Historically bad, the Colorado Rockies had sound reasons to fire manager Bud Black. The 21–0 loss to San Diego on Saturday officially stamped a 6–33 team as a non-competitive embarrassment.
It wasn’t as if Black did not get a chance. He has the worst career record (.460 winning percentage) among the 80 managers who lasted the longest in a major league dugout. His Rockies have been the worst team in baseball not just this month, but over the past seven years.
But by firing Black, the Rockies did something this long irrelevant franchise almost never does: it called attention to itself. And the picture that comes into focus is an ugly one. Like the Pittsburgh Pirates firing manager Derek Shelton, the move is devoid of meaning. Does a change in managers matter when a team is not trying to win and when systemic problems have been in place for years?
Start with a disclaimer: The Rockies have the toughest job among the 30 ballclubs when it comes to building a sustainable winner. Baseball is too difficult, too weird at altitude. It saps recovery time. It flattens breaking pitches. It creates instability in reading and throwing pitches as the season see-saws from road trips (normal baseball) to altitude baseball (abnormal baseball). As Jim Leyland says, they built Coors Field too big, so cheap hits rain into the huge expanse of outfield and nobody gets thrown out on the bases. A Fenway bandbox with huge walls would have been better.
That said, the Rockies are a stale organization. They are perhaps the most insular organization in baseball. Bill Schmidt, the GM, has been there 26 years. Chris Forbes, the director of player development, has been there 19 years. Warren Schaeffer, the new manager, has been there 19 years. Clint Hurdle, Schmidt’s righthand man, goes back to the 1990s with Colorado, with a nine-year hiatus as Pirates manager. CEO and owner Dick Monfort is nothing if not loyal.
They don’t make trades. They don’t like to sign free agents, and when they do, they get the player at the wrong time (Kris Bryant). Their major league development is poor. Ryan McMahon is 30 years old and has played nine years and has never been an above average hitter (his best OPS+ is 98). His trade value, once high, has withered to nothing. Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle look like the best players to graduate to the big club, but both have gone backward this year. Outfield prospect Zac Veen could not take away at bats from the likes of Mickey Moniak and Nick Martini. And why tell Jordan Beck, 24, to take a seat in late and close situations so Martini, 34, can take his hacks?
During this seven-year organizational decline, pitchers Kyle Freeland, German Marquez and Antonio Senzatela have started 40 percent of the team’s 909 games—and returned a 95–142 record. Where have the arms been to push them?
Most of the systemic problems were beyond Black’s control. He is a good communicator, he knows pitching and he was instrumental in his San Diego years in schooling Dave Roberts on how to be a great manager. But few places other than Colorado would give a manager with his record so much rope. Since the second half of the 2022 season the Rockies are 152–281, a .351 winning percentage, including the two worst seasons in franchise history.
Overall, Black is 1,193-1,403. Only three managers were more games under .500, none of them in the past 75 years: Jimmie Wilson, John McCloskey and Connie Mack, who was on the job 53 years. Black’s winning percentage is the lowest among the 80 managers who were given a run of 1,660 games or more.
Black should have known his days were numbered when Hurdle convinced Schmidt to put him back in the dugout. Schmidt bounced the hitting coach, Hensley Meulens, the rare outside hire the Rockies made three years ago, and installed Hurdle as hitting coach. Weeks later, Black is out, and Hurdle has been promoted again, this time to bench coach and wise sage. Schmidt gave Black a shove out the door when he went out of his way to praise Hurdle, 67, “as an experienced voice within our clubhouse.”
Nothing will change in Colorado until the team’s infrastructure and philosophy change. Because of the physical and strategic challenges of altitude, the Rockies should have one of the most robust analytic departments; instead, they have one of the smallest.
They should pour more money into player development and less into free agency, because predictability of performance at altitude is too risky when you’re talking about veteran players who have made their career at sea level.
They should invest in a Far East scout to become at least a player in mining talent from that part of the world.
They should emphasize size and freakish athletic ability in scouting players to improve the chances of defending a large field and holding up to the physical rigors.
They should look at hiring the brightest young minds in other organizations to discover what the Dodgers, Rays, Guardians, Yankees and the like know about winning on the margins—to be bold enough to admit what they don’t know and look for answers.
They should, like most teams, stop talking this nonsense about building “a sustainable winner” like they have the Dodgers’ money and concentrate on peaking with a young core in three- or four-year windows and cycle more quickly out of the down periods.
None of this is happening in Colorado. It never does. Nothing changes. Attendance is down 15 percent from pre-COVID years, but many fans still so enjoy the Coors Field experience they don’t seem to mind watching a bad team. Last year the Rockies outdrew six playoff teams, including the Mets and Orioles.
The way the Rockies have been playing baseball is awful. They have been outscored by 128 runs in 40 games. Only the 2023 Athletics (-144 run differential) were more non-competitive after 40 games.
The Rockies are part of a disturbing trend in baseball. The bottom of the baseball barrel is getting more rotten. In the first 50 years of the 162-game schedule, only seven teams lost 110 games. The 2025 Rockies almost certainly will make it eight such massive losers in just the past 12 years. Playoff spots will be decided this year on just how badly the other NL West teams beat up on Colorado. They are 11–2 so far against the Rockies.
On the day before Schmidt fired Black, he told the Denver Post “I don’t think we are” going to fire him. Schmidt talked about how the “guys are working hard every day.” That’s not a compliment for a professional athlete and team. That’s a requirement.
“Guys still believe in what we are doing and where we are headed,” Schmidt said.
Really? Seven years as the worst team in baseball and the most insular, stagnant team in baseball, how can you like the practices and direction of the Rockies? What is needed now is not just a new manager, but also a new, bold way of thinking.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Bud Black’s Firing Won’t Change Much for MLB’s Stalest Franchise.