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Coaching staff coming back isn't a bad thing for Colorado Rockies

David Martin Avatar
October 21, 2015

 

If it ain’t broke. Don’t fix it.

That’s a joke, the Colorado Rockies are certainly broken. However, their decision to keep their entire coaching staff intact wasn’t as bad of a decision as it looks like from the outside.

The Rockies are perennial losers. They need to change the culture. There is no doubt about that. However, changing the culture isn’t going to come by getting rid of the bullpen coach.

The Rockies have lost close to 90 games or more in the past three seasons and they haven’t been relevant since 2010. The franchise, frankly, is a joke. Anyone who has watched another phenomenal October-worth of baseball has to take off the purple-colored glasses and realize that the Rockies are at least two years away from being relevant again.

This is a franchise that isn’t leaning on guys sitting in Triple-A. This is a franchise that is leaning on guys who spent this past summer in places like Modesto, Asheville and Grand Junction. The true impact players in the Rockies system are deep in the system. There are some that are close, but for the Rockies to turn the corner, they are going to need rapid growth from their young prospects.

With that in mind, there is no reason to change the coaching staff. After one season with Steve Foster and Darren Holmes, was there any significant data that would show that they didn’t do their job. Of course the pitching coach and bullpen coach respectively would be the quickest changes that would need to be made.

Is it fair, however, to judge the Rockies bullpen coach and pitching coach based on the pitching staff that was assembled? Is it fair to suggest that Holmes should have made some sort of lasting impact in just one season with a group of bullpen members that included Boone Logan?

On the outside, it would be easy to suggest that the Rockies should simply clean house and start from the beginning. The problem with that idea is that it doesn’t allow for a coach to show what he can accomplish. If the Rockies were going to evaluate whether they would keep or fire their coaches based on the results on the field in 2015, there would have been little doubt that no matter who took the reins, the answer would be the same. That coach would be packing his bags and heading for the unemployment line.

To get an honest evaluation, specifically of Foster and Holmes, the Rockies need more than a one-year sample. They need to see how the two men in charge of the pitchers handle a full season of a staff that at least has the ability to not be laughed at when they are introduced as a Major League pitching staff.

The Rockies are in a bad place. They are a long way from contention. Even with young players in their system who look like they could make an impact, the struggles will continue for at least another season. That isn’t the coaching staff’s fault. That is the fault of the guys who assembled the roster and the guys who left the cabinets bare when they left.

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