{"id":19895,"date":"2025-05-12T01:12:18","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T01:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/19895\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T01:12:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T01:12:18","slug":"rockies-fire-bud-black-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/19895\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockies Fire Bud Black – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rockies have announced that manager Bud Black and bench coach Mike Redmond have both been fired.\u00a0 Warren Schaeffer (previously the club\u2019s third base coach) will serve as interim manager for the remainder of the season, and hitting coach and ex-manager Clint Hurdle will become Schaeffer\u2019s interim bench coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur play so far this season, especially coming off the last two seasons, has been unacceptable.\u00a0 Our fans deserve better, and we are capable of better,\u201d Rockies owner Dick Monfort said in an official press release.\u00a0 \u201cWhile we all share responsibility in how this season has played out, these changes are necessary.\u00a0 We will use the remainder of 2025 to improve where we can on the field and to evaluate all areas of our operation so we can properly turn the page into the next chapter of Rockies Baseball.\u00a0 I want to thank Bud Black and Mike Redmond for their contributions to the organization across their eight years here.\u00a0 I appreciate their hard work and dedication and wish them nothing but the best going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other coaching changes, assistant hitting coach Andy Gonzalez will take over as the new third base coach, USA Today\u2019s Bob Nightengale<\/a> reports.\u00a0 Jordan Pacheco and Nick Wilson will become the Rockies\u2019 new hitting coaches.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s 9-3 victory over the Padres today improved the Rockies\u2019 record to a miserable 7-33, putting the Rox on pace to challenge the all-time loss record set by the White Sox just a year ago.\u00a0 Against this backdrop, it isn\u2019t surprising to see some changes in the dugout, even for an organization that has long prized loyalty.\u00a0 The Rockies made another prominent coaching change in mid-April, when Hurdle went from special assistant to the GM to his hitting coach role after Hensley Meulens was fired.<\/p>\n

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The 2025 campaign was Black\u2019s 18th as a big league manager, with nine seasons apiece with the Padres (from 2007-15) and Rockies (2017-today).\u00a0 Black has winning records in only four of those seasons, as his 1193-1403 career record is broken down as a 649-713 record in San Diego and a 544-690 mark in Colorado.\u00a0 While the numbers aren\u2019t in Black\u2019s favor, his overall effectiveness as a manager is still somewhat hard to gauge.\u00a0 The Padres were in a rebuilding phase for portions of Black\u2019s tenure, and the Rockies\u2019 issues are so myriad that it is hard to single out Black as a particular reason for the club\u2019s extreme struggles.<\/p>\n

Black\u2019s arrival in Denver marked the Rockies\u2019 last successful stretch, as the club reached the postseason as a wild card in his first two seasons as the skipper (and Black won NL Manager of the Year honors in 2017).\u00a0 Since then, however, the Rox have reeled off six straight losing seasons, and the 2025 season already seems like the seventh in that increasingly dismal stretch of baseball.\u00a0 Colorado is already coming off the two worst seasons in franchise history, after losing 103 games in 2023 and 101 games last year.<\/p>\n

There was some speculation that Black could be let go following last season, yet the Rockies announced in October that the skipper had been signed to a one-year extension covering 2025.\u00a0 Black\u2019s contract situation was somewhat unique, as it was believed that Black was essentially a rolling year-to-year deal (as described by reporter Nick Groke<\/a>), yet the fact that the Rockies waited until October to finalize Black\u2019s return was perhaps a sign of some discontent.\u00a0 Black\u2019s previous two extensions had been announced in March 2022 and March 2023, giving the manager plenty of extra security and removing any lame-duck perception.<\/p>\n

It could be that Monfort genuinely believed Black could still get things turned around, though things have gone so haywire so early that ownership had no choice but to make some kind of change.\u00a0 Ironically, GM Bill Schmidt just gave Black a vote of confidence yesterday in an interview with Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post<\/a>, though that was just hours before the Rockies perhaps hit rock bottom in a 21-0 loss to San Diego.<\/p>\n

At the time, Schmidt said \u201cI don\u2019t think we are\u201d at the point of requiring a managerial change.\u00a0 \u201cI think our guys are still playing hard, and that\u2019s what I look at,\u201d Schmidt explained.\u00a0 \u201cGuys are working hard every day, they come with energy, for the most part\u2026.Guys still believe in what we are doing and where we are headed.\u00a0 We are all frustrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, player effort doesn\u2019t overcome a marked lack of talent on the roster.\u00a0 Colorado\u2019s struggles have been exacerbated by lack of action from the front office, as the Rockies haven\u2019t done much to either clearly upgrade the team, or to go in the other direction of blowing things up for a full rebuild.\u00a0 Monfort has often been accused of being both too optimistic about his team\u2019s potential and too insular in his hiring practices, which has left the Rockies seemingly lagging behind the rest of the league not just on the field, but also in terms of analytics, scouting, player development, and other front office practices.<\/p>\n

Since Monfort\u2019s statement painted 2025 as an evaluation year, it could be that the Rockies\u2019 brutal start has finally inspired a broader change of direction at Coors Field.\u00a0 What this might mean for Schmidt (a longtime staffer who became interim GM in 2021 and then the full-time GM after that season) remains to be seen, or if the Rox will perhaps explore a fire sale at the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

Schaeffer has been a member of Colorado\u2019s organization dating back to his playing days, as he was a 38th-round draft pick in 2007 and spent his entire six-year playing career in the Rockies\u2019 farm system.\u00a0 After retiring from the field, he turned to coaching and managed three different Rockies affiliates from 2015-22, and Schaeffer then became the big league third base coach prior to the 2023 season.<\/p>\n

While first-time MLB managers are rarely stepping into an ideal situation, the 40-year-old Schaeffer faces a tall order in trying to salvage anything from the 2025 Rockies\u2019 season.\u00a0 At this point, perhaps just avoiding a record number of losses would count as a minor triumph, even if another 100-loss season seems inevitable.<\/p>\n

Schaeffer will have an experienced voice to help him in Hurdle, who managed the Rockies from 2002-09 and led the franchise to its only World Series appearance in 2007.\u00a0 Hurdle also managed the Pirates from 2011-19 before retiring, and then returning to baseball in his special assistant role during the 2021-22 offseason.<\/p>\n

Redmond and Black were hired in the same offseason, so Redmond had been Black\u2019s chief lieutenant throughout the manager\u2019s entire tenure in Denver.\u00a0 A former 13-year veteran of the big leagues, Redmond is perhaps best known for his own former managerial stint with the Marlins over the 2013-15 seasons.\u00a0 It was almost exactly 10 years ago to the day that Redmond was fired after Miami posted a 155-207 record during his time in the dugout.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of\u00a0Ron Chenoy \u2013 Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rockies have announced that manager Bud Black and bench coach Mike Redmond have both been fired.\u00a0 Warren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,1487,1488,9129,4,9130],"class_list":{"0":"post-19895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bud-black","10":"tag-clint-hurdle","11":"tag-mike-redmond","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-warren-schaeffer"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114492207595885342","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}