Dick Monfort’s Rockies can be fixed. Here’s how, from pitching to analytics to athleticism.

09/28/2023

First in moos, first in brews … and last in the National League.

From 1903 through 1939, the old St. Lous Browns landed in the American League cellar only seven times. But the old rhyme about the Mound City’s old second team — “First in shoes, first in booze and last in the American League” — was catchy as heck, so the tag stuck.

A century later, purple is the new brown.

From 1999 through 2023, the Rockies have finished last in the National League West eight times, five of those coming since 2012. The “Rockie Way” is a one-way ticket to the blues.

There’s no question Colorado CEO Dick Monfort is one of the nation’s leading experts at playing the game. If that game is “Monopoly.”

How would I fix what ails the Rox? 1. Double down on home-grown, cost-controlled pitchers that are taught to throw strikes and entice grounders. Big-name free-agent hurlers ain’t signing here unless you give them Russell Wilson money, and that’s silly money. 2. Emphasize a lineup that melds the minds of Earl Weaver and Whitey Herzog: Power, strike-zone judgement, athleticism and defense — especially in the outfield. Have you seen those gaps? Coors Field is a doubles park. When you keep playing Kris Bryant or post-2020 Charlie Blackmon in the corners, it becomes a triples one. 3. Push for expansion, so you can move the heck out out of the National League West.

As part of The Post’s “Rockie Way” project, I surveyed a handful of national voices to see how they’d tinker with one of the most broken franchises in Major League Baseball. Whether it’s adding Chaim Bloom or diving deeper into analytics, when it comes to the mess along 20th and Bleak, we’re all singing from pretty much the same hymnal:

If you were general manager of the Rockies, what would be the first changes you’d make?

Dan Szymborski, FanGraphs: I think the most important part of analytics isn’t just using analytics — every team has a department — but a top-to-bottom approach in which information to directly help develop players is considered the norm. Ignoring any trash-can dynamics, one thing the Astros have done very well for a long time isn’t just having analytics staff, but giving players the tools to actually improve. The culture needs to change, to modernize. The Rays compete without spending a lot of money, but the Rays had to develop a state-of-the-art organization, which is far beyond simply crunching numbers. One thing the Rays do well is that every player in the minors has a chance to improve and make the team, they’re not just finding these relievers every year by accident. Too often the Rockies show almost a casual disinterest in their minor league talent when it’s not someone who is a highly touted prospect. The team’s actually done somewhat better this year than in the past. I think it’s crazy that Nolan Jones didn’t start on the roster, but at least he didn’t hang around at Triple-A and watch an overpaid veteran with a negative WAR start for an entire season.

Erik Kratz, Foul Territory, ex-MLB catcher: Do an outside audit of my player development, front office and scouting department. They have had all the same people employed there for so long that everyone says the same thing and they just keep running around in circles. I would also do an evaluation of advanced scouting for the big leagues. I have talked to several players that came through there that said they never had reports on guys they were facing and when they did, it was very vague.

Ben Clemens, FanGraphs: The first thing I’d do is put more resources into player development, both in hiring more coaches and using more consultancy-type services (Driveline, that kind of thing). I’d do so with an eye toward supplementing the team that’s already there. The Rockies have done a good job with several young hitters in the minors in recent years, and I think that keeping that pipeline flowing is key to long-term contention. Next, I’d lean into that by explicitly favoring young players at the major league level, even if it means a worse team on the field today. No more Randal Grichuks, in other words. I like Grichuk, but I think it was irresponsible to play him and Charlie Blackmon when the team really needs to find out what their next core looks like. Finally, I’d bulk up the analytics/scouting side of things. This would be a condition of me accepting the job, to be honest; figuring out the draft and/or cashing in on trades to stockpile for the future has been a key part of a lot of the sustainable contenders we’ve seen in recent years, so I’d want to focus on that heavily.

Bradford William Davis, GQ.com/Insider: Dick, the first thing I’d do is read your Bible. My brother in Christ, I am for real. Speaking as one devout man to another, I urge you to turn to the wisdom of the Proverbs. In the first chapter of the book of Proverbs, the ancient author of divine wisdom writes: How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?/ How long will mockers delight in mockery/and fools hate knowledge? I saw an admittedly imperfect chart designed by Twitter user Jay Cuda. Jay tried to illustrate which teams have the largest and smallest analytics staffs in their front office by publicly available listings, comparing it to team payroll. The Rockies had the lowest relative to their budget. This is not perfect information, but from everything I’ve heard around the league, it’s a decent proxy that explains how your team approaches empirical information and innovation. While I know you employ good, smart baseball minds, Dick, you have managed an organization that has, effectively rejected (or, Biblically speaking, “mocked”) a full integration of a crucial domain of knowledge about what makes players good and how to make players better. This does not mean you or any organization should worship analytics as the sole path to improvement, but the science of baseball is readily available to you. Moreover, you own a franchise in the most scientifically intriguing place in all of American sports. Your elevation offers the most unique and compelling questions about how to succeed at this sport. It could attract the brightest, creative, and most passionate minds if you pursued them like you pursued Kris Bryant and allowed them to take charge in building the next Colorado sports dynasty. But, you are, to quote the Good Book, in love with your simple ways.

Ben Verlander, Fox Sports: I think the first and foremost (task) is getting the pitching situated. And I know it’s not an easy thing to do in Denver. Figure out the scouting department — look at what else is going on around the league. The problem with the GM (role there) is you can only have so much pull, and the owner has a lot of it.

OK, then. So If you were owner of the Rockies, what would be the changes you’d make right now — and why?

Szymborski: I feel ownership is the biggest problem with the team right now. There are too many misconceptions about how teams win and why, and it reflects in the long-term decisions. People around baseball, both in front offices and among the agent class, were absolutely shocked that Kris Bryant got that contract, and the valuations of him around baseball were basically in another galaxy. Baseball, from an attendance standpoint, is perhaps the least star-driven major sport. From Zimbalist 25 years ago to today, basically all the evidence points to stars not drawing crowds, outside of their perceived effect on wins, with the exception of very specific players, like Fernando Valenzuela after his debut or Shohei Ohtani or the 1998 home run race. Bryant was never going to spike huge crowds and he certainly wasn’t going to cause the team to win many more games than the year before. And when you go publicly and say things about how you’re going to win 94 games or compete for a wild card and nobody believes it, you just shred your credibility with players on your team. Now it’s unreasonable to expect an owner to have no input on a $200-million contract, but the decision-making needs to largely be driven by competent people who know that winning games in MLB in 2023 is not remotely the same thing as winning a game in a 1970s sports movie.

Kratz: See the previous answer because you (as owner) are the one who enabled all the same people to keep working for a team that has developed well but also hasn’t won enough. I would dip into my wallet that is fat because of the awesome support Rockies fans give the team.

Clemens: I’d want to focus a lot on modernizing the front office with a huge emphasis on player development. I think this is a great fit with things the Rockies already do well. I’d also find out if anyone high up in the community outreach part of the team wanted to switch over to baseball operations. You can take this with a grain of salt, because I’ve only visited Denver, never lived there, but I’ve been consistently impressed by how well things are run there. It’s one of my favorite stadiums and area-around-stadium experiences in baseball, and I’m a big fan of finding good people and then giving them problems to solve rather than getting too focused on what their current role is. Good employees are just good at jobs more than they’re specialists, in my opinion, and the people making it fun to watch a game in Denver are clearly good at their jobs.

Davis: It’s up to your GM to prioritize athletic outfielders who excel on both sides of the ball. You know this more intimately than I, but your outfield is enormous. Home runs will always be with you. That’s not good or bad, it’s just what is. But are they going to be solo shots, or three-run back-breakers? Right now, it’s the latter. Since 2019, the Rockies have a team-wide 68% left on-base percentage. That’s worst in baseball by nearly two percentage points. Again, this is a semi-intractable problem when you play at altitude. Even in your good recent seasons like 2018, the Rockies ranked in the bottom half of the league. But converting as many balls in play as possible while fielding credible offensive players matters when making the most of those dimensions. Fortunately, I believe your team may be starting to realize this: Since 2020, four of your last six first-round picks were outfielders. (Keeping up the run prevention theme, the other two picks were pitchers.) Good. Keep going.

Verlander: First and foremost, I would be looking in the mirror and start making moved that need to be done correctly to prove to the fans that so deserve to see a winner, it’s just such a great fan base, and they’re starved for a winner, and I feel there’s not the right people in place (now) to make that happen. I don’t know about (Dick Monfort’s) inner circle, but I know it’s not working. I think, to me, that says it’s time to clean house.

Division aside, what are the most prominent factors that keep the Rockies from being competitive on a yearly basis? And how would you go about changing them?

Szymborski: Ownership and the lack of realistic short- and long-term goals. Ownership is hard to “fix” other than a different approach, of course. As for goals, any time the team makes any move, no matter how small, they ought to be asking two questions: How does this make us win now? How does this make us win later? If you can’t think of a coherent answer to one of these questions other than a shrug of the shoulders, don’t make the move. Not doing that is the root cause of how you end up with Ian Desmonds and becoming the last big payday for good relievers from five years ago.

Kratz: From an outsider’s view there needs to be more accountability in the big leagues. They seem to develop talent in the minor leagues but they don’t foster a winning environment year-in and year-out.

Clemens: The first factor is easy: I think that the altitude effect is just going to be a persistent headwind. I’d try to minimize this, because I don’t think you can eliminate it. You can change things around the margins, though. Better hitting machines. More regimented practice sessions focused a bit more specifically on what breaking balls look like at lower elevations. Second, I think that one of the biggest factors holding them back is that most teams aren’t competitive on a yearly basis. It’s just really hard to do it, particularly in the NL West, where you have three teams spending a ton of money and with a lot of resources to back that up. I think that the Diamondbacks model of generally trying to improve the team and stockpile talent while accepting that not every year is going to be a playoff year is great, and I’d try to lean into that more.

Verlander: I think one of the main factors is, I don’t know if the organization itself knows what direction it wants to go in. And when that’s the case, what do you expect to happen on the field? They show me, year-in and year-out, that they’re not good, that they don’t know what to do, and there’s no better explanation for that than Nolan Arenado. You let Nolan Arenado walk, with money, and then one year later, you’re giving Kris Bryant a monster contract with a no-trade clause? I like Kris Bryant, but where’s the logic there? I feel like the team is lost because the front office is lost.

Is there a future GM/evaluator the Rockies should hire right now? And why could they make it work in Denver?

Szymborski: This may not be a popular answer, but Chaim Bloom. He was basically given a thankless task in trading Mookie Betts and working within salary constraints and then basically fired for doing exactly what ownership told him to. Yet despite these constraints, the Red Sox never collapsed, made an ALCS, and the farm system has gone from being one of the weaker ones in baseball when he was hired to one of the stronger ones now. He knows how and why the Rays are a good organization, and I’d like to see how he’d do in an organization in which he isn’t hamstrung from the start.

Kratz: Raul Ibanez. He would for sure live there and he has the ability to connect with every facet of player and he has won and lost and lived every situation there is in baseball. He has seen rebuilds and sell-offs and championships and close calls on championships.

Clemens: I’d hire Mario Delgado Genzor. He’s an analyst for Baseball Prospectus who has also written about the Rockies at Purple Row. He wrote the best series I’ve seen on “The Coors Effect” and what can be done about it, which is obviously relevant. He’s got a strong body of work. He’s also a huge Rockies fan, which I think matters a lot if you’re trying to go out and hire an analyst for an organization that frankly doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to analysts. I’d want someone with baseball smarts who is motivated, and a Baseball Prospectus writer who wants to help the Rockies win seems like an awesome fit.

Verlander: I like what the Tigers did, with going out and getting Scott Harris from the Giants. Look at those organizations (such as the Orioles, Rays, Astros), and see who’s below (the general manager). I know of a few names that come to mind who are potential candidates out there: James Harris is one, from Cleveland, I believe he’s an assistant GM there. I would really look at Carlos Rodriguez, I think he’s been with the Rays for a long time as an assistant GM. Why not go get somebody who’s been in a front office that’s won, let them bring his or her own people and go from there? We’re not just running a family business for the fun of it. We have a city and a fan base that is starved for winning, and it’s a fantastic city and a fantastic sports town and it’s one of my favorite places on the planet to watch a baseball game.

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Dick Monfort’s Rockies can be fixed. Here’s how, from pitching to analytics to athleticism.

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