Should the Rockies Move From Denver

The Colorado Rockies have been in existence for 21 years, all in Colorado. During that time period they have made the playoffs 3 times and have been to 1 World Series which they lost. In the 1st season, they had 4 million fans come to their stadium, and that number has slowly dwindled down to 2.6 million this past year. The Rockies owner Dick Monfort wrote back a fan who complained about their stadium experience and said "If product and experience that bad, don't come" and also emailed back a fan who criticized the failures of the Rockies manager since they have not had a winning record since 2010 and said "By the way you talk maybe Denver doesn't deserve a franchise, maybe time to find a new home. " I do think the only way the Rockies will be successful is if they move because they will never be able to have good pitching if they stay in Colorado because of such a high altitude. The altitude has always helped their hitting because the ball has gone such a long way and that's shown by the success that the Blake Street Bombers and Todd Helton had, but the humidity also made Garrett Atkins and Brad Hawpe all-stars and those players had very limited success elsewhere. In their history they have only had 2 pitchers(min 100 IP) with ERA's below 4.00 in their career with the Rockies in Ubaldo Jimenez and Jhoulys Chacin. This is a problem that is not going to improve with time as no good ground ball pitchers will want to come to Colorado and the Rockies draft picks will not pan out. Because of this, I think it would be a good idea for the Rockies to move and these cities listed below would be good ideas in my opinion for the Rockies to move to. They would probably have to change their name as well to move to these places because Rockies probably wouldn't geographically make sense.

Las Vegas: Las Vegas is the largest city in the United States without a sports team. They do have the cash to build a stadium however but sports teams are unwilling to move there because of the heavy gambling there and if a major sports team went there then a lot of sports gambling would take place there and the leagues definitely do not want that. However, I think a move would be good for baseball because of the large market that is in Las Vegas.

Louisville: Louisville has a market which is comparable to Nashville and Jacksonville which is good enough to support a baseball team. In addition baseball has a history there with the Louisville Slugger which was the 1st baseball bat manufactured there.

Connecticut: Hartford has a large television market and it has the capital from the major insurance companies to finance a stadium. The citizens of Connecticut were spurned by Bob Kraft when it looked like he would move there but didn't and the Whalers left as well. They support Uconn highly and travel well so I'm sure it would be a good fit for them in baseball too.

Brooklyn: Baseball was very popular in the 1950's when it had 3 New York teams but it has gradually declined since the Dodgers and Giants moved to California, and football and basketball have risen in popularity. Now is a good time to revert back to the glory days and many New Yorkers would welcome another team to Brooklyn

Montreal: Fans of the Expos were very disappointed when they moved and are trying to persuade the Rays owners to move there. The Rays still want to stay in St. Petersburg however so I think it's a strong option for the Rockies should they decide to move

London: It seems like all the leagues want to move to London, and I think it would be a great idea for baseball to expand there because it would introduce a whole new market. 

Tokyo: I think this one would be a very good idea because if MLB had a team in Tokyo they might be able to persuade the Japanese to disband their league and start an international draft which I am strongly in favor of. This would truly globalize the game and make MLB the first global league.