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June was the month the Rockies gave back nearly everything they had earned in May.

A month ago, Colorado had clawed its way to 30-30, climbed back to .500, and forced its way into the middle of the National League conversation. There was still plenty wrong with the roster, but the Rockies at least looked stable. They were relevant. They had made the division race a little more crowded. And they had just enough momentum to make June feel important.

Instead, June turned into a collapse.

Colorado stumbled to an 8-18 month and opened July at 39-49, back in fifth place in the NL West and nine games behind the Dodgers. The Rockies also slipped to 10th in the National League wild-card standings, 7.5 games off the pace. After spending May pulling themselves back into the race, they spent June sliding out of it.

The shape of the month tells the story. Colorado opened June by sweeping the Angels, then took the first game of a series against Milwaukee to move to 34-32 on June 9. At that point, the Rockies were still above .500 and only three games out in the division. That version of the season still felt alive.

Then the bottom fell out.

From June 10 forward, Colorado went 5-17. The Rockies lost two of three to the Cubs at home, dropped a series to the Athletics on the road, lost another series in Chicago, got swept by Pittsburgh at Coors, got swept by Boston in brutal fashion, and then lost two of three in Minnesota before dropping the first two games of the Miami series to close the month. It was not one bad weekend or one ugly road trip. It was a full-scale unraveling.

The offense never found enough consistency to survive it.

Through July 3, Colorado ranked 14th in the National League in batting average at .228, 13th in on-base percentage at .298, 12th in slugging at .373, and 13th in OPS at .671. The Rockies were tied for 12th in runs scored with 338, 14th in hits with 661, and 13th in walks with 246. Even with 88 home runs, tied for ninth in the league, there just has not been enough traffic on the bases or enough pressure from top to bottom to sustain rallies.

The lineup still revolves around Hunter Goodman, and he remains the clearest source of thump in the order. Through 78 games, Goodman was hitting .263 with 20 home runs and 48 RBI. He has been the one reliable power threat all season, and without him this offense would look even thinner than it already does.

But the lineup around him remains uneven.

T.J. Rumfield has quietly been one of the steadiest bats on the club, hitting .278 with a .353 OBP and 33 RBI, even if the power has stayed limited. Ezequiel Tovar has continued to be productive in run-scoring situations, sitting on 10 home runs and 45 RBI, but the overall line is still modest at .230/.296/.391. Edouard Julien has supplied some power with 13 home runs and 35 RBI, though the .208 average and .317 OBP underline how inconsistent his season has been.

There were a few smaller bright spots. Braxton Fulford has made the most of his opportunities, hitting .300 with a .932 OPS in 22 games. Brett Sullivan, even with the injury interruption, gave the Rockies useful work when available, batting .292 with a .539 slugging percentage in 30 games. And after his promotion, Adael Amador gave the lineup an immediate jolt. In his first nine big-league games, he hit .370 with a .469 OBP, a .593 slugging percentage, and a 1.061 OPS. It is a tiny sample, but it was easily one of the most interesting developments of the month.

That mattered, because Colorado badly needed fresh life in the infield after Ryan Ritter landed on the 10-day IL on June 23 with a bruised collarbone. Amador was already forcing the issue in Albuquerque anyway. Before the promotion, he was hitting .325 with a .412 OBP, 9 home runs, and 51 RBI in AAA, and on June 22 he was named Pacific Coast League Player of the Week after going 11-for-21 with three homers and 14 RBI. His call-up felt earned, and his first impression in Denver only added to the sense that he belongs in the conversation now.

Still, one promising promotion could not cover up the larger offensive issues.

Willi Castro was down at .187. Jake McCarthy sat at .183. Brenton Doyle was at .197. Mickey Moniak, back from the fractured wrist, was only hitting .227. Jared Thomas was up but still settling in. Kyle Karros held his own at .259, but this is still a lineup with too many outs built into it. The Rockies have enough individual pieces to avoid being lifeless, but not enough reliable offense to stop a losing streak once it starts rolling.

The pitching staff was not good enough to carry them through it.

By July 3, Colorado’s team ERA sat at 4.66, 14th in the National League. The starters were 13th at 4.89, and the bullpen was also 13th at 4.36. Opponents were hitting .264 against Rockies pitching, also near the bottom of the league, and Colorado had already allowed 424 runs, 793 hits, and 114 home runs. The strikeout total, 636, ranked 14th in the NL. Put simply, the Rockies have not missed enough bats, and they have not prevented enough damage when they fall behind in counts.

Kyle Freeland has been the best starter in the group. He entered July at 6-1 with a 3.10 ERA in 87 innings, giving Colorado exactly the sort of stabilizing work it needed in the middle of a bad month. Jose Quintana has been more up and down, going 4-9 with a 4.65 ERA over 91 innings. Michael Lorenzen’s numbers continued to drift the wrong way, as he fell to 3-9 with a 5.50 ERA in 86.2 innings. Carson Palmquist, one of the newer rotation pieces, has had a difficult beginning, going 0-4 with a 7.31 ERA through six starts.

And then there is Chase Dollander.

His rookie line through 11 starts is a reminder of how hard this level can be, even for an important arm. Dollander was 2-7 with a 5.10 ERA, having allowed 35 runs in 54.2 innings. The upside is still obvious, and the organization is still right to let him learn through it, but June showed that his arrival was never going to be a one-step fix. Colorado needs him to become part of the answer. Right now, he is still fighting through the league’s counterpunch.

The bullpen, at least, had a few more trustworthy numbers. Jaden Hill has been excellent in the closer role, posting a 2.52 ERA with six saves. Zach Agnos has handled heavy work and already collected 11 saves despite a 3.48 ERA. Victor Vodnik has stayed useful with a 3.68 ERA. Antonio Senzatela remains one of the quietest stabilizers on the roster, logging 74.1 innings out of a long-relief role with a 3.87 ERA and a 6-1 record. But there have still been too many leaks elsewhere. Juan Mejia’s 6.00 ERA and Keegan Thompson’s 4.86 show how thin the margin can get in the middle innings.

The month also brought more roster churn.

Brett Sullivan went on the 10-day IL on June 2 with a strained PCL, opening a short-term path for Zac Veen to return from Albuquerque. Sullivan made it back on June 26, and Veen was optioned back down the same day. On June 23, Amador’s contract was selected after Ritter’s injury. And on June 26, the Rockies officially ended the Kris Bryant experiment by releasing him outright, a move that felt less like a surprise than a final acknowledgment that the fit, the production, and the plan had all run their course.

If there was a stronger story in June, it lived in the farm system.

Cameron Nelson won California League Player of the Week on June 8 after a hot opening stretch in Fresno. Clayton Gray followed by winning the same honor on June 15 after batting .423 for the week, and by month’s end he was hitting .319 with an .860 OPS in 34 California League games. Roldy Brito had the loudest headline of all, winning Northwest League Batter of the Month for June after hitting .346 with six home runs, 18 RBI, and 17 runs. For the season, Brito was up to .318 with 10 homers and 43 RBI. That is real momentum from a 19-year-old corner infielder the organization still sees as one of its more interesting bats.

And then, of course, there was Amador, whose promotion gave the Rockies at least one development to feel good about in the middle of the slide.

That is the tension of June.

The major-league club slipped hard. The Rockies went from .500 and third place to 39-49 and last place. They were outscored, outhit, and overwhelmed over large stretches of the month. Their season-long team rankings now live mostly in the bottom third of the National League, and the wild-card picture has started to stretch away from them.

But even in the middle of that, the organization kept producing names worth watching. Amador forced his way into the big-league lineup. Brito had a monster month in Spokane. Gray and Nelson made noise in Fresno. The pipeline is still moving. The problem is that the big-league club is no longer keeping pace with it.

So June did not just hurt Colorado in the standings. It changed the tone of the summer.

In May, the Rockies were trying to prove they belonged in the race. By the end of June, they looked more like a team being dragged toward harder questions. How much runway should Dollander get while he learns? Can Amador lock down everyday work already? How many more chances can the veteran core get if the losses keep piling up? And how quickly do the Rockies pivot from hanging around the race to figuring out which of these younger pieces should matter most in the second half?

That is where July begins.

Not with momentum. Not with urgency around a surge. With a 39-49 record, a 5th-place standing, and a season that suddenly feels far more fragile than it did 30 days ago.