Walt Weiss Holds Team Meeting, And Then The Rockies Score 10 Runs

Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports

The Colorado Rockies thumped the team with the best record in all of baseball on Friday night. Not only that, they did all of that damage against one of the best pitchers going this season in Francisco Liriano. So it was that this team defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates 10-1 and reminded us of the promise we thought we saw in them earlier this year. We know better now, but this was still a much-needed win.

Before the game, manager Walt Weiss held a team meeting. It was his first of the year, or at least his first where we received reports about said meeting.

The closed door meeting was a go-to move for my man Jim Tracy. As such, I tried to figure out the benefits at the time. I wrote the following on May 12th of last year:

"Here’s what I want to know: what exactly do these closed door meetings look like? We acknowledge them when they happen with a hushed reverence as if to say, “Oh. Things are really serious now.” But why? We don’t know what they look like. Do we just react that way because the door is closed? Is there some type of open door meeting I’m not aware of? Can people drop in on those?”"

Tracy, whether you loved him or hated him, loved to hear himself talk. That combined with the frequency of said meetings probably dampened their meaning and eventually rendered them ineffective. Or at least that seems like a reasonable speculation from “guy on the couch” (because I, in fact, don’t live in my mom’s basement…anymore).

Anyhow, I asked Denver Post beat writer Troy Renck on Twitter why the significance might be different with Weiss. Here is his reply:

First of all, it’s a good reminder to give things more than one game before we get too excited. But here’s the way it sounds to me…

I’ve never been in a fight in my life, but one time a friend of mine explained who the different “guys” are in a fight. There are the hot heads who always instigate things, the guys who pretend they don’t want to fight but freak out as soon as “the other guy started it,” and so on. Then he said the most intimidating guy is the one who stands calmly off to the side, doesn’t say much, and then after a while he’ll say, “OK, let’s take it outside.”

It’s intimidating because you fear what it must be like when that guy finally snaps. What would it take to push him over the edge? As far as managers go, I feel like that’s Weiss. Even if he just walked into the room and slammed the door, the whole team would probably sit upright and think: “Uh oh…”

Maybe that’s not the case. Of course I don’t know Weiss or what he’s like in the locker room. Maybe he does yell. But if his disposition in the dugout and on the field serve as any indication, he’s a pretty calm dude. And let’s just say that, on the flip side of things, we saw some pretty good indications that Jim Tracy had a quicker temper (go to 2:10 of this video):

So maybe when Weiss holds a meeting, it will resonate. Time will tell, but for today, the Rockies just really needed a win. The fact that the offense keyed last night’s victory is just a bonus.