GREELEY — With the economy in tatters, his team coming off its most disappointing season in history and his manager entering the final year of his contract, Rockies owner Charlie Monfort says there’s no time to lose this spring.
“With people having all sorts of concerns with their pocketbooks, you have to give them a real good reason to come out to the ballpark,” Monfort said Saturday morning before the “Breakfast of Champions,” an annual event that raises funds for Greeley-area youth baseball programs.
“I think a fast start is more critical to all teams this year than maybe in the past, because of the economy,” Monfort added. “But certainly it is for us, because of the way we have started the last four or five years. We need to break that habit and come out fired up.”
The Rockies have been notoriously slow starters. After winning the National League pennant in 2007, last year’s Rockies stalled at the starting line. By the end of May, they were 16 games under .500 and 11 games out of first place in the National League West. Only once in the past six seasons have the Rockies headed into June with a winning record — 27-26 in 2006.
Two weeks from today in Tucson, Rockies pitchers and catchers are scheduled to hold their first workout under the watch of manager Clint Hurdle. Hurdle has one year left on his contract and his entire coaching staff, save for pitching coach Bob Apodaca and first-base coach Glenallen Hill, will be new.
When asked about speculation that Hurdle is on the hot seat, Monfort said: “I guess anytime you are in the final year of your contract, people are going to say you’re on the hot seat. But we have spent a lot of time with Clint in the offseason. We feel totally comfortable that he can do what needs to be done with this team. He knows this team better than anybody. We think he will get the most out of it and we’ll be successful this year because of it.”
Despite last year’s 74-88 record, the Rockies averaged 33,128 fans per game at Coors Field, their best showing at the gate since 2002. Much of that boost can be traced to the club’s magical late-season run in 2007. Monfort disagrees with the notion that the 2007 season was an aberration, and he doesn’t buy the idea that the Rockies have squandered all the goodwill created by “Rocktober.”
“You know, it’s always, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ But I think people know that this is a very similar team to the one we had in ’07,” he said. “Was ’07 a fluke? No, I look at last year as a fluke, with some bad injuries at the wrong times. We never got going like we had in the past, and fundamentally and defensively we broke down a little bit. We are going to concentrate on that in the spring. So I still think that people know that we have it in us to compete and win that division and go from there.”
Patrick Saunders: 303-954-1428 or psaunders@denverpost.com
