This past off-season, Bud Black issued a letter to Colorado Rockies season ticket holders. Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page in terms of the background for this letter to a professional baseball team’s most loyal fans. The Rockies lost 101 games last season. They lost 103 games in 2023.
Those are the only two 100-loss seasons in franchise history. The Rockies have existed since 1993. They have never won the division. They have only reached the playoffs five times. They made it to the World Series once, and they lost.
All of that is to say, the Rockies just finished their worst two seasons. And they have had a lot of bad seasons.
Knowing that, Bud Black must have been issuing this letter to set the stage for big changes, right? This was a chance to level with the fans, agree that the current path is unacceptable, and state that things will be different moving forward.
That seems obvious, right? Surely the Rockies don’t think that they should keep operating as usual, that they are right on track and that their current plan is working?
If you know the Rockies, you’re already chuckling. If you don’t, let me give you a taste of their wacky outlook on the state of their franchise.
Imagine if you were in charge of a team that had failed for the last six years. Instead of sweeping changes, what if your solution was to keep doing the same thing that hasn't worked for those six years, insisting that it's going to work again because it did in 2018?
Let's ponder that question, and for comparison, let's look at how much some other things have changed since 2018.