The off-season is speeding by, and before you know it, there will be baseball games to play.
The Colorado Rockies will have pitchers and catchers report to their complex in Arizona on February 12th with
the first full squad workout occurring shortly after. By the end of the month, spring training will be in full swing with the World Baseball Classic and the 2026 regular season visible on the horizon!
While we wait for the baseball world to awaken in the spring, it’s time once again to dip into our mailbox and answer questions from our readers here at Purple Row.
When are the Monforts going to sell the team to the Penners so I can start supporting the Rockies again? — Sherwyn in Aurora
When is the Walmart family going to buy the Rockies? — Michael in Canal Winchester
“Will the Rockies be sold?” is a common question we get here at Purple Row, both in our comments and on our social media feeds. These two particular questions focus on the Rockies being sold to the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group, which purchased the Denver Broncos NFL team from the Pat Bowlen Trust in 2022.
The sale gave the Broncos one of the richest ownership groups in professional sports and helped the team escape a post-Super Bowl 50 era that saw a miserable quarterback and head coaching carousel, seven consecutive losing seasons, and an eight-season playoff drought. It was the worst stretch of football in Broncos history since the franchise put up 13 straight losing seasons from their founding as an AFL team in 1960 through 1972.
The Broncos now appear to have found their franchise quarterback in Bo Nix and have made the post-season in back-to-back years, including making it all the way to the AFC Championship this season.
That all sounds very appealing! The Rockies have been mired in their own stretch of awful baseball with seven consecutive losing seasons, three consecutive seasons with 100 or more losses, and their historically miserable 2025 season that ended with a 43-119 record.
Charlie Monfort has been a part of the Rockies ownership group since 1992, with his brother Dick joining him shortly thereafter. The Monforts purchased the controlling stakes from the late Jerry McMorris in 2005 and have remained the organization’s primary owners ever since.
There have been rumors that Stan Kroenke—owner of Kroenke Sports Entertainment, the Denver Nuggets, and the Colorado Avalanche—offered to buy the team in the past, but nothing substantiated.
With that out of the way, I might as well tear off the bandage now.
The Monforts are never going to sell the Colorado Rockies. Not to the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group. Not to anyone. If your Rockies fandom is solely dependent on ownership changing, you may as well pick another team at this point.
There have been no signs that Dick and Charlie Monfort would be willing to sell the team. Although Charlie Monfort has largely stepped away from the Rockies’ day-to-day, Dick Monfort remains the chairman and CEO.
The main hope for Rockies fans is that Dick Monfort—known for being meddlesome—would take a step back from daily baseball operations and let someone else take charge. For what it’s worth, that appears to be what’s happening. Monfort’s eldest son Walker was promoted to executive vice president mid-season last year, and he has since brought in an entirely new and expanded front office, new executives, and a revamped coaching staff.
With the Monfort family firmly at the helm of the Rockies organization with no indication of a sale in the pipeline. What do you think the team can do outside of heavy spending to become a playoff caliber ball club? The rebuild doesn’t seem plausible with our farm system and players often leaving / getting dealt as they are peaking. I don’t believe coaching is the difference, it seems as though they need a “Moneyball” type discovery to be competitive. — Chris in Lone Tree
You’re right that this team will never be heavy spenders like the Los Angeles Dodgers or the New York Mets. The Monforts simply don’t have the revenue or the capital. They will never be able to defer over a billion dollars in contract money or sign multiple free agent super stars.
With that being said, small- and mid-market teams can be competitive, playoff-caliber ball clubs. They just have to do everything else right when it comes to baseball operations: drafting, developing, and making both smart and cost-effective free agent moves.
The Rockies have historically not been good at any of these things. That’s where this rebuild truly starts, and it’s far too early to write the whole thing off as implausible.
So far, the organization is doing all of the right things. The entire coaching staff has been revamped—especially the pitching and player development side of things. Coaching is a tremendous difference maker, especially when they are young, innovative, and bought in to the idea of making baseball at altitude work. Meanwhile, Walker Monfort has also brought in a new and expanded front office, and that front office is working on evaluation and deployment of better resources throughout the farm system.
The front office also has to evaluate the talent within the system. The Rockies historically have held on to prospects and players for too long, even if they don’t fit into the vision of the organization or no longer have peak value. We have evidence that this is changing with the team letting go of several former top prospects—most notably Drew Romo—this off-season.
The Rockies have done things too poorly for too long. This is a from-the-ashes rebuild and we’re only just getting started. The 2026 season is about building a foundation and making incremental improvements to avoid repeating the 2025 season. It won’t be for several years until things start to fully come together.
What positon is Condon going to play in 2026? — Firedinger in Greenville
My understanding is that the Rockies view Charlie Condon solely as a first baseman moving forward.
Prior to the draft, Condon only played one season of third base at the University of Georgia in 2024 while the less defensively versatile Corey Collins—eventually drafted by the Mets—enjoyed a stupendous season at first. In 2023 he played mostly first base and outfield.
Condon played third base and left field in his professional debut with the High-A Spokane Indians in 2024, but it’s clear moving forward that the Rockies are prioritizing first base. In 2025 he played first base in 74 of the 99 games he appeared in, with ten appearances as a designated hitter, 11 in left field, and only five at third base. When Condon attended the Arizona Fall League, he played exclusively at first base.
While Condon is a versatile enough defender, he is still a bat-first prospect and his glove profiles best for first base.
Do you have a favorite piece of Rockies memorabilia? I just got a signed Chris Nelson ball at Rockies Fest that’s my new favorite addition to mine 🙂 — AB303 in Denver
I got some of the other Purple Row writers to chime in on this!
Evan Lang: “I own a lot of Rockies memorabilia, but my favorite is a Todd Helton autographed baseball from the 1998 season that my dad gave me when I was a kid. It was my first ever autographed item.”
Sam Bradfield: “I have a signed Ryan McMahon drawstring backpack from when he won the Arizona Fall League Home Run Derby in 2016. I didn’t have a baseball or anything, so I asked him to sign my bag and he did.”
Skyler Timmins: “I have the ticket stub of my Dad’s first Rockies game in 1993. It was a rain check for August 20 against the New York Mets that was played as part of a doubleheader the next day, Rockies won 8-6.”
Renee Dechert: “I have two things. I got one of the original @ Rockies purple t-shirts, and I have a ball Jordan Beck fouled into the press box.”
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