In 2021, the Colorado Rockies dealt away a franchise legend in Nolan Arenado, infamously retaining $50 million of his salary to effectively gift the Cardinals one of the best players in baseball. In return, the Rockies alleviated some pressure on the Monfort brothers’ checkbook and got a combined 1.0 bWAR from Elhuris Montero and Austin Gomber. Salary dumps are nothing new (see: Giancarlo Stanton to the Yankees) but this particular salary dump rubbed everyone the wrong way because Arenado really had no intention of leaving. The trade marked a turning point for the Rockies, once a team with exciting talent and a short but rich history, they are now at rock bottom.
Four years after the Arenado trade, the Rockies are the worst team in baseball. They are an afront to professional sports, a caricature of an organization that is going no direction except down. In autumn I wrote a piece about the Chicago White Sox, a similarly atrocious team, asking the question if there is any future for the organization. Here there will be no such optimism. The Rockies are awful, lets look at how they got there.
Art of the Deal
Four years ago, Foolish Baseball uploaded a video detailing the downfall of the Rockies organization up to that point in 2021 when their franchise legend was shipped away. Almost exactly a year after that video was uploaded, the Rockies would sign veteran Kris Bryant to a seven-year, $182 million deal, in one of the most baffling moves in recent memory. The Rockies traded away a 30-year-old third baseman to… sign a 30-year-old third baseman a year later. Furthermore, Ryan McMahon was a more than adequate third baseman defensively while Bryant was in decline, so they put their new marquee signing into one of the largest corner outfield spots in baseball in order to get him in the lineup.
As mentioned earlier, salary dumps are nothing new, but never before have we seen a team turn around and reinvest that money in a considerably worse asset. Bryant’s fall from grace was a bit of a surprise, but his numbers had already been trending down as had his health. When factoring in contract length and salary retainment, the breakdown of contracts looks like this:
The Rockies saved $21.5 million by investing in Bryant instead of keeping Arenado, but oh did they not get value. While Arenado has continued to be a productive hitter for the Cardinals, Bryant has seen his career crumble in Colorado:
| Year | Arenado w/STL | Bryant w/COL |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 4.3 | N/A |
| 2022 | 7.2 | 0.6 |
| 2023 | 2.7 | -1.2 |
| 2024 | 3.1 | -0.8 |
| 2025 | 1.0 | -0.5 |
| WAR total | 18.3 | -1.9 |
Goodness gracious.
Arenado isn’t the perennial all-star he once was but he’s continued to be productive into his mid-30s, while Bryant’s injury-ridden stint in Denver has been a trainwreck. The thing is, we all saw this coming. Perhaps not to this degree, but Bryant’s signing with Colorado was never going to be a success, and when Arenado finished an MVP finalist in 2022 while Bryant floundered, it was just another example of the Rockies’ incompetence.
It’s hardly the first time a Rockies signing has fallen flat. The aforementioned Foolish Baseball video (which you really should watch) pointed out that between 2015 and 2019, the Rockies spent $256 million on multi-year deals to free agents that amassed -8 bWAR. The Rockies have since been more cautious of spending big money, but they have continued to make inconsequential or outright bad free agent signings. Here’s every single free agent the Rockies have signed since 2021:
Mismanaged Assets
Exhibit B is how the Rockies are horrible with the assets they have. Take the trade deadline for instance, which the Rockies refuse to take seriously. The Rockies have gotten very fortunate with having veteran players produce quality seasons for them, yet the Rockies rarely try to flip them for prospects. The most egregious example is Trevor Story, a very highly regarded player in 2021 whose contract was certainly going to expire without re-signing. The 74-win Rockies decided to hang on to Story to play meaningless baseball instead of trying to build for the future. Here are a few notable players not traded when they should have:
This may not seem significant but acquiring prospects by selling veterans for rentals is a great way to accelerate a rebuild. Selling rentals is not a surefire way to get good prospects, but Pete Crow-Armstrong, Joe Ryan, Yainer Diaz, Josh Smith, Reese Olson, Simeon Woods Richardson and Keibert Ruiz were all dealt as prospects during that deadline. Trading Trevor Story and Jon Gray could have netted the Rockies some nice pieces instead of leaving them on the payroll, yet the Rockies opted to let them walk for nothing.
The other major category the Rockies have struck out on is draft picks. Here is every single first-round pick they have made since 2015:
Admittedly, there are a couple of issues with this methodology: Newer draft picks or those taken out of high school will not be fairly represented compared to players taken a decade ago, and the WAR generated isn’t necessarily for the team that drafts them (Tyler Nevin, for instance, never played for the Rockies). That being said, the Rockies first-round picks generated a total of 3 bWAR over the last decade. If that sounds bad, it’s because it is terrible. I went through the draft history of every team over the last ten years to see just how bad the Rockies are at drafting:
The Rockies rank 28th in terms of WAR drafted. Yikes!
That’s not the full story, however. You’ll notice the Rockies spent a well above average amount on player signing bonuses – a total of 62.3 million – a total so high that only the Reds and Tigers have spent more. So let’s contextualize this further by seeing where the Rockies rank in terms of the value of their draft signings:
Oh, the Rockies really need to send a gift basket to the A’s, who end up taking the bullet here. The A’s do get a bit unlucky with this portrayal, as 2023 draftee Jacob Wilson is looking like he can single-handedly salvage them on this graph – but let’s circle back to the Rockies. The ONLY productive player they’ve drafted was Brendan Rodgers, although it’s worth mentioning that I’m using bWAR for this data, and DRS (which bWAR uses) was especially generous to Rodgers in 2022, giving him 22 DRS. That means that while bWAR gives Rodgers 4.2 bWAR in 2022, fWAR gives him just 1.8. Just for fun, here’s what that graph looks like if you subtract 2.4 WAR from Rodgers’ total:
$103.83 million. If you adjust Rodgers’ 2022 defense, the Rockies have drafted 0.6 WAR in the first round since 2015. Admittedly this is a little dubious, but good heavens is it indicative of the Rockies’ struggles. They should not have to depend on a middle infielder’s defensive metrics to save face.
edit: Jordan Beck decided to have a 3-hit, 2-homer night the day before this article was supposed to go live, so he increased the Rockies’ WAR total and some of the charts are outdated as a result. The point still remains that they shouldn’t have to depend on a chaotic game against the Diamondbacks to save face, though.
Oh and just in case you thought there was hope in the second round, the Rockies have gotten -3.2 bWAR from their 2nd round picks since 2015. This does in fact mean that the Rockies have spent nearly $100 million on 1st and 2nd round signing bonuses to get -0.2 bWAR.
Kola Superdeep Borehole
As of writing, the Rockies have an 8-37 record, meaning they are on track for about 28 wins. It’s not a secret why they’re doing so poorly – there’s no production in the roster. Here’s where the Rockies rank in, well, just about everything important:
In case you’re wondering, a 75 OPS+ would be the 20th worst in the live ball era, and an ERA+ of 83 would be in the bottom 100 worst seasons from a pitching staff since 1920. The 2025 Rockies do not possess a single positive attribute. At least the 2024 Chicago White Sox had Garrett Crochet and Erick Fedde, players that would far and away be the best players on the ’25 Rockies.
What’s fascinating is that the White Sox have a strong farm system. Despite not having a top-ten pick last year, and Colson Montgomery’s stock disintegrating, the White Sox ranked 6th in MLB Pipeline’s newest farm system ranking, while Baseball America had them ranked 4th. USUALLY, the silver lining to bad seasons, or continuous bad seasons, is that a team can focus their efforts on developing prospects and building toward the future. The Orioles, Tigers, Twins, Mariners and of course the Astros are all examples of this.
The Rockies, meanwhile, rank somewhere in the teens on most farm system rankings. That’s not abhorrent, but it’s also largely predicated on very bullish projections for Chase Dollander, whose fastball shape has thus far gotten pulverized in the thin Colorado air. Everybody knew that Dollander’s profile was a horrible fit for Coors Field, and yet the Rockies decided they should be the ones to take him. Now, if they took Dollander and then traded him to a team that plays at sea level, then it could be a savvy move, but, of course, this is the Rockies. Frankly, I believe the Rockies farm to be very overrated, as Dollander, Condon and Amador have faltered early in 2025.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole was an experiment conducted by the USSR to see how deep they could dig a hole. It was 40,000 ft deep, and, like the Rockies, was completely pointless, going no direction other than down, and represents absurdities in ambition and failure. The Rockies are so bad, they gather comparisons not to teams of the modern era, but of a creation so wretched it deserves its own section:
Arachnophobia
In 1899 the Cleveland Spiders went 20-134. They were this bad because their best players were essentially scrapped for parts, and the lonely Spiders were left to rot. The result was a team of misfit toys, who were so pitiful that they had to play most of their scheduled games on the road because opposing teams wouldn’t play them in Cleveland. The Spiders – not by their own fault – became the worst team in major league history. A laughingstock even a century later. And yet…
edit: again, they were below the Spiders until the night before publishing – thanks Diamondbacks.
I hope you realize how absurd this is. Now, the Spiders were already horrible but became considerably worse in the last 50 games when they won just a single game, but even drawing a comparison to the Spiders at ANY point in the season is so humiliating it’s almost beyond description. Through 45 games, the Colorado Rockies have had the worst start in MLB history – I checked. No team has won fewer than eight games through their first 43 games played, except for the 2025 Colorado Rockies. So far, these Rockies are on pace to be – far and away – the worst team in modern MLB history.
Mile High Mistakes
In fairness to Colorado, they play in a very difficult division, in a ballpark that is very difficult to build around. There’s nothing Colorado can do about the former, but they have completely whiffed at acquiring pitchers who can pitch at Coors. In Coors Field, balls move less and fly further (and faster). Pitchers with high spin rates are much less effective because the backspin that makes those pitches tick is less effective.
If I’m the Rockies GM, next offseason I am calling the Rays and Braves every day until I can get Zack Littell and AJ Smith-Shawver. Littell has a low spin 4 seamer and a pitch mix that includes a slider, splitter, and sinker. That pitch mix is almost custom made for Coors. Meanwhile AJSS has a 95+ 4S that also has low spin, and a split he throws 35% of the time. I’d also be begging the Giants for Jordan Hicks, who is PERFECT for Coors.
Coors also has the biggest outfield in MLB, which requires rangy outfielders to cover it. The Rockies deserve some credit for turning Brenton Doyle into more than just a glove, but the corner outfield spots need some love too. Covering that ground is no small feat, and they should devote considerable resources toward it. Garret Mitchell and Jake Myers aren’t the sexiest options, but would be a welcome improvement.
These signings would not fix the core problems, however, nor does firing Bud Black. The problems with the Rockies lie in the fact that they do not care about winning baseball games. They have one of the smallest analytics departments in MLB, a dysfunctional front office, and make horrendous investments. The Rockies have the 20th-highest payroll in baseball, which is actually down from the 10th-highest in 2019 and the 15th-highest in 2023 via Spotrac. Not like it matters, they couldn’t invest wisely if they were given a billion dollars.
It’s a travesty, really. I’ve been to Coors Field, it is a lovely park with passionate fans. Denver faithful flock to see the purple and black get trounced every weekend with a loyalty that rivals a German Shepherd. This fanbase deserves better, but the Monfort brothers and the Rockies FO have run this team into the ground and kept digging. This is maybe the worst team in the live ball era, an embarrassment to professional sports. The silver lining is that there’s nowhere to go but up from here because with a winning percentage of .163%, it’s pretty hard to get worse. Rock bottom indeed.
