Those four measly victories the Rockies managed in their first 21 games of this baseball season raise some interesting questions about the status of professional baseball in Denver.
Let’s begin with CEO Dick Monfort’s lament in March that virtually unrestrained player salaries were ruining Major League Baseball.
He’s right in one respect. It’s a different ballgame in the 21st century.
Back in the mid-1970s—the time when what is generally considered to be among the greatest teams of all time, the Big Red Machine, was at its peak—it didn’t take hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of player payroll to field a championship team.
In the latest Pete Rose book, CHARLIE HUSTLE by Keith O’Brien, the author recalls the feelings of Denver’s Bob Howsam, architect of those great Cincinnati Reds teams, as he saw salaries escalating to what he thought was an unsustainable level: more than $200,000 each per season! for Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez.
That’s the rough equivalent of $1.3 million today for one player, which is less than double the current Major League minimum. (Kris Bryant, the highest-paid Rockie now, is No. 20 on USA Today’slist of the best-paid players in the Majors at $28 million per year.)
In December 2023 the Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani to a $700 million contract. Last offseason the New York Mets signed free agent Juan Soto for 15 years at $765 million. And earlier this month Toronto locked up Vladimir Guerrero Jr. with a 14-year extension worth $500 million.
“It’s an unregulated industry,” said Monfort, acknowledging that only MLB is without a salary cap among the top four pro team sports.
But, while cornering the market on superstars with previously unimaginable long-term contracts goes a long way toward winning, there is ample evidence that other factors are involved, too.
In last year’s baseball postseason, seven of the nine teams with the highest payrolls made the playoffs. But teams whose payrolls ranked between 17th and 28th—including four who spent less than Monfort’s Rockies—also made it. Two of them won their divisions in regular season.
The issue in Denver, agrees a growing chorus, is that Rockies ownership has not made winning a priority within its organizational culture. That’s often been reflected in salary-driven decisions that resulted in talented players going elsewhere.
An exception is the $182 million Colorado spent on Bryant. Since Colorado’s splash in free agency in 2022, he has been active for slightly fewer than 60 games per season. And he’s on the injured list again.
It’s unfortunate that he’s had a bad back and other disabling injuries. Were he whole, he might have been that face of the franchise and anchor in the lineup that the Rockies envisioned when they offered him that big contract.
But he isn’t, which is another matter.
For my money, it’s past time the Rockies do what the Broncos did with Russell Wilson: Admit it’s not working out as planned and eat the rest of the contract, rather than continuing to waste a roster spot on someone who isn’t going to help the team succeed.
The change announced last week, that Hensley Muelens has been replaced as batting coach by Clint Hurdle, once Colorado’s manager and the team’s only field leader to take the Rockies to the World Series, is worth a try. But it’s not going to be transformative.
A friend asked my reaction to this move.
My reply: Bud Black is still the manager.
From everything I know, Bud is a quality baseball man and a good guy. During his first few years here, my impression was that he was a good manager, too, one who, in particular, knew pitchers and pitching.
But as the losses have mounted in recent years, I’ve grown tired of his patience with sub-par performance and rookie mistakes. It that regard, he’s part of that organizational-culture problem I referred to.
Dick Monfort, who is loyal to a fault with almost everyone in the Rockies organization, has rebuffed all previous calls for him to sell the team to someone with deep pockets and a matching commitment to trying to win it all.
His disillusionment with skyrocketing salaries paid by clubs with billionaire owners and huge TV contracts, though, is real. He may be reconsidering. And that could bring real, needed change.
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Denny Dressman’s 17th book, a collaboration with Kansas City artist Anthony High titled Black Baseball’s Heyday – Capturing An Era in Art and Words, will be published in late June. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.