Black could be just right for Rockies
Manager knows game in and out from all angles
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. He has won a World Series championship as a player and as a coach, but never as a manager.
He was teammates with Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn in college and Hall of Famer George Brett in the major leagues but never made the All- Star team in his 14year playing career.
He has had every job in baseball, from player to pitching coach to scout to special assistant to manager.
Bud Black considers himself a baseball amalgam, having worked in virtually every component of the game.
He realizes he’s going to have to draw from all of his experiences, and perhaps brush up on his psychology, if he’s going to have any chance of success in his new job as manager of the Colorado Rockies.
This is a franchise that hasn’t had a winning record since 2010, has reached the playoffs only three times and has not won the National League West in its 24year existence.
Now, after being involved in Major League Baseball for 35 years, Black is thrust into his most demanding job yet, working 5,280 feet above sea level in the forgotten Mountain Time zone, with the task of delivering a winner to Colorado.
“Come on, no one ever said this was going to be easy, but I’m ready,” Black says. “What they have in place here, I know we can do this.”
Black, in many ways, embodies baseball’s new style of manager. Gone are the days of playing in the minor leagues or major leagues, getting hired as a low- level minor league manager, working your way up through the system, becoming a major league coach and then a bigleague manager.
In this era of analytics, with more front office input than ever before — in- cluding some managers arriving to work with the lineup card already sitting on their desks — it’s as essential to understand the machinations of a team’s front office as it is the arm slot of your ace.
Black, 59, was fired in June 2015 after eight- plus seasons managing the San Diego Padres. He was nearly hired five months later by the Washington Nationals, but, with no other managerial jobs available, he went to work in the Los Angeles Angels front office as general manager Billy Eppler’s special assistant.
It was his first front office gig in 17 years, and once the season ended, teams started recognizing him as the hottest managerial candidate in the game.
“When I went back to the front office, it really made me understand how it all fits now,” said Black, who was a special assistant with the Cleveland Indians from 1996 to 1999. “It’s not like it was a generation ago. It’s truly become a total collaboration.
“It’s imperative there is inclusion and collaboration with management and the field staff. You have that with the Cubs front office and ( manager) Joe Maddon. That connectivity is vital for success.”
Black is 20 years older than Rockies GM Jeff Bridich. Yet he has come to em- brace the ideas from even those who have never worn a pair of spikes but can build a database with aplomb.
“I think it’s such a huge advantage to have that kind of experience he has,” says Maddon, who led the Cubs to the World Series championship last season. “To me, he’s just the perfect fit there. You watch what happens now that he’s over there. They have a lot of good arms. Their position players are as good as anyone’s in the game. And with Buddy’s handling of those guys, he’s going to make them very successful. Heads up. I’m telling you, if they pitch, they’re as good as anybody.”
Says Angels manager Mike Scioscia, who has had Black and Maddon on his staff: “Buddy checks off every box. Just the experience he had working in the front office definitely translates to player evaluation, dugout analytics, everything. ... He knows the ones that are applicable and the ones that are really tailored to a front office. He’s got remarkable people skills with a deep understanding of every aspect of this game.”
Houston Astros manager A. J. Hinch, formerly director of player development for the Arizona Diamondbacks and scouting director for the Padres, says it’s almost essential these days for a manager to have as good of an understanding of the inner workings of the front office as the psyche of his players.
“It makes us a little more relatable to the whole organization,” Hinch says. “The uniqueness of seeing an organization from top to bottom blends an entire organization together.
“I’m not going to say I like every decision, but I certainly understand it.”
It’s Black’s background that has the Rockies front office feeling as if Black has been in the organization for four years, rather than four months. They can debate drafting high school players instead of college players or argue whether it’s more important to be mentally tough than to possess sheer talent to have pitching success at Coors Field.
“We already felt like we knew him pretty well without truly knowing him, just from all of the time he spent in this division,” Bridich said. “There’s a shared perspective that, even though you may not agree on things all of the time, you can understand all of the different positions that are needed to make good decisions on behalf of the organization.
“We all have some level of sarcasm here, so his dry humor fits in well.”
Certainly, you need a sense of humor managing 81 games at Coors Field. This is a place that has chewed up managers, from Don Baylor to Jim Leyland to Clint Hurdle to Buddy Bell. Black offers something different. “What they’ll see is a manager who has his own method,” Maddon says. “It’s very direct. And it’s very simple. Buddy is not into overanalyzation. He’s more into the teaching process.
“It’s like the time he went to the mound one game to talk to Lou Pote. He came back in a nanosecond. Really, there was no time to say anything. ..
“I said, ‘ What did you say to Lou?’ Buddy said, ‘ I asked what does he weigh? He told me 200 pounds. I said, ‘ Well, start pitching like it then.’
“That’s Buddy. They’re going to love him there.”