How the Colorado Rockies could have won the 2004 World Series

Personally, I’m a big fan of the video games from yesteryear, even though they may not be nice to the Colorado Rockies.

I’m particularly a fan of the MVP Baseball series from 2003 through 2005. MVP Baseball 2005 is still the best baseball game ever made and, frankly, I don’t think it’s that close. (When MLB The Show has a create ballpark mode, a 120-year dynasty mode, around 120 unlockable classic jerseys, 15 classic stadiums including some lovable dumps like Montreal’s Olympic Stadium (2005 was the first season of the Nationals and therefore, both of the Expos’ stadium in their last years were in the game) and Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, 60 unlockable Hall of Fame players plus players that were active then and are Hall of Famers now, great arcade modes, and where you can have your manager argue and get ejected by umpires on pretty much any call, you let me know.)

However, MVP Baseball 2004 is a close second. The cover of the game was graced by St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols.

The series was primarily on the PlayStation 2, the original XBOX, and the Nintendo GameCube. I have MVP 04 for both of the latter two. However, since the XBOX has a ton of memory on the system, I chose that just to see if I could make the 2004 Rockies better with going with the nostalgia that Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd seemed to be going with at the time with the signing of Reed and Castilla.

I started the franchise and I did not have force trades on so I would have “fair” trades and I decided to keep it in the theme of the 90s Rockies reunion (with a few other changes). I also chose to play the entire season with the designated hitter for reasons I will explain shortly.

The main thing I knew I needed to work on was the bullpen. That’s part of the reason that heading into the game, the Rockies had a pitching ranking of 28th. The offense, on the other hand, was fourth.