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.

The two teams faced each other on October 1 and even nine innings in an extra game wasn’t enough to decide the winner. In fact, they had to play 13 innings. The Rockies looked like they would fade away once again after Scott Hairston hit a 2-run homer off Rockies reliever Jorge Julio in the 13th inning but the Rocktober magic came back in the bottom of the 13th.

Against future Hall-of-Fame closer Trevor Hoffman, Kazuo Matsui doubled to lead off the inning. After getting the count full, Rockies rookie shortstop Troy Tulowitzki doubled in Matsui. On the very next pitch, Matt Holliday tripled to right field and Tulowitzki scored to tie the game at 8.

After intentionally walking Todd Helton, Jamey Carroll came to the plate and on the first pitch, he lined out to right field. Holliday tagged from third and was safe at the plate on a head-first slide (at least according to Rockies fans and home plate umpire, Tim McClelland, who’s opinion was the only one that mattered).

The Rockies had reached the postseason for the first time since 1995.

They took that magic to the NLDS and NLCS as they swept the Philadelphia Phillies in three straight games in the NLDS and they swept the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NLCS in four straight games.

The Rockies ended up being swept themselves by the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. However, it is still one of the most improbable teams to get to the World Series considering where they were just two weeks before the regular season ended.

It is also the season that Colorado Rockies fans look back most fondly upon.

Hurdle, himself, said at the time that the 2007 Rockies “brought me more joy this year than I’ve had in 35 years of professional baseball.”

He had a similar sentiment when he returned to Coors Field as Pirates manager in 2016.

“Always, when I go on the field, I take a look at the flag down to the left of the foul pole, the National League championship flag,” Hurdle said. “Those are priceless memories. The people around here seem to be thankful and grateful. They seem to have some memories as well.” “It was a season that you don’t script, because we had two rookies in the rotation, a rookie closer and a rookie shortstop,” said Hurdle. “That’s not the way you draw it up over the winter to put together a team that makes you say, ‘We’re going to go to the World Series, and this is how we’re going to do it.’

After 2007, though, the fall from grace came rather quickly for Hurdle in Denver.