There has been a spirited race toward Major League Baseball's Dumpster of Distinction all season, with a number of candidates trying to join the increasingly popular 100-loss club. But there are ways to fail, and then there are stylish ways to fail. Miami and Baltimore are failing, but it's pretty boilerplate stuff: The Marlins don't pitch, the Orioles don't hit. Nothing especially novel there, give or take Baltimore's 192 wins over the previous two seasons.
In other words, in an era in which losing 100 is no big thang—there have been 22 teams that have managed it since 2018—the way you get to 100 matters. The Chicago White Sox figured that out last year by reaching 100 in the last week of August and ending up with 121 losses, the second-most defeats in baseball history. They stunk, but they found a way to do it at a rate that no other team had figured out before.
There are two teams seeking out that sort of special White Soxian anti-achievement this season, now that the Pope has the Sox covered. One is Pittsburgh, which has found varied and fascinating ways to drop trou in public, the latest and most risible being using the election of said pope as news cycle cover for firing manager Derek Shelton. Shelton, of course, was guilty of taking a job funded by the Nutting family, and got what he deserved—an underfunded roster overseen by an organization with the P.R. sense of a rabid wolverine tear-assing around a schoolyard.
But the Pirates have been passed, finally and perhaps for good, by the Colorado Rockies, who celebrated their seventh win of the season and second this month by firing the manager who had been praised the day before for keeping the lads invested in playing hard. That happened moments before the team absorbed a shutout loss that saw them lose by three touchdowns.
The victim in question here was Bud Black, whose record over the last several years is standard firing fodder and whose start this year has been both historically and predictably catastrophic. What made this laughable was the way the Rockies did it, starting with general manager Bill Schmidt saying to the Denver Post's Patrick Saunders on Saturday, "I think our guys are still playing hard, and that's what I look at. Guys are working hard every day; they come with energy, for the most part. I don't think we are (at that point of firing Black). Guys still believe in what we are doing and where we are headed. We are all frustrated."
And...
"I feel for the fans; I feel for the people around here," Schmidt said. "I know we are better than we have played, but we are not good right now. We have to battle through it and get to the other side. There are still a lot of games left. I think we can turn it around, but it's going to take a whole group to do it. The guys are working to get better."
Then they lost 21-0, to San Diego, which would have been the time to fire Black no matter what Schmidt said about not being at that point—and since he assembled the team, maybe Schmidt as well.
But no, the Rockies did their trying-hard bit to a T and won on Sunday, 9-3. That's when somnolent owner Dick Monfort revived his famous sense of comic timing, noticed that he still owns a baseball team, and put out a statement of his own that contravened Schmidt's assessment and violated the sanctity of the disingenuous vote of confidence:
"Our play so far this season, especially coming off the last two seasons, has been unacceptable. Our fans deserve better, and we are capable of better. While we all share responsibility in how this season has played out, these changes [bench coach Mike Redmond was also fired, third base coach Warren Schaeffer was promoted to interim manager, and hitting coach and former manager Clint Hurdle was named bench coach] are necessary. 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."
It reeked of a rich guy being laughed at by his friends for having smeared something fragrant onto his shiniest toy. And so he made this slow-motion panic move at the appropriate time, which in Monfort time translated to "the most ridiculous time."
This is not a defense of Black, who had had an easy enough ride in public for someone whose last six seasons have produced little of distinction. By the standards and practices of modern sports franchises, he probably got more rope than most. The last 20 games offered enough of a hint of what was coming, given that the Rockies allowed six runs or more 16 times during that stretch.
But the messaging here is what makes this Colorado-laughable, from Schmidt saying his manager was doing a good job to that manager not doing a good job to rallying to improbably do a good job, and then Monfort saying he wasn't doing a good job. The point, as anyone with a basic concept of the number line can attest, is that you show displeasure after defeats rather than wins, especially when your chief deputy just finished defending the person you intend to fire 24 hours previous.
Frankly, this would have made more sense had Monfort fired both Black and Schmidt, since the one managed the ingredients provided him by the other—or if Monfort had waited until after the burnt-out-match-storm over Shelton's cheesy firing to fire Black. Pope Bobby casts a broad shadow now that we know he's a White Sox guy, and Monfort seems only minimally aware of any and all events until they are pointed out to him firmly and slowly. I mean, who needs a day-long run-up to notice a 21-run loss and then wait until after a six-run victory to snap into action? And by action, we of course mean "dictate a statement and lay low, as owners do."
See, you can't shame an owner. It isn't that they can do as they wish—money will money, after all—but that their money means they do whatever they do in a vacuum. The employees are left, always, to mop up the drool puddles their bosses leave behind; that’s most of what they’re paid for. In this case, Monfort undercut Schmidt's gibberish by rendering it meaningless it inside of one day. His statement would have been more believable if it had read, "Lose by 21, win by six, what's the difference? I just felt like it, and I'm rich. Now piss off." We could respect that, at least, and that's more respect than the Monforts usually deserve, let alone receive.
