When she was built in 1906, the Daniel J. Morrell was designated the “Queen of The Lakes”, an unofficial title given to the longest vessel on the Great Lakes shipping channel. The Morrell was built for the Cambria Iron Company and thus named after one of it’s former General Managers, who later became an accomplished Republican congressman in 1866. The Morrell was set out on her maiden voyage in August of 1906 and was set carrying iron ore across Lake Huron for MA Hanna and Cambria iron processing plants in Pennsylvania before being taken into management by the famous Bethlehem Steel Company in 1930.

The Morrell sailed for 60 years as part of the iron shipping channel that proved to be the backbone of American industrialization. On November 29, 1966, the Daniel J. Morrell sunk in the waters of Lake Huron, taking 28 sailors with her as one of the deadliest shipping accidents on the Great Lakes.

The Colorado Rockies lost 119 games in 2025. A complete and total collapse of a structure and belief system put into place since at least 2014 when Jeff Bridich took team control. For years, the Rockies were an organization that made just enough moves to win 70-75 games. Bad, but not miserable. But last season, the bottom fell out. Talent analysis, coaching, and plain old bad luck are to blame for a historically bad season but there is no bones about it, the Rockies ship was heading to the bottom of the lake. A farm system without any premium talent, a major league roster without a valuable player, a front office adrift of a plan or any idea how to implement one even if they did have one. During 2025, there was very little to be optimistic about within the Rockies organization.

Seeing this and perhaps recognizing it for the first time, Dick Monfort and his son Walker fired GM Bill Schmidt and brought in an outside brain to manage the organization’s baseball product. This brain became Moneyball’s brightest mind Paul DePodesta and with him he brought Dodger’s farm system director Josh Byrnes. For all the jokes about how Dick Monfort has hired the brightest minds of 2005, there is a lot to be said about the hires here. DePodesta represents the first true “outside hire” since Dan O’Dowd in 2001. The insular rot that had flowed since that time period is almost the entire cause for the organizations collapsed from sustained mediocrity with sporadic bouts of quality to…well, 119 losses. For the Rockies, an organization that apparently didn’t even have post-game analysis of their own pitchers, this is a sea change.

In the early morning hours of November 29, a storm took hold on Lake Huron producing winds as high as 70 MPH and swells that were over 25 feet high, topping the height of the Morrell. The Morrell’s sister ship, the Edward Townsend, made the decision to shelter in the nearby St. Clair River. This meant that the Morrell was alone on the waters, heading for shelter on Thunder Bay. Around 2 AM, the ship began to sink. Some men leaped off the ship to the water, but in November the Lake Huron waters were only 34 degrees and many died from the leap, the shock, and the hypothermia. Eventually, the ship broke in half. Something that was later ironically blamed on poor steel manufacturing when the ship was built 60 years prior. The remaining sailors loaded into a life raft and went to the water. No distress call was ever heard from the Morrell, though a survivor stated he heard that the cable had broken.

The Morrell sank into Lake Huron with the men watching from the raft, hoping a ship would come to rescue them. But without a distress call, the ship would not be reported missing for ten more hours. Miraculously though, in the dark, with a sinking bow in front of them, some men spotted lights off the side of the ship heading toward them. Another boat had found them. Rescue, seemingly, had arrived.

PDP and Byrnes are now in charge of taking a sinking freighter and bringing it not only to shore but back to life on the channels. The Rockies are not dead, they are not at the bottom of a lake, they carry on. Part of the beauty of sports is you could be the worst team to ever exist one year but eventually you show up for work and that’s not what you are anymore. You’re the 2026 version of the Colorado Rockies now. The losses from last season are past tense, spoken about in generalities and not specifics, and brought up only as bad memories. It’s a beast for champions of sports to have to deal with this, knowing the season will turn again and eventually they won’t be champions anymore, but what a blessing for the teams that stink. They say that hope springs eternal on Opening Day, but for a team like the Rockies Opening Day offers simply an escape from talking about last year.

The Rockies have taken many opportunities to change what they were doing. Pitching staff completely turned over with new pitching coach Alon Leichman coming over from Miami and a new brain trust following with him, player development has taken on new names as well as the organization shifts it’s focus to rebuilding the structures that had been lost or left to rot under the Schmidt regime. Former prospects like Drew Romo and Yanquiel Fernandez were cut loose. Fringe trades and signings were made to stabilize innings, try different styles of player and pitcher, and set a new culture. The club was busy not only rebuilding infrastructure but working to take stabs at evaluating talent in a year they probably don’t have to win too much (just more than before). There is an opportunity not only in the “blank slate” that the FO has for their results but also the grace period they have to find what works and what doesn’t. An experimental era to pull an org out of the tailspin. This may sound simplistic, but the Rockies were so high on their own insular supply they weren’t even doing that under Schmidt. Stories are rampant that the previous Rockies were not using coherent strategies or a planning their analysis beforehand. These were things we used to joke about that became very true as the Schmidt regime spiraled out of control. The bar for improvement is quite literally on the floor.

There is much to consternate on both sides of the argument with the new front office. How much will they really have freedom to change? Are their ideas going to work? How can we gauge success early on and how long is this going to take? All fair questions, all without answers at this point. But there are lines of encouragement early in their tenure. An understanding that pitching in the modern environment requires more pitchers than you think, a true position battle mentality in places around the diamond, a departure from the sunk cost fallacy that riddled previous regimes. Byrnes and DePodesta have made moves that at least signal an attempt to construct things in their image. Whether that image is good or not, we’ll have to find out. But for now, there is optimism and a belief that maybe, just maybe, the team is at least normal now. Maybe not good, but normal. For Rockies fans, that’s enough, it represents a light in the darkness. A miraculous rescue.

As the lights got closer to the sailors, the hope that they had been rescued turned quickly. The lights they were seeing were not from another ship, there was no rescue here. What the sailors saw, tragically, was their own ship turned against them. The stern of the Morrell had turned on it’s own and was now barreling towards them, powered by the ship’s engine. When investigators found the stern they were able to discern it had traveled 90 minutes under it’s own power. A ghost ship. For a brief moment, the sailors were saved. But just as quickly, they were plunged into darkness again. Only one survived the night.

This is still the Rockies, after all. This is still Dick Monfort. DePodesta might appear to have the bandwidth to create something new, but what happens when Dick doesn’t like something? There are countless stories on this, where a new GM comes in and it all appears to be going great, only for it to collapse. What if PDP and Byrnes’s evaluations are bad? Do the Monforts turn back in house? Do they burn the bridges they are creating now? Are we seeing a light only to realize it’s the still sinking ship just sailing on, unaware of it’s impending fate?

None of that matters right this moment though. For now, it’s Opening Day. And the 2026 Rockies are different than they were before. Maybe not better, but different. The questions will get answered but there’s not a lot of reason to dwell on them too much. We won’t know if the lights are a rescue ship until we’re being pulled aboard, so why spend all our time trying to figure it out? Sports happen to us, whether we want to predict them or not.

162 to go. Guess we can try to enjoy one.

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