An Open Email to Dick Monfort
Hi Dick,
Remember that time when you emailed a fellow Rockies fan “if product and experience that bad, don’t come!”? Can you believe that was a full six and a half years and a single playoff victory ago? Me neither! Time sure flies, doesn’t it? In that time, we’ve had the immense pleasure of watching the growth of Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story, and Charlie Blackmon into one of the very best cores in the sport while watching a homegrown pitching staff grow into one that can actually, you know, compete on the moon…err sorry, I mean at Coors Field.
But, over those same six and a half years, we’ve had the great displeasure of watching you and your front office piss all of that away and completely whiff on the most legitimate championship window you had because of your bizarre, misplaced loyalty to your general manager. You have an all-world third baseman and shortstop — a luxury maybe only the Dodgers or Yankees could afford — and given your recent, um shall we say, communications to media and fans it appears that given the choice, you’re choosing your general manager over your most valuable assets (just in terms of hard ROI!).
I’ll be honest, when you tapped Jeff Bridich to replace Dan O’Dowd, I was all-in. Sure, part of it was my sheer aversion to the failed Geivett/O’Dowd administration, but I also genuinely thought that this Harvard-educated dude would finally be the one who would get the Rockies to embrace analytics and help the Rockies take that next step towards winning the World Series. After all, he’s gotta be smart right? HARVARD!
Oh, how naive I was. How naive we all were, you included! From the Tulo trade — which we now know the Rockies lost miserably — over nothing more than some bad blood to the Ian Desmond signing ($70 million for -3.2 bWAR in just three years! What a relief it is that he’s a genuinely good and likable human) and to essentially replacing now-perennial AL MVP candidate DJ LeMahieu with Daniel Murphy for the exact same contract (actually Murphy’s was worse with the buyout but I digress), what more do you need to see to understand that he has no idea what he’s doing and doesn’t deserve your loyalty? This is a cutthroat industry, Dick! You get punished for loyalty, especially when it’s misplaced.
But here’s what’s really bothering me and, well, you should know, many other Rockies fans. When a normal person makes a mistake — and mistakes do happen; no one begrudges honest, good-faith mistakes — they actually stop doing what they were doing that didn’t work and try something else. I’ll grant you the first five years of Bridich (as a treat). I’m a reasonable person and can write those off as you getting to know what you have in your new general manager. But now, at the end of 2020, after everything that has transpired, both on the field with at best questionable moves and off the field with the very public war of words between your general manager and your most valuable player, stoked by both in the media, many of us can’t understand what you see in Bridich that makes you believe in Bridich more than the best third baseman in the history of the sport. How can you not see that hiring Bridich was a mistake? And, if, on the off chance, you do see it, why haven’t you taken action?
An unbiased person might look at what Bridich has done to the Rockies during his tenure and wonder if he’s working as a double agent for, I don’t know, the Dodgers with the sole goal of destroying the franchise from within. That’s how bad your team has been with Bridich at the helm. And don’t come at me with your “two playoff appearances and a victory!” bullshit. A Rockies Twitter friend ran the numbers and found that, outside of every team’s top four hitters, in terms of fWAR, the Rockies had by far the worst supporting cast between 2015 and 2019 and were one of just three teams with negative value from those players (the other two? Baltimore and Detroit. Yikes!). I would imagine that only got worse in 2020 given…well, you know.
Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story, and Charlie Blackmon have been the lipstick on Jeff Bridich’s pig. Those two playoff appearances and wild card victory over the Cubs came in spite of Bridich, not because of him and it’s abundantly obvious to just about everyone except you, apparently. I shudder to think about how bad the Rockies would have been without the all-world talent of those three players.
I’ll be honest, if I was running your team, as someone who understands how MLB teams derive value (we exist. Believe it or not, you don’t have to be an MLB franchisee to understand it! Might be news to you, though, Dick), given that massive gap between my top three players and the rest of the roster, I would be doing absolutely everything in my power to keep those players happy, especially the one I’m on the hook to pay two hundred sixty million total dollars (if you’re more of a visual guy, that’s $260,000,000. Lots of zeroes!). That includes, nay starts with replacing the very person responsible for that on-field value gap.
I should be clear, though. You’ve lost the trust of the most passionate portion of your fanbase. Replacing Jeff Bridich isn’t enough to win us back anymore. Had you pulled that trigger after an inexcusable 2019 season, maybe it would have been. But now? Nope. It has become abundantly clear that the Rockies’ problem is you and Jeff Bridich is nothing more than a symptom of the Dick Monfort Problem™ (DMP) that has embedded itself deep within the organization.
So, what’s the solution? As mad as I am right now, I do still love this team. I love these players. I love Nolan Arenado. I love Coors Field. I want to stop being mad at the team. I want to feel good about giving my money to this franchise again. So yes, I want to find a solution to the DMP. You may be asking yourself right now, does this dude really want me to sell my team and livelihood? Yeah, man. Yeah, I do. I want you as far away from the Rockies as possible and if the only way to do that is for you to sell the team to someone who would actually be a good owner (think Steve Cohen buying the Mets from Fred Wilpon who is, in my opinion, a pretty good comparison to you). But do I actually expect you to do that? No. I’m a reasonable person and I understand the kind of money you’re stealing from fans for a shitty product…err, I mean the kind of money you’re making as the owner of the Rockies and you would be an idiot to walk away from that. Though, a $1.3 billion sale would be a nice consolation for walking away, no?
So assuming you’re not going to sell the team (on the off chance I caught you in a generous mood, I do have three dollars, are you interested?), what do I want you to do? I want you to do two things. First, I want you to fire Jeff Bridich. I have long hated supporting people losing their jobs and their livelihoods but when their performance is as bad as Bridich’s has been, it’s warranted. Second, I want you to finally hire Keli McGregor’s replacement. We mourned his untimely death with you, his family, and the entire franchise. But it’s no coincidence that the most successful era of Rockies baseball to date was during his tenure as president. As the most successful teams in baseball over the past decade have shown, there needs to be a degree of separation between the general manager and owner. Plus, Theo Epstein is just out there for the hiring at the right price. And you can afford him. You’re a billionaire and the Rockies are worth $1.3 billion. But if not Epstein, then find someone else with legitimate experience in the sport to finally fill McGregor’s role again. Your ten-year experiment with a president-less franchise needs to come to an end.
Listen, Dick, I think you’ve failed as an owner. The Rockies have deservedly become a dysfunctional laughingstock under your leadership. Your franchise has a culture problem throughout and every organization’s culture starts at the top. No matter how much you try to lie to our faces, winning has never been an organizational priority and your loyalty to Bridich does nothing but sustain your franchise’s toxic culture.
Let me be perfectly clear. As long as you’re in charge, as long as the Rockies’ general manager reports directly to you, the product will always be bad, the experience will continue to be terrible, and I absolutely will not attend another game at Coors Field. As long as you’re an active owner, I will not give a cent to or in support of your Rockies.
Now, I’m not so naive to think that my own refusal to spend money on the Purple and Black is meaningful enough to cause you to make any real changes. The level of Rockies apathy in this town is so damn high and growing (thanks to your team being, you know, bad) and I know you’ll continue to profit off of Broncos fans with nothing to do in the summer.
You told fans via Twitter in 2014 that nobody wants to win more than you do but your actions have spoken much louder than those hollow words. A more apt interpretation of the single playoff victory in the last six and a half years would be that nobody wants to profit from regional apathy more than you.
In short, as long as your pattern of ownership behavior continues, the product and experience of Rockies games will remain bad and I absolutely will not come.
All my best to you and your family during this holiday season,
Nick Tremaroli, a disgruntled, once-loyal former Rockies fan
