FanPost

History Suggests The Rockies Might Actually Make Changes

On the most recent episode of the Purple Dinosaur Podcast, Rockies beat writer Nick Groke was asked about the likelihood of significant changes for the Rockies this offseason. Groke said that the impression he is currently getting is that no major change is on the way, though he mentioned the possibility that Dick Monfort's vocal dickishness this year may indicate something regarding the front office. This was surprising to me, considering that the Rockies have a very good chance of ending the year as the worst team in baseball. I wondered how often the team that is the absolute worst in the majors makes no meaningful changes in the offseason, so I looked. These are the last ten worst teams in baseball, and what happened after.

2004: The Arizona Diamondbacks. Bob Brenly was fired midway through the season, a few years after winning the World Series. GM Joe Garagiola, Jr. made it through the year but left the team midway through the 2005 season. This was a terrible, terrible offensive team. 24 year old Chad Tracy had the highest bWAR of hitters at 1.8. The only two starting pitchers who accumulated at least 1.0 in WAR were 25 year old Brandon Webb who wasn't going anywhere, and 40 year old Randy Johnson who had a fantastic year (brief aside: you can tell how dominant Randy was that year by the fact that he finished second in NL Cy Young voting behind Roger Clemens. Randy had the better year by far, but first and foremost he was on the worst team in baseball while Clemens and the Astros went to the playoffs, which matters for some reason). Randy would leave for the Yankees in the offseason, where he would never be a surly dick to anyon and lived happily ever after.

2005: Kansas City Royals. Manager Tony Pena was let go 33 games into the season, GM Allard Baird made it through the year, but was replaced with Dayton Moore in '06, which has worked out wonderfully (Baird himself replaced Herk Robinson six years earlier. Herk, Allard, and Dayton sound like guys who should sell plain, utalitarian wooden furniture they make themselves). The only real notable hitters on this team were 25 year old David Dejesus and Mike Sweeney who had a down year and also made 11 million dollars, so. Jose Lima and 21 year old Zack Grienke led the team in innings pitched and combined for -.5 WAR. Yipes.

2006/2007: Tampa Bay Rays. These were the first two years of Andrew Friedman and Joe Maddon, and they really did not mind being terrible for awhile. In these two years Friedman traded Julio Lugo, Russell Branyan, Aubrey Huff, Ty Wigginton, Mark Hendrickson, Toby Hall. Basically every middling contributor around the age of 30 not named Greg Norton, who got to stick around probably because trading Greg Norton would require acknowledging that Greg Norton is a human being and baseball player, which: eh. And oh yeah, they changed the name of the danged team.

2008/2009: Washington Nationals. These are the years the Nats acquired the two best prospects of the century by being so terrible, but there was still repurcussions for management. Jim Bowded resigned after the 2008 season to write dumb articles for ESPN and Manny Acta was fired midway through the 2009 season and also eventually found his way onto ESPN. "ESPN: The Braintrust of the Late Aughts Washington Nationals, Today!" Closer and Canadian giant Jon Rauch was the most high profile trade, but John Lannan was their best pitcher in that span, so it's not like they were holding onto anything.

2010: Pittsburgh Pirates. This was in the middle of GM Neil Huntington's rebuilding project, featuring young versions of the team's current McCutchen/Walker/Alvarez offensive core. The pitching had not arrived yet, due to the fact that Zach Duke was their frontline starter, disproving the theory that in any universe where Zach Duke is a #1 pitcher is one where pizza tastes like dead men's bones. Manager John Russell was let go at the end of the year. You may say it is cruel to fire a guy in a teardown year, especially when you consider that the team's Pythagorean record was even WORSE.

2011/2012/2013: The Houston Astros. Well there's not much more anyone can say about what the Houston Astros are up to. In 2011 they were the worst team in baseball on accident, then Ed Wade was fired, Jeff Luhnow was hired, and they've been the worst team in baseball basicaly on purpose ever since. Luhnow has fired Brad Mills and traded away Carlos Lee, Jed Lowrie, Wandy Rodriguez, Bud Norris, and probably a couple parking spaces.

So, as is pretty clear, after suffering through the worst season of any team in the league, ownership is unlikely to bring the band back together the next year. The only exceptions seem to be situations like Tampa or Houston, where being terrible for awhile is part of the plan. This is unlike the Rockies in the sense that the Rockies have never ever had anything resembling a plan. So if something is going to change, what would it be? Managers are the typical fall guy, but Weiss was signed to an extension just last year, and the players seem to like him. Rumors of a Tulowitzki trade have been prevalent all year, but the Monforts seem hesitent to let him go, and it would be difficult to get the high return they would want with Tulo out for the rest of the year. The same is true of CarGo, who has had a season that has been frustrating and downright macabre.

So that would seem to leave the front office, could this finally be the year that Dan O'Dowd is let go? We can hope, but as always with the Rockies, it's hard to predict. Dick Monfort seems to be blaming Bill Glivett for the performance of the team this season, and for all we know he still considers O'Dowd "head and shoulders above any other GM in baseball" (which only seems possible if the only evaluation Monfort has of general managers is how much money they have already made Dick Monfort). The two-headed GM monster here seems untenable, and it would be a shock if it's still in place next season, but given how he's been able to hypnotize ownership for 15 years, it will be an even bigger shock if O'Dowd is gone.

Eat. Drink. Be Merry. But the above FanPost does not necessarily reflect the attitudes, opinions, or views of Purple Row's staff (unless, of course, it's written by the staff [and even then, it still might not]).

In This FanPost

Teams