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Jim Tracy could find out Friday about his future with the Rockies - The Denver Post
Friday Morning, Jim Tracy will be meeting with Rockies Director of Major League Operations, Bill Geivett, to discuss whether or not Tracy will return. Per Renck's article, Tracy has a $1.4M contract, although the actual details seem to be missing on this, outside of the handshake agreement Tracy received from Dan O'Dowd at the beginning of this season.
Thomas Harding of MLB.com wrote that Tracy wants to stay with Colorado, but the real question is if Jim Tracy is the man for the job going forward. From what we know of Tracy, and most MLB managers by extension, is that he does not like relinquishing control of his team to any front office personnel. He was certainly opposed to the Project 5183 pitching changes, and it took a little while for Tracy to abide by the front office's pitching strategy. He did, however, play ball with the organization during the 2-month experiment, and held pitchers to the pitch counts while using the piggybackers (Josh Roenicke, Adam Ottavino, and Carlos Torres) in the "rotation" they'd been working in.
One of the more frustrating aspects of Jim Tracy has been his propensity to favor "established veterans" over younger players. We've seen this evidenced in years past in the forms of Garrett Atkins and Melvin Mora over Ian Stewart, Miguel Olivo and Yorvit Torrealba over Chris Iannetta, and roughly anybody with a pulse over Chris Nelson. However, this season has forced Tracy's hand. With nearly every veteran option on the DL, Tracy had no choice but to give players such as Jordan Pacheco, Josh Rutledge, Chris Nelson, Tyler Colvin, Charlie Blackmon, and Wilin Rosario a considerably larger cut of the playing time than they would have otherwise received with their veteran counterparts available for play.
Whether or not Tracy has had a grinch-like "change of heart" toward rookie players is certainly up for debate. We'd heard from a variety of sources (whether from the perception/conjecture of the observer or from actual incident is up for debate) that Stewart, Nelson, and Iannetta lacked the maturity or drive (or both) to really take the reins in the Majors, which could explain a lot of the seeming misallocation of playing time.
Regarding this season, it does sound like Tracy hasn't "lost the clubhouse". We haven't heard any vocal problems with Tracy as other organizations have had with their managers. He very well may still be in ownership's good graces.
I personally still would prefer to see a change in manager, but if 2012 has forced Tracy to turn over a new leaf, I may have to reserve judgment for awhile longer.