Dave Veres’ elevator pitch was a sinker.
This past June, the former Rockies closer happened to run into Colorado CEO Dick Monfort during a Roy Halladay Award function.
“If anything opens up with the club,” Veres, the first man to ever record a 30-save season for the Rox, told Monfort. “I’d love to put my name in the hat for a coaching job.”
“I’ll pass it along,” Monfort assured him.
It’s late November, and Veres, who’s been a pitching coach at Cherry Creek High School for the last seven years or so, hasn’t heard anything from the club yet.
Still, he told me Monday night, the offer still stands. Especially with Paul DePodesta taking over baseball operations and with the “interim” tag now officially removed from manager Warren Schaeffer’s job title.
“Even if it’s just an interview, hear me out,” the 59-year-old coach continued. “I know they might say, ‘Oh, you’re just coaching high school.’ I mean, I pitched at Coors Field.”
And pitched pretty darn well, given the circumstances. Over 136 games as a Rockies reliever in 1998 and 1999, the righty posted a 3.99 ERA and a 4.27 FIP, or Fielding-Independent pitching ERA. Veres got the teaching bug in 2018 and hasn’t looked back, helping Creek win state crowns in ’24 and ’25.
“We didn’t win state because we had the hardest throwers,” he said. “We won state because we made the best pitchers.”
Veres has been teaching his kids what got him through 10 seasons in The Show and more than two decades as a pro: Downward movement, change of speed, location, location, location.
In his salad days, Veres was more of a split-finger and sinker type. As a sensei, he still is. Especially in this climate. As a pitcher, you’ll never entirely beat Mother Nature or elevation. But you can sure as heck mitigate the pair of them. How? With a fastball that dives. With a change that deceives.
As Veres chatted with Monfort, he told the Rockies boss that while his approach was about science, it wasn’t the rocket variety. And, more to the point, it could be easily applied to Colorado pitchers at every level of the organization.
“Well, you can’t make a pitcher what he’s not,” Monfort said. “If he’s a four-seam guy, he’s a four-seam guy.”
Funny thing, though: Plenty of ‘four-seam guys’ have found another grip and made it work — even later in their career. Tigers ace Tarik Skubal was a four-seam guy who wanted more drop on his change-up. So he switched to a two-seam grip before the 2022 season. Dude hasn’t looked back.
“I taught a lot of high-school guys how to throw a two-seamer, how to make it sink,” Veres said.
“You watch the (MLB) playoffs, and where did (Kevin) Gausman and (Yoshinobu) Yamamoto live? Down in the zone. You have to pitch ‘up,’ obviously, every now and then.
“I threw the four-seamer up top at 92-93 miles per hour and could get away with it. I’m not saying you can’t throw up there. But (Coors) is just a little bit different.”
The Rockies need to think a little bit differently, too. Although gnashing your teeth over Schaeffer’s return is probably a waste of enamel and time.
The 2025 Rox were the seventh big-league club to lose at least 115 games in a season since 1900. Of the other six, four retained their managers and two replaced them. The new guys averaged a 13-win improvement in the win column. The holdovers averaged 22 more victories the next season.
The takeaway? When you’re already on a sinking ship, changing captains won’t change the icebergs ahead. Schaeffer’s a good dude. A young, minor-league-ish roster keeps a young, minor-league-ish kinda manager. That’s fine.
And let’s be real: The skipper’s job was probably always going to be a can that got kicked down the road. For one thing, John McGraw couldn’t coax the ’26 Rox to 75 wins. Or to relevance. For another, MLB is barreling headlong into a nuclear winter a year from now anyway, as the current collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1, 2026. More Schaeff means a couple things, but they’re things we already knew:
1. The Rockies are going to be pretty much next season what they were this one. Some short-term names will change. The Titanic will swap some deck chairs on 1-year deals, but that will be as sexy as it gets. Gains will have to come via the margins. Or the minors.
2. Whatever vision DePodesta and his surrogates are allowed to start planting, the real flowers won’t be seen until after a new CBA is well underway.
Right or wrong, the owners-vs.-owners and owners-vs.-players fights to come probably mean the Rox can spend a year to self-scout, self-assess — and self-heal.
Besides, the only free-agent pitchers who are going to sign with this club without a loopy, Kris Bryant-level of overpay are either at the end of the line — or at the end of their wits.
Jeff Bridich was the wrong guy with the right idea. When it comes to arms, you’ve got to grow your own. You’ve also got to grow them right and grow them in waves, so that when a few do break out, if some do become All-Stars, you don’t have to become too emotionally or professionally attached.
“So you better draft,” Veres laughed. “And you better develop.”
And hey, if DePodesta and the Monforts want a guy to ride the buses and prop up the minors, Veres is down for that, too. He loves working with kids. He loves teaching the game. He loves pitching, period. Which is why it eats him up to watch his hometown Rockies stink so badly at it.
“With analytics, I’m learning how to blend in some of the other stuff — it’s necessary, I get it,” Veres continued. “But it’s funny how (some) things haven’t changed. It’s possible to teach old dogs new tricks. Every year, you hear about how somebody supposedly comes up with something new. And how the split-finger seems to be the pitch of 2025. That’s my specialty.”
Columnist Sean Keeler can be reached at skeeler@denverpost.com.