Grading The Week: Firing hitting coach won’t fix what ails Dick Monfort’s Rockies

Whenever the Rockies ship hits an iceberg nobody rearranges deck chairs the way Dick Monfort rearranges deck chairs The baseball wonks in the Grading The Week cubicles have never heard a bad word about Clint Hurdle Anything that stops the S S Coors Field from sinking further into the depths of the National League West is better than nothing at all But firing the hitting coach of a - club also feels a bit like slapping a Band-Aid on a shark bite Our wonks like Bud Black too full disclosure but FanGraphs computers also say he s on a pace to lose games The Rockies veteran manager lost last year and the season before that In any sort of normal historical baseball circumstance that would mean he s coming to the end of this road Rockies tweaking instead of rebooting C-minus We re torn On one hand the Rockies problems go far far far above Black The organizational rot starts at the top and permeates all the way to the roots John McGraw couldn t make Rox work in the present day s NL West with Monfort s keep-it-in-the-family approach The AL Central maybe But NL West No way Too plenty of other rich teams smart teams or rich smart teams There s an argument that nobody could make silk purses out of Bill Schmidt s rosters of sow ears let alone Buddy On the other hand a skipper overseeing six straight losing seasons with a seventh in the works wouldn t be tolerated by any MLB franchise that gives half a darn The closest modern managerial parallel to Black that GTW could find was Gene Mauch s tenure with the expansion Montreal Expos Mauch managed the Expos miserable inaugural campaign of then hung in for six more losing seasons before management pulled le plug in October At what point will the Rox admit and admission is half the battle that Black s message has run its syllabus Or gone stale You know what a struggling franchise does when it doesn t have the backbone to let go of its manager It axes the hitting coach Not that Schmidt or Monfort did Hensley Meulens dirty Colorado s offense isn t just off to a historically bad start it s historically bad period If the Yankees featured Murder s Row the Rockies have countered with Shoplifter s Row The Rox went into Friday evening s MLB slate ranked last in the Senior Circuit in runs home runs walks strikeouts and steals eight Their seasonal unit stat line as of Saturday morning batting average RBI OPS in at-bats resembles that of a utility infielder from say the Year of the Pitcher Hurdle s voice is a welcome one but why does it feel as if Monfort s just delaying the inevitable Related Articles Clint Hurdle faces daunting challenge turning around Rockies offense Rockies-Nationals Friday night challenge postponed by bad weather Renck Clint Hurdle s return will be hit for Rockies if it inspires accountability from Dick Monfort Clint Hurdle to replace Hensley Meulens as Rockies hitting coach Michael Toglia s grand slam can t save Rockies in loss to Dodgers The Rockies are staring at the end of another one-year extension for Black He ll turn in June He s been a good soldier for a weird franchise that values good-soldier-ism over winning the way it seemingly values everything over winning The Nuggets got rid of their GM and coach in early April in part because Josh Kroenke announced he was going to make certain sort of sweeping change in the off-season anyway Why wait Unlike Michael Malone and Calvin Booth on Chopper Circle Black and Schmidt reportedly sing for the largest part part from the same hymnal But like Malone and Booth Schmidt is going to start sending Buddy more kids he drafted and Buddy traditionally prefers veterans Especially when they re the grindy professional no-muss types Jake Cave for instance Jake Cave especially Hurdle was the Colorado manager for arguably the peak moment in Rox history Championship in Which is when the Rockies beat Bud Black Now they re sharing a dugout On Blake Street the only two things that truly change are the kegs and the levels of irony Want more Rockies news Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis