The Colorado Rockies aren’t just losing; they’re rewriting the manual on how to crash and burn in spectacular fashion. With a brutal 12-50 record, they’ve set up camp at the bottom of the NL West, turning defeat into routine and disappointment into identity. Each game feels less like a contest and more like a countdown to the next low point. It has gone beyond frustration. For Rockies GM Bill Schmidt. Now, it’s flat-out embarrassment. This season has been so bad for the Rockies that they’re even making last year’s White Sox look like a World Series team. Despite this, Schmidt stayed optimistic. Early in May, he said, “I think our guys are still playing hard, and that’s what I look at. Guys are working hard every day, they come with energy, for the most part. Guys still believe in what we are doing and where we are headed.”
And, surprisingly, all of his optimism paid off when something strange happened to them this week: a series win. Ending a 22 straight series loss streak, they defeated the Miami Marlins with a clean sweep. That win may have felt like rain in the desert, but it’s nowhere near enough to pull them out of the embarrassment they’re stuck in, especially not for their general manager. Still, it offers a small ray of hope.
Schmidt opened up when he was asked what gives him hope during such a cursed time for the team by ESPN’s Jesse Rogers. “We’ve been way more competitive lately,” he said. “We’re going to turn it around. I’m embarrassed by what’s transpired.” Well, he is not wrong, even “embarrassing” would be an understatement for how the team has performed this season.
Defeats are no longer news for them, with each loss, they were finding a new low. Last Sunday, when they lost to the Mets 5-3, they made history, an embarrassing milestone of hitting 50 losses, the first team to do so this season. To add to the long list of miseries, they haven’t seen playoff action since 2018. And this humiliating start forced the front office to fire longtime skipper Bud Black and bench coach Mike Redmond in May. That change may be the reason behind their slight competitive edge lately.
Reliever Austin Gomber said, “The start of the year was tough, if we’re being honest about it. We weren’t very competitive. Since [interim manager Warren Schaeffer] has taken over we’re pretty much in every game. But it’s not going our way. It’s easier to keep the attitude positive. I know we’re competing every night. At the beginning of the year, that wasn’t the case.”
When Warren Schaeffer took charge of the Rockies, there was a literal blood bath waiting for a cleanup. Even though there is no major change yet, they are showing some spark. After the Marlins series, the per-game run differential went up to 2.41 under Schaeffer, compared to minus 3.2 under Black, but their winning percentages are similar. This may be a small shift, but it’s still a change. However, when owner Dick Monfort asked Black to step down, not everyone saw the managerial shift as the right move.
Rockies were under fire for the Bud Black decision
Remember when MLB managers were dropping like flies last month? The Pirates, Orioles, and Rockies all threw their skippers under the bus after shaky starts. And guess what followed? All three teams axed their managers. When Rockies owner Dick Monfort reasoned his decision to fire the team’s manager of eight years and six weeks, he said, “Our play so far this season…. has been unacceptable…these changes are necessary.” But ex-Marlins president David Samson saw this as an attempt to escape from accountability.
“Amen. That is my kind of owner saying, ‘Yeah, just so you know, I feel bad too, but of course I’m not going to get fired because I own the team. So it’s easy for me to say that I share responsibility because it makes me look good to you, doesn’t it?” Samson shared his unfiltered opinion on his podcast, Nothing Personal with David Samson. At that time, even Schmidt backed Black, saying, “Buddy’s doing a good job right now. They’re showing up for work and playing with effort,” to the Denver Post, before the firing. But now, with the much younger, forty-year-old Schaeffer leading the team, Schmidt might be thinking differently.
“Buddy Black is a real good baseball guy,” Schmidt said to ESPN’s Jesse Rogers after the Marlins series win. “It was probably time for a different voice.” That different voice might be exactly what the Rockies needed. As they inch closer to possibly losing 130 games, just nine more than the White Sox last year, a complete turnaround looks unlikely. But with a newfound bit of confidence, they can at least hope to make the rest of the season less embarrassing by putting up a fight.
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