Coors Field is a wonderful place to watch a baseball game, the stretch of breweries that lead up to the stadium make for a perfect pregame, and the 2026 Colorado Rockies will in all likelihood stink the joints up to high heaven.
I’m a casual follower of the Rockies, considering them my B-team even if the rest of baseball considers them more the Z-team. After last making the playoffs in 2018, the club hasn’t posted a winning percentage better than .460, and last year suffered the third-most losses in the history of the modern era, with a frankly pathetic 43-119 record. They’re in a division with four teams that all have very real playoff aspirations, whether they’ll make it or not, and while the team has actually made a couple of additions in the winter, the Rockies will almost certainly finish at the bottom of the table again.
Those additions did include pitchers, which has not always been the case when you play on the moon. Michael Lorenzen and Jose Quintana are real MLB pitchers that boost the depth of your rotation, albeit ones that will be asked to fill in as No. 2 or 3s when they really shouldn’t be. The Rockies also inked Tomoyuki Sugano, and I’m excited to watch someone set an MLB record for the single-worst pitching season of all time.
Hunter Goodman is the standout offensive performer, a 3.5 win catcher last year with an above-average bat. Mickey Moniak took a prove-it, one year $4 million contract to help add some thump to the lineup, and while he might be the worst defensive player in the league, he should be able to up the floor of the team’s offense. And then, there’s Ezequiel Tovar.
The mercurial shortstop, still just 24, is kind of Colorado’s version of Anthony Volpe. He was a four-win player in 2024, with a bat that was effectively league average and stellar defense. He’s never hit close to league average in any of his other three seasons, and took a step back defensively in 2025. You would point to him leading off an MLB lineup based on reputation, but he’s never had a season with an OBP over .300.
Kris Bryant, meanwhile, may be the greatest tragedy in MLB. The onetime MVP has been broken down by a degenerative back condition, and he will start 2026 on the 60-day IL. More to the point, his own comments this spring have detailed how he lives his life in daily pain, and it’s fair to speculate whether he will ever play in the big leagues again. More importantly, how he is able to manage that pain is going to directly influence his overall quality of life, and I hope some kind of medical solution presents itself.
It’s hard to write about the truly, truly bad teams. I wrote back in November about these same Rockies, directly comparing them to the Yankees as a reminder of just how good we have it. Earlier today I published a post on Elston Howard, and tomorrow I’ll have a preview of Aaron Judge — the past, and the present, stories of Yankees legends. With all due respect to Larry Walker and Todd Helton, the Rockies only have so much of the former, and they have nothing of the latter. They also have one of the worst farm systems in baseball, so their future is fair to be skeptical of. Enjoy the atmosphere of Coors Field, Denver friends, and try not to look too closely at what’s happening between the lines.
More Pinstripe Alley MLB team season previews will be available here.