Colorado Rockies Are Selling, and the Pitching Explains Why

The Colorado Rockies are 42-67, which is the worst record in the National League, and they arrived there this week the way they have arrived at most things in 2026: by scoring enough and pitching nowhere near enough. Colorado lost four straight to close the stretch, dropped five of six overall, and got swept in a two-game set at Petco Park where the club is now 0-6 this season. Sitting 26.5 games behind the Dodgers with the August 3 deadline four days out, the Rockies are one of the few teams in baseball whose next week has no ambiguity in it at all. The interesting questions are about who stays.

Colorado Rockies drop four in a row in Milwaukee and San Diego

It opened with the good day. On July 24 in Milwaukee, Tomoyuki Sugano gave 5 1/3 innings of two-run ball in his second start back from a July stint on the IL with back spasms, Kyle Karros doubled and drove in a run, TJ Rumfield went 2-for-2, and Jordan Romano closed a 5-2 win.

Then the Brewers took over. On July 25 Ryan Feltner gave up nine hits and five runs in five innings and Milwaukee won 8-5, with rookie Cooper Pratt going 3-for-3 with a homer and three RBI. On July 26 it was 11-2, and the shape of it was familiar: Jacob Misiorowski struck out 12 in five innings while allowing one hit, Kyle Freeland gave up five in 5 1/3, and by the eighth Colorado had catcher Brett Sullivan on the mound. Cole Carrigg and Willi Castro homered for the only Rockies runs.

San Diego was more painful because it was closer. On July 28 the Rockies scored four in the third, led into the late innings, and lost 8-7 on a walk-off — Mickey Moniak homered and drove in three, Carrigg went 3-for-4, Castro homered, Ezequiel Tovar doubled in two, and Fernando Tatis Jr. went 5-for-5 for San Diego. Michael Lorenzen allowed eight hits in four innings, and Jimmy Herget took the loss. On July 29, Gabriel Hughes gave up a three-run fourth and Colorado lost 3-1, managing one run on a Sullivan single. The Rockies are 1-14 in their last 15 games at Petco.

The pitching is the worst in the majors, and Coors only explains part of it

Colorado has allowed 628 runs, carries a 5.54 ERA and a 1.53 WHIP, and both of those are last in baseball by a clear margin — the 29th-place Athletics are at 5.28. The staff has struck out 763 batters, among the fewest in the sport, and given up 152 home runs. That is the whole season in three numbers.

The starters the front office bought last winter to fix this have not. Lorenzen is 3-9 with a 6.54 ERA in 22 starts. Freeland is 2-10 with a 7.34 and 21 homers allowed in 99 1/3 innings. Feltner is at 5.73. Sugano, at 10-4 with a 4.69 ERA over 96 innings, is the one who has worked, and he is 36 and on an expiring deal. In the bullpen, Antonio Senzatela has quietly been excellent in relief — 9-2, 3.66 across 51 2/3 innings in 33 appearances — and Brennan Bernardino has a 2.62. Almost everything else has an ERA starting with a five or a six.

Injuries have not helped. Chase Dollander, the organization's most important young arm, has been out since mid-May with a right elbow strain and is on the 60-day. Jose Quintana is on the 60-day with a left elbow sprain. Jeff Criswell went back on the IL on July 18 with a shoulder strain barely six weeks after returning from Tommy John. Welinton Herrera and Jaden Hill are out. Brenton Doyle has been on a rehab assignment at Triple-A Albuquerque since July 23.

Hunter Goodman and the short list of things that work

Here is the part that gets buried under the record: Colorado ranks fifth in the majors in team OPS at .739. Coors Field inflates that, obviously, but there is real production in the lineup. Hunter Goodman has 31 home runs and a .871 OPS as a catcher, and he is the closest thing this organization has to a franchise player. Notably, when Ken Rosenthal reported on July 22 that the Rockies were fielding offers on essentially the entire roster, Goodman's name was absent.

Rumfield is hitting .293/.376/.467 with 13 homers and 22 doubles in 428 plate appearances. Jake McCarthy is at .293/.334/.491 with 10 homers and 17 steals. Karros has a .362 on-base percentage with 45 walks. Carrigg, the No. 6 prospect in the system, is hitting .296/.373/.519 in 159 plate appearances since his call-up. Troy Johnston has 24 doubles and a .355 OBP. Moniak's .561 slugging is the loudest number of the bunch, though his splits are extreme — a 1.079 OPS at home against .668 on the road, a caveat any acquiring team will apply.

The Tovar problem

Ezequiel Tovar is hitting .198/.245/.322 with 21 walks and 95 strikeouts in 369 plate appearances. He is 24, signed long-term, an elite defender, and was supposed to be a core piece of the next good Rockies team rather than a question about whether there will be one. He hit .269 with 26 homers and 45 doubles as recently as 2024. There is no injury explanation on the transaction log and no obvious fix in the numbers — the walk rate is where it has always been, the contact quality is not. How the organization handles the rest of his season is a bigger deal than any deadline return they are likely to get.

Colorado Rockies at the deadline: everybody's phone is on

The selling started on July 20, when Colorado traded reliever Seth Halvorsen to the Dodgers for right-hander Nick Frasso and outfielder Landyn Vidourek. Halvorsen was on the injured list with shoulder inflammation and on a rehab assignment at the time, which tells you the Rockies were willing to move value before it was fully on display.

Rosenthal reported on July 22 that Colorado is taking offers on "pretty much anybody and everybody," specifically naming Freeland, Lorenzen, Sugano and Senzatela among pitchers and Moniak, McCarthy and Castro among position players. MLB.com's deadline preview lists Castro and Moniak as candidates and Senzatela as an available reliever. The distinction that matters: Freeland, Lorenzen and Sugano are expiring or near-expiring veterans who will bring back very little, while Moniak, McCarthy and Castro have club control and could actually move the needle in a return.

What's next

Colorado is off Thursday, then hosts Kansas City for three starting Friday with Sugano lined up — a start that will be scouted by more front offices than usual. Tampa Bay comes to Denver August 3-5, meaning the deadline passes during the series, and the roster that finishes that homestand will not be the one that started it. Then it's three in St. Louis. For all of it, the framing worth keeping is that 42-67 through 109 games is genuine forward motion from where this franchise was a year ago, when it opened 22-74. The Rockies are 15-15 in one-run games and 24-29 at home, and 11-25 inside a division that includes the two best records in the league. That is not a good team. It is, for the first time in a while, a team where you can point at specific players — Goodman, Rumfield, Karros, Carrigg — and describe what the next one might look like.