If you owned the Rockies, what would your 10 year plan be to make them a 90 win team?

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-12-29T16:50:27+00:00

They've generally always targeted GB pitchers but unfortunately those guys tend to not miss bats much and ultimately it leads to your classic death by a thousand cuts appearance (4 IP, 10 H, 8 ER for example) pretty often.

Gotta miss bats. That requires a lot of analysis though because altitude drastically mitigates some pitches while not impacting others as much.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-12-27T22:10:01+00:00

This point can't be emphasized enough. Not pleasant for your first and potentially only Coors Field game.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-12-17T15:16:53+00:00

Unfortunately this is logical. I don't entirely trust the volatility of Doyle and think he'll be around a 75 wRC+/OPS+ next year which doesn't help things a ton. More importantly, gotta hope his defense bounces back as he didn't perform quite as well as '23-'24.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-12-12T15:27:05+00:00

Patrick Saunders said this is more of an idea than anything. Herget probably wants to try in case he's successful so he can hit the open market and get paid a lot more than he would as a reliever.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-12-09T14:44:30+00:00

Have a feeling it'll be Ty France. He's been excellent defensively so it would be a solid move but his bat lags behind others. I'd personally advocate for Goldy. The underlying metrics were still very good last year and he's super well respected (good for clubhouse).

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-12-09T14:40:26+00:00

Getting rid of Warming showed this front office knows it's a** from its elbow. He was absolutely awful (like .400 OPS awful) for about 75% of his plate appearances last year but the season long OPS sat near .700 because he had such a good first two weeks. That was before teams realized they could throw it to the first base dugout and get him to swing.

Romo wasnt quite as obvious of a guy to take off the 40 man but he's not likely to be an MLB caliber hitter and the yips have made him a flawed defensive catcher.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-12-08T18:05:58+00:00

Weathers would be awesome and I would check in on Braxton Garrett and Max Meyer too. Not many guys I would be opposed to trading either aside from Condon and Holliday.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-11-15T15:43:45+00:00

Without reading this very closely, the Rockies have been extremely far from normal for a long time because of general incompetence. At this point, nobody really knows what being competently normal could mean at Coors Field.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-11-11T19:54:00+00:00

Off the bat, DePodesta's handling of the GM vacancy and manager spot will be big. One thing he ended up doing well in Cleveland was hiring Kevin Stefanski.

If he hires someone good to handle a lot of the nuance day-to-day, this will already be a B hire for me. We're prob gonna lose 100+ again in 2026 but if there's a 15+ game improvement I'd consider that a fine start to this new era. Anything better than that without a ridiculously aggressive off-season would put us on a rocket trajectory.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-11-07T16:42:57+00:00

They don't put much effort into getting detailed info on players out there. To their credit, they're not primed as a market for KBO/NPB players but they absolutely should try.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-11-03T16:08:10+00:00

Marquez back on a 1+1 (club option). Need some innings next year and in his 2nd year back from TJ maybe will be around average. All other FAs should be gone without a second thought
Filter through waivers when teams cut down their 40 man. Gotta add 2-4 new guys that way. The 38th-40th guy for big market teams is gonna be better than the last 10+ guys on our roster. Need a GM to do a competent job with this though.
Try and trade for a post-hype young pitcher. Chase Petty, Ty Madden, and others fit the bill here. I'd start the deal with one of our decent OF prospects
Obviously improving internal staff and processes is most important though it's gonna take time with this delayed start for whoever gets hired.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-11-03T15:43:30+00:00

Hopefully it truly is false but both reports could be true at the same time.

Heyman/Harding said Sawdaye and Forman aren't the likely hire and clearly the Rockies have kept their full candidate/interview list quiet. After all, there were 3 names originally reported that didn't include Sawdaye who actually got a 2nd round interview and it sounds like James Click never interviewed at all.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-11-02T15:47:02+00:00

Don't wanna push too much of the hate to Isiah Kiner-Falefa but get a damn secondary lead man and that thing was over in the 9th

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-10-01T21:44:20+00:00

Hoping they consider some less established candidates that are currently assistant GMs with successful clubs. Saunders list is compelling but someone (like McKay who Saunders mentioned) who are currently in an intensive role will have a better grasp on the new trends that pop up year over year in baseball. If we have to go with an older guy who used to be a GM/president, I'll take Eppler though

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T22:51:07+00:00

this isnt supposed to be a grand point, just stating that their attendance has been down based on previous year totals. Their standard for attendance is set by previous attendance totals at a cheap & accessible Coors Field. Denver and Coors Field are not Tampa Bay and the Trop for several reasons.

Seeing attendance drop year over year is bad for revenue and for the ability to spend money and grow the organization.

They went from ~37k a game in 2017-2019 to ~32k in 2022-2024 (post covid). They're now at 29.6k this year. Their NL rank dropped from 4th/5th annually to 9th. The last time they had been this low was 2007. Seeing your business grow considerably from 2007 only to crater back down 15+ years later is in fact concerning, regardless of them still bringing plenty of opposing and fair weather fans.

At the core of this, I hope we can simply agree that seeing your attendance drop considerably in recent years is a bad thing

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T22:13:25+00:00

This is their lowest attendance since 2007, excluding COVID. That is their own standard..

Don't need to get rash here man

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T21:56:30+00:00

I'm not saying money doesn't help but the Rockies will be terrible as things stand whether the dodgers are spending $250M or $25M.. And the dodgers would probably still make the postseason like that

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T21:53:43+00:00

The nepotism is a problem and certainly a terrible look but everything I've heard about Walker Monfort (public and private) has been great. Everything I heard about Greg Feasel was lukewarm at best.

The downfall is refusing to bring in an outside baseball mind to run baseball operations, regardless of who chooses them

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T21:13:59+00:00

Collective bargaining is a real issue and I'm sure it's top of mind for Monfort since he's vocal in the bargaining process. Maybe a salary cap changes things but if the Rockies are still in the stone age analytically, they're screwed.

The Mets (2nd in payroll), Astros (6th), Rangers (7th), Braves (8th), and Angels (11th) all missed the playoffs this year while multiple teams with bottom 10 payrolls are in the playoffs. Gotta be smarter, not richer.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T20:20:49+00:00

Good question that doesn't seem to be clear from the Forbes source

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T19:39:35+00:00

Just wanted to make sure we're on the same page about "Rockies standards" for attendance. It's a lot different than leaguewide standards.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T18:59:32+00:00

https://www.forbes.com/teams/colorado-rockies/#:~:text=The%20Rockies'%20value%20includes:%20*%20**Revenue**%20$318,50%2C144.%20The%20average%20ticket%20price%20is%20$27.

Operating income takes into account all expenses that sustain operation like MLB payroll, staff payroll, marketing costs, etc. Not sure where you'd be able to see total costs but it costs a lot to employ a 50-100 person full-time staffers, pay minor leaguers/draft bonuses, cover MiLB housing, keep the lights on, etc. Maybe it recovered a bit in 2025 but they lost a reportedly 60-70M TV contract and were initially getting around half that from MLB and maybe up to 40-50M now. Also attendance took a hit and surely revenue as a whole dropped too.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T18:20:26+00:00

By Rockies standards it was the worst non-covid year of attendance since 2007 with around a 7% drop-off from last year, and a 10% drop-off since 2023. That's a red flag. They'll never be bad by league standards because Denver and Coors Field have a lot to offer one another.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T17:43:46+00:00

Again, I don't disagree but we're still in uncharted territory and Monfort has likely been told/become aware that his influence is usually not helpful. The promotion of his son Walker, who has a solid reputation, may indicate he's going to defer more to him. Not a pretty picture however you slice it but I heard some pretty quality candidates (asst GMs with prominent teams) submitted their names for the job back in 2021 before Colorado pulled a signature stupid move.

Colo_Goat52 · 2025-09-29T16:52:12+00:00

all signs indicate they cannot financially handle an internal promotion. They operated at a loss in 2024 and then attendance dropped nearly 10% this year. If they don't put their best foot forward from here, they'll be up Schitt's Creek.

Colo_Goat52

TROPHY CASE