How the 2016 Hartford Yard Goats impacted the 2021 Colorado Rockies

Salazar had been the hitting coach for New Britain the year before the franchise moved to Hartford. There was plenty of buzz about the new franchise and new stadium heading into the 2016 campaign, Salazar said, and that’s what made the year-long road trip an even tougher mental exercise for the team.

“The toughest part was probably leading into the season. Maybe the stadium will be ready. Maybe it won’t,” Salazar remembers. “You know what, we will spend the first two weeks on the road, then it will be ready, which turned into a month. They just kept extending it. That was probably the most difficult part was not really knowing.

“But you adapt. You say, ‘OK, we’re just taking a bus. We’re just on a Northeastern tour of the United States playing baseball.'”

That Northeastern tour included, among other places, Harrisburg, Pa., Manchester, N.H., and Binghamton, N.Y., where the Yard Goats played a July 4 “home game” in a completely empty stadium.

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“They wouldn’t sell tickets to the stadium, so there would be zero fans, kind of like what we went through last year,” Salazar remembered about those road “home” games. “It was just so empty. You could hear the ball hit the seats or you could hear conversations going on if anyone was in the park. Dick Monfort would come to a game, and I remember coming out with, maybe Jeff (Bridich) and (Zach) Wilson, and you can hear them like talking from the dugout.”

In all, it’s estimated that the team traveled around 10,000 miles during the season. And, despite all the team went through and the obstacles overcome, those Yard Goats finished with a 74-67 mark.

“I think baseball players maybe learn this lesson easier than other people,” Salazar said. “You really depend on the people around you and your start to embrace them as your family. No matter what the race, a religious belief, or whatever, it’s just a ‘we’re in this together’ bond. Let’s find a way through it and be strong.”

Abramson said that, while the team was on the road, he and his administrative team took on that same “together” bond as they prepared for the Yard Goats debut, whenever that would be.

For staff, it was patience and continuing to believe in the known outcome,” Abramson said. “There was never a time we doubted how successful we would ultimately be and with that came the courage to not strike back at those who were criticizing us at the time. We knew our day would come, and that the results would speak for themselves.”

Ryan McMahon hit an even .300 at Class-A Modesto in 2015 with 18 homers and 75 RBI. The statistics and progress were enough to earn him a promotion to Double-A Hartford.

McMahon said he looked back on not only the Hartford road trip but his first years in the minors as a huge time of learning and growth.

“That time was so good for me,” McMahon said. ” I mean, I was a sheltered kid from Orange County. I learned a lot about the world in the minors and made a lot of great friends along the way. That’s a great thing about the minor leagues, honestly. It’s a melting pot, right? There are guys from all over the world, from Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Florida, California, so you get everybody else’s kind of different perspective. Because we are around each other so much, we just got to learn so much more about each other and kind of how the world works.”

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Working together to stay entertained and upbeat while also becoming better baseball players was a challenge, McMahon said.

“It was a grind,” he smiled. “The things that happened on that road trip molded us. We’re driving in the bus 10-12 hours every three or four days. It was a whirlwind, but we all got really close because we were around each other all of the time. We leaned on each other a lot.”

Kyle Freeland was in Modesto with McMahon and made the jump to Double-A with him as well. However, Freeland made just 14 starts for the Yard Goats before being promoted to Triple-A Albuquerque.

While he may not have been on the entire road trip, Freeland still remembers how it impacted him.

“It was a different kind of grind in the minor leagues for us. There was so much unknown. We didn’t know when the ballpark was going to open, where we were going to play, everything like that,” Freeland recalled. “As players, you already had the minor league grind and then on top of that, all of that made it even tougher.”

So what do you do on a road trip that lasts all season?

“A lot of card playing and stuff like that,” Freeland said. “Exploring the cities that we were going to be in because we didn’t have really have a home. We were living out of hotels constantly. There wasn’t ever that feeling of, ‘OK, we’re going back home and it’s going to feel good to be in our spot.'”

McMahon laughed when I asked him what kept him busy on the road.

“We did a lot of dumb things, pulled pranks on each other,” he said. “We had this other game where one person was the killer and you had to try to figure out who it was. We were just trying to have fun.”

Salazar was quick to remind me that technology has changed a lot in five years.

“There were guys with video game consoles in their suitcases,” Salazar said. “There was this one golf game we had where we could connect like eight to 10 phones together and guys were playing this race putt-putt type of game.”

Whatever it was, the team was doing it together … and was growing together as well. Maybe, just maybe, some of those lessons learned during tough times in 2016 can pay dividends if the Rockies hit more tough times in 2021.

“In baseball, you embrace challenges and you embrace them together,” Salazar said. “You’re not doing anything by yourself. You’re doing it as a team. You’re doing it as a family. That makes a difference.”