Woody Paige: With spring training close, the Colorado Rockies have an uphill battle to be relevant in ’25

By Woody Paige February 2, 2025 | updated 6 months ago

Winter Meetings Baseball — Colorado Rockies manager Bud Black speaks to media at the Major League Baseball winter meetings Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, in Dallas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
LM Otero

The Stone Age Mesolithic era lasted eight thousand years; optimistically the Rox Age Monforthic errors will not last quite that long.

The Powerball odds of winning $100 with a $2 ticket this year are 36,525 to 1; the Las Vegas odds of the Rockies winning the National League West this season are 50,000 to 1.

The Rockies posted Saturday that “Trucks arrived’’ at the club’s Salt River Fields at Talking Stick spring training facility.

I got excited. I had a Virgil Trucks baseball card in 1954 when the righthanded pitcher produced a 19-12 record and a 2.79 earned-run average with the White Sox. A starter armed with those statistics and 52 victories over three seasons certainly could help the Rockies. Unfortunately, Trucks, a 17-year Major League veteran, passed on in 2013.

These trucks were filled with equipment, uniforms and, possibly the new alternate caps for the Rockies AA team in Hartford, which is called the “Yard Goats” and has added a second slick nickname — the “Thunder Chickens.”

We anxiously await the Aug. 9-10 appearances at Coors Field for the Denver debut of the Savannah Bananas. Sadly, though, the traveling team with appeal won’t play the Rockies, who will be playing in Phoenix that weekend.

And we eagerly get ready for the Rockies pitchers and catchers to report Feb. 13, and the first workout of the entire roster in Scottsdale, Az., on the 18th. The Rox open the real season in Tampa, but not at Tropicana Stadium – seriously damaged in October’s Hurricane Milton. The teams play at the Yankees’ spring training field named for George Steinbrenner, and the Rays should have a rare home sellout of 11,000 March 28.

The Rox aren’t much of a touring attraction, though. The over-under prediction is 60.5 victories. If the Rockies lose 102 in ’25, they will possess exactly 400 defeats in four seasons. Some idealists claim the team “will turn the corner,’’ but they realistically could end up on a cul de sac again. Baseball experts graded the Rockies’ off-season acquisitions a D-plus, and the club’s farm system ranks 23rd despite annual high draft picks.

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Colorado Gov. Jared Polis recently twice poked fun at the franchise – once in his State of the State speech. Although MLB is described as The Show, the franchise in Colorado sometimes is referred to with a supplementary four-letter word.

Rockies’ majordomo Dick Monfort has joined brother Charlie in not discussing anything about the offseason or upcoming season. No prodigious prognostications have been proposed from the ownership, particularly in the aftermath of the Dodgers’ World Series title and that team’s latest spending spree of $450 million in guaranteed contracts to new acquisitions. Manager Bud Black, back for a Rockies record ninth season on another one-year agreement, and longtime lackey general manager Bill Schmidt, have been left to whistle into the left-center field wind. Black says every time the Dodgers signed another star he texted other managers, including L.A.’s Dave Roberts: “Really?”

The manager also said the players look forward to the challenge of playing the Dodgers 13 times. The Rockies were beaten in 20 of 26 games by the Dodgers the past two seasons.

It could be submitted that the Dodgers are more popular at Coors Field than the Rockies. Although the Rox never acknowledge how many full season tickets are sold, the number in 2024 was approximately 18,000.

Last season, with L.A. bringing MVPs Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto to Denver (LoDodgertown?), the attendance at seven games averaged more than 41,000. With Ohtani returning to pitch again, and the embellishments of Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki as starters, the throng will thrive. And with the Phillies, the loveable Cubs, the Braves, the Mets and, yes, even the Yankees at the ballpark, along with the Fireworks Nights, the Bobblehead Games and, of course, the Bananas, the Bros. Monfort will relish the revenue.

But, first, the Rockies convene in Scottsdale, where the franchise and its fans hope the Rox rotation of Kyle Freeland, German Marquez, Antonio Senzatela, Ryan Feltner and Austin Gomber compete and stay healthy, and a relief corps can be cobbled together, the young position players – Ezequiel Tovar, Brenton Doyle, Michael Toglia, Jordan Beck and Nolan Jones – continue to develop, and Kris Bryant resuscitates his career or departs.

Otherwise, as George and Ira Gershwin wrote, “The Rockies may tumble.’’

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Woody Paige: With spring training close, the Colorado Rockies have an uphill battle to be relevant in ’25

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