The Colorado Rockies haven't had much go their way this season. They're on a historically bad pace, with an embarrassing 8-41 record heading into Thursday's game. With the Philadelphia Phillies finishing up their four-game visit, the results from the first three games of the series have turned out about as most of us expected.
After being outscored 25-12 in the first three losses of the series, the Rockies took their embarrassing season to a whole new level on Thursday morning. This time, it was off the field, thanks to an incident involving Phillies center fielder Johan Rojas and Coors Field security.
Johan Rojas took the brunt of Rockies security guards' incompetence
As The Athletic's Matt Gelb posted, Rojas went into the stands to make a phone call. It seems innocent enough, right? Well, that's until Coors Field security got involved and wouldn't let him back on the field, apparently not buying that Rojas was a player. According to Gelb, it took Zack Wheeler to convince the overzealous security personnel that Rojas was, indeed, a major league player.
To be fair, Rojas isn't a household name outside of Philadelphia. But, seriously, it can't be that hard to tell who's a player and who's not. You have to think he was wearing some Phillies-branded gear. Although perhaps that's what prompted the security guards to give him such a hard time. It must be tough watching a team like the Phillies and their National League-leading 31-18 record — not to mention the rabid fan base — invade your city for four days and lay an absolute beat down on your team.
While poor Rojas suffered through the embarrassing incident, it's unlikely this would happen to one of the more easily recognizable Phillies — at least you'd hope. It would be surprising to see Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber or Wheeler stuck in a similar situation.
That's not all Rojas had to deal with, either. Before the incident with the security guards, MLB.com's Paul Casella ran into the center fielder on the upper-deck concourse because the elevator wouldn't take him to field level. What?
To pile on to the embarrassing pre-game snafu, the Rockies' grounds crew got in on the act. In case you missed it during the game, Bryson Stott took the base with him on a slide while stealing second during the fourth inning. Stott looked baffled, and rightly so, when the bag came right out of the ground a little too easily. As Ben Davis said on the broadcast, that's something he's seen in little league, not the majors.
Phillies helped Rockies' embarrassing season get even worse this week
Now, as we've already touched on, the Rockies are a dumpster fire on the field right now and are somehow making the 2024 Chicago White Sox look relatively competent. How bad have they been? Colorado has a league-worst -157 run differential. The next team is the Baltimore Orioles at -85.
According to Maddie Rhodes of KDVR FOX 31, they just missed having the worst 25-game start in MLB history, with a 4-21 record. In part thanks to the Phillies' first three wins during their visit to Denver, the Rockies are going to have the worst MLB start through 50 games since the Wild Card was instituted in 1995.
The current record is held by the 2023 Athletics at 10-40. With the outcomes of Thursday's matinée yet to be determined at the time of writing, the best the Rockies can finish is 9-41.
It's hard not to feel for the players grinding out loss after loss on the field, but the poor decisions made by the folks in charge, makes it difficult to feel bad for the organization. Especially when the glorified bouncers at the ballpark extend the embarrassment off the field.