Colorado Rockies: Part two of our tribute to Clint Hurdle

On Wednesday, we had part one of our tribute to former Colorado Rockies coach and manager Clint Hurdle who is retiring from managing and coaching in baseball by recounting his coaching career with the Rockies.

But before we go through some of the highlights of Clint Hurdle‘s managerial career with the Colorado Rockies, a new development has come out since the original report from Kevin Acee of The San Diego Union-Tribune said that Hurdle was retiring from baseball.

Rob Biertempfel of The Athletic in Pittsburgh reported on Wednesday that Hurdle has “sort of” retired. Hurdle told him via text that it is not a formal retirement but he has “decided to put the baseball pants in the closet” and that it was “[t]ime to give back to my family.”

He added that he could return to baseball in a front office capacity but for that, he said that only “[t]ime will tell.”

Yesterday, we recounted Hurdle’s time as a minor league hitting coordinator and major league hitting coach from 1994-2002 with the Rockies.

Today, we will look back on his managerial career with the Rockies, which took place from 2002 to 2009 as well as the aftermath of his 2009 firing.

Let’s take a leap back to 2002 and how he became the manager of the Rockies.

His managerial beginnings

Like a few other teams in 2002, the Rockies got off to a horrendous start. They started the season with a 6-16 record, which was the worst start in franchise history up to that point.

As a result of that and losing five straight games, they fired manager Buddy Bell on April 26. He was already the third MLB manager to be fired that season (fourth if you count Red Sox manager Joe Kerrigan, who was canned in spring training) as the Detroit Tigers fired Phil Garner on April 9 and the Milwaukee Brewers fired their manager, Davey Lopes, on April 18.

While both of those teams had interim managers for the remainder of the season (Luis Pujols for the Tigers and Jerry Royster for the Brewers) and both ended up being replaced after the season by former players for that respective team when they last made a trip to the World Series who also became first time managers (Alan Trammell for the Detroit Tigers and Ned Yost for the Milwaukee Brewers), the Rockies did not have an “interim” tag on Hurdle.

Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd called Hurdle the “manager of the Rockies — not interim manager — for the remainder of the season.” He also said that Hurdle “brings passion, he brings enthusiasm, he brings a charisma I think this ballclub needs.” He added that the Rockies needed to “start playing the game with more joy and more confidence than we’ve played already this year.”

If you look at the numbers, it’s easy to see why Bell ended up getting the axe. In the first 22 games, the Rockies pitched to a 5.48 ERA. One of the worst pitchers was Mike Hampton, who went 0-3 with an 8.88 ERA.

Offensively, they also started off slow as they hit .251/.310/.383 and averaged only four runs a game. Todd Helton got off to a slow start (.266/.352/.430 slash line) as did many others.

Both Hampton and Helton felt that the players were to blame for the firing.

“I think we’re all pretty much in shock,” Hampton said at the time. “Any time things go bad, the first person to go is the manager. That’s just the way it is. But we blame ourselves.”

Hampton added, “If you fire anybody, you should have fired me.”

You could also contend that the Rockies ownership and front office were to blame as they slashed payroll by more than 20 percent heading into 2002.

But the silver lining of the situation was that Hurdle was the replacement.

Hampton called Hurdle’s promotion “a plus.”

“He’s familiar with this organization,” said Hampton, “and that’s probably the only plus out of this.” Helton said that Hurdle a “tireless worker, very organized and very outgoing. Maybe he can shake some things up.”

Starting with Hurdle’s first game as manager and through the month of May, Hurdle was successful at shaking things up as they were 23-10 in his first 33 games at the managerial helm.

The Rockies pitching staff pitched to a magnificent 3.30 ERA and the offense averaged 5.8 runs a game with a .289/.364/.468 slash line. Hampton pitched to a 4.05 ERA in his next five starts and Helton finally warmed up as he hit a blistering .365/.476/.774 from Hurdle’s hiring until the end of May.

But Hurdle didn’t take credit for the turnaround. “We were due to play better. We played so poorly we got a good man fired,” he said back then.

While the Rockies were still in fourth place in the very competitive NL West, they were three games over .500 entering June. The team ended up faltering in June and July and ended up with a 73-89 record, 25 games back of the reigning World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL West.

After the season ended, Hurdle’s wife, Karla, gave birth to their first child together, Maddie, and as soon as she was born, she was sent directly to the neonatal intensive-care unit, where she stayed for three weeks.

Doctors diagnosed her with Prader-Willi syndrome, a chromosomal disorder that can lead to a number of developmental and behavioral issues, including short stature and constant hunger.

The Hurdle’s were already tested before their marriage and before Clint became manager as he struggled with alcoholism but he quit drinking in the late 90s and started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings before Karla agreed to marry him in 1999 after he proposed (and was denied) in 1997 and they have been together since.

In the next four seasons, Hurdle and the Rockies with their lack of hitting, lack of pitching, or lack of both, never won more than 76 games in a season, making Hurdle “the only manager in major league history to start a career with five losing seasons and not get fired.” However, 2007 was the season that Rockies fans had been waiting on for more than a decade.

The 2007 season

The 2007 season was a season in which, once again, Rockies fans thought that the team would fade into oblivion without a wimper of getting close to the playoffs.

Clint Hurdle’s contract was extended in the offseason but only for the 2007 season as he was still on the hot seat, as Troy Rench of The Denver Post reported at the time. So if the team didn’t put up good numbers, he very well could have gotten the axe after the season ended.

Before the 2007 season, Hurdle said that wanted to “prepare (the team) more effectively” as he admitted that he overmanaged during the second half of 2006.

“I am going to do things differently,” said Hurdle, “because it’s time.”

They started of the season with a subpar 10-16 start. They essentially treaded water in May and June as they entered July with a record of 39-42, which was good enough for fourth place in the NL West, eight games back of the San Diego Padres, who were led by rookie manager Bud Black. The Rockies were also only eight games ahead of having the worst record in the National League.

After going 15-9 in July, the Rockies were still only 54-51 and still in fourth place in the NL West. However, they were still well within striking distance as the first-place Diamondbacks were only 3.5 games ahead of the fourth place Rockies.

The Rockies stumbled a bit in August as they went 15-14 and they finished the month with a 69-65 record, which meant the Rockies were still in fourth place and five games back of both the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres, as they were in a virtual tie for first place (the D’Backs had one more win but also one more loss than the Padres).

In the first half of September, the Rockies, once again, just were treading water, as entering play on Sunday, September 16th, the Rockies had a record of 76-72 and in fourth place, 6.5 games back of the Arizona Diamondbacks for first place.

The Rockies, under the tutelage of Hurdle, went on to win 14 of their last 15 games with all but the first win coming against their NL West opponents.

The team pitched to a 3.13 ERA in that span (it was 4.45 entering what became known as the “Rocktober streak”) and they also hit a startling .317/.384/.528 while scoring a mind boggling 6.8 runs per game.

Even with going 14-1, it was not good enough to secure the NL West or even a Wild Card spot outright, but they tied the San Diego Padres for the lone Wild Card spot so a Game 163 had to be played in Denver.

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With being the reigning National League champions, Hurdle was obviously invited to come back to manage in 2008 but they did not have the “Rocktober” magic that they had in 2007.

They stumbled to a 74-88 record and after a 18-28 start in 2009, Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd pulled the trigger and fired Hurdle after spending parts of eight seasons as Rockies manager. He was replaced by bench coach and former Dodgers and Pirates manager Jim Tracy.

“It was been a tremendous ride. It has been life lesson after life lesson,” Hurdle said at the time of his firing. “And I will tell you this, the last seven weeks I have said the serenity prayer more times than I did in the last seven years.”

Like he did when Buddy Bell was fired in favor of Hurdle seven years prior, Rockies cornerstone first baseman Todd Helton said that it was because the lack of performance from the players that caused Hurdle to get the axe.

“Obviously, he takes the sword for us,” first baseman Todd Helton said on the day of the firing. “He didn’t have any bad at-bats, he didn’t throw any bad pitches. He’s the same manager he was two years ago. So, we realize that ultimately we’re the reason he got fired.”

Hurdle was offered a position to stay in the organization but he decided to become an analyst for MLB Network, which was in its first year as a network. He became the hitting coach for the eventual American League Champion Texas Rangers in 2010 and he became the Pirates manager in 2011.

The 2009 Rockies ended up making the playoffs as they went 74-42 for Tracy once he took over. Even with that success, Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd later said in 2016 that the day that he fired Hurdle was the most difficult day in his career and it was the biggest regret that he had in his career.

“If I had to do it all over again, I probably should have left with him,” said O’Dowd.

Final Thoughts

While Hurdle hasn’t completely closed the door on returning to baseball, it seems like he does not want to return to the field as a coach or manager.

He still has 17-year-old Maddie, 15-year-old son Christian, and his wife, Karla, at home so after 45 years of being in baseball, it is at least time for a break for Hurdle and time for him “to give back to my family.”