Thursday Rockpile: The writing's on the wall after Hurdle uses Tulowitzki as whipping boy

I feel that the players no longer believe in Clint. I think we have reached that point where a change would be best for everyone involved.

It’s definitely not the best situation, but it has to be done.

Benching Tulo was an act that smacks of desperation… the last futile grasp at credibility and control from a manager who is losing it by the day.

I honestly thought that a potential saving grace for this season would be the players responding to the threat of Hurdle losing his job. My impression was that they liked playing for him, and appreciated his loyalty and candor. Let’s just say I’m not getting that impression anymore. Now I believe that this team is just going through the motions in playing out Hurdle’s tenure, and once O’Dowd does an Old Yeller on him, it might free the players to relax and just play.

I watched the game last night, and while I was trying to figure out why, I think I came across the answer: I like the players. I like watching Hawpe and Helton and Tulo and Fowler. I like to watch Ubaldo and Cook and De La Rosa pitch (well, I didn’t like watching JDLR pitch last night – I thought he was going to punch Tim Tschida, and I would have thought it justified). Though the pursuit of winning has been largely futile this year, I still enjoy watching them try, as ridiculous as that sounds.

that the team may be in the process of quitting on him, and benching Tulo was the most sure fire way to ensure that they do quit on him.

I agree with the general sentiment expressed here. Having lost the fans, he’s now in the process of losing the players. Oh yeah.

Come on front office. Bite the bullet. As Rox Girl says, sticking fingers and toes on a dead body won’t bring it back to life.

For you Baseball Prospectus subscribers… there’s a mock draft posted over there today that has the Rockies selecting former Missouri RHP Aaron Crow with the 11th overall pick and Indiana RHP Eric Arnett with the 32nd pick.

Brief snippets from the article:

He’s… an impressive talent who could go higher than this, but his power arm with sink would fit in well at Colorado.

Arnett finally seems to have harnessed his plus fastball with excellent late life, while showing a solid slider and changeup to go with a beefy 6-foot-5 frame that provides plenty of stamina.

By using Troy Tulowitzki as an example, benching his shortstop to prove a point about patience the move was more William Bligh than Thomas Cochrane, and while Tulo was a good soldier and accepted his fate, the message that the team received probably wasn’t the one intended.

Thomas Cochrane? Heck…. he’s not even Zefram Cochrane.

I thought that game against the Pirates was rock bottom, but when the manager Benches one of his best players for swinging at the first pitch (which wasn’t a bad pitch to swing at), thats when it shows that he’s lost it.

That move alone probably made him loose any repsect the players had for him, and you can see it in the quotes by Atkins and Tulo. I really hope Hurdle doesn’t make it back to Coors Field with his job, but knowing this franchise he probably will get canned in October, after his contract runs out.

What a joke.

that Hurdle has sealed his fate, would it be better to slap the Interim tag on Baylor or Tracy and spend quality time doing a search or find someone first then let Hurdle go?

Seems to me that if we go with the later, DOD gets a repreive and maybe an extention. If we use a stop gap – then I think DOD goes and we get a new GM and he gets to pick his guy.

About benching Tulo shows that there is no leader on the field, just Hurdle on the bench. Hurdle is a great man, I don’t think anyone doubts that, and until recently I advocated keeping him, but his time has come and it is so evident now that the owners need to make a move. Please not Baylor though….that man knows how to kill a bullpen.

Maybe I should make a fan post about this or incorporate it into a story, but I’ll just let it fly here.

I love this team; like Franchise26 and Squeaky stated above, I’ll always find myself watching them, no matter how downright awful they are as a team/franchise/organization/whatever, because they have become my favorite major league baseball players, and I just enjoy watching them. However, seeing a lot of them play with absoultely no emotion – no anger, rage, excitement, fire or anything else that could be used to describe it – really does not do it for me. Case in point – Friday night in Pittsburgh in the ninth inning during what would turn out to be a rare Rockies victory, Matt Capps nearly knocked Chris Iannetta to the ground while shoving him during a play in which he tagged Iannetta out in front of first base. Iannetta was clearly pissed, shouted some words in the direction of Capps, stormed into the dugout and threw his helmet, and generally looked like a dude who was about to lose it. I honestly thought this team was going to make a turn in the right direction at that exact moment. I thought that early in the next game, somebody would throw a purpose pitch to let the Pirates (and everybody else) know that the Rockies were not going to tolerate being pushed around. Well, guess what? It didn’t happen; the team continued to play like they just don’t give a rat’s ass about the outcome of the game and didn’t care enough to show other teams that they will push back. Personally (and this probably sounds cliche), I blame Hurdle only about 50% on this one; the other 50% falls on either the players or the organization as a whole for not having an on-field leader to take these kinds of matters into their hands. Though Jorge De La Rosa looked like a mad man last night, he still hardly showed the emotion that he should have shown while getting shafted by the umpires; Hurdle should take most of the blame as well, as it was a perfect spot to go get in somebody’s face and try to fire up his squad.

Regardless of what happens, I will always love this team and will continue to watch them, spend time and money on them, etc. However, I get a sickening feeling when I think about the fact that most of these players and coaches do not seem to be passionate about what they are doing. Part of that is just the landscape of professional sports, but a large chunk of it has to do with the guy who is running the product on the field, and anything leftover is the responsibility of the front office.

Come on Rockies, GET IT TOGETHER!

Though, the prevailing opinion ‘round here was always for a Hurdle firing, I stayed wholeheartedly in the “keep him” camp. I’m afraid the time has come, now, however to let him go. I’m not sure if firing Hurdle will turn this thing around but keeping Clint in place is not going to work. It’s sad because I really like the guy but we’ve just got no better option at this point. Either Don Baylor or Jim Tracy would be feasable options at this point.

Any GM will insist that they have control and that they are allowed to bring in their own people, and that especially includes the manager. So until O’Dowd is fired, or extended (gawd, they couldn’t could they? I mean it’s the GM’s responsibility to assemble the talent on the field) no manager can be more then “interim” or temporary.

My Solution: A fan gets to manage the Rockies for a day. Requirements are the fan has to have tickets to that game. The Rockies will draw the winning ticket and notify the winner that they have won, “manager for a game!” contest.

It will sell tickets, generate fan and media interest….and couldn’t hurt the team worse. I mean a monkey could pull out names of hat and get 100 loss season, which is what we have already going on.

Even though I am all for getting rid of this hack manager, I fear that the Rockies wil find someone just as incompetent to replace him with, until the Monforts sell this franchise to an owner that actually gives a damn about the product on the field, then this will be our fate for years to come.