Strike 1: In baseball, you get three strikes. The Colorado Rockies just took Strike 1.
Promoting interim manager Warren Schaeffer to the full time manager’s job? An error.
Only two errors left.
It’s yet another “internal hire” for an organization that, while they did go outside to bring in a new president of baseball ops from the outside, just can’t help themselves. When it comes right down to it, they have to hire from within. It’s part of their collective DNA.
But hiring from within wasn’t the mistake. The mistake was that they promoted the wrong guy from within.
Veteran coach Bobby Meacham should have gotten the manager’s job.
Last season the 65-year-old Meacham was the manager of the Rockies Double-A affiliate in Hartford, Connecticut. Even though he wasn’t on the big league staff last season, he’s got a resumé that’s far superior to that of Schaffer, whose strength is reportedly his relationship with the players.
Guess what? Meacham has that too, plus a whole lot more.
If you don’t know him, Bobby’s resumé starts back during his college playing days at San Diego State where he convinced his coach to take a look at this basketball player named Tony Gwynn. Meacham was convinced that Gwynn could help the Aztecs baseball team, too.
So he’s always had an eye for talent.
Meacham himself went on to become a first-round draft pick out of SDSU after spending one summer playing alongside Gwynn, Joe Carter, Joe Maddon and other college standouts with the Boulder Collegians in 1980. Once the St. Louis Cardinals had signed him and assigned him to Class A St. Petersburg in the Florida State League, that’s when they decided to make him switch hitter. And it worked.
Meacham would go on to play six seasons at shortstop for the New York Yankees during the difficult George Steinbrenner Era. Perhaps longtime baseball fans remember this play against the Chicago White Sox from back in 1985.
When Meacham hung up his spikes, he traded them for coaching shoes, and the first of his three stints with the Rockies organization was as the lead assistant for manager Brad Mills with the 1993 Colorado Springs Sky Sox – the Triple-A affiliate of the expansion Rockies. He’s spent considerable time as a first and third base coach with other Major League clubs, including two stints alongside Joe Girardi, and in the 2007 with then-Padres skipper Bud Black when they fell victim to “Rocktober.” He’s also held multiple minor league managing jobs.
In all, Meacham has spent 34 consecutive seasons in professional baseball.
Schaeffer was born two years after Bobby broke in.
“I believe our young guys need to be led by those of us who have gone before them,” Meacham texted me before the announcement about Schaffer came out. “And I know my experience and perspective carries a lot of weight.”
It certainly should have.
Bobby’s been through all the changes in the baseball landscape, and has already coached a lot of the players the Rockies are counting on to be part of the rebuild – which was a talking point the organization used to promote the Schaeffer hire.
In the end, Schaeffer – who’s resume does say he’s 50 games under .500 as a big league manager and isn’t likely to improve this season – very likely has a nice coaching career in front of him. Right now, he still lacks experience, which Meacham has.
And on top of everything else, Schaeffer’s honeymoon period with Rockies fans is now officially over and next season isn’t shaping up all that great right now. Schaffer’s team will need to show a lot of improvement or he’s going to start to feel the heat.
Something else that’s easier to deal with if you have the kind of experience Meacham would have brought to the job.
Paul DePodesta has come in and done some good stuff thus far. This hire, however, is Strike 1
