Colorado Rockies

Franchise Record: (through 2023) 2,260-2,598 (.465) Post Season Record: 10-14 (.417) World Series Titles: 0 National League Pennants: 1 (2007) Playoffs: 5 (1995, 2007, 2009, 2017, 2018) Franchise Players: Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, Ellis Burks, Vinny Castilla, Jhoulys Chacín, Aaron Cook, Kyle Freeland, Andrés Galarraga, Carlos González, Todd Helton, Matt Holliday, Jason Jennings, Ubaldo Jiménez, DJ LeMahieu, Germán Márquez, Ryan McMahon, Jorge De La Rosa, Trevor Story, Troy Tulowitzki, Larry Walker Retired Numbers: 17 - Todd Helton; 33 - Larry Walker; 42 - Jackie Robinson (retired throughout Major League Baseball) Ballparks: Mile High Stadium (April 9, 1993-August 11, 1994) (76,123), Coors Field (April 26, 1995-) (50,381) Winningest Manager: Clint Hurdle, 534-625, .461 W-L%

Colorado Rockies Logo

Team History

The Colorado Rockies began play in 1993 as part of the expansion of 1993, alongside the Florida Marlins; those were the first two teams to be added to the National League since 1969. The Rockies sold out every game playing in Mile High Stadium in 1993 and 1994 and sold out their initial season at Coors Field (1995) when they reached the postseason for the first time as the first-ever Wild card team in the NL, but attendance dwindled over the next seasons due to a losing team. In their first postseason series, the Rockies lost in four games to the Atlanta Braves in the Division Series.

After stalling in the bottom of the NL West standings for a number of years, the Rockies came out of nowhere in September of 2007 to win 13 of their last 14 games to force a one-game playoff with the San Diego Padres for the NL Wild Card. The Rockies won a wild and crazy 13-inning game at home to move to the postseason, and continued their incredible run by sweeping the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS and then the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NLCS. However, the fairy tale ended there as they ran into a juggernaut Boston Red Sox team in the 2007 World Series, and were swept in turn. It remains the Rockies' only World Series appearance to date. Essentially the same team caught fire again in 2009 after a slow start had cost manager Clint Hurdle his job. Under new skipper Jim Tracy, they rallied form 10 games below .500 to win the Wild Card spot for the third time in their history. They faced the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS but were eliminated in four games. They have not really been in contention for the postseason since then.

Because Denver, CO features the highest altitude of any major league city, the thin air allows batted balls to travel particularly well and also makes it harder for pitchers to throw breaking balls. This makes for high-scoring games; it inflates batters' statistics and inversely hurts those of pitchers. Over the years, the Rockies have been concerned about the impact of this effect on their teams, because hitters would become home run-happy at home, making them worse hitters on the road, and more importantly, pitchers would lose their confidence, something which would then carry over to their pitching in more "normal" circumstances. The high-scoring games also meant that pitchers had to throw a lot more pitches than average to get and more relievers needed to be used as a result. In order to reduce some of these extremes, the Rockies began the practice of keeping game balls in a humidor, a contraption designed to keep cigars at the right amount of moisture, something which has had some positive effect, although Coors Field still remains quite favorable to hitters. In 2012, the Rockies tried another radical step, moving to a four-man starting rotation with a very low pitch count of 75, while using relievers for longer stints; the experiment did not yield observable positive results and was ditched after one year.

The Rockies are one of the few teams in professional North American sports to have purple as their primary color. This choice of colors is a nod to the line "purple mountain majesties" in the patriotic song America, the Beautiful. The prominence of the color in the team's uniforms and other gear has varied over the years, but before the 2017 season, the Rockies confirmed that they were adopting a single shade of the color for all usages; the specific shade is Pantone 2685.

Rockies Managers

Don Baylor 1993-1998

Jim Leyland 1999

Buddy Bell 2000-2002

Clint Hurdle 2002-2009

Jim Tracy 2009-2012

Walt Weiss 2013-2016

Bud Black 2017-

Awards

• National League MVP:
  • Larry Walker 1997

• National League Cy Young Award:
  • none

• National League Rookie of the Year Award:
  • Jason Jennings 2002

• National League Manager of the Year Award:
  • Don Baylor 1995
  • Jim Tracy 2009

Famous Feats

• Perfect game:
  • none

• No-hitter:
  • Ubaldo Jimenez: April 17, 2010

• Unassisted Triple Play:
  • Troy Tulowitzki: April 29, 2007

• Four home runs in one game:
  • none

• Two home runs in one inning:
  • none

• Hitting for the Cycle:
  • Dante Bichette: June 10, 1998
  • Neifi Perez: July 25, 1998
  • Todd Helton: June 19, 1999
  • Mike Lansing: June 18, 2000
  • Troy Tulowitzki: August 10, 2009
  • Carlos Gonzalez: July 31, 2010
  • Michael Cuddyer: August 17, 2014
  • Nolan Arenado: June 18, 2017
  • Charlie Blackmon: September 30, 2018

Sources and Further Reading

• Peter Filichia: Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebrations of All 273 Major League and Negro League Ballparks Past and Present, Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1993.
• Thomas Harding: "Rockies outfitted with one shade of purple: New color is specific on all caps, jerseys, other apparel", mlb.com, January 30, 2017. [1]
• Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker, eds.: Major League Baseball a Mile High: the First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies, SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2018. ISBN 978-1-943816-77-4
• Manny Randhawa: The Blake Street Bombers, MannyBall.com, Middletown, DE, 2019. ISBN 978-1701428522