Rockies lose in front of smallest Coors Field crowd in 10 years

The Colorado Rockies bullpen couldn’t hold it together on Wednesday, as the club fell to 3-10 thanks to a 5-3 series-clinching loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks in front of a small crowd.

More eye-popping than just another Rockies loss and a poor performance from the bullpen and offense—things that are way too common at Coors Field—was the amount of people at the ballpark. Just 18,311 people were announced as the attendance for the game, the smallest crowd for a non-pandemic-restricted ballgame at 20th and Blake in the last 10 years. That means, two of the three smallest crowds in the last 10 years of Rockies baseball have come in the past three days, as they drew just 18,870 for Monday night’s game.

All three games in the D-Backs series drew under 20,000 fans, totaling 56,540 fans which is just slightly above the all-time Coors Field crowd record of 51,267, set at the 1998 MLB All-Star Game. For Rockies Opening Day in 1993, 80,227 showed up, last Friday 48,399 showed up for 2024’s Home Opener.

The Rockies’ average announced attendance through six home games is 26,624 — a drop of 5,605 (17.4 percent) from last year. It’s also the lowest non-pandemic figure at this point in the season since 2007.

— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) April 10, 2024

The low mark for the crowd can only be equaled by rare times by teams in the mid-2000s on normally bad weather days. So far the Rockies have had pretty good weather for April with Wednesday’s contest played under partly cloudy skies and about 60 degrees. Last year’s weakest crowd also came in a day game a little later in April against the Pirates on a decent but cooler weather day.

The real question now is, since everyone knows the Rockies are really bad, how bad will the crowds get? The team is expected to follow up their first triple-digit loss season with what could be the worst record in Major League Baseball. The Rockies will not be last in crowd size, as the soon-to-move A’s are drawing less than 7,000 fans a game and the struggling Marlins are at about 14,500 a contest. Oakland is a unique case but Miami made the postseason last fall. The Rockies crowd is just an anomaly and will likely always show up and do so strongly.

If one were to predict the worst Rockies crowd of the season there are a few factors: school being in session, the time of first pitch, opponent and weather are huge factors. April 25’s day game against the Padres may look to be a good candidate but the ever-popular STEM day may keep the crowd sizeable. The next best bet is the day game on May 9 against the Giants. But even in a really bad season it’s both unlikely the Rockies find a way to play worse than they are right now and get a crowd smaller than the one they got on Wednesday.

The Rockies are on the road to face the Blue Jays on Friday—after dropping their first four series of the season. The one this week was particularly rough for the slumping Nolan Jones and Kris Bryant, who continues to struggle.