The Giants and Rockies were set to open a series at Coors Field in Denver on Friday, a matchup that put two NL West teams at the bottom of the standings on the same field for the first time this season. San Francisco entered at 22-34. Colorado came in at 20-37.

That is why giants vs rockies was drawing attention now: the game was not just another date on the schedule, but the first home series between the clubs this year and a direct check on which one could claim a little daylight in a division race gone wrong. The stakes were simple, if unglamorous — avoid last place, or at least delay the fall.

The Rockies’ place in the standings came with numbers that explained why the gap felt so large even after some progress. Colorado had the worst team ERA in baseball at 5.18, had scored 229 runs and carried an 81 wRC+, while its.241 batting average was only a shade behind the Giants’.245 mark. The record also sat against a deeper pattern: Colorado had not posted a winning season since 2018 and had lost 629 games over the previous seven seasons.

There were signs the organization was trying to change that, even if the results had not caught up. Paul DePodesta was in charge as president of baseball operations after leaving the NFL's Cleveland Browns, and Josh Byrnes had returned as general manager. The Rockies had also been described as a vast improvement over a year ago, but they still arrived at 20-37 and 6-19 in May with a minus-70 run differential, a reminder that improvement and relevance were not the same thing.

Chase Dollander was part of that story too. Drafted by Colorado in 2023, he had provided a great contribution before he went on the injured list, another sign that the Rockies’ season had featured flashes worth keeping and enough setbacks to keep them near the bottom anyway. The Giants, for their part, were hardly rolling at 22-34 and 9-16 in May with a minus-28 run differential, which is why Friday’s opener in Denver mattered more as a sorting test than a showcase.

The first answer would come on the field at Coors Field. The unresolved one was whether either club could use this series to turn a bad month into something better, or whether one of baseball’s ugliest starts would simply become the other team’s problem for another night.