The Colorado Rockies are now in a jam, and they may be calling on a familiar fireman to help them out of the situation.
According to multiple reports, the team’s top two options to fill the vacancy atop the team’s front office are no longer being considered for the role. Both Arizona Diamondbacks assistant general manager Amiel Sawdaye and Cleveland Guardians assistant general manager Matt Forman, who interviewed in person in the last week or so, are no longer in the running. The Athletic reported that they’re not sure “what transpired to prompt the Rockies to move in another direction.”
The Rockies had previously been linked to Kansas City Royals’ Scott Sharp, the Toronto Blue Jays’ James Click and Thad Levine. They could once again go down that route or start from scratch as the offseason officially began on Monday. This puts the team’s back against the wall since the team had hoped to have this settled last week, and the general managers’ meetings begin next week in Las Vegas.
The search is being led by Walker Monfort, with help from Dick Monfort. The team took a big step by admitting they needed to look outside their organization to fill the role last occupied by Bill Schmidt. But their search might take them back to a former Rockies player.
Multiple reports surfaced on Monday that active right-handed reliever and former longtime Rockies bullpen star Adam Ottavino had talked to Dick about becoming the club’s general manager. It’s also unclear how serious the Rockies would consider Ottavino to run baseball operations, especially given that the 39-year-old not only has no front office experience of any kind but is still an active player.
Ottavino last pitched for the Yankees in April and has bounced between both New York clubs and Boston since leaving the Rockies after the 2018 season.
When he was with Colorado, he impressed with his strong analytical approach to the game, and then later credited that for keeping his career alive longer than some anticipated. He’s a pitcher who used his analytic knowledge to help his own development and was a strong enough communicator to explain the insides of baseball on MLB Network as an analyst several times.
The Rockies have said they’re looking at folks outside of their organization, and in Ottavino’s case, he’s not in anyone’s organization, so that would hold true, though he does have those strong Rockies ties. He posted a 3.41 earned run average over 361 appearances with the Rockies between 2012-18, spending about half of his MLB career in the Mile High City.
Ottavino would be a wacky idea, no doubt, but he also fought the Coors Field pitching demon himself and was there as Bud Black turned a few young starters like Jon Gray, Kyle Freeland, and German Marquez into the best staff the franchise has ever had.
Funny enough, for Ottavino, who might be the next GM, he’s arguably not just good enough to pitch for the Rockies still, but be one of their best bullpen arms. In the past four years, he’s thrown 185 innings across 195 games with a 3.11 ERA, where he’s struck out 10.4 batters per nine innings. Only now Yankee Jake Bird has thrown more innings out of the Rockies pen during that time, and only Jimmy Herget and the retired Daniel Bard have ERAs better with over 25 innings pitched in that time.
So if the Rockies somehow do land on Ottavino as GM, maybe his first move should be signing himself to come out of the bullpen.
