Why Rockies Manager Clint Hurdle Needs a Quick Start To Save His Job

Colorado Rockies' manager Clint Hurdle is feeling the summer heat already—and it is not from the Arizona sun.

Hurdle is entering his seventh season as the manager of the Rockies. He took over for Buddy Bell 22 games into the 2002 season, after the team stumbled to a 6-16 start. 

Hurdle, along with general manager Dan O'Dowd, are entering the final season of their contracts. Two years ago, the duo was awarded contract extensions on opening day.  It has been made clear that there will be no extension to begin this season.

Despite being only one season removed from a National League title, Hurdle is on the hot seat and will most likely be dismissed, if the Rockies do not come out strong in April.

If Hurdle is worried about losing his job, he isn't showing it. After hiring two former managers—Don Baylor and Jim Tracy—to his coaching staff, Hurdle may be looking over his shoulder all season long—especially with Baylor having a good idea on how to manage a team at Coors Field.

They say in baseball that as a manager, it is only a matter of time before you get fired. It often seems that the easiest person to blame is the one person who never throws a pitch or swings a bat.

Hurdle definitely has some quirks in his management style. Last season, Hurdle was quick to pull the trigger on a lineup, if it didn't produce runs in the clutch. 

Troy Tulowitzki bounced from second in the lineup, to seventh, to eighth, to the bench, and anywhere in between, when he was struggling early last season. Such moves tend to be questioned in baseball—a game where consistency seems to breed success.

Hurdle has also come under fire for leaving Todd Helton in the cleanup spot. Helton hit 49 home runs in 2001 but has not come close to those kinds of power numbers since.

O'Dowd has been on record several times this offseason saying that the '07 club was not disciplined enough. He said that lack of discipline poured into the games where the club failed to follow through on the basics, such as bunting runners over and hitting the cutoff man.

While his moves can sometimes legitimately be questioned, it seems that Hurdle is taking the blame for the struggles of the 2008 season. 

Many factors played into the '08 failure. It was evident that the team was pressing early on, possibly in an attempt to prove—maybe to themselves—that the '07 run was not a fluke. It seemed that when a runner got into scoring position, the batter, no matter who it was, froze up like a freshman boy before meeting his prom date's dad.

Another overlooked factor was the second base issue.  Kaz Matsui was a catalyst down the stretch in '07, as he took over the leadoff spot. He was offered a three-year deal in the '07 offseason by Houston. That money was more than the Rockies were willing to offer, and three years was definitely out of the question.

Therefore, the Rockies believed that they could head into the season with slick-fielding, light-bat Jayson Nix, who had just won the M.V.P for the World Cup of Baseball. After 46 at bats, it was beyond clear that the Nix experiment was a total failure.

After April, the Rox were so far out of the race with their heads spinning that it may have been too late.

Other critics of Hurdle question how he even made it to the '07 season in the first place. They point to his overall record, saying that he has had only one winning season and that he averages about 74 wins per year.

These critics point to his below .500 career record (516-597) to show that he should be dismissed. They point to the fact that he has only finished better than third in the N.L. West once and that he does not discipline the team well enough—allowing the clubhouse to be too loose.

This argument seems to hold water, especially to outsiders who were not paying attention until the Rockies entered the race in earnest in late '07. It seems to be short sighted to look only at Hurdle's overall record. In the 2002 season, Hurdle took a team that was already 10 games under .500 after 22 games and finished only 14 games under .500.

The critics forget that the failed free agent signings of Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle happened early in Hurdle's tenure revamped the Rockies line of thought in terms of how to build a winning team. They decided to go from a free-spending, big market-type team, to a build-from-within small-market squad.

This meant that the franchise started shipping off of their bigger contracts and working through the scouting department to develop young players in the farm system. This model proved to work in 2007, but the growing pains existed in the years previous to that.

Hurdle managed his way to 72+ wins in years where players like Chris Stynes and Jose Hernandez manned the left side of the infield. Danny Ardoin was the everyday catcher at a time, and the thump in the lineup came from strikeout-prone Jeromy Burnitz.

After these players came and left the franchise, the team still had two years of "Todd and the Toddlers," in which the young talent had made its way to the big leagues, but still had maturing to do.

The plan finally came together in '07. 

This offseason, the Rockies shipped off the first product of the farm, Matt Holliday. Holliday had done nothing but establish himself as possibly the best hitter in franchise history. 

Holliday has been replaced with adequate talent to compete, but still there has to be some room for the pieces to fall into place. 

For Hurdle, that time does not exist. If the Rockies do not finish April within a stone's throw of .500, it is almost a sure thing that Hurdle will be joining the millions of Americans in the unemployment line. 

Maybe it is the manager's job to take the blame for failure, but in a system that depends on young talent to consistently produce year after year, it seems unfair that Hurdle would receive the boot one full season removed from taking a young team all the way to a National League pennant.