Trigger Warning: The Monforts are going to own the Colorado Rockies forever…
Or at least, for the rest of most of our lives.
Dick Monfort will remain the primary owner for the foreseeable future and the most likely scenario is that his son, Walker, takes over when the time comes.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with calling for a sale of the team based on recent events, something we’ve done here on the DNVR Rockies Podcast, the fact is that this is a pie-in-the-sky hope that has little resemblance to the reality we live in.
He’s not gonna sell and we can’t make him.
So focusing on how to make this dream come true may well be a waste of everyone’s time and effort.
However, that doesn’t mean that Rockies fans should just give up and quit on the idea of their team ever being a consistently competitive one that they can be proud of.
We have seen in recent weeks signals of change if not actual change. Jeff Bridich is out as GM and for the first time in over a decade, the club has named a Team President in Greg Feasel.
Bill Schmidt makes perfect sense as the now-named interim GM and leaves the door wide open for the club to go outside the organization for their permanent replacement. This is an eventuality that multiple sources have indicated to DNVR is a likelihood.
Therefore, it seems the prudent thing to do to focus on what is realistically achievable in the coming weeks, months, and years.
Here are five perfectly reasonable, yet still fundamental and important changes the Colorado Rockies can and should make in order to turn their entire franchise trajectory around:
Honorable Mention: Move To A Division That Makes Sense
This one isn’t entirely on the Rockies so it just gets an honorable mention, but Colorado plays in the wrong division!
All of the problems of altitude and Coors Field (stay tuned) are exacerbated by the constant trips to polar-opposite environments in California. Every time the Rockies travel anywhere except Arizona they have to go through at least two time zones while some East Coast teams can go half a season without ever having to change time zones once.
The Rockies should play in a division with the Diamondbacks, the two Texas teams, and the Kansas City Royals. Or at the very least in a reimagined NL Central.
This would dramatically reduce the impact of the Hangover Effect on the field and the wear and tear of altitude and travel on the bodies of each player off of it.
There is little the team can do on this front, however. The most likely case for realignment would have to come if MLB sees expansion some time over the next decade.
But if there is even a sliver of hope that the team could be placed in a division that doesn’t put them at a constant disadvantage in terms of travel and money (coastal teams have more fans and therefore more revenue) they should do everything they can to petition the league to make it happen.
5. Start All Over
The Nolan-Charlie-Trevor era is over. And you can’t change the past.
This version of the team should have achieved much more success than they did but the window is closed now and there is no point in trying to continue to salvage this.
The team can afford to hang onto Charlie Blackmon if they wish. He will be paid more than his production over the next few years, but with nobody else set to make any money and the club entering a rebuild whether they realize it or not, it’s not too high a price to pay for the tiny bit of good will you get from making him a career Rockie.
He can also keep growing in his role as team captain and dad for the next generation.
Beyond that, though, anyone who has value and won’t be around two years from now needs to be traded. That starts with Trevor Story. Rip the band-aid off, get what you can, and move on. Unless the changes in the front office really do make an extension more likely.
The same goes for Jon Gray if he can’t be signed, though there is plenty of merit in keeping the young core of starting pitchers together. Everyone else is on the table.
There’s no need to keep acquiring and playing guys like C.J. Cron unless they intend to flip them for younger players at the deadline. Move out any relievers having good seasons and restock the farm system.
For at least this year and maybe next, they should be absolutely fine being the worst team in MLB which translates to nabbing the first overall pick in the draft.
Even if you hate tanking (I’m philosophically opposed to it) this is the move you have to make for right now.
It’s time to start building the next core.
4. Fix The Ballpark Dimensions
The outfield is too damn big.
It hurts everybody. How it hampers pitching has been obvious for years but it killed the production of DJ LeMahieu among plenty of others at the place.
Before the humidor, the layout made a certain kind of sense. The vast outfield and walls a little further back made up a bit for the freer flight of the baseball in the thin air.
The ball plays a lot truer these days. Coors Field does not regularly lead the league in home runs surrendered and studies show that it isn’t even in the Top 5 in terms of “cheap” or non-barreled home runs.
And whoever convinced us that homers were a bad thing in the first place?
There are ways to accommodate for that as well, like building some higher walls in left field, you biggest concern about making the outfield smaller is that the ball will leave the yard more often.
We will follow up on this idea with a few detailed and specific suggestions in the future but the larger point is that the Rockies absolutely have to normalize their home environment as much as they can for a myriad of reasons.
From making it easier to build consistency on the field to eliminating a lot of the ambiguity and irritating narratives away from it, real attention has to be put into what the ballpark dimensions are doing to the club’s chances of staying consistently competitive.
3. Embrace a Pitching-First Vision
The biggest lesson the Rockies should learn philosophically from the last five years is that they cannot abandon a pitching/defense-first vision.
Even when implemented poorly, the philosophy built success in 2017 and 2018 before the club abandoned it in search of offense prior to the 2019 season.
While it is a statistical correlation, it is an overwhelming one. Each and every single one of Colorado’s postseason appearances, going back to 1995, has been powered by pitching. And the best offenses in franchise history have put up some of the worst win/loss records.
It is counterintuitive and will be mocked by fans and the press. But they have to both commit to it and sell it to their fans, the press, and their players. And maybe even themselves.
Come out and loudly, proudly, declare that the Colorado Rockies are going to emphasize pitching and defense over slugging.
It will be panned, but the calls on this team to be forward-thinking and savvy are directly in lock step with this philosophy. You cannot make the demand for one without recognizing the other.
All of this will become self-evident if/once they follow through on…
2. Invest in Analytics
This is a biggie.
The club has always been reluctant to prioritize modern analytics. They had been getting better in the years leading up to the pandemic but now have to start all over again at square one with an analytics department that has been entirely gutted.
It’s especially frustrating for a franchise that doesn’t have the built in advantages that others do when it comes to money and location still try to keep up at times by sinking big dollars into star player contracts (Arenado, Tulo, CarGo) when you could spend half as much on research and development that will allow you to essentially cheat the system.
The fact is, as much as some folks refuse to admit it except when their holding it against individual Rockies players, Colorado plays in a unique environment and has to come up with unique solutions.
Their problems aren’t the exact same as everyone else. And doing what worked in Tampa or Oakland or Minnesota may not translate.
Or it might.
The thing is, this remains an open question. The riddle has not yet been solved. And there is answer to it.
There’s no one exact formula for winning anywhere. It’s constantly evolving. But Colorado has employed a scattershot, inconsistent approach to tackling the challenges presented by playing at altitude and in such a uniquely-offensive environment.
They absolutely have to pour resources into hiring smart people and quality computers to help them get a handle on the chaos.
Spending $15 million on a new analytics department would go a hundred times farther than spending another $30 million over three years on any reliever ever again.
This should be an easy sell:
Spend less money. Make team better. Win more games. Make more money.
It’s 2021. Fans don’t need or want marketable star position players. They just want to win.
1. Hire A Quality GM and President of Baseball Operations
That Monfort has re-created the position of Team President is already great news for anyone who has been following this team closely for over a decade.
But it can’t be the only good front office news of the year.
As discussed, all fingers are pointing to the Rockies going outside the organization for the next GM which is something fans have been clamoring over for years. But then the name Ruben Amaro Jr. showed up on the rumor mill to remind everyone to be careful what you wish for.
It’s important that whoever is the next person to take the job has more qualifications than just “isn’t from here.”
The new GM must have an understanding of the unique dynamics at play in Colorado. They have to be analytically minded and follow through hard on the second entry on this list. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter how good your R&D is.
The new GM must have a specific plan and vision for the future of this franchise.
Of course, they will also need the owner to let them work.
Unfortunately, it’s likely that Monfort will always meddle to some degree in baseball decisions but the Bridich tenure also showed us that he will go hands-off for long stretches of the time and allow a GM to build the team in their own image.
The problems historically have arisen at inflection points where Monfort become unmalleable about allowing whoever is putting the team together to make flexible moves to make up for the unexpected. Vetoing trades of star players and refusing to budge on the budget even for players like DJ LeMahieu becomes prohibitive.
This is where a new President of Baseball Operations could be vital to this organization.
Somebody definitively other than Monfort (or Feasel) needs to have the final say on baseball decisions. The General Manager needs a buffer between him/herself and the owner and someone to go to bat for them (pardon the pun) when things get tense.
Sources have indicated to DNVR that creating such a position has, indeed, been considered by the franchise if they thought they could find the right candidate.
A few immediately come to mind in Clint Hurdle and Thad Levine.
Both are smart, forward-thinking baseball minds who have achieved success elsewhere but are still very familiar with the quirks of Colorado.
Levine has reportedly been contacted by the organization prompting the debate about why someone with a pretty good job would want to inherit this mess.
Well, perhaps a title (and probably pay) bump would do the trick?
And any way you can get Hurdle involved with rebuilding this franchise should be done yesterday.
Like with the analytics department, making the right hires here can be expensive in a vacuum. It’ll be more money on non-uniformed people that this ownership group has ever spent. And, if they did it right, it would make them more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives.
Because, in the grand scheme of things, you can pay the cost of a state-of-the-art front office, change hearts and minds (and sell a lot of tickets and jerseys) for less than the cost of just one of the five worst free agents this club has signed over the last half-decade.
If instead of $70 million on Ian Desmond (yes, I know he didn’t get all of it) this team had just invested that money in everything we’ve discussed here, we’d be talking about your perennially contending Colorado Rockies.
In Conclusion
The same people who will tell you that you are naïve for believing that the Rockies can be better are often the ones who will turn around and sell you a nearly impossible solution to the problem.
“Sell the team!”
Not happening.
“Boycott so they’ll go broke!”
Also not going to happen.
“Sign a smart GM!”
It may sound just as outlandish as the others but it really isn’t.
The silver lining to the mushroom cloud that has been the implosion of this team is that now they stand in the rubble and ash with nothing but opportunity in front of them. There is every chance to change and every indication that change is coming.
The Colorado Rockies are a few small, yet gigantic, steps away from a glorious new era of baseball. If they can dare to see it.
