It is over now, finally, mercifully, the Rockies’ home schedule ending Thursday afternoon with a 12-8 loss on a field that mocked them, surrounded by fans who are struggling to see progress through anger.

A new front office brought Colorado from dial-up connections to fiber optics, incorporated analytics and took successful swings on afterthoughts Jake McCarthy and TJ Rumfield.

But overcoming four straight years of loyalty to stunning incompetence is proving difficult.

And the Rockies sticking with manager Warren Schaeffer in the wake of this awful finish — 7-28 over the last six weeks — is not helping convince fans of a brighter future.

“It is a leadership job. He is a very good leader. He has a real ability to connect with players, push them and hold them to a high standard,” general manager Josh Byrnes told the Post Thursday. “We know we have to get a lot better to field a winning team. And he is as determined as anyone to help us get there.”

Rockies fans deserve a better product. The franchise has not earned their trust or patience, not after losing 100 games for the fourth straight season, an indignity last accomplished by the 1962-65 New York Mets.

There has been legitimate improvement.

The problem is that nobody wants to hear it.

Not on a day when the Rockies trailed 6-0 without recording an out. Not on a day when a massive home run came off the bat of Arizona’s Nolan Arenado, whose trade before the 2021 season turned many Colorado fans against owner Dick Monfort forever, regardless of Monfort’s long-overdue decision to promote son Walker and allow him to hire president Paul DePodesta and Byrnes.

The Rockies’ record is terrible, 57-102. But they are on a better trajectory. Seriously.

The 2025 Rockies team, by most metrics, was the worst in major league history. DePodesta and Byrnes were charged with turning around the Titanic in a bathtub.

It is going to take time, creativity and luck.

Any serious evaluation of this front office is not fair until after the 2028 season, when DePodesta and Byrnes have logged three drafts, gone through multiple free agencies and been given a gestation period for their seismic changes to hitting and still-evolving pitching philosophies.

“Generally, I think we are making progress, but we have a long way to go,” Byrnes said. “The last 40 games have been frustrating for a lot of reasons. We expected better. The 100 losses means something. The optics mean something. We wanted to get out of that zone for a lot of reasons, and we didn’t.”

The stench is less odiferous. But its presence remains unmistakable.

Some things worked. The Rockies’ strikeouts dropped, the swing-and-miss percentage improved and walks increased as players like Roldy Brito and Cristian Arguelles demonstrated proof of concept in the minors and Rumfield, McCarthy and Cole Carrigg executed the strategy in the majors.

With three road games remaining in Chicago against the White Sox, the Rockies have won 14 more games than in 2025.

The combined WAR — wins above replacement value — of the top 12 position players increased from 0.7 to 7.7 year over year, per Baseball Reference.

And the run differential has gone from 424, worst in modern MLB history, to 236 this season. Trades for pitchers have shown promise with the acquisitions of Mason Adams, Nick Fasso and Mark Manfredi.

Still, when the Rockies left the field Thursday, they trudged off bearing more than a loss, but a stain. Starting pitching, in so many ways, ruined everything, a script for decades ingrained into Rockies’ history.

A member of the rotation has not posted a victory since Aug. 26, going 0-13.

The Rockies’ starters were among baseball’s best in the first month, then top prospect Chase Dollander and Jose Quintana suffered injuries, and the group never recovered.

The Rockies emphasized the importance of starters using a wide arsenal of pitches not only to get ahead in the count but also to stay ahead.

“I don’t think we made as much progress as we would have liked,” Byrnes said.

There is no quick fix for a team that has some money to spend this offseason, but almost never attracts top pitching free agents for obvious reasons (see altitude). The Rockies need more talent, but the farm system is lacking, meaning trades, waiver claims and all permutations for eating a season’s worth of 1,400 innings are on the table.

Could they lean on openers? What about using starters for four innings and employing piggyback relievers to throw multiple innings?

“We are open-minded and know that we don’t have the answers,” Byrnes said. “We are exploring everything from usage and deployment. We want to minimize the starter facing a lineup a third time. But that puts more innings on the bullpen. How many 80-inning relievers can we find and how often can you ask them to take on that extra workload?”

The best way could be using three or four starters and an army of relievers. But that requires arms with minor-league options who can be ferried between Triple-A Albuquerque and Denver.

Without a seismic upgrade in the rotation, the Rockies are accepting failure moving forward. For too many days, they chased a deficit, which muted their aggressive base running and allowed pitchers to attack them without fearing consequences.

Against the Diamondbacks, they were outscored 15-1 in the first two innings of the series, leaving the season margin at 262-146.

Of all the things that went wrong for the Rockies, starting pitching went the most wrong, fueling a 10-game home losing streak. The Rockies finished 32-49 at Coors Field. To post their first winning season since 2020, that number must be realistically reversed.

In its first year, the front office did something its predecessors never did. The Rockies made trades, took chances and embraced technology so they no longer look like “The Flintstones” with flip phones.

And yet, the Rockies deserve all the criticism they get. They must continue pursuing answers, even as fans hope that a work stoppage and new collective bargaining agreement this spring will eventually lead to Greg Penner and Carrie Walton Penner taking over as majority owners.

“There is a silver lining to these last 40 days. There is real frustration that we haven’t won more games, because we lost so many late, and lost so many close games. It is good that expectation exists,” Byrnes said. “But this season has also been a reminder that we have a long way to go to climb out of this.”

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