Youth Movement? Fine, as long as there's movement - Colorado Rockies hit the final stretch of 2024

“… the best way to quiet them down is to win, and win all the time, and that’s what we need to do. I do feel like we are on the right track.”

– Dick Monfort, owner, Colorado Rockies, describing the best way for the team to respond to their critics

Sometimes, you work your tail off, just to find yourself right back where you started. You’re moving, and working toward something, and moving, and working towards something, and somehow all of that work plops you down right back where you began.

You’d think or wish that Dick Monfort gave that hope-filled quote up top sometime early in his history as the Rockies owner, but amazingly, those words aren’t quite 160 days old as of this writing. More impressively, they preceded what looked like Colorado’s first definitive decision in years to reset the table, give their youngsters a chance to work out some kinks, take the lumps that almost invariably follow, and see what gems they found worth keeping after the dust settled.

Amazingly, while the Rox players and coaching staff often acknowledege their relative youth, the club’s average age overall has often hovered near the middle of the pack this season. It comes up as Colorado has played the youngsters more often than many of the clubs “younger” than them on that average list, and recently moved even further towards youth by calling up Drew Romo while waiving recent All-Star MVP Elias Diaz.

While there have been several intriguing prospects found amongst the youngsters who do play, the team has struggled to have a consistent group on the field between injuries and changes. Those rotations have left them feeling a bit like they’re still finding themselves as an entity, and that work in progress has all of that movement feeling a lot like what they started out with. Worryingly right back where they started, with possibly more questions than answers. With less than 30 games left in this season, you might imagine not all of those answers look to come in 2024. You hope that at least the club, including Monfort, feels like what they have learned from this movement has them on that right track.

While the game the Rockies are playing feels very familiar in ways, maybe there is something new to the method of this madness. While they never out and out told their fanbase they were going to use this season as a lengthy tryout, they made sure to utilize the struggles they faced to get a good look at a lot more of the young talent than they historically do. If that leads them to a path forward with the right players out of the mix, then maybe being on a 60-win pace isn’t an effort taken in vain. You’d have expected this youth experiment to have produced an even less-efficient effort than last season, but with all of these learnings, 60 would actually place them a win better than last year’s unfortunate record-setter.

The truth will come to light when we end up seeing what they may have learned from the experience. If the Rockies use this two-year trip to the cellar to spring back with a new plan, right-priced stars, and even occasionally touching on the fringe of the playoff conversation in the next… couple years(?), there will have finally been a method to this baseball-bouncy-castle madness. This dedicated youth movement will have borne fruit.

But if the Rockies are still playing sub-.400 baseball by 2026 or 2027, you have to wonder if even the eternally sunny and Mile-High patience of Rockies faithful might finally be stretched too thin. Youth movements are fine, if they produce that second part. Movement. If Colorado simply finds itself circling back to the same old spot, you have to wonder if it isn’t the now-70-year old at the very top who should consider a new line of work.