Alanna Rizzo calls out Rockies ownership: ‘Start spending money or sell the team’

Alanna Rizzo was willing to go the record.

A Colorado native and a University of Colorado at Boulder graduate, Rizzo was willing to take the Colorado Rockies to task. The former MLB Network personality was on a Zoom call with Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post, along with Jenny Cavnar and Taylor McGregor, as he sought to talk to three of the most recognizable female faces in baseball, each of whom has roots in Colorado.

Rizzo was the lone voice whose criticism of Rockies owner Dick Monfort was quoted in The Post piece. Rizzo didn’t pull punches as she took aim at Monfort’s unwillingness to spend on building a team that can compete with the rest of Colorado’s National League West foes, let alone the Dodgers.

And while Rizzo’s roots are firmly in Colorado, she was part of the Dodgers’ broadcast team from 2013-20 and now co-hosts a Dodgers podcast (Dodgers Territory) on the Foul Territory network.

“What I cannot tolerate is an owner who comes out and says that the Dodgers are the poster child of what’s wrong with Major League Baseball,” Rizzo told The Post. “Every single owner has the ability to spend money or choose not to spend money.”

The Rockies are 21st in payroll, which would make them dead last in spending in the NL West. The team that’s traded franchise favorites like Nolan Arenado and sent $50 million to the St. Louis Cardinals in the process doesn’t want to be one of the heavy hitters in the free agency market. For a team that entered Monday 2-7 with one of the better pitching staffs in baseball (as of the writing of this article), the resources to build anything resembling any sort of contender are few and far between.

Rizzo covered the Rockies for five years, as The Post feature notes, but she’s also married to longtime catcher Chris Iannetta, who played in Colorado from 2006-11. Rizzo knows a thing or two about the local team, which is why she called out an investment Monfort made into Coors Field over a decade ago.

“You can choose to turn your outfield (seats) into an entertainment area, which is fine, but you too, Mr. Monfort, can spend money on the team, just as every other owner can,” she told Saunders. “Yes, the Dodgers have money, but they reinvest it in their team, just as the Cubs do, just as the Mets do, just as the Yankees do. So I don’t want to hear it. Start spending money and put a better product on the field. Or sell the team. Period.”

Rizzo, much like Michael Kay, is done with the empty rhetoric. Both in recent days, they’ve called out the Rockies and Pirates ownership, respectively, for their refusal to spend, an all-too-familiar theme in baseball that’s long overdue for accountability.