Rockies set to leave the country … for a 2024 series, at least

As if playing baseball at 5,280 feet wasn’t enough, the Rockies will take it 2,069 feet higher next year.

Monday, Ken Rosenthal and Chandler Rome of The Athletic reported that the Rockies will face the Houston Astros in Mexico City during the 2024 season. The news comes on the heels of MLB’s first Mexico City regular-season series, which took place between the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres over the weekend.

The Astros and Rockies will play in next year’s regular-season series in Mexico, tentatively scheduled again for Mexico City, sources tell me and @Chandler_Rome.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) May 1, 2023

It won’t be the Rockies’ first regular-season trek to Mexico. They faced the Padres in Monterrey to open the 1999 season. Vinny Castilla had a four-hit day in his return to his native country, and the Rockies won, 8-2.

Monterrey’s Estadio de Beisbol hosted MLB regular-season games in five separate seasons from 1996 through 2019. But this weekend saw the first games at Mexico City’s Alfredo Harp Helú Stadium. And in the first game, played April 29, the Padres and Giants had a Coors Field-type special, combining for 11 home runs in a 16-11 San Diego win.

The teams had four home runs Sunday as the Padres earned the sweep in a 6-4 triumph.

The baseballs were kept in a humidor in Mexico City, as is now the case for every major-league park. However, as Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reported, the Mexico City humidor had the settings used for all non-Coors Field parks.

I learned after the game that the humidor here is NOT set at Colorado levels or lower. It’s set at the same 70 degrees and 57 percent humidity as the 29 not-Colorado parks. “That’s a joke,” one member of the Giants traveling party said.

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) April 30, 2023

At Coors Field, the humidor’s humidity is set at 65 percent to account for elevation. So, one would expect MLB to appropriately change the settings for Mexico City next year. But then it would be on the Rockies’ arms alone to limit the damage from Houston’s stacked, title-winning lineup.

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