Colorado Rockies news and links for Thursday, March 28, 2024
It’s been a long March.
The month is typically reserved for hope and optimism for baseball fans as the air fills the sound of cleats on dirt and the crack of wooden bats as winter thaws into spring in MLB camps around Arizona and Florida. However, this year has been much less satisfying for not just Colorado Rockies fans, but fans of the game of baseball.
Colorado’s performance and outlook is not the reason for this pessimism. Expectations are low after an abysmal 2023 campaign and the team has largely avoided the catastrophic injury this Cactus League season. If anything, spirits are raised after the seven-year extension of SS Ezequiel Tovar late in camp.
No, it’s the league the Rockies play in that is the bigger problem.
Do you remember the controversy surrounding the quality of the new Fanatics uniforms? It was an obvious issue that arose as soon as we got our first glimpses of players gearing up for the new season. The issue sparked plenty of attention and opinions while companies pointed the finger of blame for the eye-sores. But for the sport, it was largely just an embarrassing moment.
That seems like a long time ago now, as a sprawling sequence of PR black-eyes has been collected since then.
First was the lingering free agency of many big-name free agents – namely reigning Cy Young winner Blake Snell, former National League MVP Cody Bellinger and recent postseason demigod Jordan Montgomery. The list of available free agents had a common theme; agent Scott Boras.
It was clear MLB owners were raising the stakes in their fight against the super agent – a battle that has been going on for years now. The public bickering grew louder as the weeks passed with marquee names still available, creating more tension and animosity between players and the league.
This bubble of disdain continued to swell until it reached a head with a decry of a mutiny within the MLBPA centered around player representatives calling for lead labor negotiator Bruce Meyer to be ousted and replaced by Harry Marino.
This situation developed as the game of chicken between Boras’ clients and the owners dragged on before ironically becoming exacerbated by one of his clients signing. Matt Chapman’s three-year $54MM deal with the San Francisco Giants had a trickle effect within the organization, leading to the club cutting incumbent 3B J.D. Davis and diverting the majority of his $6.9MM salary for the season – a figure he earned through winning his arbitration hearing during the winter.
So the sport limped into an international soft opening of its regular season with the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers facing off in South Korea with a black cloud of labor tension, unsigned star players and objectively bad uniforms hanging overhead.
Then the real bombshell dropped.
Shohei Ohtani, owner of a record-shattering $700MM contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers and easily the most marketable player in the game and one of the most popular athletes in the world, has now been mired in a major gambling scandal involving his former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara.
At the time of writing, there are still plenty of unknowns to this latest (and largest) controversy and much more to come on the story. The optics are not good as the situation brings legends of the 1919 Black Sox and Pete Rose to mind. But, the keyword is once again “controversy”.
The sport has a proclivity of attracting the term. A habit that has seemed to grow more and more with each season to the point of essentially becoming synonymous to the league’s brand. As a fan of the sport, it’s becoming harder to endure the never-ending negative spotlight of the league and its business.
But it is finally Opening Day around the league, the full launch of the 2024 regular season. The Rockies will likely struggle mightily again this year and it will be painful to watch at times. But today is an opportunity to get back to baseball and embrace another summer seeing the best players in the world play what many die-hards consider the greatest game in the world.
That part never gets old, no matter how landmined to road leading up to it gets with distractions.
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BetMGM has Colorado tied for the worst odds to win the World Series (+50000) with the Oakland A’s and Chicago White Sox. They also have the over/under for the Rockies set at 60.5 wins for the 2024 season.
Colorado Rockies announce additional Rockies TV broadcast details | mlb.com
Official details on the Rockies broadcast schedule for the 2024 season with all of the teams 162 games airing either through through national channels like ESPN and TBS or through the new Rockies.TV streaming deck. Additionally, all members of the booth will return this season except Jenny Cavnar, who joined the Oakland broadcast team during the off-season.
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