“High School Walter” is coming back for another miserable season of terrible Rockies baseball.
(photo, the Denver Post)
“At Coors Field tomorrow is going to look a lot like yesterday. The re-signing of Weiss makes that a certainty.”
Everybody is hard on the Colorado Rockies these days – and why not? They suck. Despite having three All-Stars, the best three pitchers in franchise history and a murderer’s row of offensive weapons, they’re on track for another ninety loss season (give or take a few games). Nobody has been harder on them than Zach Fogg and Reed Marks at Mile High Sports. The fellows work together on air to relentlessly hammer the purple and black for their woeful inefficiencies. They’re the duo that coined the term “High School Walter” to describe the Rockies newest manager, who the team recruited from Regis Jesuit High School.
Weiss, as Marks and Fogg often explain, was given an opportunity that baseball men all over America and the world have toiled for decades to earn, a chance to be the skipper of a real, honest-to-goodness, Major League Baseball franchise – one of only thirty such positions that exits, catapulting over minor league assignments, scouting positions, gigs in South America and positional coaching roles. Weiss’ promotion was at once wildly unfair and utterly ridiculous. It smacked of organizational desperation and a desire on the part of management to receive as little “push-back” as possible from their team’s leader. Weiss was, in the perceptions of many, brought in to do the bidding of Bill Gievett and Dan O’Dowd, to be, in essence, a managerial eunuch.
Most people suspected that Weiss’ tenure would be limited to a single season. He was given only one year on his contract and it was assumed that, after that single year, the Rockies would have stumbled onto a more permanent plan. Gievett and O’Dowd were doubtlessly turning over stones looking for a skipper that could take the team in another direction. Well, last night we learned that Weiss is coming back for another year. Apparently, until we see Gievett and O’Dowd finally removed, we can count on more of the same from the Colorado Rockies.
The Colorado Avalanche followed a similar pattern for many, many seasons. Only recently did ownership take the drastic step of removing Pierre Lacroix from his GM position and completely reshape the franchise. Now, with Lacroix finally out of the way, the Avalanche have a chance to create a completely new environment for their fans. There’s hope that it’s a new day at Pepsi Center.
At Coors Field tomorrow is going to look a lot like yesterday. The re-signing of Weiss makes that a certainty.
No other organization in professional baseball could look at the outcome of the 2013 season and think “that went pretty well, let’s try it again”. Injuries were not a huge problem for the Rockies in 2013. They don’t have that old stand-by excuse to lean on in asserting that next season will be different the way they sometimes do. Fans have absolutely no cause for optimism whatsoever. We are in for another miserable season of terrible Rockies baseball. There will be the usual glimmers of hope, but we all know what we’re in for in the end.
The willingness of the Rockies to bring back High School Walter for another stint should tell you all you need to know about the ball club. It is doomed to mediocrity until Dick and Charlie Monfort finally do the right thing and remove the cancer that is their team management. All fans can hope for is that, after one more season under Weiss, that Dick and Charlie are finally frustrated enough to make the same sweeping changes that the Avalanche made. But don’t get your hopes up.
