400 Losses in Four Years, a 5.81 Team ERA, and One Number Paul DePodesta Has to Fix

The Colorado Rockies finished 2026 at 58-104. That is a bad baseball team, and it is also — weirdly — the most encouraging thing that has happened in Denver since 2023.

Start with the raw ledger. Colorado scored 752 runs and allowed 944, a minus-192 run differential. Compare that to 2025's 43-119 disaster, which featured a minus-424 differential on 597 runs scored and 1,021 allowed. That's 15 more wins, 155 more runs scored, and 77 fewer runs allowed in a single year. For a club that had spent three seasons inventing new ways to embarrass itself, a 0.358 winning percentage counts as genuine movement.

It still wasn't enough to avoid history. The Rockies became the fifth team in MLB history to lose 100 games in four straight seasons, and the first since the Mets did it from 1962 through 1965. Four years, 400 losses. That's the headline most fans woke up to.

The Rotation Is the Whole Story

Here's the number that explains the 104 losses: a 5.81 team ERA across 1,276.1 innings. Colorado's staff posted a 1.55 WHIP, served up 214 home runs (1.51 per nine), and struck out just 7.01 batters per nine. Twenty-five pitchers took the mound and combined for 31 saves.

Kyle Freeland's season doubles as a symbol. The lefty made 26 starts, threw 135.1 innings, and finished with a 6.65 ERA, a 1.52 WHIP, and 29 home runs allowed against just 108 strikeouts. His final start — the loss that pushed Colorado to 100 defeats — may have been his last in purple, and the reporting around it treated it that way.

Injuries didn't help. Chase Dollander spent the year on the 60-day IL, as did Kris Bryant, whose contract has become a running referendum on the previous front office's loyalty-first approach.

DePodesta's First Deadline Was Quiet — and That's the Point

The 2026 deadline was the first for Paul DePodesta and Josh Byrnes running baseball operations. They moved Brenton Doyle to the White Sox and not much else, a level of inactivity that drew "underwhelming" grades from the fan base. DePodesta addressed it publicly and, by most accounts, framed the restraint as intentional rather than passive.

The organizational logic is visible elsewhere. Tyler Freeman was bumped off the 40-man roster after a contact-heavy, power-light season. Roster churn raised the floor. The power-ranking model slots Colorado 29th at a minus-1.32 runs-neutral rating, but that is up from a minus-2.402 prior, and the club has been modestly profitable against market expectations — the public may still be overrating how bad this roster actually is.

Ownership Is Shifting, Slowly

Off the field, the Penner Sports Group bought 40 percent of the team in April, and reports in the Denver Gazette suggest the Monforts may sell another 35 percent. Walker Monfort, now president, and DePodesta met media at season's end to discuss pitching, the new partners, and the road forward — a conversation that made clear the 2027 budget, not the 2026 record, is the real storyline.

Four straight 100-loss seasons buy a franchise either clarity or another decade of drift. The Rockies finally have a front office that talks like it knows the difference. Whether they act like it this winter — starting with a rotation that just posted a 5.81 ERA — is the only question that matters.