Strike 2: Bud Black is better off now.
When a team isn’t any good – and the Colorado Rockies certainly qualify – it’s almost always the manager who gets to be the scapegoat. With the team on pace for an historically terrible record, Black got the pink slip, even though the mess at 20th and Blake is not of his doing. The fact is that the veteran baseball man deserved a lot more than he was given to work with ever since Rockies team management decided to start dismantling the core group that Black had led to two consecutive playoff appearances in his first two seasons in Denver. That was more than a half dozen years ago now.
DJ LeMahieu. Nolan Arenado. Trevor Story. Jon Gray. Gone but not forgotten.
Letting LeMahieu leave as a free agent – and trying to replace him with an over-the-hill Daniel Murphy was the first domino. There were other bad moves, and moves that never got made. These are the things that upset Arenado, who saw front office failure and called them on it. After he was traded (in a move that one former MLB GM called the worst trade in baseball history), Story and Gray walked away as free agents and the free fall was in full bloom.
None of that is on Black.
Then-general manager Jeff Bridich made a series of really lousy moves and he paid for it with his job. At least they got that right. After he was let go however, the Rockies failed to look outside the organization for a fresh set of eyes. Promoting longtime scouting director Bill Schmidt to a role he’d never been in before was also a mistake. Being insular, and having an over-reliance on “home grown” players has proven to be a failure. “Draft and develop” only works if the right baseball people (not the least expensive) are handling the development part. And it’s not easy to call yourselves a “draft and develop” organization when you sign – and grossly overpay – an injured Kris Bryant to a $182 million seven-year contract.
Schmidt’s tenure will include the first three 100-loss seasons in franchise history.
Again, error after error after error, and none of them on Black. Sure, you can call him “complicit” if you want, but when it came down to it, he was only an employee with one voice among many. He didn’t have the final say on personnel.
At least now he can sit on a beach and watch the ship continue to take on water from a safe vantage point.
The change that’s really needed is not a new manager. Young Warren Schaffer will have his hands full when he has to deal with the same stuff Black had to put up with. The change that’s needed is also not for Rockies ownership to sell the team. That’s never going to happen. The change that needs to take place is for ownership – remarkably good on the business side – to step away from the baseball side and turn those duties over to someone with a proven track record of operating a successful baseball team, not just a successful baseball business.
They should make “interim bench coach” Clint Hurdle the new team president and let him hire a new general manager. That would be a great start.
Outside ideas are not a bad thing. Letting go of front office employees who aren’t up to it isn’t a bad thing, either. Change can be good for everyone. Those who make the ultimate decisions have to be willing to accept that responsibility and not make a good man like Black their scapegoat.
Don’t be shocked when the dust settles if Black ends up back in southern California, working for the Evil Empire, the Los Angeles Dodgers in some capacity. His good friend, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, told a local SoCal newspaper, “I’m bummed. I’m disappointed. I don’t think Casey Stengel could change the outcome of that ballclub and that’s not the manager’s fault. But obviously, they felt they needed a change in voice or direction. But for me, there’s not many people that are better than Buddy Black. So, yeah, that’s very disappointing. It is certainly not his doing.”
Bud Black will look good in Dodger Blue.
