Why are the Colorado Rockies so bad? And is there any hope of them getting better?

On May 14, 2023, Phillies superstar Bryce Harper took aim at the Colorado Rockies.

The two-time MVP’s ruthless critique didn’t come during a news conference or an interview. It happened right there, on the Coors Field dirt. After Rockies reliever Jake Bird barked at the Phillies dugout following a scoreless inning, Harper charged onto the diamond to confront him. The benches cleared. Cusses were hurled. And though no punches were thrown, a hold-me-back-style stand-off unfolded. As the dust settled and cooler heads prevailed, a perturbed Harper gestured toward the Rockies and delivered a piercing parting shot.

“You’re a loser f***ing organization,” he proclaimed. “Every single one of you.”

Harsh? Yes. Crude? Absolutely. But Harper’s outburst reflected a grim reality, one acknowledged and understood by players, coaches and officials around the league: The Colorado Rockies, as an organization, are utterly clueless.

Two years on from Harper’s verbal cannon blast, baseball’s most geographically isolated franchise is in an even uglier place. The 2025 club is currently 7-33, tied for the second-worst 40-game start in MLB history. On Sunday, Colorado made an inevitable managerial change, canning skipper Bud Black, who had helmed the purple-and-black since 2016. Third-base coach Warren Schaeffer, a 40-year-old Rockies lifer who has been with the organization since it drafted him in 2007, was named interim manager through the end of this season.

But the problems, piled high above sea level, won’t be remedied with a single move. Colorado hasn’t finished a season above .500 since 2018, their last playoff appearance. The Rockies own the league’s worst record since 2019. The team’s most recent (non-one-game wild card) postseason series win? The 2007 NLCS. On pace for a 28-win season, this year’s Rockies are a train wreck, a punch line, a dinosaur.

Injuries to key offensive contributors such as Ezequiel Tovar, Kris Bryant and Thairo Estrada have played a major role, but the Rockies can be banged up and bad at hitting simultaneously. Only three of their hitters — Hunter Goodman, Jordan Beck and Ryan McMahon — have performed at a league-average level or above. Every other bat in the lineup has been downright dreadful. Colorado is second-to-last in baseball in runs scored, despite getting to play half their games in an extremely hitter-friendly home park.

And somehow, the future looks even bleaker than the past or present. So how did it get this bad? What in the mile-high hell happened here? Why are the 2025 Rockies in serious danger of surpassing the 2024 White Sox as the worst team in MLB history?

The Rocky Mountain horror show, more than anything else, is the result of organizational inertia.

General manager Bill Schmidt has been with the team since 1999. Rolando Fernandez, the vice president of international scouting and development, joined the Rockies as a coach in 1993. Danny Montgomery, vice president and assistant general manager of scouting, was an original Rockies employee, hired in November 1991, a year and a half before the team played a game. Scouting director Marc Gustafson and major-league operations director Paul Egins have also been with the Rockies since ‘91.

Colorado’s insular environment is unlike anything else in professional baseball. A form of blind loyalty — driven, sources say, by team owner Dick Monfort — has left most of the organization stuck in the 2010s. As a paradigm-shifting technological revolution swept baseball over the past decade, the Rockies simply failed to adapt, leaving them woefully behind the times. They are, for instance, the only MLB team without an internal pitch-grading system or proprietary stuff-plus model.

Many teams have struggled to keep pace in baseball’s information arms race. But what’s happening in Colorado is even worse. For the Rockies, it’s not about inability; it’s about unwillingness.

Schmidt pushed back against that sentiment in a recent interview with The Athletic.

“People talk about us being isolated. That’s fine,” he said. “I wouldn’t say we’re behind the times by any means.”

But the facts tell a different story. As clubs such as the Dodgers, Yankees, Rays and Brewers have searched relentlessly for the next frontier, the Rockies have become the baseball equivalent of Colonial Williamsburg: a living museum, fixed in time, clinging proudly to the past.

“My favorite part of it is they think they are doing a good job,” one MLB evaluator, granted anonymity in exchange for honesty, told Yahoo Sports. “They question everyone else doing things differently.”

This isn’t to say the Rockies don’t draft talented players. In fact, their amateur scouting department is relatively well-respected within the industry. However, the club has struggled mightily in recent years to develop youngsters into impact big leaguers. While teams such as the Mets, Mariners and Guardians are respected for getting the most out of their pitchers, the Rockies have acquired a polar opposite reputation. Their big-league players rarely get better.

And while the Rockies have often maintained a respectable payroll, Monfort has consistently balked at making financial investments in the organization’s infrastructure. That has been most impactful in terms of technology, where the Rockies lag far behind the 29 other clubs. In fact, sources indicated to Yahoo that Monfort — who chaired the owners committee during the 2022 CBA negotiations — is hoping the next CBA contains a salary cap, which he believes would give his fallen franchise a better chance. Importantly, Monfort is reportedly seeking a cap that extends beyond MLB payroll to cover all organizational spending, including coaching, technology and scouting.

When you check the attendance numbers, Colorado’s resistance to change makes some sense. The Rockies draw. Coors Field is a beautiful park right in the center of Denver. The views are stellar, the beer is cold, and the weather is usually lovely. Because the yard stays full even though the team stinks, there’s much less pressure on Monfort and Co. to change their behavior.

And to be fair, Monfort, Schmidt and the Rockies face a unique and persistent challenge that no other MLB team contends with: altitude. The thin air in Colorado impacts almost everything — how pitches move, how batted balls carry, how players recover. It’s a singular conundrum, yes, and one this Rockies leadership group has repeatedly proven incapable of solving. Coors Field is a dreadful place to pitch, yet visiting hurlers have a combined ERA nearly a half-run lower than that of the home team’s pitchers since the park opened in 1995.

Where things go from here is anyone’s guess. Most public outlets rank the Rockies’ farm system in the bottom third in MLB. And Colorado rarely deals valuable big leaguers for prospects at the trade deadline. Oft-injured superstar Kris Bryant is under contract at $27 million per year through the end of 2028. Shortstop Ezequiel Tovar, center fielder Brenton Doyle, outfielder Jordan Beck and catcher Hunter Goodman could form the core of a compelling offense. Top prospect Chase Dollander has been awful in his first taste of the bigs (28 innings of 7.71 ERA ball) but remains a massive talent.

Perhaps more critically, faith in this operation around baseball remains at an all-time low — for good reason. The 2025 Rockies might or might not lose a record number of games, but if the organization continues to refuse to adapt, the 2026 Rockies or the 2027 Rockies certainly could.

Even worse: This isn’t a rebuild. Or a retool. The 2024 White Sox were that, a roster ripped up from the studs. All their losing, at least in theory, had a purpose.

These Rockies can claim no such rose-colored future. They are a hamster on a wheel, a relic frozen in the ice, a franchise trapped in the thin air gasping for answers that don’t exist.