Rockies to ink Tracy to long-term deal; are they making a mistake?

ON MAY 29, THE COLORADO ROCKIES sat 10 games under .500. They had just been swept by the Dodgers in consecutive weekends and were playing with no heart.

That day, manager Clint Hurdle was given his walking papers.  Despite being less than two years removed from captaining a young team to a surprise World Series appearance, Hurdle was no longer the manager of the Rockies.  It was a move that surprised no one.

Jim Tracy, brought in before the 2009 season as bench coach, was handed the reins.  If nothing else, Tracy was Hurdle’s the polar opposite.  Hurdle was loud and boisterous.  He spent time in the clubhouse with the players. He was like one of the guys.  Hurdle was very likable, and in the end, that is what got him fired.  When he needed to make a tough decision, he struggled.  He did not want to disrupt the chemistry in the clubhouse that he felt a part of.

Hurdle managed with his heart.  He would play the hot hand instead of going with a routine.  This often led to confusion as to what role a player was in.  There was no better example of this than the early-season move to declare Huston Street the closer, and then go with Manny Corpas, and then go back to Street.  All the while, neither of the pitchers had blown a save.

Tracy, on the other hand, is very soft-spoken.  Instead of being “one of the guys” in the clubhouse, he was often locked in his office scouring through numbers, trying to be one step ahead of the opposing manager, studying the intricacies of every hitter in the opposing lineup.  In his two previous managerial jobs, Tracy’s critics accused him of being too much of a micromanager.  They said he blamed the players when things went wrong but took the credit when they went right.  That seemed odd to Rockies fans because Tracy was letting the players play and seemed far too humble to take credit for the success.

Instead of going with the hot hand, Tracy instead put the talent on the field.  This included inserting Clint Barmes into the two-hole in the lineup and playing second base every day.  In addition, he made Ian Stewart the third baseman, planting Garrett Atkins and his struggling bat on the bench.  Tracy retooled the bullpen, finishing the season with only one pitcher, Street, still there from the opening-day roster.  That enabled him to find the right person for each job and for that person to understand his job.

Starting pitchers were given a longer leash.  Instead of being tied to a pitch count, Tracy would allow a starter to pitch deep into games, giving them the opportunity to pick up the win or loss, not the bullpen.

The changes were felt in a positive way almost immediately.  Barmes looked like the best-hitting second baseman in baseball. Stewart hit for power and improved the infield defense. Ubaldo Jimenez and Jorge De La Rosa turned into top-shelf pitchers.  Everyone knew his role and became comfortable in that role.

The turnaround the team experienced made history.  No team had ever been as far behind as the Rockies and managed to go to the postseason.

Tracy had the Midas touch; it seemed nothing he did went wrong.  The team had turned around completely with him at the helm.

Then, as the summer nights turned chilly, it seemed as if the Tracy who had calmly led one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history had turned into the Tracy whom the critics had described.  Tracy began to micromanage.  A prime example was on Sept. 24.  Jason Hammel was pitching brilliantly against the Padres.  Through six innings he was staked to a 3-1 lead courtesy of a first-inning Troy Tulowitzki home run.  In the bottom of the sixth inning, the Rockies had runners on second and third with two outs.  With the game a hit away from being secured as Hammel stepped to the plate,  Hammel, not much of a hitter, grounded weakly to the second baseman.

Tracy’s allowing Hammel to hit for himself was not a big deal. The righty was getting outs and had his best stuff working.  What left Rockies fans scratching their heads came in the top of the next inning.  After getting the first out, Tracy elected to go to the bullpen to face the light-hitting Tony Gwynn Jr.

Franklin Morales came to the mound and promptly walked Gwynn, allowed a hit and walked another hitter, allowing the Padres to even the score.  In the next inning, the San Diego scored two more runs and the game was lost.

The way the playoffs were handled made many fans second-guess the previously unassailable Tracy.

Because the Phillies’ starting rotation is dominated by left-handers, Tracy elected to go with Atkins at third base.  To say Atkins slumped all season would be a huge understatement.  He looked lost at the plate and could not turn on fastballs the way he did earlier in his career, presenting questions about his off-season work ethic.

While Atkins added a right-handed power threat, Stewart was on the bench because Tracy did not want too many lefty-lefty matchups.  While stats would suggest that right-handers tend to hit right-handers better and lefties hit lefties better, this is not always the case.  In Stewart’s case, just one year ago he hit .370 against left-handed pitchers, which led the league  Early in ’09, the Rockies bragged about his ability to hit left-handers.

For the playoffs, Stewart’s absence left the Rockies short both on defense and offense.

Another of Tracy’s decisions kept Seth Smith on the bench in favor of playing Dexter Fowler in center field.  Smith in the lineup would have pushed Carlos Gonzalez to center field and put Smith in left.  The switch-hitting Fowler is far better from the right side of the plate but was still going through the growing pains of a player who never set foot on a Triple-A field.  In 433 regular-season at-bats, Fowler struck out 116 times.

Smith, on the other hand, had been one of the hottest hitters for the Rockies.  He was the National League Player of the Week in the first week of September and contributed in the clutch several times down the stretch.

The moves seemed all too familiar.  They seemed eerily similar to the moves of a former manager, one who had worn out his welcome in the clubhouse and lost control of his team.  It seemed as if Tracy decided to use the Hurdle book on managing down the stretch and in the playoffs.

The fact that Tracy managed the Rockies to the playoffs at all in 2009 is proof that he deserves a long-term contract. However, it will be interesting to see which Tracy shows up in the dugout next year, the Tracy who let the players play or the Tracy who micromanaged his way out of the playoffs.

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