As the franchise’s new general manager, Josh Byrnes comes to the Colorado Rockies at a time when the Denver sports scene is nearing peak levels.

With the Broncos atop the AFC West and the Nuggets and Avalanche both aspiring to win a championship, the Rockies are the odd team out after a 119-loss campaign.

However, while Byrnes is looking around the city’s landscape, he believes the Rockies will start the upward climb toward respectability again soon.

“I think any place you are, you’re rooting for the other teams in town. I think it’s great,” Byrnes said Friday in his first media session as the Rockies general manager. “It shows how much the fans care and will support a team that’s entertaining and winning.

“That’s the challenge, and I think it’s the big challenge. I wouldn’t come in here without some optimism and confidence that we can get there.”

Byrnes brings that optimism to Denver after spending the last 11 seasons as the senior vice president of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers won three World Series during that span, using Hall of Fame-caliber talent, including Clayton Kershaw and Shohei Ohtani, to push Los Angeles to the top of the MLB mountain.

While the Rockies don’t have an Ohtani or Kershaw-level player on the roster, Byrnes believes there are lessons learned from working at Chavez Ravine that can be applied at elevation.

“(Rockies president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta) and I have talked about, conceptually, raising the floor and having a deeper team with fewer, sort of gaps, innings, plate appearances that are going to players that aren’t quite what we need,” Byrnes said. “There’s a lot of ways to start attacking it, but there’s definitely some talent in place.

“One of the many things that allows the Dodgers to be successful is the four, sort of, certain Hall of Famers (Ohtani, Kershaw, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman) on the roster never stop. They never stop pushing and trying. Shohei, can you steal 50 bases? Mookie, can you play shortstop? ‘Kersh,’ can you pitch without your 95 mile per hour fastball? It’s a nonstop quest for improvement, and, in their cases, greatness. It has to come from a player, but we also have to support it and be right there with them.”

Byrnes was an assistant general manager with the Rockies from 1999-2002. He said he “loved every day with the Dodgers” and is excited about tackling the challenge of winning on a consistent basis with the Rockies.

“It was tough to leave, but I’ve known Paul for 30 years, and he and I have always embraced challenges,” said Byrnes, who worked with DePodesta with the then-Cleveland Indians from 1996-98. “I think he’s brilliant. I think there’s a lot we can both bring to this (team) and not just tell stories about what we’ve done, but create a new future for this franchise, which I think is arguably the most interesting in baseball with the challenges.

“It’s a great challenge with the right people. It was a tough decision, but I’m very excited I made it.”

DePodesta said he views his working relationship with Byrnes as a partnership.

“We were both assistants in baseball operations. We both run player development and scouting areas. We’ve both been assistant GMs. We’ve both been general managers. We’ve done a lot of the same jobs at different times in our careers and in different circumstances,” DePodesta said. “Because of those different circumstances, in different environments, we’ve had to attack those jobs very differently. So, I think in that sense, we fill in each other’s gaps to a large degree.

“I told him from the beginning that I see us as partners in this. We’re going to be involved in every part of the baseball operation. I truly think Josh is going to significantly impact everything we do in baseball operations.”

Byrnes and DePodesta will head to next week’s winter meetings in Orlando with plenty on their to-do lists, including filling out the staff under manager Warren Schaeffer, finding ways to improve the roster and elevating the perception of playing for the Rockies.

“One of the many things I think we should strive for is to be best in class so players want to come here, and players believe when they get here that it’s a great environment that will get the best out of them. It takes time to earn that across the game,” Byrnes said. “We could trade for a guy when I was with the Dodgers, and there was an energy of, ‘Okay, I’ve come to a place where they can get the best out of me.’

“I think you can build relationships many different ways and the most important is winning.”