It’s been roughly 40 hours since the news came down that Rockies’ manager Bud Black and bench coach Mike Redmond were relieved of their duties and that Warren Schaeffer and Clint Hurdle would be taking the reins in their places.

The new coaching staff has begun to take shape:

The Colorado Rockies’ new hitting coaches will be Jordan Pacheco and Nick Wilson.
Andy Gonzalez will be moved from assistant hitting coach to third base coach, replacing Warren Schaeffer, who becomes manager.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) May 11, 2025

Last year, I argued that Warren Schaeffer should be the manager in 2025. My prediction was a little late, but here we are. And here I am today to double down and say he is exactly the right man for this moment.

For starters, this move signals something that has eluded the Rockies for the last few years: There’s been a ‘youth movement’ (ish) on the field, but not in the manager’s office.

Black, 67, is nearly 30 years older than his successor and served as a ‘father figure’ to many on the Rockies current roster. Schaeffer, on the other hand, is 3.5 years older than the oldest active Rockies player (Scott Alexander). He has memories of playing alongside Nolan Arenado, 34, and Charlie Blackmon, 38.

Additionally, Schaeffer has a wealth of experience working with young players. While he never played Major League Baseball, he has extensive coaching experience in the minor leagues.

Prior to being called up to the Rockies’ major league coaching roster in 2023, Schaeffer spent eight years managing their minor league teams. In fact, he managed Ryan McMahon — the Rockies’ most-tenured position player — with the Low-A Asheville Tourists in 2015 and made the playoffs with that team. He also had the pleasure of telling then-Isotopes Ezequiel Tovar, Michael Toglia and Jake Bird that they’d been called up to the big leagues in 2022.

There’s continuity there and a fundamental understanding of how to teach young players how to become professional baseball players at the next level.

By contrast, Black began his coaching career in 1998 with the then-Cleveland Indians. He served as their Triple-A pitching coach for two seasons before being called upon to serve as the major league pitching coach of the Los Angeles Angels after the 1999 season. And he never looked back, serving as the manager of the San Diego Padres from 2006 to 2015 and then the manager of the Colorado Rockies from 2016 until Sunday with another one-year stint with the Angels sandwiched in between.

In case some of you forgot, I was a beginning band teacher when I first started working at Purple Row. Music, like baseball, is a skill to be honed over many years of repetition and practice.

When I was going through my undergrad, I had the dream that nearly everyone has of being a high school band director. I wanted to make music with students who already knew what they were doing, and I could then “take them to the next level.” I didn’t understand or appreciate the fundamentals of music making and the ripple effects it had as students progressed up the ranks. You can’t have success at the high school level if your students are lacking in their fundamental skills.

But then I taught beginning band, and worked with folks who immediately became high school band directors right out of college. There was a clear disconnect in how they viewed everything, and you could tell who had taught beginning band before (and appreciated its challenges and importance). My best friend just finished her first year as a high school band director after 10 years of beginning band teaching, and she has a very different understanding of how to develop players and people than many of the others. That taught me the importance of beginning band and the fundamental skills required to succeed.

I think the same could be said about Black and Schaeffer — Black is more comfortable with established players, while Schaeffer understands their beginnings. Bud Black’s most successful seasons with the Rockies came in 2017 and 2018, and they haven’t had a winning season since. He also leans heavily on veterans to ‘show young players the ropes’ and to ‘play the game the right way.’ He’s always had short leashes with prospects unless they force his hand, and that might stem from not having as much experience coaching them.

Given how young this roster is, and how much movement we can expect the rest of the year (not unlike a Triple-A roster), Schaeffer is the right man to steer this ship. It’s still going to be a tough season, but this is the rebuild the Rockies need. And having Clint Hurdle there to mentor him also signals an organizational change that could pay dividends.

All of this is to say, thank you Bud Black for helming this team for nine years and helping me grow as a baseball writer. I learned a lot from you, and I’m grateful for our interactions. Your service to this team has been admirable, but it’s (officially) Warren Schaeffer time.

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Bud Black’s firing was inevitable, but messy — even by the Rockies’ standards | Denver Post ($)

Patrick Saunders outlines the sequence of events that led up to Bud Black’s firing on Sunday morning. As he says, things were contradictory from Bill Schmidt (just on Saturday he said he didn’t see Black being fired) and Dick Monfort has yet to field questions from the media other than the statement the team put out on social media.

I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering how much of a mess this organization is in every other aspect.

Schaeffer’s plan to help Rockies make turnaround | MLB.com

As we move forward, Thomas Harding (being the only beat writer in Texas with the team) got the first interview with Warren Schaeffer. There’s a lot to like here, and a lot to keep an eye on through the next 121 games.

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