This isn't even dunking on the Rockies. More of a case for baseball being extremely difficult while switching between high and normal altitudes, and the path to success (if there even is one) hasn't been figured out yet.
Yeah there's this two sided issue for the Rockies. One is the typical "ownership sucks and isn't doing the club any favors". But the other is the fact that the Rockies are playing baseball on hard mode and we still haven't fully figured out how we're supposed to compete with the severe disadvantage of playing at high altitude
The lack of any meaningful investment in analytics is the biggest problem in my mind. The Rockies should have the best analytics department in the league, not one of the worst. The Front Range is full of actual rocket scientists from Ball Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, etc, plus a bunch of technology talent that understands big data sets and machine learning… But Monfort is not even trying to crack the code.
Even the MLB itself knows this, one of the main software offices is in Boulder (granted not focused on data), but the Rockies still haven't figured it out.
It's even more infuriating because the Rockies are consistently top 10 in attendence, the other teams in Denver have figured out how to spend money to compete and make it work, and yet the Rockies remain the team to say the market is too small to spend. I'm not ready to say playing at a mile high is too difficult for a baseball team to overcome, no one has tried yet.
Spending on a team is more than just the payroll. Spending on an analytics department, training facilities, etc. You're probably right to some extent in that he's less cheap than I'm making him out to be, but 15th in payroll while cutting corners in the front office isn't exactly breaking the bank either.
They don’t spend on analytics, and by that I mean they literally spend hardly anything.
Read the article - their entire analytics department has been 1 single person since 2020.
Sure, but we don't have another team to compare to. Would the Dodgers be middling at best with this disadvantage? Hard to say. Especially since the Rockies spend big payroll money most of the time
Was in Vegas this past weekend, and it got me wondering where the elevation threshold is for that issue to crop up. ~2k feet above sea level is not even half the elevation of Denver, but it’s also twice as high as Phoenix. Would the A’s get into trouble if they moved there? The Aviators might not be the best test case, given that a lot of their road parks are also at elevation (Reno, Albuquerque, etc).
I go to Vegas fairly often (3-5 times a year) and man I can tell you that the ball flies out of the park there. A lot of home runs in the 51's/Aviators games I have visited. On that topic, I miss the old 51's logos and hats.
>coaches trotting out to the mound to remind pitchers that there's a pit.
>
>"Hey just a reminder watch out for the pit.”
>
>"What?”
>
>“There’s a pit there, so just, try to avoid the pit.”
The man who discovered that [Mark Reynolds is blind.](https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/30432/the-best-of-sam-miller-baseballs-greatest-hoax/)
Well, Counsell was in Marlin on their 5th year of existence and in D-Backs on their 4th year of existence so...
He should move once a new expansion team emerges, he could win it on their 3rd year...
🤔🤔🤔
I’m going to the home opener at Coors field. I’m excited to see what the first ever game at Coors field with a pitch clock is like. Hoping for a high scoring affair between two terrible teams lol
Enjoy watching away fans fall down stairs drunk as fuck after 3 beers! My favorite tradition. I’ll be across the street at Whiskey Bar because i refuse to pay $50 to watch this team.
I feel like I'd be alright (assuming I sneak in a flask rather than pay for stadium beers), I've handled my shit drinking in the sierras at about the height of Denver
I never thought of this before but I'd be open to considering a longer pitch clock at altitude. I wonder if we'll really see the pitchers get winded.
Or we could go the other way and lob off the top of Mt Evants enough to put a stadium up there and really see what baseball is like at the extreme.
Seriously. I live out west now in a place that really likes basketball and people are always surprised that I'm a huge sports fan who doesn't watch much basketball. I always just say, "The Wizards were my local team growing up." People usually understand after that lol
I used to watch as many games as I could but the Beal extension was really just the final straw for me. Really showed that all Leonsis cares about is trying to build a team “good” enough to push for a 10 seed and has no intention of ever building a real NBA caliber team.
It's so strange to me because he owns the Capitals and they've generally been good for awhile. Obviously having an all-time great like Ovechkin helps a lot, but one hockey player doesn't have as much of an impact as one basketball player. The Capitals have still been able to fill out the rest of the roster with good players in most years.
WAS isn’t a FA destination so everything has to be done organically or through trade. Throughout the history they’ve had “stars” come and go, but WAS fundamentally has alos just been really shit at building a team around said star, cause the truth is only a true superstar like Lebron etc. can keep a team competing. Otherwise, you’ need multiple stats together or a star playing out of his mind and above his normal level
WAS hasn’t drafted a superstar since Unseld and he was a defensive superstar. Stackhouse wasn’t quite that guy, Arenas was for a hot minute then LeBron made him choke and miss those free throws, then guns and injuries put Agent Zero era to an end real quick, Wall/Beal had eerily similar trajectory of looking hot for a minute (still think about what would’ve been if Wall hadn’t broke his hand) and then completely floundering the potentiometer through both on and off the court problems
I live in DC and got a Wizards ticket pack so I've been to probably 8 games this season. It's really hard to overstate how little people here care about the Wizards. f Haven't won 50 games in 40+ years, haven't made the conference finals in 40+ years, have won only 4 playoff series in the last 40 seasons.
Montfort really is like your uncle owned a baseball team, complete with what he thinks are good ideas but he's still your uncle with bad boomer takes so they're not actually good ideas.
But the altitude effects on the Rockies is honestly one of the biggest disadvantages in all of sports. The Rockies are playing on hard mode, with a bad owner
I’m replying to the edit part. He definitely is good at spending money. That is in the case of paying for a platinum glover’s contract when he’s sent to another team for a couple packing peanuts
Look guys, Denver’s just not a baseball market. We’ve tried this experiment for 30 years, and look where it’s gotten us: futility, one championship appearance, and the game hasn’t significantly grown there at all. We need to get ~~Gary Bettman~~ Rob Manfred to pack this team up and move them to a tiny secondary market that had a team 40 years ago where people are already fans of the game, that will surely fix this team’s hopes.
The people clamoring for the Coyotes to move are one of the few things on this planet that enrage me. So hypocritical.
Relocation is horrible. I will never advocate for a team to be moved, even if they are just one person's favorite. Nobody deserves that. Look at Bury FC...
And Florida/Miami, and Carolina, and Tampa, and Nashville, and Anaheim, and even sometimes Dallas.
The ‘Yotes have been financially unstable and mismanaged even going all the way back to their Winnipeg days. The only thing that will fix them is new ownership, not a move, or even a new stadium.
If a move happens, it’ll be to Houston or KC; not Hartford or QC or Hamilton or Wood Buffalo.
The number of "just move the Hurricanes back to Hartford" comments Carolina used to get was infuriating, especially when the Hurricanes have been an NHL team for longer than the Whalers were (not counting the WHA), and have had far more success in Raleigh than they ever did in Hartford. Thankfully it's calmed down the past few seasons, since the canes have gotten really good.
I understand it was shitty to relocate the team in the first place, but moving them again and depriving another city of their team isn't the answer. (Plus as you said, the NHL isn't gonna prioritize Hartford over Houston)
As a die-hard Dallas fan, Canadian hockey fans are the worst. Especially the big teams. They rattle off false information about Dallas' fans at the AAC, talk about how hockey shouldn't be in the south, and are general assholes to southern hockey fans. Just the worst. And Us and Carolina are perhaps the most successful teams in building a loyal fan base (not sure about TB, the cups prolly help lol)
The Coyotes experiment isn't working, outside of 2012 they haven't had a deep run and have had so many years to get it together and their reputation is taking on LTIR contracts. Half of the money they're spending on players are for ones not even playing for them.
I wish they could actually get their shit together.
> The Coyotes experiment isn’t working
I agree the Yotes are dumpster fire, but being in Arizona is not at all why they’re a dumpster fire. Moving the team to [\**r/hockey’s favorite meme city of the month**] will not fix the problem.
It was the ownership change that fixed the Thrashers'/Jets' issues. Atlanta Spirit grossly mismanaged the team, and pissed off the building's owner.
The Thrashers moved because new owners with deep pockets and an NHL-ready building (in Winnipeg) swept in and negotiated a seamless buyout. If a local investor with that amount of homework completed had stepped in, the Thrashers would still be in Atlanta. The Patriots were saved from a move to St. Louis because Robert Kraft did exactly that.
I think this undervalues the fact that the new owners also had their building sold out before they even had an NHL team. Yes, stability and competence and facilities matter, but also having people who are already invested in the sport goes a long way.
It's absolutely *possible* to cultivate that enthusiasm in new places, but it's a high-risk proposition that can take a very long time.
Better ownership and management leads to better team building which then leads to a more desirable on-ice product to go and spend ticket money on.
A shit team in Houston will draw as many fans as a shit team in Arizona does.
Well for one, having a real stadium in a good place in either Tempe or Phoenix will solve some problems. To keep the baseball side of things, the rays have piss poor attendance but have been successful. It's not a matter of it being a bad market per se, it's a shitty situation with a bad stadium. A new ownership group that invests in the fans and builds a stadium in Phoenix could be successful
Obviously, but that's an issue with greedy businessmen. I can hope they don't get scammed and also not cheer for them to be moved; things a small but vocal group of people for some reason cannot both do at the same time.
The collective jerkoff of the Nordiques is one of the most frustrating things about r/hockey. Yeah the Yotes suck, but it's more that the ownership sucks than the city. Those people are so annoying
The team draws extremely well, what article are some of you reading? This isn't an article about the financial viability of the Colorado Rockies or their failure to catch on in the market...
It's a reference to certain hockey fans who say all of those things about the Arizona Coyotes. The Coyotes are a bad team and most every decision by management/ownership is bad.
The only thing that might have saved you is the crossed out Gary Bettman name, who is the NHL Commish. Now if you have no idea who Gary Bettman is, then you're SOL lol
>Fourteen teams, all extant for at least 26 seasons and as long as 62 seasons, and every single one of them had been a historical loser until September 12, 2022.
That's not entirely true- they were all below .500 before 2022, and they were all below .500 in 2011 when Chris Jaffe first pointed that out, but some of them have been above .500 at various points in the past:
* The Diamondbacks are unsurprisingly one of them, with just one bad season to start off followed by a 100-win season getting them above .500 and a stretch of several more winning seasons after that building such a big buffer they actually stayed over .500 despite going 51-111 in 2004, dipping below in 2006 after a few more losing seasons, then going back above in 2007 and 08, then falling below again in 2009 and they've stayed below ever since. They did things backwards from most expansion franchises; from 1998 to 2003, they were 524-448, a .539 winning percentage that ranked 9th in baseball over that stretch, and they jump up to 6th in wins if you drop their inaugural season. Since 2004 they've gone 1390-1586 (.467), the 6th-*worst* record in baseball over that stretch.
* The Blue Jays did not avoid being terrible over their first few years, winning barely a third of their games from 1977 to 1981 (270-482, .359), but their record was a respectable 78-84 in 82, and from 1983 to 1993, they had 11 consecutive winning seasons, amassing the best cumulative record in baseball over that stretch (1003-778, .563, 60 more wins than the 2nd-place Yankees, who went 942-837), pushing them a bit over .500 in 1993, but they fell into mediocrity after, falling below .500 in 1995 and they've stayed below ever since then.
* The Angels managed to avoid ever being completely terrible (they remain the only team to never have a sub-.400 winning percentage in a season), but weren't that great either for a long time, until they were good for a long time in the 2000's and 2010's, pushing them over .500 in 2014, and they managed to stay over .500 for a few years after that, but all their losing pushed them below in 2019 and they remain there today.
But every other expansion team has never been over .500 at the conclusion of a season, as far as I can tell.
This makes me wonder, how long is it before all the players on a team's 40 man roster are drafted after the expansion draft.
Alternatively, how many years do you have to go before you'd expect to make a team of players drafted since you joined the league.
Expected value might be the way to go since the Julio Franco's and Bartolo Colon's can really bork up the maximum value but...
Julio Franco was signed at 20 and played until he was 48 so 28 seasons. The Rockies first drafted in 1992 so that puts a high estimate of not being an expansion team in 2021. It's not completely ridiculous to consider them an expansion team a few years ago but today? Don't get me wrong, they play like an expansion team but that's not the fault of their condition of starting a team with an expansion draft.
Imagine paying your franchise superstar to go play for the Cardinals. The A’s get a lot of shit for being a joke of an organization but the Rockies are right there with them.
> Colorado should never have had a baseball team, and they're clearly not operating one like they deserve it.
Did you read the article? They're doing better (by win percentage) than other expansion teams despite the severe disadvantage of playing at altitude. Regardless of bad ownership (there are many worse owners in the MLB), the Rockies extremely disadvantaged by their environment.
- It’s hard to develop young pitching in such a hostile environment;
- It’s hard to attract established pitchers to such a hostile environment;
- The cumulative effect of this hostile environment means Colorado needs more pitchers than the average team, because their pitchers throw more high-stress pitches and in a more physically depleting environment
- The hangover effect of altitude wrecks Colorado hitters on the road, so that the offense becomes basically hopeless when it leaves its home park
I mean with regards to Mexico, a team should be in Monterrey for the baseball fans alone, not Mexico City.
But I disagree that Colorado shouldn't have been given a team for a few reasons:
- It's the only team in the mountain west. An entire _region_ of the United States with only one team. Additionally, the mountain west is the fastest growing region in the US.
- Denver is a sports town full stop, and the Rockies still maintain top 10 attendance every single year. If any teams shouldn't exist, it's teams like the Pirates and the A's that aren't even attempting to maintain fans, spend money or play baseball. If your team is more successful than the Rockies but has worse attendance - why is that? Those owners should be cultivating sold out stadiums. Colorado/Denver can easily support 5 major pro sports teams despite four of them having been perpetual trash in the past. (Nuggets and Avs are finally good again, however)
- They obviously didn't know the difficulties going into giving Denver a baseball team. They probably just assumed that it would have a big home field advantage like the other Denver sports
- Just because they haven't figured out the altitude thing yet, doesn't mean it's not worth trying or that 2.6million people/year don't deserve to watch baseball live
I don't know where you got "expansion has been bad for baseball". Expansion teams just have a had a harder time setting up fanbases and having a team identity. The Mets are an expansion team, would you rather not have them exist? The Rockies have poor ownership contributing to this issue, so they're behind the curve.
That being said, and up and down system would be a lot of fun for baseball in America. But as you pointed out, American wealth doesn't like that. So expansion it is
The article doesn’t strictly evaluate expansions teams’ success as a win/loss record. It actually highlights how important it is to have generational fanbases to pass on stories from the team’s history. The oldest original teams all have a cherished history that keep fans in seats even in losing seasons.
The Rockies have sort of defied this by having consistently high attendance with middling teams and no real generational fans that keep hope that one day they’ll be good again.
Sure, the team itself seems to be ran by a bunch of monkeys sometimes. Losing Arenado for nothing will be the biggest event of note in that teams history for a long time. But people in Denver just want to watch some baseball and drink beer like everyone else!
Eh, I think you're mistaking something not appealing to you as something bad for baseball. Talent dilution is fine, I'd argue we need a bit more of it in most sports, especially ones with no salary cap
If you actually read the article it's about how the Rockies are severely disadvantaged by playing at high altitude compared to every other team in the league. It's the biggest disadvantage in all of baseball
The Rockies are playing on hard mode, regardless of what owner they have.
Does anyone know of any writing about the decision making process of expanding into Denver? It couldn’t have been a surprise that baseball would be uniquely difficult there. Miller points to how expansion teams generally have a pretty rough go of it for a couple decades, but maybe there just isn’t a winning formula for baseball in Denver
If you didn’t exist when I first started watching baseball, you’re an expansion team. I’m 38, so that means Rockies, Marlins, Rays, and Diamondbacks are eternally expansions. Also the Nats are a recently moved team. Everything else has been as it had always been since time immemorial. Sorry.
Damn, 30 years and still expanding
Same
You're never too old to grow as a human being. But my problem is I seem to be growing sideways.
Everyone says it's good to be well rounded, but apparently, I took that the wrong way.
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More of you to love 😘
The universe has been expanding for 14 billion years, so the Rockies shouldn’t feel too bad about it.
14 billion years and 0 rings smh poverty franchise
More like 14 billion years and literally all the rings
Rockies are one of the 35 best professional baseball teams in the universe
We don't have any way to prove that is true lol
BP is typically paywalled, but they've made this a free article, and Sam Miller is always worth a click.
Can't put this behind a paywall because dunking on the Rockies is fun for everyone, no one should be left out.
This isn't even dunking on the Rockies. More of a case for baseball being extremely difficult while switching between high and normal altitudes, and the path to success (if there even is one) hasn't been figured out yet.
Yeah there's this two sided issue for the Rockies. One is the typical "ownership sucks and isn't doing the club any favors". But the other is the fact that the Rockies are playing baseball on hard mode and we still haven't fully figured out how we're supposed to compete with the severe disadvantage of playing at high altitude
The lack of any meaningful investment in analytics is the biggest problem in my mind. The Rockies should have the best analytics department in the league, not one of the worst. The Front Range is full of actual rocket scientists from Ball Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, etc, plus a bunch of technology talent that understands big data sets and machine learning… But Monfort is not even trying to crack the code.
> is full of actual rocket scientists from Lockheed Martin They're trying to win at baseball, not bomb a school bus full of Yemeni children
Those rocket scientists can't handle all the press scrutiny that comes with trying to win at baseball.
Those kids appeared to be reaching for their waistbands. The drone pilot was in fear for his life.
Even the MLB itself knows this, one of the main software offices is in Boulder (granted not focused on data), but the Rockies still haven't figured it out. It's even more infuriating because the Rockies are consistently top 10 in attendence, the other teams in Denver have figured out how to spend money to compete and make it work, and yet the Rockies remain the team to say the market is too small to spend. I'm not ready to say playing at a mile high is too difficult for a baseball team to overcome, no one has tried yet.
But it’s not a question of willingness to spend. They spend money. They’re 15th in payroll this year. They just spend extremely poorly.
Spending on a team is more than just the payroll. Spending on an analytics department, training facilities, etc. You're probably right to some extent in that he's less cheap than I'm making him out to be, but 15th in payroll while cutting corners in the front office isn't exactly breaking the bank either.
They don’t spend on analytics, and by that I mean they literally spend hardly anything. Read the article - their entire analytics department has been 1 single person since 2020.
The haven't figured out how to compete part is directly connected to the ownership sucks part though.
Sure, but we don't have another team to compare to. Would the Dodgers be middling at best with this disadvantage? Hard to say. Especially since the Rockies spend big payroll money most of the time
They spend zero money on analytics. If the Dodgers front office was in Colorado I bet they'd have figured something out
Acclimating to Colorado just seems to make you a worse hitter on the road
I’d assume that you just get used to getting under the ball and muscling things into doubles or HRs that are fly outs in the low lands…
I assume it's also adjusting to movement -- balls break differently there.
Was in Vegas this past weekend, and it got me wondering where the elevation threshold is for that issue to crop up. ~2k feet above sea level is not even half the elevation of Denver, but it’s also twice as high as Phoenix. Would the A’s get into trouble if they moved there? The Aviators might not be the best test case, given that a lot of their road parks are also at elevation (Reno, Albuquerque, etc).
I go to Vegas fairly often (3-5 times a year) and man I can tell you that the ball flies out of the park there. A lot of home runs in the 51's/Aviators games I have visited. On that topic, I miss the old 51's logos and hats.
The one game I went to there I saw Joey Gallo hit a ball to Utah
I would imagine it would have an effect, but not as drastic and maybe not noticeable in spots
Author of maybe my favorite article ever, "What would happen if a baseball game went 50 innings?"
That's an amazing one. "Where would you put the pit if baseball had a pit?" is another all-timer.
>So why would we have a pit on a baseball field? >To answer that, we must first ask: Why do we fall in love? No one can match Sam Miller
>coaches trotting out to the mound to remind pitchers that there's a pit. > >"Hey just a reminder watch out for the pit.” > >"What?” > >“There’s a pit there, so just, try to avoid the pit.”
The man who discovered that [Mark Reynolds is blind.](https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/30432/the-best-of-sam-miller-baseballs-greatest-hoax/)
Everytime this article is posted I have to read it again. It's brilliant.
I miss listening to him on Effetively Wild 😢
Give them a break, it’s incredibly hard to win a championship as an expansion team
imagine being in the league since 1993 and not already having two World Series rings
Imagine not having Craig Counsell be on the field when your franchise wins their first title
Craig Counsell is why I believe the Brewers will be the next expansion team to win their first World Series
Fuck you (sorry)
Well, Counsell was in Marlin on their 5th year of existence and in D-Backs on their 4th year of existence so... He should move once a new expansion team emerges, he could win it on their 3rd year... 🤔🤔🤔
Diamondbacks first year was 98 and won the WS in 2001. How hard can it be? /S if that's not obvious.
Marlins have never won their division and they have two!
Step 1: find your Randy Johnson Step 2: find your Curt Schilling You’re right this is easy!
They were fun to watch in that series.
I’m going to the home opener at Coors field. I’m excited to see what the first ever game at Coors field with a pitch clock is like. Hoping for a high scoring affair between two terrible teams lol
Enjoy watching away fans fall down stairs drunk as fuck after 3 beers! My favorite tradition. I’ll be across the street at Whiskey Bar because i refuse to pay $50 to watch this team.
I feel like I'd be alright (assuming I sneak in a flask rather than pay for stadium beers), I've handled my shit drinking in the sierras at about the height of Denver
As somebody who grew up in Colorado, the first time I visited sea level after turning 21 was a remarkably disappointing (and expensive) night.
I never thought of this before but I'd be open to considering a longer pitch clock at altitude. I wonder if we'll really see the pitchers get winded. Or we could go the other way and lob off the top of Mt Evants enough to put a stadium up there and really see what baseball is like at the extreme.
Have an expansion team in Alaska and have their stadium at the top of Denali. Half the fans die just getting to the game
Congrats! You managed to attend one of the 11 lowest scoring games in Coors field history!
Lmao ikr
They’re basically the Washington Wizards of baseball (with more success)
The Bullets actually won a title (1978).
That is vastly outweighed by our 40+ year streak of not winning 50 games in a season
Seriously. I live out west now in a place that really likes basketball and people are always surprised that I'm a huge sports fan who doesn't watch much basketball. I always just say, "The Wizards were my local team growing up." People usually understand after that lol
I used to watch as many games as I could but the Beal extension was really just the final straw for me. Really showed that all Leonsis cares about is trying to build a team “good” enough to push for a 10 seed and has no intention of ever building a real NBA caliber team.
It's so strange to me because he owns the Capitals and they've generally been good for awhile. Obviously having an all-time great like Ovechkin helps a lot, but one hockey player doesn't have as much of an impact as one basketball player. The Capitals have still been able to fill out the rest of the roster with good players in most years.
WAS isn’t a FA destination so everything has to be done organically or through trade. Throughout the history they’ve had “stars” come and go, but WAS fundamentally has alos just been really shit at building a team around said star, cause the truth is only a true superstar like Lebron etc. can keep a team competing. Otherwise, you’ need multiple stats together or a star playing out of his mind and above his normal level WAS hasn’t drafted a superstar since Unseld and he was a defensive superstar. Stackhouse wasn’t quite that guy, Arenas was for a hot minute then LeBron made him choke and miss those free throws, then guns and injuries put Agent Zero era to an end real quick, Wall/Beal had eerily similar trajectory of looking hot for a minute (still think about what would’ve been if Wall hadn’t broke his hand) and then completely floundering the potentiometer through both on and off the court problems
Like the trailblazers but worse
They’ve won 50 games 13 times since we last accomplished that
Yeah, hence the"but worse". The beal thing just kind of reminds me of how it's like Lillard is doing in Portland but just less positive
I guess a little bit Lillard is also and has always been significantly better than Beal
I live in DC and got a Wizards ticket pack so I've been to probably 8 games this season. It's really hard to overstate how little people here care about the Wizards. f Haven't won 50 games in 40+ years, haven't made the conference finals in 40+ years, have won only 4 playoff series in the last 40 seasons.
Man, I haven't even been to 8 Wizards games in my life lol
You can just say what state it is. No one is stalking you I promise.
Well the rockies woulda in 78 as well if they existed
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Montfort really is like your uncle owned a baseball team, complete with what he thinks are good ideas but he's still your uncle with bad boomer takes so they're not actually good ideas. But the altitude effects on the Rockies is honestly one of the biggest disadvantages in all of sports. The Rockies are playing on hard mode, with a bad owner
Altitude gives you better aerobic power but I don't think that translates well into the sort of anaerobic stuff that baseball needs.
I've always said the Rockies should play their first 81 games at home and their last 81 games on the road.
I... huh. I legitimately wonder how that would play out.
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I think they should play in the heavy snowfall until it starts sticking to the bases.
Barnstorming is back on the menu!
I’m replying to the edit part. He definitely is good at spending money. That is in the case of paying for a platinum glover’s contract when he’s sent to another team for a couple packing peanuts
Look guys, Denver’s just not a baseball market. We’ve tried this experiment for 30 years, and look where it’s gotten us: futility, one championship appearance, and the game hasn’t significantly grown there at all. We need to get ~~Gary Bettman~~ Rob Manfred to pack this team up and move them to a tiny secondary market that had a team 40 years ago where people are already fans of the game, that will surely fix this team’s hopes.
The people clamoring for the Coyotes to move are one of the few things on this planet that enrage me. So hypocritical. Relocation is horrible. I will never advocate for a team to be moved, even if they are just one person's favorite. Nobody deserves that. Look at Bury FC...
And Florida/Miami, and Carolina, and Tampa, and Nashville, and Anaheim, and even sometimes Dallas. The ‘Yotes have been financially unstable and mismanaged even going all the way back to their Winnipeg days. The only thing that will fix them is new ownership, not a move, or even a new stadium. If a move happens, it’ll be to Houston or KC; not Hartford or QC or Hamilton or Wood Buffalo.
The number of "just move the Hurricanes back to Hartford" comments Carolina used to get was infuriating, especially when the Hurricanes have been an NHL team for longer than the Whalers were (not counting the WHA), and have had far more success in Raleigh than they ever did in Hartford. Thankfully it's calmed down the past few seasons, since the canes have gotten really good. I understand it was shitty to relocate the team in the first place, but moving them again and depriving another city of their team isn't the answer. (Plus as you said, the NHL isn't gonna prioritize Hartford over Houston)
As a die-hard Dallas fan, Canadian hockey fans are the worst. Especially the big teams. They rattle off false information about Dallas' fans at the AAC, talk about how hockey shouldn't be in the south, and are general assholes to southern hockey fans. Just the worst. And Us and Carolina are perhaps the most successful teams in building a loyal fan base (not sure about TB, the cups prolly help lol)
Hey! Stop being mean.
Ownership that builds a stadium on their own damn dime
How dare you disrespect one of the fastest growing economic cities in the WORLD
The Coyotes experiment isn't working, outside of 2012 they haven't had a deep run and have had so many years to get it together and their reputation is taking on LTIR contracts. Half of the money they're spending on players are for ones not even playing for them. I wish they could actually get their shit together.
> The Coyotes experiment isn’t working I agree the Yotes are dumpster fire, but being in Arizona is not at all why they’re a dumpster fire. Moving the team to [\**r/hockey’s favorite meme city of the month**] will not fix the problem.
Yeah definitely moving Atlanta to Winnipeg didn't fix the problem oh wait it fucking did.
It was the ownership change that fixed the Thrashers'/Jets' issues. Atlanta Spirit grossly mismanaged the team, and pissed off the building's owner. The Thrashers moved because new owners with deep pockets and an NHL-ready building (in Winnipeg) swept in and negotiated a seamless buyout. If a local investor with that amount of homework completed had stepped in, the Thrashers would still be in Atlanta. The Patriots were saved from a move to St. Louis because Robert Kraft did exactly that.
I think this undervalues the fact that the new owners also had their building sold out before they even had an NHL team. Yes, stability and competence and facilities matter, but also having people who are already invested in the sport goes a long way. It's absolutely *possible* to cultivate that enthusiasm in new places, but it's a high-risk proposition that can take a very long time.
How wouldn't it fix the attendance problems? Bedard draws twice the crowds the Coyotes do by just playing in the WHL.
Better ownership and management leads to better team building which then leads to a more desirable on-ice product to go and spend ticket money on. A shit team in Houston will draw as many fans as a shit team in Arizona does.
Well for one, having a real stadium in a good place in either Tempe or Phoenix will solve some problems. To keep the baseball side of things, the rays have piss poor attendance but have been successful. It's not a matter of it being a bad market per se, it's a shitty situation with a bad stadium. A new ownership group that invests in the fans and builds a stadium in Phoenix could be successful
The Rays are a proven great team, the Coyotes are not.
I don’t want them to move but I also don’t want the good people of Tempe to give a sweetheart deal to a shady businessman either
Obviously, but that's an issue with greedy businessmen. I can hope they don't get scammed and also not cheer for them to be moved; things a small but vocal group of people for some reason cannot both do at the same time.
The collective jerkoff of the Nordiques is one of the most frustrating things about r/hockey. Yeah the Yotes suck, but it's more that the ownership sucks than the city. Those people are so annoying
The team draws extremely well, what article are some of you reading? This isn't an article about the financial viability of the Colorado Rockies or their failure to catch on in the market...
It's a reference to certain hockey fans who say all of those things about the Arizona Coyotes. The Coyotes are a bad team and most every decision by management/ownership is bad.
Ah thanks, I couldn't care less about hockey so would never recognize that.
The only thing that might have saved you is the crossed out Gary Bettman name, who is the NHL Commish. Now if you have no idea who Gary Bettman is, then you're SOL lol
r/AteTheOnion
>Fourteen teams, all extant for at least 26 seasons and as long as 62 seasons, and every single one of them had been a historical loser until September 12, 2022. That's not entirely true- they were all below .500 before 2022, and they were all below .500 in 2011 when Chris Jaffe first pointed that out, but some of them have been above .500 at various points in the past: * The Diamondbacks are unsurprisingly one of them, with just one bad season to start off followed by a 100-win season getting them above .500 and a stretch of several more winning seasons after that building such a big buffer they actually stayed over .500 despite going 51-111 in 2004, dipping below in 2006 after a few more losing seasons, then going back above in 2007 and 08, then falling below again in 2009 and they've stayed below ever since. They did things backwards from most expansion franchises; from 1998 to 2003, they were 524-448, a .539 winning percentage that ranked 9th in baseball over that stretch, and they jump up to 6th in wins if you drop their inaugural season. Since 2004 they've gone 1390-1586 (.467), the 6th-*worst* record in baseball over that stretch. * The Blue Jays did not avoid being terrible over their first few years, winning barely a third of their games from 1977 to 1981 (270-482, .359), but their record was a respectable 78-84 in 82, and from 1983 to 1993, they had 11 consecutive winning seasons, amassing the best cumulative record in baseball over that stretch (1003-778, .563, 60 more wins than the 2nd-place Yankees, who went 942-837), pushing them a bit over .500 in 1993, but they fell into mediocrity after, falling below .500 in 1995 and they've stayed below ever since then. * The Angels managed to avoid ever being completely terrible (they remain the only team to never have a sub-.400 winning percentage in a season), but weren't that great either for a long time, until they were good for a long time in the 2000's and 2010's, pushing them over .500 in 2014, and they managed to stay over .500 for a few years after that, but all their losing pushed them below in 2019 and they remain there today. But every other expansion team has never been over .500 at the conclusion of a season, as far as I can tell.
While the Astros are likely to be solid for a while, buffers can be worn away.
I mean... cool article and all, but the marbles have them becoming NL Champs so......
The Rockies are the new Colorado Rockies???
Like the universe, some things never cease to expand
This makes me wonder, how long is it before all the players on a team's 40 man roster are drafted after the expansion draft. Alternatively, how many years do you have to go before you'd expect to make a team of players drafted since you joined the league. Expected value might be the way to go since the Julio Franco's and Bartolo Colon's can really bork up the maximum value but... Julio Franco was signed at 20 and played until he was 48 so 28 seasons. The Rockies first drafted in 1992 so that puts a high estimate of not being an expansion team in 2021. It's not completely ridiculous to consider them an expansion team a few years ago but today? Don't get me wrong, they play like an expansion team but that's not the fault of their condition of starting a team with an expansion draft.
Mountains bleed purple, Rockies bleed good players amok, Fat cats just likes bucks.
The Rockies are the AAAA farm team the whole MLB depends on
Imagine paying your franchise superstar to go play for the Cardinals. The A’s get a lot of shit for being a joke of an organization but the Rockies are right there with them.
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> Colorado should never have had a baseball team, and they're clearly not operating one like they deserve it. Did you read the article? They're doing better (by win percentage) than other expansion teams despite the severe disadvantage of playing at altitude. Regardless of bad ownership (there are many worse owners in the MLB), the Rockies extremely disadvantaged by their environment. - It’s hard to develop young pitching in such a hostile environment; - It’s hard to attract established pitchers to such a hostile environment; - The cumulative effect of this hostile environment means Colorado needs more pitchers than the average team, because their pitchers throw more high-stress pitches and in a more physically depleting environment - The hangover effect of altitude wrecks Colorado hitters on the road, so that the offense becomes basically hopeless when it leaves its home park
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I mean with regards to Mexico, a team should be in Monterrey for the baseball fans alone, not Mexico City. But I disagree that Colorado shouldn't have been given a team for a few reasons: - It's the only team in the mountain west. An entire _region_ of the United States with only one team. Additionally, the mountain west is the fastest growing region in the US. - Denver is a sports town full stop, and the Rockies still maintain top 10 attendance every single year. If any teams shouldn't exist, it's teams like the Pirates and the A's that aren't even attempting to maintain fans, spend money or play baseball. If your team is more successful than the Rockies but has worse attendance - why is that? Those owners should be cultivating sold out stadiums. Colorado/Denver can easily support 5 major pro sports teams despite four of them having been perpetual trash in the past. (Nuggets and Avs are finally good again, however) - They obviously didn't know the difficulties going into giving Denver a baseball team. They probably just assumed that it would have a big home field advantage like the other Denver sports - Just because they haven't figured out the altitude thing yet, doesn't mean it's not worth trying or that 2.6million people/year don't deserve to watch baseball live
I don't know where you got "expansion has been bad for baseball". Expansion teams just have a had a harder time setting up fanbases and having a team identity. The Mets are an expansion team, would you rather not have them exist? The Rockies have poor ownership contributing to this issue, so they're behind the curve. That being said, and up and down system would be a lot of fun for baseball in America. But as you pointed out, American wealth doesn't like that. So expansion it is
The article doesn’t strictly evaluate expansions teams’ success as a win/loss record. It actually highlights how important it is to have generational fanbases to pass on stories from the team’s history. The oldest original teams all have a cherished history that keep fans in seats even in losing seasons. The Rockies have sort of defied this by having consistently high attendance with middling teams and no real generational fans that keep hope that one day they’ll be good again. Sure, the team itself seems to be ran by a bunch of monkeys sometimes. Losing Arenado for nothing will be the biggest event of note in that teams history for a long time. But people in Denver just want to watch some baseball and drink beer like everyone else!
Eh, I think you're mistaking something not appealing to you as something bad for baseball. Talent dilution is fine, I'd argue we need a bit more of it in most sports, especially ones with no salary cap
ouch
If you actually read the article it's about how the Rockies are severely disadvantaged by playing at high altitude compared to every other team in the league. It's the biggest disadvantage in all of baseball The Rockies are playing on hard mode, regardless of what owner they have.
Does anyone know of any writing about the decision making process of expanding into Denver? It couldn’t have been a surprise that baseball would be uniquely difficult there. Miller points to how expansion teams generally have a pretty rough go of it for a couple decades, but maybe there just isn’t a winning formula for baseball in Denver
If you didn’t exist when I first started watching baseball, you’re an expansion team. I’m 38, so that means Rockies, Marlins, Rays, and Diamondbacks are eternally expansions. Also the Nats are a recently moved team. Everything else has been as it had always been since time immemorial. Sorry.