Before the Padres made a 29-year-old Randy Smith baseball’s youngest general manager, he was the first baseball operations chief for the expansion Colorado Rockies.
This was well before high-speed cameras, triangulation and computing horsepower revolutionized how the game was observed. Instead, Smith and other Rockies executives leaned on some 40 years of minor-league baseball at Mile High Stadium — once the home of the Denver Bears and the predecessor to Coors Field — as they built a team for the 1993 expansion season and beyond.
“The thought was really to get as many sinker-ball guys as we could and keep the ball on the ground,” Smith recalled. “In theory, that sounds good.”
Again, in theory.
In reality, pitching in altitude remains a mystery that the Rockies — and visiting teams like the Padres — have yet to truly solve 30 years into the Coors Field experiment that began in 1995 after two years at Mile High Stadium.
The Rockies have just nine winning seasons and none since making back-to-back wild-card playoff appearances in 2017 and 2018. The “Blake Street Bombers” — Dante Bichette, Larry Walker, Vinny Castilla and Andres Galarraga — showed how the Rockies could mash their way to wins at 5,200 feet above sea level. But the Rockies’ brass has been unable to sustain that success, and the conditions have chewed up all kinds of arms along the way.
Coors Field has provided a unique experience for a Padres team that’s struggled to win in Denver.
The Padres have won at just a .390 clip in Denver since emerging as a playoff-caliber club in 2020. Their 109-145 all-time record (.429) there is akin to their winning percentages at places with a whole lot more to celebrate. The Padres’ winning clip at Dodger Stadium is .421; it’s .422 in Philadelphia.
The Padres’ own record book provides a glimpse of the bonanza of offense that occurs in the thin air and vast power alleys at Coors Field.
The first two cycles in franchise history (Matt Kemp in 2015 and Wil Myers in 2017) occurred in Denver. On the flip side, the 14 hits and 11 runs that Clayton Richard allowed on July 19, 2017 are both tied for the most ever allowed by a Padres pitcher.
The largest defeat (20-1 in 2005) and most extra-inning hits (21 in 2019) that occurred at Coors Field are also tied for franchise records. The Padres have scored at least 15 runs in a game 41 times in franchise history; eight of those outbursts have happened in Denver.
It’s why Fernando Tatis Jr. (1.065 OPS) and Jake Cronenworth (1.026 OPS) can’t wait to get to Coors Field — and why so many people without a bat in their hands feel as former Padres radio play-by-play announcer Ted Leitner did while watching so many games at the Rockies’ home park.
“It’s never been baseball,” he said. “It’s a bastardized version, a video game.”
Baseball ‘on the moon’
Why that’s the case has been chronicled in depth throughout the years.
There’s less drag on baseballs flying through thinner air in Denver, and the dryness of the climate results in bouncier baseballs. Mis-hits fall in for singles with more regularity as outfielders guard against extra-base hits.
The Rockies began storing baseballs in humidors in May 2002 to begin to combat the atmospheric effect. By 2022, Major League Baseball began requiring baseballs to be stored in standardized conditions across all parks.
To whatever degree that has helped — Coors Field has checked in as the best hitting environment in the majors in all but four seasons since stat geeks founded park factors in 1999 — it can’t offset what even Smith and colleague Bob Gebhard hadn’t fully grasped as they put together the Rockies’ expansion draft ahead of that 1993 season:
Even thrown baseballs are affected by the elevation.
“My first indication that it was going to be different was long toss in the outfield,” said Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman, who played at Mile High Stadium in the minors and later at Coors Field. “The ball at sea level naturally tails back, and in Denver, the ball goes off on a different trajectory. It feels like you’re playing catch on the moon.”
The bigger the expected break of a pitch, the bigger the impact.
Sinkers, depending on the pitcher, are generally functional. Same with cutters and lower-spin changeups.
The data is so precise these days that Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla knows to account for about three less inches of movement on pitches before even stepping onto the field there.
That informs where pitchers start some of their breaking balls and perhaps the “out” pitches called by catchers.
Some of Niebla’s pitchers will wrap their heads around that information, but the Padres generally believe that less between the ears at Coors Field is more.
“The more you discuss things, the more they’re in your head,” Niebla said. “We want to make sure we keep our focus on the battle of the at-bat, the execution and making sure we have awareness of what those pitches do.”
Added veteran Joe Musgrove: “I personally feel like I leave Colorado a better pitcher. Because you do have to go in knowing you can’t leave balls up and that balls in the air have a chance to go. It’s really just an extra level of focus to finish pitches. You’re not trying to do anything different. Sometimes we limit sinkers or curveballs or sliders. They don’t grab (the air) as much.”
The change in break was so much that former Rockies outfielder Charlie Blackmon would drag a pitching machine onto the field during early work on the club’s first day in a new ballpark.
“Just to get acclimated,” said Padres minor-leaguer Connor Joe, a former teammate of Blackmon’s, “calibrated for how sliders and sweepers would move on the road versus sweepers and sliders in Denver.”
The Rockies are also diligent about their workload and the effects of altitude over the course of a season, Joe said.
Likewise, visiting teams like the Padres pace their conditioning and pregame work during trips to Colorado — especially if they don’t get an off-day ahead of the series to adjust to the thinner air.
The effects are so impactful that Musgrove skipped a trip there to 2023 — the year he was dealing with elbow bursitis — to avoid the headache altogether.
“Being at a higher elevation, your body doesn’t recover as well, you’re not taking in as much oxygen and so the tissue recovery is not as good,” Musgrove said. “Guys fatigue a lot, and we talk a lot about if somebody’s throwing the first game back home after a Colorado series and they are not going to be throwing there, it doesn’t make much sense to send our guys there, have them throw a bullpen, try to recover in high elevation and then fly back home and throw the next day (in San Diego).
“It’s just something that we’ve tried over the last year and a half to two years to keep our guys fresh and keep us from making an unnecessary trip that’s going to cost us in our performance.”
Then there’s what a trip to Coors Field can do to a pitching staff as a whole.
The Padres are fortunate to have an off-day to regroup after their bullpen blew leads on Tuesday and Wednesday in New York. Two years ago, they were especially lucky to have off-days sandwiched around a three-day June trip to Colorado.
They were not so lucky in June 2019, when the Padres and Rockies combined for 92 runs in a four-game series at altitude. The Padres called on the bullpen 19 times in that series, resulting in nine pitchers either coming and going in and around the trip. One of them, Robert Stock, was called up and optioned out within a day.
“You knew when you went into Colorado, something might happen,” then-pitching coach Darren Balsley said. “You’re crossing your fingers.”
Heartbreaker
And yet — the result aside — Balsley counts Game 163 in 2007 as “maybe the best baseball game” he’s ever seen.
The Padres had saved NL Cy Young winner Jake Peavy for a potential play-in game at Coors Field if they couldn’t clinch in Milwaukee.
Peavy got the start, then coughed up three runs inside the first two innings.
An Adrián Gonzalez grand slam keyed a five-run fifth inning, and the Padres took the lead. Peavy gave up the lead again before exiting in the bottom of the seventh with the Padres down 6-5.
A half-inning later, Brian Giles doubled in the tying run.
Soon, Game 163 headed to extra innings. Scott Hairston hit a two-run homer in the 13th, giving the Padres the 8-6 lead.
But no lead is safe in Colorado, even with a Hall-of-Famer in the back of your bullpen.
Kazuo Matsui greeted Hoffman with a double in the bottom of the 13th. Troy Tulowitzki followed with one of his own. Then Matt Holiday tripled to tie the game. After an intentional walk to Todd Helton, Jamey Carroll lofted a fly ball deep enough to right field for Holliday to (ahem) score the game-winner.
“To this day, I don’t think he’s touched (home plate),” former Padres manager Bud Black told a room full of reporters in November 2016, when he was introduced as the Rockies’ new manager.
That’s beside the point.
The way the game played out is exactly why the hair was raised on the back of team officials’ necks as they waded into Coors Field for a win-or-go-home game that year.
And it’s why, to this day, any trip to Denver is cause for concern.
“My first couple of years, it was back and forth. We’d score. They’d score. We’d score. They’d score,” Padres bullpen coach Ben Fritz said. “You’re always on the edge of your seat out there.”
Yes, even now. Even with the Padres sitting at 23-13 and the Rockies on pace to set a modern-era record for losses in a season.
Asked for his own Coors Field horror story, Niebla was succinct. It begins, he said, “every time we walk in there.”
Love …
These 10 Padres loved hitting at Coors Field (minimum 80 plate appearances):
1.223 OPS | 1B Wally Joyner (1996-99, 2 HRs, 27 RBIs, 20 games)
1.217 OPS | OF Steve Finley (1995-98, 7 HRs, 25 RBIs, 24 games)
1.179 OPS | 3B Phil Nevin (1999-2005, 12 HRs, 44 RBIs, 32 games)
1.107 OPS | 1B Ryan Klesko (2000-05, 14 HRs, 46 RBIs, 45 games)
1.068 OPS | 1B Wil Myers (2015-22, 14 HRs, 43 RBIs, 55 games)
1.065 OPS | OF Fernando Tatis Jr. (2019-now, 6 HRs, 21 RBIs, 27 games)
1.049 OPS | SS Khalil Greene (2003-08, 12 HRs, 35 RBIs, 41 games)
1.026 OPS | INF Jake Cronenworth (2020-now, 6 HRs, 27 RBIs, 38 games)
1.023 OPS | 1B Adrián Gonzalez (2006-10, 15 HRs, 54 RBIs, 47 games)
1.013 OPS | 3B Ken Caminiti (1995-98, 8 HRs, 26 RBIs, 25 games)
… and hate
These 10 Padres pitchers struggled at Coors Field (minimum 20 innings)
14.90 ERA | RHP Woody Williams (1999-2006, 29 IP, 15 HRs, 2.55 WHIP)
10.41 ERA | RHP Edinson Volquez (2012-13, 23 ⅓ IP, 4 HRs, 2.40 WHIP)
8.88 ERA | LHP Robbie Erlin (2014-19, 25⅓ IP, 5 HRs, 1.66 WHIP)
8.67 ERA | LHP Clayton Richard (2009-18, 54 IP, 11 HRs, 1.93 WHIP)
7.71 ERA | RHP Joey Hamilton (1995-98, 21 IP, 2 HRs, 2.29 WHIP)
7.54 ERA | LHP Blake Snell (2021-23, 22 ⅔ IP, 4 HRs, 1.81 WHIP)
7.17 ERA | RHP Adam Eaton (2000-05, 64 IP, 10 HRs, 1.78 WHIP)
6.35 ERA | RHP Sterling Hitchcock (1997-99, 28 ⅓ IP, 9 HRs, 1.80 WHIP)
5.87 ERA | RHP Andy Ashby (1995-99, 31 ⅔ IP, 6 HRs, 1.36 WHIP)
5.85 ERA | RHP Trevor Hoffman (1995-2008, 32 ⅓ IP, 7 HRs, 1.39 WHIP)
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