As of Monday, April 19th, the Colorado Rockies currently sit at 4-12, which is the worst record in Major League Baseball. They have lost 4 out of 5 series, and the bullpen is a mess, blowing lead after lead. While this may all seem bad, and no doubt it is, let me shed some light on this Rockie situation (pun intended). The Rockies’ opponents have consisted of the Los Angeles Dodgers x2 (by far the best team in baseball so far), the New York Mets (the NL East favorite), the San Francisco Giants (a playoff team last year), the Arizona Diamondbacks, along with one of the better teams in baseball, the Houston Astros coming into Coors Field for a 2 game set on Tuesday.
Notice anything? Here, let me help: The Rockies have an incredibly tough schedule. While it sort of evens out by having most of their games played at home thus far, the schedule has also aligned to where the Rockies are facing the top of these teams’ rotations which means they have to go up against pitchers like deGrom, Kershaw, Bauer, Cueto, etc. along with each team’s very talented lineups.
The good news to all of this is we have remained competitive and we have not been blown out all but a few times, so we are at least watchable. We also currently hold the #1 overall pick in the 2022 MLB draft to this point so we can restock our less-than-ideal farm system. We are also enjoying a 5-tool player in Trevor Story, the coming-out party of Ryan Mcmahon, and we beat the Dodgers (once, the very first game of the season).
Rockies fans, we knew this season would be painful, and we knew this team would not be good. So, if anything, we have performed as expected. This isn’t to say that the Rockies cannot turn this thing around and make their record look at least respectable, but we need to ask ourselves what is more important: respectability or top-tier talent? Because we certainly cannot have both.
