They sport a team OPS (on-base plus slugging) of 644 which is well below average, and an OPS+ 74 which is 26 points below average. They are batting .219 as a team! Fans of the team know all too well that ownership is the culprit. The team simply does not spend money on acquiring players or, and this may be more important, developing their system to produce quality Major League hitters. It’s just an awful time to be a Rockies fan even though inexplicably fans still show up to watch the team play. More than 26,000 per game on average so far in 2025 have attended home games although the Coors Field experience which is great, is the likeliest reason people keep on showing up.
It’s no secret that pitching in Colorado is difficult. I wrote about that recently when listing the five best starting pitchers in Rockies history. But what hitter wouldn’t want a chance to show their stuff in the high altitude of Denver? It turns out it’s not as many as there should be.
The greatest Rockies batsmen
HOFer Todd Helton is the most recent home-grown great Rockies hitter. Helton joined the Rockies 28 seasons ago in 1997. HOFer Larry Walker joined the Rockies in 1995 after six seasons in Montreal and was already established as an excellent MLB player. Walker’s 10 years in Colorado were magnificent with an OPS of 1.044 to go along with a .334 batting average and 258 home runs.
Andres Galarraga won a batting title in his first year in Colorado but like Walker came up with the Expos and played eight years in Montreal before moving to Colorado for five seasons. Troy Tulowitzki also came up with the Rockies in 2006 and seemed to be on his way to a stellar, maybe even HOF-worthy career. It turned out his 10 seasons in Colorado were divided between six excellent ones and four injury-filled ones.
Trevor Story also started his career in Colorado very well in 2016 and had two 6+ bWAR seasons in 2018 and 2019 before leaving the team in 2022 for Boston where he’s been an injured and mostly ineffective player. He left the Rockies because they were unwilling to pay him what was then the current market value. At least that has worked out for the Rockies but for all the wrong reasons.
Current Cardinal and former Rockies and future HOFer Nolan Arenado played eight mostly terrific seasons in Colorado winning five Silver Slugger awards along the way. The Rockies again did not want to pay Arenado the going rate and subsequently traded him for the proverbial bag of balls known as pitcher Austin Gomber along with a few minor league prospects.
Vinny Castilla should also be mentioned as he came over to the Rockies from Atlanta for their inaugural season in 1993 and had nine good but not great seasons for the team. Recently retired Charlie Blackmon fashioned a very nice career in Colorado, and he played his entire 14-year career in Denver also winning a batting title.
I could keep going except that I can’t because that’s pretty much it.
Good hitters should be flocking to play in Denver
Lack of spending is the main reason hitters aren’t lining up to play for Colorado. That along with fielding a lousy team for the past seven seasons. The Rockies have not had a winning campaign since 2018. Added to that is the team has recorded only two winning seasons since 2010. (2017 and 2018).
Then there’s the Kris Bryant ‘thing’. Bryant, who was the NL Rookie of the year in 2015 and helped lead the Chicago Cubs to their first World Series in 108 years in 2016, had seven very good seasons in Chicago delivering a 133 OPS+ and averaging 4.0 bWAR per season. Bryant then signed a seven-year $182 million contract in 2022 with the Rockies thinking what everyone was thinking - he’d kill it in the Mile High City. Now in his fourth season of that mega-contract, Bryant has totaled -1.6 bWAR in three and a third completely awful seasons. That’s more of an individual failure than a cautionary tale for playing in Colorado, but it has done nothing to convince the front office to go get some big-time hitters.
This past off-season Juan Soto signed the largest contract in professional sports history. He was never going to get that in Colorado. Kyle Tucker will be a free agent after the current season is over. Does anyone really believe Tucker would even think of signing with the Rockies? The team has shown no indication that it’s serious about putting a winning team on the field, and ‘winning’ players like Tucker, future free agents Yordan Alvarez, Pete Alonso and Kyle Schwarber, won’t be given an offer enticing enough (if at all) to have them consider playing in the rarefied air of Colorado. The Rockies if they sign any hitter of any repute, will likely have to overpay a player like free-agent-to-be Bo Bichette to consider joining the team. Not that the team owners – the Monfort family, seem ready to make that kind of an effort!
The Monforts bought the franchise in 1992 for $95 million, and the current value is estimated to be nearly $1.5 billion. Rockies fans want the family to sell the team to an owner that is willing to invest in the future of the franchise. Building from the bottom up is what’s required and that will take several years if that decision is ever made. Whenever that fateful day comes (and none-too-soon for Rockies fans), the franchise should pick a lane and become a team that mashes, scores lots of runs, and plays great defense. We already know pitchers would rather not spend time in Denver as a player or an opponent!
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and now Substack.com.