Colorado Rockies: Assessing Jeff Bridich’s tenure

The departure of Colorado Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich – following so shortly after the trade of franchise star Nolan Arenado – represents an abrupt change of course for a franchise that until now has been a model of upper-management stability.

Since the Rockies came into existence in 1993, only three men have presided over the baseball side of the enterprise: Bob Gebhard (1993-99), Dan O’Dowd (2000-2014), and Bridich.

Assessing Jeff Bridich’s tenure with Colorado Rockies

How stable is that? The Miami Marlins, created alongside the Rockies, are on their sixth GM: Kim Ng. The Arizona Diamondbacks, created five years after the Rockies, are on their sixth. In fact, the average number of general managers employed by the 30 major league clubs since 1993 is about five and one-half. No team has gotten by with fewer than three, and only the Yankees, White, Sox, Royals, and Athletics have employed that few.

Bridich’s departure was presented as a ‘mutual agreement,’ and that may be true if one interprets the phrase as ‘both sides hated the other’s guts.’ Although nobody’s saying so for the record, it appears that Richard and Charles Monfort, the brothers who own the Rockies, as well as team president Gregory Feasel all agreed with Arenado that Bridich had failed to live up to his promise to remake the team into a contender.

For his part, Bridich may have felt that a lack of upper-level support after Arenado signed his multi-year deal and then complained about the team put him (Bridich) in an impossible situation.

Since Bridich succeeded O’Dowd following the end of the 2014 season, the Rockies have a 426-447 record and .488 winning percentage. They made two playoff appearances, losing a wild card game in 2017 and winning one in 2018 before being swept in the division round.

Even prior to and certainly since Bridich’s departure, the most consistent criticism of him has been that he consistently misread the free agent market. The data supporting that view is persuasive.

Bridich has signed or extended 52 players. But those 52 have produced a cumulative value of -12.90 Wins Above Average for Colorado in their first seasons, and -7.90 WAA in subsequent seasons.

And most of the gain the Rockies have seen in that area has involved re-upping their own: D.J. LeMahieu in 2016, Charlie Blackmon in 2018, Arenado in 2019, and Trevor Story in 2020.

The outsiders Bridich has signed produced -20.3 WAA for Colorado in their first seasons and -11.5 WAA in any subsequent seasons.

During the Bridich administration, the average first-season change in value due to his free agent signings/extensions has been -2.15 WAA. Among 192 general managers in baseball history who have held the position for five seasons or more, that ranks 185th in contribution to team success.

And things haven’t gotten better once the signings were allowed to mature. The average value of Bridich’s signings in the years following the first year is -1.58. That ranks 189th out of 192.

It’s easy to see why that kind of production might offend owners of a team that increased opening day player payroll by 55 percent between 2014 – the last season before Bridich took over — and 2019. That movement has been pared back; the Colorado Rockies’ 2021 opening day payroll was $105.6 million, well off its $145.2 million 2019 high.