Warren Schaeffer and Paul DePodesta talked a lot about the Rockies’ future on Wednesday morning. Communication, leadership, culture, process and collaboration were their recurring buzzwords and themes.
But two things stood out.
First was Schaffer’s optimistic offseason offering.
“The ultimate goal is to bring consistent winning seasons to this organization,” said Schaeffer, who was officially named as Colorado’s manager on Monday. “You’re going to see winning baseball in Denver a lot sooner than you think.”
For a team coming off a 119-loss season, it was a gutsy thing to say, but such was the optimism of the morning.
The primary reason for the conference call was for DePodesta, the team’s new president of baseball operations, to explain his decision to bring back Schaeffer after the Rockies went 36-86 with him as the interim manager.
That brings us to the second newsy nugget of the morning. While DePodesta said he “explored the idea” of hiring someone other than Schaeffer and talked to people inside and outside the organization about potential candidates, it’s clear that Schaeffer was his No. 1 choice almost from the get-go.
“Ultimately, this is where I landed, and it was pretty quick,” DePodesta said. “I would say, even a week in… it became pretty clear to me that this was a good direction to go.”
Podesta added that although he did explore other candidates, he did not conduct any formal interviews.
“Ultimately, I didn’t feel the need to interview anybody else,” DePodesta said, elaborating that he likes Schaeffer’s connection to the Rockies’ past and the continuity the manager can bring as the team begins its rebuild.
Schaeffer’s first job in the Rockies organization was as the hitting coach for Short-Season Tri-City (Pasco, Washington) in 2013. He managed the Asheville Tourists from 2015 through 2017 and Double-A Hartford in 2018 and 2019. He was named manager of Triple-A Albuquerque for the 2020 season, but the season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He managed the Isotopes in 2021 and 2022. In November 2022, the Rockies promoted him to their major league coaching staff as third base and infield coach for the 2023 season.
“Not only is ‘Schaeff’ a connector, but he places importance on collaboration,” DePodesta continued. “I think he’s a great teammate and partner, not only with the front office but with his coaches. I think he’s very open-minded. He clearly works extremely hard and has a really high care factor — both for the Rockies, in particular, but also for the job at hand. There’s a great respect for the game and a great respect for the organization.”
But none of that will matter, and Schaeffer’s vision of a quick turnaround will fade, if Colorado can’t fix its busted starting rotation. It posted a 6.65 ERA, the highest mark since it became an official stat in the American and National Leagues in 1913.
“I think the short answer is that there isn’t one answer,” DePodesta said. “Our eyes need to be open to every possible avenue. I say that to mean it could be free agents, it could be different types of free agents, and it certainly could be trades. It also could be players in our own 40-man roster. … Clearly it’s an area of focus for us as we begin the offseason.”
Schaeffer is already looking forward to his first spring training as Rockies manager.
“When we walk into spring training next year, the guys are going to be excited to see what new things are going to happen there,” he said. “I really feel strongly that we are going to put a new process in place.”
Schaeffer didn’t get into specifics about how the team will be coached differently during camp, but did say: “There will be a shift in how we do things, from top to bottom. … Just the way the mornings are set up and just what kind of importance we place on things. We need to get way better in our baserunning. We are going to spend way more time on that.
“I can’t get too much into it because I haven’t talked to my staff yet, because I don’t have a staff yet.”
Filling out Schaeffer’s coaching staff, as well as DePodesta’s front-office staff — beginning with hiring a general manager — is high on both men’s to-do lists. They said they are looking for “complementary pieces.”
“I’m having a lot of different conversations, gathering as much information as I can about some different potential people,” DePodesta said. “But it’s actually not just the GM. I think we’re also talking about other potential roles, because I really am trying to build a team of complementary skills. So it’s not so much that I would look at any one job — including the GM job — in a vacuum.
“Some of the people we’ve discussed internally about who could take on the GM job have very, very different profiles. So that would affect the rest of the leadership team. So I would say we’re very much in process, and I do have a goal of getting a lot of these things in place by the time we get to Orlando” for the winter meetings beginning Dec. 8.
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