The Rockies road leads to 100 losses once again

The Colorado Rockies showed promise in September. Their young core began to blossom. Elements of a potential plus bullpen for the 2025 season flashed in the first half of the month. And they rode the emotional crest of Charlie Blackmon’s retirement into a final 6-game homestand.

But it wasn’t enough to prevent the Rockies’ second consecutive 100-loss season.

A 13-2 thrashing at the hands of the National League West champion Los Angeles Dodgers sealed their fate Saturday night; it was loss No. 100 with one final outing left Sunday afternoon at Coors Field.

Colorado looked poised to avoid 100 losses after taking the first two games of its series with the Diamondbacks on Sep. 16 and 17. At that point, Colorado needed to merely go 4-6 in its final 10 games to avoid the second triple-digit loss season in club history.

But the Rockies dropped the finale to Arizona, then lost 2 of 3 in series against the Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals before losing Friday and Saturday to Los Angeles.

In the process, the Rockies allowed 7.6 runs a game during that 9-game span — 3.4 more runs per game than they’d allowed in the first 15 games of September, when they went a respectable 8-7 to raise hopes of avoiding the 100-defeat ignominy.

Los Angeles took the field Saturday having clinched the No. 1 seed in the National League postseason by virtue of Philadelphia’s 6-3 loss at Washington on Saturday. That didn’t keep the Dodgers from dropping the hammer in a hurry at Coors Field.

Indeed, it got out of hand early for the Rockies. After taking a 1-0 first-inning lead when Ryan McMahon brought home Blackmon on a sacrifice fly, Los Angeles surged in front in the second inning when Enrique Hernández sent an Antonio Senzatela slider 430 feet into the left-center-field stands, scoring Will Smith and Tommy Edman to put the Dodgers up 3-1.

Senzatela, making his third start this year, ended up lasting 4 1/3 innings. He left after two walks in three batters to open the fifth inning, after which reliever Jeff Criswell entered. He saw his first pitch — a 95-MPH fastball — blasted 429 feet to left field by Hernández for his second 3-run shot of the night, pushing the Dodgers’ lead to 8-2.

It got worse in the final innings, as Justin Lawrence — in his potential final appearance of the season — allowed 6 hits, 4 earned runs and 2 walks in just 1 1/3 innings of work, ceding a pair of runs as the Dodgers pushed their tally into double digits for the second consecutive night.

It got worse when Jake Bird replaced Lawrence. He promptly plunked Teoscar Hernández to load the basis, then served up a 2-RBI double to Max Muncy for what proved to be the final margin.

This was also the final night for the Rockies to wear the current iteration of their City Connect jerseys. After three seasons wearing a green-and-white uniform — with some purple trim — that evoked comparisons with the Colorado license plate, Colorado will introduce a new City Connect look next year.

Those uniforms grew on Rockies fans. But they will be forever tied with the on-field nadir of Rockies history.