Rockies roasted in anonymous player poll, ‘it’s like the Stone Age’

The Colorado Rockies can barely get a mention in national circles these days, with their name barely coming up in articles previewing the MLB Trade Deadline or talking about what’s great in baseball right now.

The Rockies are not just one of the worst teams in baseball, for most they’re forgettable too. The team was hardly talked about in The Athletic’s 2024 Anonymous Player Poll released this week but when they were, it wasn’t nice.

The Rockies got the fourth-most votes for the worst reputation in the game. Of the 79 players who responded to the question, 40 named the relocating Oakland Athletics as a team with a bad rep, followed by the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Angels, Rockies and New York Mets.

Two player comments about the Rockies got into the story:

“I think it’s better now, but when I was there, it was horses—t.”

“(Heard from another player that) it’s like going back to the Stone Age.”

The Rockies have long been criticized by folks in and around baseball for their approach to team building, their reluctance to adapt advanced metrics as well as just a general questionable philosophy. As recently as during the COVID-19 pandemic the Rockies were using front office staff to do the team’s laundry. While the situation that birthed the strange result was unique, it goes to show what Dick Monfort and brass think of research and development—with some of the fewest number of those employees and lowest paid workers in that field in baseball.

It’s those facts around analytics that likely stemmed from the comments from those two players. It’s also a big reason why the Rockies have struggled so much for as long as they have. The Rockies are headed toward a second straight 100-loss season. Since 2000, Colorado has had the fewest wins among all MLB teams, never winning the division and only making the playoffs four times, winning a series in just one of those years—2007. Monfort has owned the Rockies that entire time and his reign has always been strange, from religion-pushing to more recent bizarre comments. And that’s not even to mention the moves the team has and hasn’t made to result in the malaise.

The hope for Rockies fans is that the most recent steady stream of losing starting in 2019 has bore some good young players. Ezequiel Tovar is having a very strong season while top prospect Adael Amador was just called up this week. The Rockies farm system isn’t rated that well, but there are signs the team could be at the very least pulling out of MLB’s basement by year’s end. Yet, the Stone Age at 20th and Blake for the fightin’ Rockies might continue so long as Monfort is the boss.

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