DENVER — The Rockies are in an interesting position as the calendar year nears an end and 2026 beckons.
How to meld the two elements into a prosperous dynamic was the theme of a press conference held Wednesday in which DePodesta and Schaeffer spoke about how they envision the immediate and intermediate future of the franchise.
DePodesta represents a fresh outsider perspective for an organization that in recent years has primarily promoted from within. And Schaeffer represents the institutional knowledge of someone who has been with the organization in coaching and player development for more than a decade.
Turning the Rockies around will be a tall order. But DePodesta explained that his approach will be multipronged and based on a system in which the various strengths of individuals in different roles will be augmented and harmonized to enhance the whole.
He also stressed that in his experience, there needs to be a fusion of the old and the new.
“I’ve witnessed a lot [in my career],” DePodesta said. “… On the one hand, I’ve gone into a situation and realized that there’s institutional knowledge here that is hugely helpful, hugely important as a foundation going forward. And I’ve certainly found that here.
“On the other hand, I’ve seen situations where people have gone in and sort of blown it all out, and when you do that, yes, I guess you get to start from scratch, but you lose a lot of good people along the way.”
Among the people already with the Rockies who DePodesta felt would be central moving forward is Schaeffer, who took over as interim manager when the Rockies parted ways with Bud Black last May.
Schaeffer was once a player in Colorado’s farm system and then transitioned to coaching, serving as the manager of the organization’s Single-A, Double-A and Triple-A affiliates before joining the Major League staff.
While the Rockies went 36-86 after Schaeffer took the helm in May, there were stretches of improvement that indicated he had connected with the young roster.
“Not only is [Schaeffer] a connector, he places importance on collaboration,” DePodesta said. “I think he’s a great teammate and partner, not only with the front office but with his coaches. I think he’s very open-minded. He clearly works extremely hard and has a really high care factor — both for the Rockies, in particular, but also for the job at hand. There’s a great respect for the game and a great respect for the organization.
“So you start putting all those things together and, in my mind, you say, ‘What else are we looking for here?’ We could go out and talk to a lot of different people, but this would be exactly what we’d be hoping to find.”
The manager has been with the franchise in some capacity for almost 20 years. The president of baseball operations has been in his chair for about three weeks. But they appear to see eye to eye on how to take the Rockies from where they are to where they want to be in the years ahead.
Schaeffer emphasized his excitement to work with DePodesta because of their shared regard for certain approaches to build success.
“I think the first thing you notice about Paul is he’s a process-oriented guy,” Schaeffer said. “You know how important the process is to me, and putting legitimate processes into play that push this thing forward and that can create a sustainable winning culture — because that’s the goal, to bring winning baseball back to Denver.”
It’s been a whirlwind few weeks for DePodesta, but now that there’s a manager in place, he is doing similar prep work for determining who the new general manager will be after Bill Schmidt stepped down in October.
Once again, DePodesta stressed that the GM would be just one piece of the puzzle, whose strengths would be evaluated for the purpose of adding supporting pieces.
“I’m having a lot of different conversations, gathering as much information as I can about some different potential people,” DePodesta said. “But it’s actually not just the GM. I think we’re also talking about other potential roles, because I really am trying to build a team of complementary skills. So it’s not so much that I would look at any one job — including the GM job — in a vacuum.
“… Some of the people we’ve discussed internally about who could take on the GM job have very, very different profiles. So that would affect the rest of the leadership team. So I would say we’re very much in process, and I do have a goal of getting a lot of these things in place by the time we get to Orlando [for the Winter Meetings beginning on Dec. 8].”
In the end, the goal is the same for every Major League team. Each club is in a different stage of its effort to get there. The Rockies are in many ways beginning anew, and the two men in Wednesday’s press conference expressed alignment on how they will try to get there together.
Schaeffer firmly made a prediction about how he thinks it will go.
“The ultimate goal is to bring consistent winning seasons to this organization,” he said. “… You’re going to see winning baseball in Denver a lot sooner than you think.”
