People noticed the Rockies
On Sunday night, All Elite Wrestling marked six years with its “Double or Nothing” pay-per-view show. During the main event, the announcers noted something about one of the wrestlers doing battle in front of a buzzing, excitable crowd.
“Hangman” Adam Page has struggled with his temper in big moments. With that in mind, they observed that Hangman needed to “master his emotions” in order to be successful.
Same, Hangman. So much the same.
Today:
The Colorado Rockies are so bad that a lot of people are actually talking about them.
Bud Black isn’t to blame for the state of the Rockies, but that doesn’t mean he was doing a good job.
Anthony Edwards needs a new nickname.
Odds and ends that include baseball’s best pitcher, grocery prices, and an annoying man who won’t go away.
When you still have single-digit wins
The 2025 MLB regular season started on March 27. Every team has played more than 50 games. Some of the best teams in the league have more than 30 wins.
The Rockies have nine.
It’s the kind of statistic that seems made up. As of this writing, the Colorado Rockies are 9-45. There’s an actual chance they will reach June before notching their 10th victory.
Before 2025, I think the Rockies were bad without much attention. Every now and then, people would notice their ineptitude and chuckle. They would make fun of the team’s owner, Dick Monfort, and maybe sprinkle in a jab about the altitude. “At least Coors Field is nice,” they might have added.
For how long the Rockies have taken up a spot at the bottom of the standings, they weren’t really given much serious attention or analysis. Even with 100 games in two straight seasons, the Rockies weren’t the very worst team. And they weren’t doing anything particularly interesting.
There wasn’t much to talk about, really, once the “LOL Rockies” was out of the way.
There was even some optimism that the Rockies were going in the right direction entering this season, and it wasn’t just the delusions of former manager Bud Black.
Had they continued their bad-but-not-worst play, the Rockies might have continued as an afterthought.
Instead, they find themselves as the clear worst team in baseball. They might be the worst team in baseball history.
So it is that people noticed the Rockies. I have seen them as front page or lead stories on CBS, ESPN, and Yahoo. I have heard lengthy discussions about them on video clips and podcasts.
It’s hard to imagine the coverage won’t continue as long as the Rockies are so bad that it’s interesting.
Suffice it to say, this is not what I ever had in mind when I longed for more coverage of my favorite baseball team.
It’s his fault a little
Bud Black is a baseball guy. He established himself long ago as part of a club that includes coaches, executives, sportswriters, and others who work in and around baseball. It’s probably reasonable to call this group the old guard, or at least an old guard.
That group went out of their way to absolve Black of any blame for the current state of the Rockies. After he was fired this month, for example, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had the following to say:
"I'm bummed. I'm disappointed. I don't think Casey Stengel could change the outcome of that ballclub, and that's not the manager's fault."
Name-dropping Casey Stengel is very on brand for this particular old guard.
Roberts is right. But I would also like to note that the Rockies didn’t get bad overnight. They made the playoffs under Black’s watch in 2017 and 2018. They have slowly gotten worse since then.
The primary reasons for their ineptitude lie in the front office and the owner’s office. But Black played a part.
I would argue, for example, that he has to own part of the regression of multiple pitchers who played on those playoff teams. Pitching is supposed to be his thing, after all, and the whole “nobody can pitch at Coors” write-off loses a bit of weight when these same pitchers helped lead a team to the postseason.
I also think Black actively made a rebuild harder with his reluctance to stick with young players. So while I would never say he was the main problem, and I would never let anyone bump Dick Monfort from the top of the list of problems, I blame Bud Black a little.
It’s a little silly, after all, to think that these teams were purely undone by everyone else in the organization while Bud Black was over there, minding his own business, coaching well through it all.
Did I mention that Bud Black’s career record as a manager is 1,193-1,403?
Giants can rest easy, for now
Anthony Edwards is 23 years old. There is a lot of time for him to live up to the hype that started to build around him as a “giant killer” in this year’s playoffs.
But he’s not there yet. Even if the Timberwolves pull off a miraculous comeback in their series against the Oklahoma City Thunder, he doesn’t feel undeniable in big moments.
I might even say that Julius Randle and some other key players on the Timberwolves ought to log some credits for their part in the felling of giants this year.
I don’t care if guys are cocky, and I hate the overreactions to guys who are full of themselves, but ANT doesn’t feel like he’s there just yet in terms of the off-the-court side of things, either.
At this point, I will acknowledge that I found myself rooting against Edwards a little bit this year after I learned about his paternity lawsuits (plural).
Back to the point, here’s how Edwards responded to questions about his 16-point performance in a crucial game 4 loss on Sunday night:
"I don't really look at it like I struggled. I didn't get enough shots to say I struggled, so that might be how you guys look at it. But, yeah, I didn't struggle at all. I just made the right play."
Don’t blame Edwards, he who made the right plays. It’s pretty much the other guys who lost, if you look at it the way he’s looking at it.
He’ll be fine. He’ll probably be great (as an NBA player). But all those “Giant Killer” headlines are going to be dated in short order. And I don’t mind that.
Odds and ends
Tarik Skubal isn’t a household name. So few baseball players are in 2025. But having a masterful season and coming off an incredible complete game shutout (CBS Sports), Skubal might just raise himself above baseball-only fame.
David Roth launched a very important investigation into whether or not baseball writer Jon Heyman paid too much for blueberries (Defector, $).
Aaron Rodgers kept his desperate hold on a spot in the headlines by saying he would consider retiring as a Packer, but only if they asked him. At this point, I’m just hoping he’ll retire at all (CBS Sports).
If you haven’t seen it yet, Oneil Cruz hit an absurd home run this week and broke his own record for hardest hit ball in the Statcast Era (MLB YouTube).
Have a great Tuesday, all.
Coors Field image from Wikimedia Commons
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