Whenever the Rockies’ ship hits an iceberg, nobody rearranges deck chairs the way Dick Monfort rearranges deck chairs.
The baseball wonks in the Grading The Week cubicles have never heard a bad word about Clint Hurdle. Anything that stops the S.S. Coors Field from sinking further into the depths of the National League West is better than nothing at all.
But firing the hitting coach of a 3-15 team also feels a bit like slapping a Band-Aid on a shark bite.
Our wonks like Bud Black, too, full disclosure — but FanGraphs’ computers also say he’s on a pace to lose 103 games. The Rockies’ veteran manager lost 101 last year and 103 the season before that. In any sort of normal historical baseball circumstance, that would mean he’s coming to the end of this road.
Rockies tweaking instead of rebooting — C-minus
We’re torn. On one hand, the Rockies’ problems go far, far, far above Black. The organizational rot starts at the top and permeates all the way to the roots. John McGraw couldn’t make Rox work in today’s NL West with Monfort’s keep-it-in-the-family approach. (The AL Central, maybe. But NL West? No way. Too many other rich teams, smart teams, or rich/smart teams.) There’s an argument that nobody could make silk purses out of Bill Schmidt’s rosters of sow ears, let alone Buddy.
On the other hand, a skipper overseeing six straight losing seasons, with a seventh in the works, wouldn’t be tolerated by any MLB franchise that gives half a darn.
The closest modern managerial parallel to Black that GTW could find was Gene Mauch’s tenure with the expansion Montreal Expos. Mauch managed the Expos’ miserable, inaugural campaign of 1969, then hung in for six more losing seasons before management pulled le plug in October 1975.
At what point will the Rox admit — and admission is half the battle — that Black’s message has run its course? Or gone stale?
You know what a struggling franchise does when it doesn’t have the backbone to let go of its manager? It axes the hitting coach.
Not that Schmidt or Monfort did Hensley Meulens dirty. Colorado’s offense isn’t just off to a historically bad start — it’s historically bad, period.
If the ’27 Yankees featured Murder’s Row, the ’25 Rockies have countered with Shoplifter’s Row. The Rox went into Friday evening’s MLB slate ranked last in the Senior Circuit in runs (52), home runs (12), walks (48), strikeouts (195) and steals (eight). Their seasonal team stat line as of Saturday morning — .220 batting average, 51 RBI, .629 OPS in 599 at-bats — resembles that of a utility infielder from, say, 1968, the Year of the Pitcher.
Hurdle’s voice is a welcome one, but why does it feel as if Monfort’s simply delaying the inevitable?
The Rockies are staring at the end of another one-year extension for Black. He’ll turn 68 in June. He’s been a good soldier for a weird franchise that values good-soldier-ism over winning, the way it seemingly values everything over winning.
The Nuggets got rid of their GM and coach in early April, in part, because Josh Kroenke said he was going to make some sort of sweeping change in the off-season anyway. Why wait?
Unlike Michael Malone and Calvin Booth on Chopper Circle, Black and Schmidt reportedly sing, for the most part, from the same hymnal. But like Malone and Booth, Schmidt is going to start sending Buddy more kids he drafted, and Buddy, traditionally, prefers veterans. Especially when they’re the grindy, professional, no-muss types — Jake Cave, for instance. Jake Cave, especially.
Hurdle was the Colorado manager for arguably the peak moment in Rox history, Game 163 in 2007. Which is when the Rockies beat … Bud Black. Now they’re sharing a dugout. On Blake Street, the only two things that truly change are the kegs and the levels of irony.
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