Sean Keeler: Rockies, Dick Monfort need thinking cap, not salary cap, in 2025

Sean Keeler, The Denver Post on Mar 24, 2025

Published in Baseball

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DENVER — The only cap Dick Monfort needs is a thinking one, preferably a number with a little less tin foil on the crown.

From 2021-24, according to Spotrac.com, the Colorado Rockies spent $25.4 million more annually than the Arizona Diamondbacks to finish, on average, 10 games back of them. The San Francisco Giants outspent the Rockies by $37.8 million per season over that span to finish an average of 21 games ahead of them.

Over that same four-year stretch, the Rockies spent $2.19 million per win. Arizona, which went from 52 victories in ’21 to a World Series in ’23, spent $1.58 million.

Among their National League West peers, Colorado’s per-win cost ranked third — trailing only the hated Dodgers’ $2.37 million and the Padres’ $2.42 million. From 2021-24, the Rockies fell short of third place in the West by an annual gap of 17 games.

When Monfort complains about competitive imbalance, fairness or purity in Major League Baseball, he’s either deflecting or delusional. Or, quite possibly, both.

The problem with the Rockies is not that the lack of an MLB salary cap is somehow keeping them from living in the same swanky neighborhood as the Los Angeles Dodgers. The problem is that if Monfort and Los Angeles had the same $100 million to spend, the Dodgers would snap up six All-Stars, while the Rockies would buy a hotel and Kris Bryant.

The problem isn’t that the Rockies won’t spend money. It’s that the dogma of John Allison guides their real estate, and the spirit of John Blutarsky picks their baseball players. The Bryant contract — $182 million for 17 home runs and 60 RBI through three seasons — is well on its way to making Brock for Broglio look like “Pride and Prejudice.”

With a payroll of $146.1 million in 2024, the 61-win Rox still outspent the Kansas City Royals (86 wins), Baltimore Orioles (91), Cleveland Guardians (92), Detroit Tigers (86), Tampa Bay Rays (80) and Pittsburgh Pirates (76).

Among division rivals, the Rockies ranked third — again — in payroll cost per victory last season. The Dodgers spent $2.6 million per win (98 victories). The Giants spent $2.5 million (80). The Rox spent $2.4 million (61). The Diamondbacks spent $2.0 million (89). And the Padres spent $1.9 million (93 victories).

Colorado ranked a perfectly middling 17th out of 30 MLB franchises in total payroll in 2024 and finished 14th in 2023. It lost a combined 204 games for the trouble.

The problem isn’t the lack of a salary cap. The problem is a franchise that refuses to let go of 2018, the way the Broncos took too long to move on from 2015. An unholy brew of ownership issues, leadership vacuums, stubbornness, terrible hires and nostalgia forced the orange and blue to spend a decade in the NFL wilderness before Dove Valley tasted the playoffs again.

At this rate, it might take the Rockies two decades.

An old pal of mine — a Dodgers fanatic who adores Monfort the way Bugs Bunny adored Elmer Fudd — likes to joke that there are only two types of Rockies fans left at Coors Field by the All-Star break: Barely alive or barely sober.

Although, do you blame them? Our Rox are a walking bundle of baseball insanity, Looney Tunes from the top down. How else do you explain doing the same things over and over and over again, then having the temerity to complain when there isn’t a different result?

A salary cap isn’t the solution, just like spending isn’t the problem. The problem, eternal and insurmountable, is an organization rooted in the worst type of American rich — small-town rich. The kind of rich that rewards cajolery over competence; where 50-cent heads write $4 million checks to $400,000 arms; where ignorance and ego beat imagination and insight into silence and submission.

There is something to be said for a Major League Baseball team that still runs a 2001 organization in 2025. But it’s not something kind.

The Broncos had to change hands to finally learn how to win again. The Rockies, meanwhile, remain trapped in baseball purgatory as a meat packer’s toy, building a home team for Phillies red and Cubbies blue to pound senseless while Denver’s transplants toast $3 drafts.

The Monforts have fracked what could be a great baseball town into a dry husk of indifference. Burning through that much money is negligence. Burning through that much hope is cruel.

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