Rockies are playing long, bad baseball games

Oh great, another feather in the "Rockies are bad" cap.

Colorado ranked dead last in Major League Baseball in pace of play last season, averaging 3 hours and 9 minutes per home game, according to Forbes' Maury Brown. The Rockies averaged fewer than three hours per nine innings at Coors Field against just three of their 14 opponents, and played the third-longest games overall among National League teams.

It's pretty easy to explain why the Rockies played home games long enough to make even New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox fans cringe. A 5.68 home ERA combined with leading the league in overall relief appearances (as well as relief appearances of fewer than three outs) results in a lot of prolonged innings and pitching changes. It also didn't help that Rockies pitchers led the NL in walks. Yikes.

In all fairness, visiting teams posted a 5.32 ERA in Denver, so it wasn't just the Rockies who were bad on the mound. But we already knew this; Coors Field produces a ton of offense and scores are inflated and pitchers are bummed -- so on and so on.

Here's the thing, though: baseball fans might not feel this is such a bad thing. Would we all like to see the Rockies play better baseball? Absolutely. Winning is fun, and the Rockies -- at 36-45 -- did not do nearly enough of that at Coors Field last season. But I can't think of many places I'd rather spend three-plus hours at than a ballpark -- specifically, the one at 20th and Blake.

Looks like that dastardly genius Dick Monfort wins again.