SB Nation Denver: All Posts by Dan Lucero

Walt Weiss steps into the unknown

2012-11-08T14:07:23Z

Walt Weiss had himself a decent major league career, in which he was good enough to win a Rookie of the Year award and make an All-Star team but never good enough to win a Gold Glove or post an OPS+ over 100 in a full season. Weiss himself was considered one of the smarter players in the game during his 14-year career, in which he was the starting shortstop for three playoff teams and a contributor to three others in three different cities. Though he never hit better than .282 or more than eight home runs - both career highs coming in Colorado, naturally, in 1996 - Weiss hung around thanks to his savvy glove work and baseball IQ.

Add it all up, and Walt Weiss was a pretty OK ballplayer. If he is merely an OK tactician and game manager, he will represent a sizable upgrade over the man he's replacing as soon as he opens the 2013 season as the sixth manager in Colorado Rockies history. He's got a chance to be better than that, if it's possible to glean in-game strategy through osmosis. Weiss broke in under Tony LaRussa in Oakland, and finished his career under Bobby Cox in Atlanta. Both managers were well regarded for their ability to coax the very best out of their rosters in a yearly basis. If Weiss was taking any mental notes, hopefully they had to do with how to maximize the potential of the team and the individual (and not how to stretch games to an interminable length with innumerable pitching changes and squabbles with umpires). And at the very least, Weiss's attention to detail will be a welcome addition in an organization that has played some truly awful fundamental baseball over the last two seasons.

Alas, if only it were that easy. If only all Weiss had to be was a smart guy to make all things well at the corner of 20th and Blake Streets. But the challenge Weiss faces as he makes the unthinkable leap from the dugout of Aurora's Regis Jesuit High School to the Rockies dugout stretches far beyond his in-game capabilities. In the end, Weiss may turn out to be the winner of a contest in which the prize is a no-win situation.

As a managerial candidate, Weiss was a virtual cipher, with only his reputation as a player and connection to the Rockies as a player and former assistant to general manager Dan O'Dowd lending any credibility to his addition to the list of names for Jim Tracy's replacement. The search seemed to be leaning in the direction of Jason Giambi from the very start, after he was one of the first people to be interviewed. Giambi had plenty of familiarity with the Rockies' current regime and players, after all, and his continued presence on the team's roster over the last two years pointed to an obvious mutual respect between player and franchise.

Giambi also had his own reputation, that of clubhouse 'big brother', to lend credence to his candidacy, though how much is certainly debatable. After all, you'd think if he were such a unifying leadership presence in the clubhouse, maybe he would have had more to say about the team's downward spiral over the last three seasons.

But the buzz surrounding Giambi cooled, as did buzz around current bench coach Tim Runnells, who would have been the absolute least inspiring choice possible among people with a pulse. Arizona Diamondbacks bench coach Matt Williams made a strong surge and was reportedly one of two names under consideration at the very end.

In the end, though, the Rockies front office, in whatever order their chain of command currently exists, decided to hire Weiss, despite his lack of coaching experience in any league but the 5A Centennial League. And given the perception left by Tracy's surprising resignation - that the Rockies wanted a toady for the buddy-buddy shot-callers from general manager on up - the fact that they went outside the organization, or at least the current iteration of the organization, has to be considered a positive. Still, how can any manager expected to be operate under the Rockies' unique organizational philosophy? Especially one that's never managed before? (On the flip side, perhaps Weiss's lack of experience means he'll be more amenable to any restrictions placed upon him by Dan O'Dowd, Bill Geivett, and the Monfort brothers.)

It's all a mystery, in the hands of an organizational braintrust that's rapidly lost the good faith of the fan base as they continue to insist they can fix a problem that they created. But the chaos of the front office will seem very small if the players on the field can play better baseball. There are no guarantees there, especially given the uncertainty about the Rockies' young pitchers who, as a group, dramatically disappointed last season. But if the Rockies adopt the personality of their new manager, perhaps they'll be a mentally tougher, more fundamentally sound ballclub next season and in years to come. That's the hope, anyway. The front office regime may not have a direction, but on the field, Walt Weiss gives the Rockies a new one, and it's one to be optimistic about.

Jim Tracy flees a sinking ship

2012-10-07T23:24:37Z

Even from the very start, we knew better than to give Jim Tracy too much credit.

The 2009 Colorado Rockies began their season as an underachieving bunch, and after nearly two months of sleepwalking, Clint Hurdle was canned and Tracy, the bench coach, slid into the big chair. Almost immediately, the Rockies started winning, and they didn't stop until the Phillies eliminated them from their second postseason appearance in three years. But even as it was happening, the plaudits that Jim Tracy received had very little to do with any actual managerial skill. Tracy received credit for the nebulous concept of "letting guys play," for sticking with an everyday lineup and letting starting pitchers work deep into games -- all of which are wonderful ideas provided you're working with legitimate talent.

If anything, the play of the Rockies in the final four months of 2009 served as validation of the ability we thought the team had possessed all along. Tracy? Well, he wasn't Clint Hurdle, and for the purposes of the time, that was good enough.

Over the next three seasons, as the Rockies win total decreased by nine, then ten, then nine again, the criticisms began to mount. Tracy was ripped -- and rightly, most of the time -- for over-managing his team. In contrast to the "set it and forget it" strategy that worked in 2009, Tracy seemed bent on finding out how many lineup combinations he could use in one week, and treated the cleanup spot in the lineup like it was a prize to be won in a clubhouse game of poker. There were players he yanked around, like Dexter Fowler, and players who played entirely too often, like Eliezer Alfonzo or Jonathan Herrera. His grandfatherly tone in interviews became less endearing and a lot more ripe for parody -- nearly every player was "special" or in a "very good place" at one time or another.

In his past, Tracy had worn out his welcome in Los Angeles after a successful start, and had aggravated everybody in Pittsburgh in two miserable years there. His tenure in Colorado seemed to combine the two, an early success with the playoff run in 2009 and two non-competitive seasons in 2011 and 2012. That his hold on the job was tenuous was no surprise, and so in many ways his resignation on Sunday wasn't, either.

But just as Tracy didn't deserve an excessive amount of credit for his handling of the 2009 squad, he doesn't deserve an excessive amount of blame for just how rapidly a seemingly ascendant organization has crashed into a mountain. Jim Tracy didn't injure his three best starting pitchers entering a promising 2011 season, or force multiple DL trips for his two best offensive players. Tracy didn't engineer the assembly of one of the worst starting pitching rotation in baseball history -- if anything, he did about as well as I would have expected he'd do given the constraints placed upon that group once the four-man rotation was enacted from upstairs. His tactical shortcomings probably cost the Rockies some games, but he wasn't the difference between the cellar and the postseason. And while the 2011 team seemed listless for most of the second half, I felt like this year's team, even in their futility, did not play like a team that wanted their manager to be fired. Messages of support on Twitter from players like Jordan Pacheco and Dexter Fowler came immediately after the announcement.

So why, then, is this the time for Tracy to go? The fact is that Tracy's resignation, and departure from a franchise that was willing to let him collect a paycheck as long as he wanted, is, I believe, less of a reaction to a 64-98 record than a reaction to an unstable situation in the front office. After all, this is an organization with a general manager who isn't really a general manager, and a guy who isn't a general manager but is more involved in the clubhouse than even the average person who actually is a general manager. When the Rockies reshuffled the deck chairs on the Titanic ... er, their front office personnel, the role they gave the "promoted" Bill Geivett was essentially a babysitter's role for the manager.

Now put yourself in Jim Tracy's shoes. Yeah, you just lost 98 games, and 89 the year before that. But you had two winning seasons before then. You were the honest-to-God Manager of the Year in the National League in 2009. You've won division titles, been to the postseason, and you know deep down that not even the ghosts of Casey Stengel and Leo Durocher carrying magic pixie dust could have guided this year's Rockies to contention. Do you want anything to do with somebody being brought in to play your wet nurse? Are you thrilled about having to kowtow to an edict about your pitching staff from upstairs, one that they were steadfastly behind until they decided to ditch it just as rashly as it was instituted?

It's a job Jim Tracy could have had as long as he wanted, and now he doesn't want it anymore. Think less about how nice it is to have an unpopular manager out the door, and more about what it says about the situation he was being asked to work through. Think about how bad things would have to get for you to quit a job that's paying you $1.4 million a year for as long as you choose to accept it.

Then - and this is even worse - think about what you'd think of the next person to take that job. Because a job under those kinds of circumstances only attracts three kinds of people - organizational soldiers, desperate men, and suckers.

So while visions of Rays bench coach Davey Martinez or newly-named Phillies third-base coach Ryne Sandberg dance in the heads of Rockies fans, the reality of the situation suggests that the Rockies will most likely look to stay within the organization with the hire. They will try and find somebody who will work under conditions completely unlike any that the other 29 managers deal with. Somebody who will tolerate having their hand held by a front office that is plum out of rational ideas. Somebody who will grin and bear continued futility and hold the company line on excuses -- "we're too young, we're too injured, it's the altitude," and so on.

It's mystifying, really. At the end of the 2009 season, the Rockies seemed to have it all figured out. Their 2007 pennant was still a fresh memory. They had elite young talent, were coming off their best season ever, and had a Manager of the Year in their dugout and an Executive of the Year calling the shots. You're lying if you say you understand how it all went south, because there's no one simple answer. What is apparent, however, is that the downward trend in the win column and subsequent clutching at straws from the Rockies front office suggest a franchise that's far, far away from contention.

Even Jim Tracy, always classy, patient to a fault, couldn't stomach it anymore. If you asked him off the record on his way out of town, he'd probably tell you that the Rockies are no longer special, and not in a very good place.

Catching Up With Project 5183: How Dan O'Dowd's Pitching Scheme Just Might Work

2012-08-28T12:00:23Z

At the end of this article, I'm going to tell you how 'Project 5183', the Colorado Rockies' much-maligned 'paired pitching system,' can work. In the meantime, though, let's come to what I feel is an obvious consensus on the subject: Dan O'Dowd's grand experiment hasn't set the baseball world aflame, but it also hasn't made what was already a lost season any worse.

When the Rockies decided to begin utilizing a four-man pitching rotation adhering to a 75-pitch limit with three 'piggyback' middle relievers eating the middle innings as necessary, the Rockies were 25-40 and done like dinner in the National League playoff picture. It was June 20. The four men in the rotation were Josh Outman, Alex White, Jeff Francis and Christian Friedrich. Josh Roenicke, Guillermo Moscoso, and Jeremy Guthrie were the 'piggyback' guys. The Rockies played the Phillies that night in Philadelphia. Outman was mostly lousy, and the Rockies lost.

The experiment has evolved, as any pitching rotation of any shape does, thanks to trades, injuries, and ineffectiveness. Guthrie is gone, to Kansas City. Outman is gone, to AA Tulsa. Friedrich is gone, to the disabled list with a freak back injury. Moscoso is constantly here today and gone tomorrow, getting familiar with I-25 thanks to his lack of familiarity with the strike zone. The four-man rotation is now something like a five-man rotation again, with Drew Pomeranz having his innings carefully monitored and Jhoulys Chacin finally, blessedly, back from the disabled list. The pitch count and 'piggyback' men remain - Roenicke, Adam Ottavino, and Carlos Torres. The Rockies entered play on Monday with a 51-75 record. That's not very good. But it's a 26-35 record since the project was put in place, which is a .426 winning percentage that ... well, it still makes the Rockies the third-worst team in the National League since its inception. But it's better than playing .385 baseball, which the Rockies were before Dan O'Dowd took a stick of dynamite to what we've come to understand as the modern pitching rotation.

I wrote in this space back in June that, in failure or success, 'Project 5183' would at least be something compelling to track in a season that was rapidly running short on compelling aspects. And I meant that in a positive and negative way. And it's easy to point to negatives. You can point to the Little League-esque restriction of a 75-pitch limit that arguably stunts the growth of Colorado's young pitchers by not giving them the experience of working deep into games and working out of jams. You can point to the numbers, where no Rockies starting pitcher has more than Friedrich's five wins and where the twin gems of the Ubaldo Jimenez trade, White and Pomeranz, have combined for three wins in 31 starts, and argue that pitchers won't want any part of a system where they lose the opportunity to rack up a stat that means something to them, if nothing at all to the baseball cognoscenti.

But Dan O'Dowd didn't implement this system with those factors in mind. Project 5183 was implemented out of desperation, but it wasn't entirely born out of it. The Rockies have had a very real problem developing and maintaining league average starting pitching. Starting pitchers markedly decline in performance from the first trip through the lineup to the second, from the second time through to the third, and so on. Young pitchers are often put on pitch or inning limits to maintain their arms for longer. These are the foundation upon which Project 5183 was built - keep young guys fresh, limit their exposure to the opposition's hitters, and see if it keeps them effective longer and if the middle relievers can deliver some more zeroes.

So, ultimately, while O'Dowd's plan was easy to criticize and ridicule as the last stand of a GM under siege, there were also some very real reasons to observe its progress with interest. And even outside of the slight improvement in winning percentage, there are signs that the project just might have some merits.

Consider these numbers:

Carlos Torres: 30 IP, 3.90 ERA, 22 H, 21/13 K/BB

Adam Ottavino: 40.2 IP, 3.98 ERA, 30 H, 37/20 K/BB

Josh Roenicke: 34.1 IP, 2.88 ERA, 33 H, 19/12 K/BB

Those are the three primary 'piggyback' men, and those are their numbers since June 20. They haven't always pitched in the 'piggyback' role, but when they have, as the numbers show, they've been at least halfway decent. And you have to feel fortunate to get 'at least halfway decent' out of minor league refugees like Torres and Roenicke, and an ex-prospect who was jettisoned from his team late in spring training like Ottavino. The role has suited these men and they've done well to keep the team in games.

Is it helping the starting pitchers? For every quote you hear from Rockies hurlers talking about how the 75-pitch limit keeps them focused and makes them go after hitters, you've got hard evidence of younger guys like White, Pomeranz and Tyler Chatwood leaving games after three or four innings because of their inability to stay under the count. So it's hard to say definitively, with either side of the argument having anecdotal evidence to support themselves. Personally, I'd support a looser pitch count restriction, maybe out to 85-95 and even further when off days provide an extra day of rest.

Ultimately, starting pitching sunk the Rockies' 2012 campaign, and the switch to Project 5183 didn't exactly transform the Rockies arms into Cy Young candidates. But the Rockies have gotten virtually nothing from the two best starting pitchers on their roster - Jorge de la Rosa's comeback from Tommy John surgery remains stuck in neutral, and Jhoulys Chacin just got back after missing three months. Their third best pitcher entering this season, Juan Nicasio, only pitched for a month and a half before getting hurt. Their best pitchers after that are either really young and have gone through expected growing pains, or are Jeff Francis.

So it'd be unfair to write off the Project after three months, because a lot more has gone into the struggles of this staff than the restrictions placed upon it by the Project. But the Rockies have a group of eight guys who could slot into either starter or 'piggyback' roles next year - Chacin, de la Rosa, Pomeranz, Nicasio, White, Friedrich, Chatwood and Francis - and could reasonably be expected to pitch better than they did in 2012.

So the question of whether there's real merit to Project 5183 may have to wait until next year. Ultimately, though, the success or failure of this system will rest on the same factor that determines the success of the traditional rotation - having enough real live pitching talent on hand. The Rockies aren't just betting that they might have that eventually, they're betting on their formula being the right way to manage said talent. Whether they're right or not, though, there's the solution, plain as can be - get good pitchers. If Chacin can stay healthy, if de la Rosa can look something like his former self, if Nicasio and Chatwood can harness their big heat, if Pomeranz and White can be more efficient, then the Rockies aren't as far away from that as you might think. Which would mean Project 5183 isn't far away from actually working.

For more on the Rockies, check out Purple Row. Head over to Baseball Nation for more news and notes around the majors.

Lost Season, Lack of Direction Must Signal End For Dan O'Dowd, Jim Tracy

2012-07-31T12:00:24Z

This is an exciting time to be a baseball fan. The trade deadline has seen big stars change addresses and leagues, altering the shape of pennant races from East to (especially) West. Young talent is debuting and lighting up the highlight reels. The addition of a second wild card may yet seem like an unneeded contrivance once October comes, but for the time being it's yet another carrot for teams to reach for, meaning even more teams can feel the thrill of meaningful baseball as the calendar prepares to flip to August. Cities like Washington, Pittsburgh and Baltimore are watching their best teams in decades. Yes, it's a thrilling year, and it's only going to get more fun as we get into the final two months.

Unless, of course, you're a Rockies fan, where "fun" and "exciting" left tread marks leaving Denver weeks ago. On Sunday, the Rockies lost their 63rd game out of 100 played, a lethargic 7-2 defeat at the hands of the Cincinnati Reds in which the Rockies were so mentally absent that they forgot how many outs had been recorded in the fifth inning, staying on the field and whipping the ball around the horn after out No. 3 as if they've needed to make it any more difficult on themselves to retire the side this season. It was a perfect moment to represent a mind-numbing season, loss after dispiriting loss long having given way to the sort of crushing ennui only mildly mitigated by the start of NFL training camp.

In retrospect, we should have seen this coming. Rockies fans should have known 2012 had a very good chance of being a very trying season. We should have known a pitching staff built on youth would go through growing pains, that the cruel injury bug would make its way to Denver, and that those two factors would, in large part, lead to us watching the other team shake hands after games a lot more often than the purple pinstripes.

And I know I don't speak for every fan, but I can deal with a bad season if I know it's coming. The first few Rockies teams I followed ardently after the switch flipped from "fan" to "obsessed fan" in my teens were the rebuilding clubs in 2003, 2004, and 2005. Those, in case you've forgotten, were some really bad baseball teams. But they were young, and thus offered something to dream on, as guys like Jeff Francis, Matt Holliday, and Garrett Atkins took their opening bows in the Show.

The first rebuilding period in Dan O'Dowd's tenure as Rockies general manager was an undeniable necessity with a clear endgame - bottom out, build from within, and contend with young, cost-controlled talent. And, lest we forget amidst some of the revisionist history being written of late that would have you believe O'Dowd has been nothing but an incompetent boob for twelve years, it bore fruit. The Rockies went to a World Series. It feels like ages ago, but it happened. Then after the club bobbled the 2008 season and after Clint Hurdle lost a more veteran clubhouse, they regrouped, were the best team in the National League from June to September in 2009, and made the playoffs again. And though the 2010 team met a demise like Wile E. Coyote in the last two weeks, falling off a cliff and landing just seconds before an anvil dropped on the same spot, that was a pretty good ballclub, too.

I felt like that four-year run gave O'Dowd a certain amount of credibility when it came to A) calling for a rebuild and B) guiding the club through the process. And though nobody said it publicly before this season began, this season represented something like a rebuilding process right from the jump, and it became more evident as the losses mounted that the Rockies were headed for a season of non-contention.

Which, again, I can handle as a fan. They aren't any fun, of course, but as long as I can see a clear vision for the future, I can keep believing. The Rockies aren't ever going to be a franchise that loads up in the free agent market, spending like a big-market team to wallpaper over any mistakes made on the scouting and player development end. The process of building a winner in Denver will always require some patience, and the occasional sacrifice of short-term results in anticipation of a bountiful future. If you don't, or can't, or won't trust that process, you're going to be even more frustrated with seasons like these.

But what I can't handle is an unclear vision for the future, and I'm afraid that's the crossroads at which the Rockies find themselves. From a talent perspective, it looks like the core of the lineup is solidly in place for years to come, and I'd like to think some better luck in the health department can merge with the growth of the organization's well-regarded young pitchers to produce a pitching staff that's at least competent.

However, that talent is in the hands of a general manager who has spent all his capital from his first successful rebuilding job on an unorthodox "paired pitching system" that so far seems to be doing as much, if not more, harm than good. And it's in the hands of Jim Tracy, whose honeymoon expired long ago, who can't keep his players focused on a day-in, day-out basis and occasionally treats the cleanup spot in his lineup like a prize to be won in a clubhouse raffle.

There is hope, of course. There is always hope. And there is potential, real potential, on display every time Wilin Rosario turns on a fastball or Josh Rutledge sends a line drive through the infield or Drew Pomeranz paints the inside corner. But there is so much that is uncertain, so much that is cloudy, because there is so much that is just plain not working. And the uncertainty stems from a pitching system that has landed with a thud and a manager whose presence on the bench stopped being a positive the moment the 2009 regular season ended.

Compounding the frustration, the futures of O'Dowd and Tracy are in the hands of the Brothers Monfort. Now, I don't blame Dick or Charlie for the failings of the on-field product, and I respect the value system that has built a top-notch organizational environment, which has given the Rockies a deserved reputation as a classy franchise. But the great fear regarding the Monforts is that they are loyal to a fault, and that their loyalty to O'Dowd and Tracy may lead them to keep them established in the same chairs even after this meltdown of a season. It's true that O'Dowd and Tracy are well-regarded in the game, and seem to be the kind of men you want representing your ballclub. But can the Monforts divorce character from results? (Ironically, O'Dowd's inability to do just that has contributed to this malaise.) Can they prove once and for all that winning on the field is the top priority beyond the goal, admirable as it may be, of building a "culture of value?"

It's a very real concern as this lost season limps to what may be an unprecedented end - the first 100-loss season in franchise history. There's no shame in a rebuilding process. There's no shame in wanting to employ respectable individuals to represent your franchise. But the way this season has come apart at the seams has shown once and for all that the expiration date on O'Dowd and Tracy has come and gone. And the greatest shame would be if this organization is too proud to see that it's time to move on, and so wedded to a character ideal that it would sacrifice on-field results.

Learning To Live With Dan O'Dowd's Confounding 'Project 5,183'

2012-06-28T12:01:06Z

As a general rule, I try my best not to make myself miserable. Common sense, right? I do what I can to avoid things I know are going to bring me down. I don't listen to music I can't stand, I don't watch movies or television shows that look like insipid crap, and I avoid people I can't get along with. This isn't quite like choosing to live in blissful ignorance - I'm just trying to salvage enough bliss for myself as I possibly can.

But there are some things I can't leave alone, and thanks to a lot of factors beyond my control, the Colorado Rockies are one of those things. I guess I could have been born to parents who didn't care for sports, or in a different state, or a different country, but my circumstances led me to adopt the newborn Rockies when I was six years old. They were the hometown team in my favorite sport, then and now. In different scenarios, I'm not sure I would have voluntarily chosen to be a Rockies fan. But I didn't have a choice, and I don't have one now, as I could no more abandon the team I've loved for this long any more than I could change anything else so deeply ingrained as a part of myself.

So I'm as much a Rockies fan today, with the club holding the third-worst record in the major leagues, as I was in 2007, when the team hoisted its first National League pennant. I was there for 2004 and 2005, when the Rockies were actually honest about anticipating 90-plus losses in rebuilding campaigns, and I was there in the mid-to-late 90s when the Rockies made the playoffs once and were generally competitive in an ultimately fruitless way. I can't quit this team, and I do not envy the sort of fan who can, who may just decide to leave the TV off and not buy tickets and maybe even - perish the thought - choose to stop following the team altogether, forsaking them for a different team or a different sport or something as silly as a non-sporting endeavor. I don't envy that person because I cannot fathom that their joy on that October night in 2007 could have in any way approached the joy that I felt.

None of this background is for the purpose of beating my chest and bragging about what a great fan I am. I'm just trying to show that as ragged and frustrating as this season has been, even these trying times are not enough to have driven me crazy. The trick is to not let the bad become unbearable. (I'm much better at this than I used to be.) As the Rockies have staggered to two miserable months in a row and virtually ensured a campaign worse than last season's awful 73-89 season, I've done my level best to accentuate the positive. It's there if you look hard enough. Carlos Gonzalez is on the team, after all, and watching him hit is a true pleasure. I've enjoyed Dexter Fowler's breakout season, Wilin Rosario's tentative baby steps, the underrated Matt Belisle-Rafael Betancourt duo at the back of the bullpen, and the return of my all-time favorite Rockie, Jeff Francis.

But the struggles of the present, in baseball as in any sport, are a sight more tolerable when you can see light at the end of the tunnel. The '04 and '05 seasons were easier to swallow because Rockies fans not only believed in the necessity of a youth movement, but believed in some of the young players who would comprise the future core (though some were surely slower to come around on the prospects than others). Four years after the tear-down, the Rockies were playing in an honest-to-God World Series. Two years after that they were back in the postseason.

The success of that rebuilding period earned the man in charge of it a certain level of political capital. I felt like general manager Dan O'Dowd had shown he knew his way around that process. But even though I was inclined to trust O'Dowd with a somewhat impromptu rebuild this season, that trust has been shrouded in a fog of utter confusion.

Surely you've heard all about Dan O'Dowd's latest plan by now. Depending on your source, you may have heard about it between expletives, or between giggles. O'Dowd's laid it all out in front of the Denver Post, the USA Today, and season ticket holders in a fan forum on Wednesday. The standard five-man rotation is a thing of the past for the Rockies, who will utilize a seven-man "paired" pitching rotation with plans to potentially expand upon that idea to include as many as 11 starting pitchers on the same staff.

It's completely off the wall, flying in the face of everything we've come to understand about how the modern pitching staff is best managed. And to hear O'Dowd tell it, it was a move many years in the making that was finally enacted due to the disappointment of this season's league-worst pitching staff and a change in the way that Coors Field is behaving with regard to batted balls.

Now, O'Dowd's not technically wrong on any of those points. The starting pitching has been horrific and the climate in the city of Denver is hotter and dryer than it's been in years. And it's only fair to point out that the Rockies rotation has been ravaged by injury - Jhoulys Chacin's shoulder, Juan Nicasio's knee, Jorge de la Rosa's slower-than-anticipated recovery from Tommy John surgery - and by a lack of readiness from young pitchers, and neither of those factors necessarily fall at the feet of the general manager. O'Dowd's plan is an effort to try and lighten workload on pitchers, thereby reducing the chance for injury, and lessen the exposure of pitchers to opposing lineups, thereby increasing their effectiveness. Theoretically, anyway.

It's a move designed for the long haul, an attempt to find long-term stability on the Rockies staff and perhaps unlock some of the magic that has turned journeymen like Belisle and Josh Roenicke into effective multi-inning relief pitchers. But it's also writing off the efforts of the pitching staffs in the last six seasons, who posted the franchise's best ever ERAs and produced All-Star starters in Aaron Cook, Jason Marquis and Ubaldo Jimenez. O'Dowd now cites the success of traditional groups like the 2009 rotation, which had five guys who stayed healthy all season and each won 10 or more games, as a fluke.

Today, officially, what you as a fan think of the Rockies going forward - how willing you are to suffer through a lousy 2012 season and still believe in the future through it all - starts with whether or not you believe in Dan O'Dowd's pitching plan. The new formula will get a run through the rest of the season, even when guys like Nicasio, Chacin, and Drew Pomeranz rejoin the fray. Will the starting pitchers buy in to a reduced workload and a dramatically reduced opportunity to accumulate individual wins? Will the bullpen be able to stand up to the enforced workload? These questions and more won't be answered until the Coors Field ticket windows are shuttered for the fall.

Personally, I don't know what to think of it. I know it's spitting in the eye of conventional baseball wisdom, and such moves, in failure or success, are at least never boring. But it also feels like a dramatic overreaction to short-term problems like injuries, inexperience, and a dry Denver summer - almost like deciding to amputate someone's leg after they sprain their ankle.

What I will call it, for now, is interesting. And I'll wait and see on the results. Because to immediately pillory Dan O'Dowd and to lose all faith whatsoever in whichever part of the Rockies' future that includes him as the general manager ... well, that'd just about make me miserable. Your mileage may vary. But whatever that light of the end of the tunnel may be, even if it's an oncoming train, I'm waiting for it either way.

Jim And Dan's Last Stand: Can This Duo Survive The Rockies' Latest Debacles?

2012-05-21T12:01:17Z

The natives are three exits past restless. The boos aren't of frustration, but of anger. Cries for a scapegoat -- multiple scapegoats -- have grown insistent, almost threatening. The last two and a half weeks have made it abundantly clear that the Colorado Rockies will not be participating in the postseason for the third consecutive year, and for the crime of not having the decency to at least wait until Memorial Day before pulling the plug on October dreams, the Rockies are paying dearly in the court of public opinion.

After a 12-12 start that featured more exciting finishes than all of the previous season and provided some glimmers of optimism, the Rockies have fallen into an abyss. A sweep at home by the lowly Seattle Mariners -- three games which were largely dominated by the AL West's basement dwellers -- has dropped the Rox to 15-25, ten games below .500 and into the NL West cellar. Where 2011's miserable May was a cold bucket of ice water that extinguished a hot start, 2012's May has been a persistent downpour, with no end in sight to the clouds hanging heavily over a seemingly regressive franchise.

Rockies fans, in turn, want heads on platters. They want manager Jim Tracy and pitching coach Bob Apodaca handed their walking papers, and they want general manager Dan O'Dowd on the same flight out of DIA. Even some members of the fanbase less inclined to demand a scapegoat have acknowledged that even change for change's sake would represent an improvement from the losing baseball the Rockies have played, without interruption, since the final two weeks of the 2010 season. (I'm of the mind that Tracy is on borrowed time, but his ouster won't make the Rockies young pitching any more experienced overnight, or recharge what has been a curiously underperforming offense. Some things are just going to have to happen on their own, no matter whose writing is on the lineup card.)

The most dispiriting facet of all of this mad chatter, though, is just how recently that same management group was beyond reproach. In baseball terms, three years isn't that long ago, and it was only that long ago when Tracy was the NL Manager of the Year and O'Dowd had overseen two playoff teams (including one pennant winner) in three seasons. To understand how things got from the Rockies being one blown call in the ninth inning away from a 2-1 NLDS lead over the Phillies in '09 to the bottom of the old well in '12, you have to understand that the Rockies' team-building philosophy hasn't changed. It's not the blueprint, so to speak, that's the problem.

When Dan O'Dowd had been on the job for four seasons, he'd seen the Rockies go from 82-80 in his first season to 74-88 in 2003. The franchise was absolutely spinning its wheels, crowds were shrinking in size, and the only way to get things moving forward was to take a step back. The Rockies committed to a full-scale rebuild in 2004. With Clint Hurdle, respected as a human if not as a tactician, overseeing progress from the dugout, the Rockies proceeded to play two of the three worst seasons in franchise history - 68 wins in 2004, one fewer the next year. But a plan was in motion -- a plan to come up with a core of young talent drafted and developed in-house. By the end of 2004, Matt Holliday and Garrett Atkins were in the everyday lineup and Jeff Francis was in the starting rotation. Brad Hawpe took over everyday duties in 2005, and Aaron Cook returned from injury for the final two months.

The Rockies won 76 games in 2006, their most wins since O'Dowd's first year. Troy Tulowitzki and Ubaldo Jimenez debuted in September of that season. The core was locked in for its first full year together, and success came ahead of schedule in the form of 90 wins, a Wild Card, and a World Series appearance. The vision was coming true -- a pipeline of homegrown talent had made the Rockies competitive without having to break the bank, a sensible and necessary approach for a team based in the 20th largest market in Major League Baseball.

So what happened? The pipeline dried up. The Rockies had been on the cutting edge of scouting and development in Latin America, but other teams began to catch up, costing the Rockies a valuable advantage. And the draft, which had been bountiful for the Rockies up through 2005, became nightmarish. The Rockies' drafts from 2005 to 2007 produced only six players who ever saw the big leagues for the team that drafted them: Tulowitzki, who's turned out OK; Mike McKenry and Bruce Billings, who hardly count; Greg Reynolds, about whom the less said, the better; and current Rockies Jordan Pacheco and Matt Reynolds, who define 'fungible.' Early returns on the 2008 class aren't a lot better, though it's too early to write off Christian Friedrich and Charlie Blackmon, who have shown promise while wearing the big league uniform.

Those four drafts were supposed to supply the Rockies with the complimentary players that the 2007 and 2009 teams had -- guys like Seth Smith, Chris Iannetta, Clint Barmes, and Ryan Spilborghs, who weren't stars by any stretch but were comfortably above-average regulars who supplemented star performances from the likes of Holliday and Tulowitzki. And to this point, that has not been the case.

The failure of the 2011 Rockies made it clear that O'Dowd's pipeline pipe-dream had run dry. The Rockies do have two outstanding players in the prime of their career, but very little else in the way of 'comfortably above-average' on the 2012 roster. And it was this understanding that led to the construction of the 2012 Rockies as a team that only the most optimistic fan could see returning to postseason play.

The 2012 season isn't quite a push of the reset button, as in 2004, but it's clear that it's Dan O'Dowd's last stand. By the end of this season, we will know if the pipeline is flowing again. We will know if Friedrich, Alex White, Drew Pomeranz can be rotation regulars. We will know if Wilin Rosario can be the answer behind the plate, and we might just catch our first glimpses of Nolan Arenado, Josh Rutledge, and other position prospects. And if the answers come back negative, if the scouting/player development side of the Rockies organization continues to show regression, then I believe the team will head into 2013 with a brand new front office.

But this is a story that will take the full 162 games to write. Not 40, not 50, not 81, but an entire season. I can't speak to who will serve out the season in the dugout, or who will be making mid-inning visits to the pitcher's mound, but I do believe that 2012 is more of an experimental season than we'd all wanted to admit back in March. It will be a test of endurance in the stands and in front of the nightly ROOT Sports telecast. Like a battered starter left in to absorb innings to protect a tired bullpen, Rockies fans are going to have to wear it. Time will tell if the men in charge will, too.

Reasons For Optimism As Rockies Take The Field

2012-04-06T12:00:25Z

A baseball fan gets six months to dream, and six months to watch reality unfold. The dreaming starts in fall, once the turnstiles quit clicking and the tarp settles over the infield dirt for the long winter ahead. With so long to fantasize about what could be, the visions of the season to come grow grander as the days progress. By the time pitchers and catchers descend on spring training complexes throughout Florida and Arizona, even the most cynical rooters of the lowliest teams have allowed the seed to grow.

If the stars stay healthy... if the kids grow up fast... if a couple of our veterans exceed expectation ... if we can lock down the leads we get ...

If you can't believe on Opening Day, if there's not even a fraction of yourself that isn't convinced this can be 'THE year' when your team takes the field for the first time, you may lack the capacity to believe in anything at all. That's what Opening Day is. It is the clean slate that puts last year's pennant winners on level pegging with the cellar dwellers. The dreaming doesn't stop on Opening Day, but the realization eventually arrives that the odds are 29-in-30 you're going to wake up and watch some other team raising the Commissioner's Trophy in October.

One of my favorite lines in the movie Moneyball, a line painfully relatable to anybody who played the game beyond Little League, was what the scout tells the young Billy Beane sitting at his parents' dinner table: "We're all told at some point in time that we can no longer play the children's game ... we just don't know when that's gonna be. But we're all told."

The baseball season works the same way. Some of us - mostly in Pittsburgh and Baltimore -- are told this is not 'THE year' in May or June. Some get to hold out that hope until the final out of the World Series. But we're all told -- all but the folks who wear the same logo on their caps as the guys dogpiling on top of each other after the season's final game. The trick, then, if you must have that conversation at all, is to put off having to have that conversation as long as possible.

How long are the Colorado Rockies going to give us this year? Last year, it wasn't long, and the cruelty of the Rockies slide into irrelevance was exaggerated by how promising everything felt entering the 2011 season. The 11-2 start to a season that began with grand expectations made the ultimate winter dream -- the dream of a juggernaut stampeding their way to the World Series - seem closer than ever before. Then ... well, then the rest of the season happened. But the greatest thing about today is that today, 2011's disappointment is replaced by the promise of 2012, for however long that promise lasts.

There are reasons for purple-tinted optimism in Colorado this season. Start with the star power of two of the game's best young players, Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez. Even on the dreariest of evenings, Tulo will make a spectacular play at shortstop, or CarGo will hammer a ball that takes approximately 0.2 seconds to reach the right field bleachers, and you'll be reminded that rooting for players as otherworldly talented and as full of love for the game as those two will make all 162 nights you spend with this team worthwhile.

There are the lions in winter, including the greatest Rockie of them all, Todd Helton, hoping to tack one more .300 season and Gold Glove on the end of his Hall of Fame resume. Michael Cuddyer, Ramon Hernandez, Rafael Betancourt, Jason Giambi, and Jamie Moyer have been around the bend a few times, too. They are the leaders, the ones in charge of showing the team's younger players the way to a brighter future that they may not get to experience for themselves.

There are the kids -- a lot of them, this time around. It's not a full-scale youth movement on the level of 2004 or 2005's Rockies teams, but we'll be watching the first tentative steps in the big league careers of a lot of intriguing prospects. Wilin Rosario has thunder in his bat and lightning in his throwing arm behind the plate. Drew Pomeranz and Rex Brothers are gun-slinging lefties that could be the stars of the pitching staff someday. And in Colorado Springs and Tulsa, the Rockies have a crop of talent that is finally back to the level that it reached back in 2005 in 2006, when the core of a pennant winner was refining their games at the highest minor league levels.

While nobody's tipping these Rockies for a trip to the Fall Classic, nobody should feel very comfortable writing them off, either. Not with a 3-4 tandem as good as any in the game. Not with a bullpen that should be solid, if unspectacular. Not with the chance that the young pitchers might be faster to approach their ceiling than some would expect.

It will be a season where reputations will be put on the line: Tulowitzki's as a leader, the prospect parade as future big league lynchpins, general manager Dan O'Dowd's as a talent evaluator, manager Jim Tracy's as a ... well, as a manager. It's a season where little is certain about the final destination, and even less is certain about the journey this team will take to get there.

It will be fun, and it will be frustrating. Mostly, it will be interesting. And it will not be 2011, which alone is reason to be delighted for the moment when Marco Scutaro settles into the batter's box at Minute Maid Park Friday night and awaits the first pitch of the new season.

It may -- just may -- be 'THE year'. It probably won't be. But that's alright. What I'm hoping for is a year where we can believe that it could be for as long as possible, and a year that shows this franchise the way to many of 'THE years' to come.

The Real Betrayal In the Ubaldo Jimenez Trade

2012-03-07T21:12:09Z

The 2011 season provided a host of miserable moments for the Colorado Rockies, none of which are fun to dwell upon. But the indelible image of a season gone wrong will always be the scene at Petco Park on July 30, when the Rockies sent Ubaldo Jimenez to the mound to face the San Diego Padres despite an all but consummated trade that would send Jimenez away to Cleveland. The clearly-distracted Jimenez labored through an awful first inning, purportedly as the final details of the deal were hammered out off-camera. When the awkward half-inning finally ended, Jimenez began hugging his teammates in the Rockies dugout, his radiant smile turned melancholy by circumstance, and the greatest pitcher in Rockies history wasn't a Rockie anymore.

It was a painful exit, excruciating to watch, and the pervading feeling among Rockies fans was that Ubaldo had been unfairly handled on his way out the door. After a month of rumors that alternately ran hot and cold, the Rockies trading a player as beloved as Jimenez was hard enough. To send him out to the mound anyway that night in San Diego, to watch him struggle so badly, and then to see him pulled after one inning and depart the clubhouse while the game was still in progress - it all felt like salt in the wound. After years and years of fruitless searches for a true ace, the Rockies were trading their homegrown pitching star not even a full season removed from the best season a Rockies hurler has ever had.

Of course, fans were privy to the rumors. And they were privy to the idea that maybe, just maybe, Ubaldo was as responsible for his exit from Denver as the ballclub was. National writers reported Jimenez had grown disenchanted with the Rockies. They said he was upset when the Rockies decided not to restructure his team-friendly contract after the 2010 season, choosing to break the bank for long-term extensions for Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki and deferring discussions about a similar deal for Jimenez until later. But Rockies fans couldn't - wouldn't - believe such a thing.

Ask out of Colorado? Demand a trade? Such a thing seemed out of character for Jimenez, the humble Dominican who lived with his parents and lived a walking distance from Coors Field, the driven star who slavishly adhered to his workout routine, going on an early-morning run through the streets of Atlanta the day after pitching the franchise's first no-hitter. He had worked to overcome a bizarre shoulder injury in the minors, fought through wildness down on the farm, and gradually improved until exploding into the national consciousness with a first half for the ages in 2010. Jimenez seemed to personify the personality around which the Rockies were hoping to build their long-term success.

The trade seemed to make a scapegoat out of Jimenez, who had scuffled badly in 2011 thanks most directly to a loss of velocity and sharpness on the hill. Instead of the confidence which each Ubaldo start brought to the Rockies the year before, the Jimenez of 2011 was a dangerous mixed bag. But Jimenez had earned enough goodwill with Rockies fans that they were willing to write off his loss in form to nagging injuries, and willing to wait as long as it took for that dazzling fastball and six-pitch mix to return. For him to have been traded felt like nothing short of a betrayal. We knew Ubaldo Jimenez, and we knew he didn't deserve to be treated this way.

And then, on Wednesday, a Tracy Ringolsby column on Foxsports.com showed us we didn't know what we thought we did.

In the column, Jimenez admitted that the ugly rumors that Rockies fans were so eager to dismiss out of hand back in July were, in fact, true - that he viewed a lack of a long-term extension similar to Carlos Gonzalez's and Troy Tulowitzki's as a sign of disrespect, and wanted to be traded as a result. More damningly, Jimenez copped to trying to pitch through injury as the season wore on so that he would remain off the disabled list and remain eligible to be traded. Jimenez want the Rockies to move him so badly that he intentionally pitched at less than his best, costing the Rockies dearly as an 11-2 start (accomplished, you'll recall, with Jimenez on the disabled list) turned into a disastrous season.

And on this day, with this revelation, Rockies fans have every right to feel as betrayed as they felt last July - but not by the ballclub they root for. We didn't know Ubaldo Jimenez after all. Jimenez, it turned out, was just as selfish as anyone else, to the point of harming his own ballclub in search of his own personal aspiration, which was to be anywhere but Colorado. He was not, it turned out, the poster boy for character and accountability that we all assumed. The Rockies were not, it turned out, trading away a beloved start - they were trading away a cancer, a player who submarined a promising season for his own team, in the process costing himself a chance to become adequately healthy and have the kind of follow-up campaign that his marvelous 2010 deserved.

The Rockies never took a contract extension off the table. As Denver Post Rockies writer Troy Renck tweeted, the Rockies came to Jimenez in May and reiterated their desire to work something out with him if he finished the season strongly. But Ubaldo's mind was made up - he had been disrespected, and he wanted out. And eventually, he got his wish. And he'll continue to pitch under the same contract, only now he'll do so for the Cleveland Indians. The Ringolsby article says he feels happy, and feels wanted. Maybe he'll bounce back and be the pitcher he was in 2010. Maybe that triple-digit fastball is gone forever and the Rockies sold him at his highest remaining point of value.

One thing is for certain - the events of last July 30 are now recast in a different light. Rockies fans weren't betrayed on that night. They were betrayed in the spring, when a selfish individual put his own interests over his team. And instead of Ubaldo Jimenez standing as an unfairly-chosen scapegoat for a season gone wrong, he stands as further proof of the hard truth that as much as we think we know the players we root for, we really don't know anything about them.

Yes, July 30 is a different memory, now. A worse one.