Best since 2018
The Colorado Rockies are optimistic for 2025, at least according to their manager.
Bud Black recently issued a letter to Colorado Rockies season ticket holders. So that we’re all on the same page in terms of the background for this letter to a professional baseball team’s most loyal fans, the Rockies lost 101 games last season. They lost 103 games in 2023.
Those are the only two 100-loss seasons in franchise history. The Rockies have existed since 1993. They have never won the division. They have only reached the playoffs five times. They made it to the World Series once, and they lost.
All of that is to say, the Rockies just finished their worst two seasons. And they have had a lot of bad seasons.
Knowing that, Bud Black must have been setting the stage for big changes, right? This was a chance to level with the fans, agree that the current path is unacceptable, and assure fans that things will be different moving forward.
That seems obvious, right? Surely the Rockies don’t think that they should keep operating as usual, that they are right on track and that their current plan is working?
If you know the Rockies, you’re already chuckling. If you don’t, let me give you a taste of their wacky outlook on the state of their franchise.
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What if you were in charge of a team that had failed for the last six years? What if your solution was to keep doing the same thing that hasn't worked for those six years, insisting that it's going to work again because it did in 2018?
Let's ponder that question, and for comparison, let's look at how much some other things have changed since 2018.
I'm glad you're here. On we go.
A message from Bud Black
The longtime Rockies manager recently sent a letter to season ticket holders. It's been posted a couple places. You can find one such post here. The upshot, in my mind, is this quote:
"I'm more confident about 2025 than I've been since our back-to-back playoff seasons in 2017 and 2018. We are building a roster you can be proud of and I'm hopeful you'll see our efforts pay off next season."
I'm always a sucker for hope with the Rockies. If they come out of the gates strong in 2025, I'll be happy to jump on board and believe. But I also understand the reality with this franchise and their meandering path to the bottom of the standings.
There is no plan. There is no organizational philosophy. The efforts to "build a roster" to which Bud Black is gesturing are directionless at best and incompetent at worst.
There have been potential paths the Rockies could have taken. They could have gone all in on pitching, adding to their staff from every possible source to build depth on top of depth. On the other hand, they could have committed to making their offense a source of strength, trying to out-slug teams and maximizing the Coors Field advantage.
They could have bottomed out and undertaken a full rebuild. They could have taken an aggressive approach to the trade market to rebuild on the fly.
The Colorado Rockies never did any of those things, not in any meaningful or consistent way that could be considered a plan to build a roster. Instead, they made one random move after another. Some moves made sense. Most didn't.
To sum up the Rockies since the successful 2017-2018 seasons cited by Bud Black in his letter: they cobbled together a weird roster with homegrown players and washed up free agents, they stubbornly stuck with a draft-and-develop plan for their pitching that hasn't worked for a long time, they navigated the same randomness that every team does in the bullpen, and then they blamed the players when it didn't work.
In the minds of the people who are still in charge of the Rockies, these consistent failures couldn't be the responsibility of the front office or the manager. It was a problem with the players. They just need to play better.
That's how you end up with a professional baseball team where, ultimately, nothing has changed since 2018. The only noticeable change over that time is that they're getting worse. That's how you end up with a franchise where the manager proudly, and presumably with a straight face, says this will be the best season since 2018 as a means of selling fans on the state of the franchise.
So, the Rockies haven't changed. Now let's take a look at how much things have changed in other corners of the world while they have been spinning their wheels.
The Planet's Champion
Bryan Danielson retired from wrestling earlier this year. Or, at the very least, he retired as a full-time, in-ring performer.
He might be the best to ever do it. In the months leading up to his retirement, he went on an incredible run as All Elite Wrestling's world champion. It was a fitting capstone to a career full of memorable runs and championship reigns.
Here’s something I wrote about it this summer, if you’re interested.
Back in 2018, while the Colorado Rockies were reaching the playoffs and convincing themselves that they had discovered an impenetrable formula that would entrench them as contenders, Danielson was in WWE. He was Daniel Bryan in that company. And he was the world champion.
Correction: he was the Planet's Champion. Danielson won the championship in November of 2018, so it was roughly one month after the last time the Rockies called themselves a playoff team.
I cannot overstate how much I loved this gimmick. Daniel Bryan went from arena to arena lecturing the crowd about capitalism and how their consumerism was killing the planet. He probably had a point, but because this is America, crowds responded with the full-throated boos that are reserved for the most hated heels.
Daniel Bryan yelled at fans. "Fickle!" He shamed the out-of-shape men in the crowds. "Impotent!" He replaced the leather WWE championship belt with a more sustainable strap in an all-timer of a segment.
In the time since 2018, Bryan changed companies (and changed names). He participated in multiple matches that are considered among the best in wrestling history. He rehabbed multiple injuries, set the stage for his retirement, and wrapped up his tenure as a full-time wrestler.
A lot happened in six years.
The New England Patriots dynasty
The Tom Brady-Bill Belichick Patriots were smack in the middle of their glory days in 2017 and 2018. They won the Super Bowl in 2016. They lost the Super Bowl to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2017. Then they won again in 2018.
With Brady at quarterback and Belichick as their head coach, those Patriots rode a familiar cast of stars to those championships. For the 2018 team, there was Julian Edelman at wide receiver and Rob Gronkowski at tight end. Hilariously, it also had a bunch of journeymen like only those Patriots teams would: James White, Sony Michel, Cordarrelle Patterson.
Just like the Rockies did at the time, the Patriots figured they had the makings of a perennial playoff team. One notion might have been more reasonable than the other.
Things are much different now for that main cast of stars than they were in 2018. Brady and Belichick are both TV analysts. Gronkowski and Edelman are both retired and feature in a surprising number of commercials.
Meanwhile, the Patriots are led by Drake Maye and Jerod Mayo. They have already drafted and moved on from another first round quarterback in Mack Jones. They find themselves right in the muck with any number of average NFL teams, trying to find their way back to playoff contention.
For the Patriots, 2018 was a different world entirely. It feels like a lifetime ago.
Another Boston team
The Red Sox won the World Series in 2018. More of those key players are still around and relevant. Mookie Betts was a star player on that team. It was the first of three World Series rings for Betts.
So, I guess his greatness is another thing that remains the same in baseball.
The same, but different
As a Rockies fan, I find this exercise both entertaining and a little disheartening. Think about how much has changed for most teams, athletes, or performers since 2018. Then remember that the Rockies are pretty much the same. The players have changed as the bad rosters have turned over, and the win-loss records have gotten worse. But they are the same.
Bud Black is here to remind you that it's actually a good thing that they're the same, and that it's definitely going to work again, this time.
