Grading The Week: Bud Black’s coming back? That’s so, so Rockies
Denver Post
For the record, the kids up in the Grading The Week offices like Bud Black quite a bit, personally. The older ones even have a few of his old Strat-O-Matic cards from the ’80s lying around in an attic somewhere. (The younger ones, our moms knew better, and either threw them out or put them on eBay ages ago.)
And also for the record, Team GTW does not specifically blame Buddy as the primary reason the Rockies have averaged 95 losses in every non-pandemic season since Todd Phillips’ first “Joker” movie came out in 2019. Silk purse, sow’s ear, et cetera. That said …
Bud Black’s extension — C-minus.
Casey Stengel or Walt Alston in their primes couldn’t have kept these Rox, runts in a division of Giants both literal (San Francisco) and figurative (Los Angeles, San Diego), from being marooned in the NL West basement.
So while GTW collectively raises a toast to Black for his 1-year managerial extension, we also can’t shake the first four things that came into our collective heads this past Tuesday when it was announced:
1. That’s so Rockies.
2. Good for Buddy.
3. If we were Rox fans, we’d be mildly furious.
4. There are only two franchises in baseball that would, after six straight losing campaigns, elect to bring Bud Black back for another rise.
Dick Monfort’s Rockies are one. The other is the White Sox. The same Sox who hit rock bottom with enough sheer force — 121 losses this summer was a modern-day Major League record — that sources are no longer scared to call out owner Jerry Reinsdorf and pal Tony La Russa for running their franchise the way Mr. Burns ran the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team.
At any rate, Reinsdorf is hardly the company Colorado fans want their ownership to keep. Yet few franchises in baseball are as singularly stubborn, insular and loyal as the Rox and Sox, twin train wrecks that fear change, prefer to keep things in the family and insist on trying to prove to the Lords of Baseball that they can win by zigging when everybody else zags.
Only they haven’t. And they won’t.
On the other hand, the purple pinstripes aren’t really built to win under anybody in 2025, right? Or in 2026, probably. Buddy won’t raise the bar much, but he also won’t rock the boat, either. Very Monfort.
We’ll give Rockies GM Bill Schmidt credit for this much, though: Unlike last October, if you squint hard enough, you can actually see the pieces of what could be a decent squad cementing into place here or climbing up the farm. Shortstop Ezequiel Tovar just turned 23. Center fielder Brenton Doyle turns 27 next April. Scouts think right-handed starter Chase Dollander could crack The Show next summer if he stays on his current trajectory.
The only problem with Dollander? The Rox needs two more of him, ASAP. The organization’s other big arms, righty Brody Brecht and lefty Sean Sullivan, are a few years behind Dollander.
GTW doesn’t much love (or miss) our old pal Jeff Bridich, but we do like the idea of what launched the Rockies into back-to-back playoff berths seven years ago: a core, a base, of stellar, strong, young, cheap, cost-controlled starting pitching that you grew yourself. Unfortunately for Black, that cavalry is still several more 1-year contract extensions away.
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