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October 1, 2025 16 mins
ROCKIES GM BILL SCHMIDT IS OUT And good. I've got nothing personally against Mr. Schmidt (I've never met him) but he's done a lousy job. I've got voice of the Rockies Jack Corrigan at 1 to discuss. Read more about his exit here.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And if you are a Rockies fan, like I am

(00:02):
a Rockies fan, you may have seen the news that
general manager Bill Schmidt is out.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
And what will come next.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Well, let's check in with the Voice of the Rockies,
our man, Jack Corrigan, who I'm hoping has a little
insight into what's going on over there now. First of all, Jack,
good to have you on the show.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well as always, Mandy, I love visiting with you.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Well, you know, and I want to be clear like
you know, Jack, I know you feel the same way,
like I don't want to celebrate someone losing their job,
but boy, did this have to happen? I mean, there
was no way for this not to happen.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yes, I mean there's no question. Bill Schmidt's a good
baseball man and has had a long run with the
Rockies organization, first on the scouting side and then as
the GM. But obviously, when you have three straight hundred
loss seasons and you look at where the teams hits

(01:00):
in terms of the immediate future, yeah, there has to
be Uh, there has to be a change, not only
in the voice, Mandy, but I think in the philosophy
of how the team gets run going forward.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Is this the end of the so called Rockies Way,
which has been stunningly unsuccessful, especially as of late.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Let me be clearwaight tech question.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, while you think about that.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Let me for people who don't know what the Rockies
way has always been strong, draft developed, developed talent in
the hopes that they develop into something that is going
to be great. And they've had some really great success
stories in that in that method. Unfortunately they all trade
away or they get signed away. They don't end up
creating a winning team. And Dick has been married, Dick

(01:52):
Monford has been married. It's the Rockies way. Well, the
Rockies way isn't working. So let's let's turn the page.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
I will I will stop you there and say in
the Rockies place in the baseball structure based on media
revenue being a big push to how teams go forward,
the size of market in terms of the Rockies being

(02:22):
the only team playing at altitude, all those considerations make
the idea that drafting and developing is still the best
way for the Rockies to go. Where the change has
to come in My thought is how they are drafting

(02:43):
and how they are developing. And I think for too
long this team got caught still with the whole Blake
Street Bomber idea of you know, bashing people at home
and then trying to survive on the road. Well, even

(03:04):
in the years that the Rockies have gone to the playoffs,
I think all but one time they've been under five
hundred on the road. So it's an it's a story
that doesn't play away from eighty feet. And I think
the types of players they need to draft has to change,

(03:27):
or has to be massaged, if you will, into the
types of players that give them a better chance to win,
not only in Denver, but when they're on the road.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
I mean, just win, right, that's our Okay, So let's
talk structurally where we are now, because I'm going to
be perfectly honest Jack. You know, I'm a huge Rockeys fan.
I watched fewer games this year than I've ever watched
since I've been in this town.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
And we went to a game on in August. I
did not know.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
A vast majority of the players on the field. I
had never heard of them before. We don't have a
player to build around. We don't have players I don't
feel like to build around. If we do, just say, look,
we're gonna scrap it. We're going to go and we
are going to rebuild this franchise from the ground up,
which I think needs to happen. What stays like, what
pieces do you see as.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
The guy who watches every game? Do you see that?
You say, you know what? That guy?

Speaker 1 (04:26):
That guy and that guy are people that we can
begin to work to bring in more talent around.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
I mean, do we even have those right now?

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yes, in quantity, no. In I think there are twenty
nine other teams that would fall all over themselves to
have Ezekiel Tobar right there are all kinds of teams
that would love to have Hunter Goodman. I think when

(04:58):
you look at maybe not quite defined yet, but Brenton
Doyle is a piece you build around. I think Jordan
Beck is a piece you build around. You'll notice I
haven't mentioned any pitchers. Yeah, that's the that's I think.
I like where the ball club is going in the bullpen.

(05:20):
They've got lots of live, hard throwing young arms at
the back end of the bullpen. But mile might They've
got to figure out a way to find starting pitching.
You know. I think Kyle Freeland is a piece that
will remain out of out of the rest of the
guys who were in the starting rotation, the veterans, they're

(05:43):
not going to be here next year, and that's where
the where they have to start.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
What about Chase Dolander, I mean, he was alternately fantastic,
but he obviously, in my mind, he obviously struggled. When
he started to struggle a little bit, it got to
him like you could see him sort of collapse mentally
on the mound in several starts that I watched. I
did watch his starts. I think he's very interesting. What

(06:09):
are your thoughts on the guy? You probably saw all
of his starts.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, I think Chase has a chance to be a
high level pitcher. I think there are elements that you're
right on and the idea of he did not farewell
emotionally mentally at Corsefield and that's something he's going to

(06:33):
have to get over now. He's not the first guy
that that happened to. John Gray was awful his first
year at Corsefield and then was good on the road,
and it took him a while to figure out how
that's going to play. I think in Chase's case as well,

(06:54):
some of the changes to the game, fewer mounts visits
are allowed, fewer times that you can step off or
throw to first base, which sometimes was done in the
past just to settle down emotionally and mentally for future.

(07:17):
You don't have that ability anymore to do that. You
can only do that twice with a guy on base
per at bat. There are only four moun visits allowed
over the first eight innings of a game, so you
have all of those elements where you could take a
young pitcher and slow him down. He's trying to learn

(07:40):
how to do that on his own. You know, whether
it's a mechanical issue, whether it's a pitch selection issue.
He can't turn to the iPad in the dugout and
look at it because that's after the fact. He can't
have the pitching coach come out and say you're doing

(08:01):
this right. Those are the things he has to figure
out and that will determine whether he reaches the potential
that his talent presents into being. You know, the challenge
of pitching half your games at course.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Field right now, I feel you on that.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Let's let's talk for a second about perhaps more changes
that could be made in the front office, and let's
talk about the fact that the Rockies, in their statement
said there will be an external search, and I think
that's significant. What do you expect that to look like?
And what might they be looking for in the new GM.

(08:41):
Are they looking for someone who is going to try
and run the team or try and run the team
the way Dick wants it run, which could be very
two different things.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
Right, you know? And that's going to be the question
that nobody really knows till we see it start to
unfold as to you know, how much does Dick allow
Walker Montford to make the decisions and to do the things.
Because I will tell you, regardless of who they bring

(09:13):
in as the next person in their baseball operations, being
around the game long enough forty years and talking to
lots of people, the Rockies need more talent evaluators when
they're drafting. If you're going to be a draft and
develop team, which they have to be based on their market,

(09:35):
you need more scouts. You need more people looking in
more places for more people. That's step one. Step two
is you need more instructors slash coaches at the lower
levels of the miners that give these guys the opportunity
to learn how to play. When you're bouncing between elevation

(10:01):
and sea level, and those are two areas where the
Rockies can spend money that you don't see necessarily but
can make a difference. That's what teams like Milwaukee in
a smaller market, they've done that for the last ten
fifteen years. They have guys leave, they only have one

(10:23):
or two guys that stick around, but they have the
next plug in because the guys they are bringing in
that fit their ballpark and everything else. They you know, Okay, hey,
we lose so and so, and now we've got Jackson Curio.
And then when we lose this guy, we've got Seal Friedlich,

(10:44):
you know. And it becomes that process. And the Rockies
have had a disconnect in that regard not only in
being able to have the next guy plug in. If
somebody does get traded because they need piece, or somebody
goes for the bigger contract elsewhere, that's where they have

(11:06):
to improve and they have to decide on what kind
of team they're going to be. Offensively, you know, the
worst thing that happened to this organization, people are going
to scream at me, was the Blake Street bombers and
the pre humidor effect. And then as the game has changed,

(11:29):
it was like, we're going to find all these guys
who could be tight ends if they were in football,
who mash runs and that you want to have home
run hit are sure, because that's the easiest way to score.
But your team can't be all those guys with all
the swings and misses, all the strikeouts they have had

(11:49):
over these last three years. It correlates to the record.
If you're not getting on base with frequency, or if
you have people on base and you're not moving them
into score position or scoring them because the people who
follow strike out. It doesn't matter whether you're pitching is
good or not. If you're not scoring, that's still the game.

(12:11):
You got to score more than the other team scores.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
I feel like towards the end of this season, the
small ball did get better, and I don't know if
that is the function of the manager, who, by the way,
we don't know if he is going to be a holdover.
You know, here's the thing, here's what I feel about
the manager, and I felt this way about budd Block.
I mean, you can only do so much as a
manager if you don't have the team with talent that

(12:35):
you need. Right, Like, it's easy to blame the manager,
because you can't fire the whole team. But does this
manager make it through this next this next change, or
would you foresee a GM coming in and saying, Nope,
we're going to go in a completely different direction and
bring in somebody new.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Well, I think if that next GM Head of Baseball Operations,
whatever title they get, give them that person Manny, I
would think he wants to have people that he has
trust in, he has confidence in, more than likely that
he's worked before, or he's admired from AFAR. That doesn't

(13:18):
mean that Warren wouldn't get consideration, because I think Warren
did a good job for much of the second half
of the season maximizing what he had in terms of
the talent. But as you've got guys coming, and there
are guys coming from the Ethan Holidays to the Charlie

(13:41):
Condons to the Jared Thomas's, there are people coming. So
that GM who gets selected, he's going to want a
manager that's twofold, one that's going to fit how he
deems is the best way for this team to be successful.
And then, secondly, because it's gonna continue to be a

(14:03):
young team, how do I maximize the teaching side of
getting these guys better.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
All right, Well this is gonna be I mean, you know, Jack,
I have to tell you, and again, I'm not celebrating
that someone lost their job, but I'm celebrating that we're
getting a new general manager, if that makes sense, because
it's just been like, I can't even imagine doing the
job that you and Jerry do making those games interesting
when they're clearly not most of the time lately.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
And I hope that.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Next year it is a much more fun season for
you and Jerry and you know, Jesse to follow this
team because there'll be good things to talk about. That's
my hope. And I hope they bring in somebody who
is one of those baseball people that just feels it
in their bones, Like that's what I want. I want
one of those baseball people that lives, eats, breathe, and

(14:55):
dies by the game. That is what I want for
this franchise. Someone who wants to win more than anything
in the world and will accept nothing less. That's what
I wanted a GM who that is. I don't know
what We're gonna have to find out later.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah, well, I think one I appreciate the kind words.
The three of us still have a blast doing the games,
even when at times there wasn't much of a story
to tell. But You're right, they do need somebody, and
I will take it a step further. That has to
be outwardly passionate. I think I think we need a

(15:37):
person in authority who the fans can respond to. Like
I said, Bill was a great baseball man, but quiet,
Jeff Bridage was quiet. I mean you almost have to
have you know, way too far with this, but you know,
almost moniacal about how he displays his passion.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
That's what I'm talking about. That's exactly what I'm talking about.
Someone who bleeds the game and lives it every single
moment of every single day and.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Says we're here to win.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
We're gonna win a World Series and anything less is
a disappointment. That's what I want for my GM. So
hopefully we will get that. Jack Corgan, go go ahead.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
I said that would be good for all of us. Mandy,
you go find him for it.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
You know what if they if they put me in charge,
I guarantee you I would do a good job.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Jack Corgan, you can hear him calling those Rockies games
next year, hopefully when he is going to have lots
and lots of times to yell about home runs and
winning games and all that good stuff.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Good to talk to you, my friend.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
As always Mandy, I loved it.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Thank you all right, thank you Jack Corgan

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