The philosophical changes that came out of the Colorado Rockies minor league coaching staffs

On Friday, the Colorado Rockies unveiled their entire 2022 minor league coaching and developmental staffs. Last, the club had unveiled their coaching staffs with one coming per day but they have revealed the rest of their developmental staffs as well.

Some of the moves were already known, like the addition of former Rockies manager Clint Hurdle as a special assistant to GM Bill Schmidt, but a few were not. One of them was an organizational philosophy change.

There are two significant changes to the Colorado Rockies minor league coaching staffs.

It has already been reported that the Colorado Rockies were hiring Clint Hurdle and making their former pitching coach, Steve Foster, their new Director of Pitching Operations, replacing the retiring Mark Wiley.

However, among the changes to the developmental staff is a change to the MLB staff. Doug Bernier, who was the MLB Data and Game Planning Coordinator, is now going to be the team’s minor league defensive coordinator. Bernier also spent time with the team pre-game when players were taking infield grounders as Bernier was an infielder himself.

In the new role, he will be focusing on infielders and outfielders so it will be a bit different. It’s also a new role for the Colorado Rockies but there are some other teams that have the position so while it’s new for the Rockies, it’s not a completely new thing in baseball. However, there are still a fair amount of teams without one.

But the other big change is a bigger philosophical change and it’s the idea of a field coordinator.

Mark Strittmatter was the team’s catching coordinator but now, he is adding the duties of “field coordinator” too. Strittmatter has been the Rockies catching coordinator since 2013 after spending two seasons as an MLB coach under Clint Hurdle in Pittsburgh. Prior to that, he was a bullpen catcher for the Rockies from 2003 through 2010 and he was their catching coach in 2008 and 2009.

The Rockies haven’t had a “field coordinator” since 2012. Most MLB teams have a field coordinator to implement philosophies and fundamentals from the MLB staff and translates that to the minor league staffs and coaches. They oversee managers and coaches, and other staff members in the minors as well.

But from 2013 through 2021, the Rockies, essentially, had a field coordinator at each level in a “supervisor of development.”

Oftentimes, the minor league field coordinator (or in recent years for the Rockies, supervisor of development) gets promoted to the MLB coaching staff after a few years.

The Rockies’ last field coordinator was Ron Gideon and he was in that role from 2008 through 2012. Now, Gideon is entering his sixth season on the Rockies MLB coaching staff and his fourth as first base coach.

Some of the previous supervisors of development for the Rockies include Gideon (2013-2016), new assistant hitting coach Andy Gonzalez (2017-2019), and Steve Soliz (2021). Soliz previously was on the MLB coaching staff for the Angels from 2003 through 2018.

Recent MLB managers Jayce Tingler and Jeff Banister were minor league field coordinators before they became managers (Tingler directly and Banister was promoted to bench coach for the Pirates from field coordinator before becoming the manager of the Rangers).

The Rockies will still have a “fourth coach” at the minor league level in a “bench coach.” Some of those development supervisors, like Soliz, will be bench coaches in the minor leagues. But the focus will be more on winning, according to new player development director Chris Forbes.

Forbes, who took over the role in the middle of last season, spoke with Thomas Harding of MLB.com about that change and why the Rockies did it.

“We need to put an emphasis on Minor League wins,” Forbes said. “Groups of players that win on the way up, that’s a key. It started to show up in 2006 and hit that stretch in ’07, they played together a lot. Our younger teams played well last year [Low-A Fresno and High-A Spokane made the postseason], and we want to keep that going. It’s not at the risk of certain development things, but we’re trying to create a landscape where their expectations are to win. When that game starts, it’s your job to put your thumb on the pulse of that game and find the win.”

Essentially, as Harding puts it, the development supervisor position was added so that someone was looking at the big picture and not the day-to-day results but now, under Forbes, they will put more of an emphasis on wins (wins that were hard to come by in Triple-A and Double-A) and minor league coaching staff’s will be a better reflection of how things will be when players reach the majors.

You can check out the full minor league coaching and player development staffs here.