With mere hours left before the season officially starts, it might make sense to look back and read about all the comings and goings that happened this Colorado Rockies offseason.

Except, well, there, really wasn’t that many… at least on paper or whatever biodegradable writing stock chronicles the organizational 40-man roster.

That has been one over par for the course in Rockies Nation Fandomness. Except for the occasional player-bashing and with an owner (Dick Monfort) that has a habit of talking to the fans more than the front office does, it can be a little difficult at times to read between the lines to figure out what the Rockies think. Even if the major prediction systems don’t think that the Rockies are contenders, there’s been little that the Rockies have said or done in the past to show that they are even aware of the predictions. So when Rockies fans do everything from begging to boycotting for the Rockies to do something, anything over recent years to turn around what they perceive as a losing team, what most people heard was a whimper.

That ho-hum shoulder shrug came on October 8th when General Managers (plural) Dan O’Dowd and Geivett resigned, followed by a real awkward press conference which “re-introduced” former Rockies Senior Director of Player Development, Jeff Bridich, as the new Rockies General Manager. Rockies fans had been hoping for a new, different, non-Rockies voice if not as president, then at least from their general manager. Even though Bridich didn’t qualify as a non-Rockies voice and as much as I was a bit ambivalent about the idea of “We’ll win once ‘I believe’ becomes ‘we believe'”, I and others were nonetheless relieved in a 9-to-5, the chains come off kinda way that at least some change took place.

So, there was some tempered optimism that, maybe, just maybe, the Rockies would change how they operated on the field and hoped that the new-old regime off the field would sing a different tune, if they would sing at all. Bridich’s offseason checklist to “improve the rotation”… which someone really needs to make a #1 Pop Rock Hit of so that each General Manager can cover it.

The first real move, since it might be a bit ambitious to call it a “major move”, was giving Michael Cuddyer a qualifying offer. Bridich was promptly criticized for the idea, then lauded when the New York Mets signed Cuddyer to a two-year deal thereby netting the Rockies a draft pick. In hindsight, it looked like there was a high chance of Cuddyer would’ve accepted the offer and considering the resulting logjam it would’ve created on the roster, it’s still a wee bit hard to tell if Bridich successfully read the market, just got a little lucky, or truly wanted him back. Either way, it fell into my “too close to call” bucket on whether Bridich was doing a good job or not.

There were a few even more minor moves, such as designating Juan Nicasio for assignment (more on that later) and acquiring Jairo Diaz for Josh Rutledge. The Rule 5 Draft was about as unremarkable as they sometimes are though the Rockies lost Taylor Featherson and Dan Winkler, they picked up Austin House.

Eventually the Rockies “made news” by signing Nick Hundley to sort-of sort out their catching situation and pitcher Kyle Kendrick to “improve their rotation”. Checklist checked!(?) The biggest thing left going into spring training, besides the constant questions about Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez‘s health, were figuring out if/when Eddie Butler and Jonathan Gray would be promoted.

So yeah, on paper, it didn’t look all that busy.

Then, outside the lines, there’s that communication thing.

Owner Dick Monfort still thinks the Rockies are contenders for 2015, as he thought so before 2014, and the offseason before that. Throughout those years, as the Rockies kept losing, Dan O’Dowd remained and many fans wondered if there was any organizational accountability for one of the longest-tenured yet losing general managers in recent history.

But this offseason, perhaps some of the elements have changed. Beyond the resignations of Dan O’Dowd and Bill Geivett, the Rockies have also revamped their communications department in November and brought in some new ideas as well as new faces, some of whom I got the opportunity to meet throughout the offseason.

My first opportunity happened during the 2015 Rockies Caravan when it stopped in Colorado Springs. Seems I wasn’t the only fan eager to see the team and meet Jeff Bridich, not to mention manager Walt Weiss and players Carlos Gonzalez, Michael McKenry and Ben Paulsen.

Oh, yeah, Dinger was there too.

I probably should’ve taken a few more pictures, but sometimes, it’s best to just drop a few phrases and let your mind wander at how surreal it is to watch Walt Weiss bring in a tray full of Starbucks coffee like he was a barista… or appraising the merits of a Carlos Gonzalez LEGO-esque figuring with Carlos Gonzalez himself.

While I never got the chance to meet Dan O’Dowd and only briefly spoke with Bill Geivett at the SABR Analytics Conference in 2014, the Rockies were kind enough to arrange an introduction to Jeff Bridich. Boy, there are a lot of nice guys involved in Denver baseball and kudos to him for patiently putting up with my semi-stammering. I even got the chance to toss out a joke that, regardless of what was really happening, it sure did seem like a lot of the Tulowitzki-to-the-Mets rumors were coming from New York. He didn’t seem to mind that joke. Yet it was a good indication on how communication, not just with the media but with blogs in general, have been changing.

I also got to meet one of the guys who runs the Rockies Twitter account, which seemed pretty important to me because Rockies Zingers is, after all, online and so is @Rockies. It’s nice to put a name and a face to a digital persona, not to mention get some ideas of the kinds of things they are looking for and vice versa. Turns out, yep, they do read our stuff and enjoyed the most recent article we had (at that time in December) about Customer Service at Coors Field. Yet again properly inspired, I scored some Rockies swag including the previously mentioned CarGoLEGO figurine at a very reasonable price.

Wait, did I just digress while talking about communication? Kids are good at that. Meanwhile, as the Rockies were opening themselves a bit more to the public here in Colorado, they were also sending their Caravan around to various cities including all the minor league teams. The Rockies also not just met, but visited with Zingers writer J.J. Buck down in Albuquerque when the caravan came to greet the Albuquerque Isotopes.

Yep, Dinger was there too, right in front of J.J.

After the Caravan concluded, Zingers Writer Jake Shapiro and I went to Rockies FanFest and were able to attend the media scrum beforehand. This was a new occurrence since FanFest, in years past, was for the fans and nothing was previously arranged for the media. So, we were given some time as Jorge De La Rosa, Troy Tulowitzki, Carlos Gonzalez, Justin Morneau and Jeff Bridich each cycled before the group and answered some questions.

One thing that Bridich said which stuck out to me was that, “At some point, there’s a difference between guys who try hard and give it their best and those who actually execute.” This was my first inkling that perhaps, players would be held more accountable without the excuses of injury or altitude that had echoed in the past.

Part of that idea of accountability was also brought up when Bridich was asked about how his life has changed as a general manager. “I’m busy. I thought I was busy as a farm director. There’s a whole different level of people I am accountable for and accountable to. It’s probably been the quickest four months of my life and it’s been wonderful. I had never fully known what it meant to “literally not have enough hours in the day to get done what I need to get done” until now. A lot of it has been internal, strengthening relationships that have existed already with others in the front office so that we can work together.”

It was a pretty neat experience and Coors Field has a different kind of atmosphere when FanFest is going instead of the usual baseball bustle. For an idea of what it was like, please check out Jake Shapiro’s recap.

Then, in early February and I was surprised to get an invite to the Rockies first “Truck Day”. As you can guess, that’s the day they load up a truck at Coors Field with 40,000 pounds of baseball gear, supplies and personal items to get shipped off to Spring Training. Naturally, they have a “Truck Day” every year but this was the first year it was open to the media.

Among the manifest was:

· 800 dozen baseballs

· 200 bats (60 individual player specific orders)

· 150 batting helmets

· 200 Batting Practice tops

· 600 pairs of pants

· 350 shirts

· 400 baseball caps (Spring Training, road, St. Patrick’s Day)

· 560 pairs of socks

· 120 equipment/player bags

· 11 cases of bubble gum

· 80 cases of sunflower seeds

· 6 pallets of Powerade

Ooh yeah, those are the kinds of things that bring out the curiosity and silliness in Rockies Zingers!

Exactly how many sunflower seeds are in a case? Turns out there’s not even a good approximation for how many are in a single bag.

Fellow Zingers writer Ryan Hammon wondered why there were more pants than socks since he, like myself and most other mere mortals, tend to have more socks than pants. Without missing a beat, one of the Rockies Public Relations guys said “That’s because socks are generic in size but many players require special sizes for their pants and those also tend to tear the most.”

How much of the stuff comes back after spring training? The answer, courtesy of Rockies Visiting Clubhouse Manager (yep, that’s his official title), Mike Pontarelli, “We usually pack each guy two bags, one is a travel bag for the season and the other is “extra stuff” that they’ve accumulated in spring training that the player himself will pack and we’ll ship back to Denver to store it for them. The loads going down to Denver are comparable to the load coming back, but it might be different interchangeable stuff.” So, 40,000 pounds go to Arizona and about the same amount comes back.

Then you get the fun disclaimer “Also travelling on the team truck will be player and staff personal items such as cribs, bicycles, family bins, scooters, golf clubs and clothes.”

As Pontarelli told us, “We try to make it as much like home for everybody and be as accommodating as possible for our staff members and players. Guys will call and say, ‘Can I bring my big-screen TV down? It’s my special big-screen TV. I like watching the MLB Network,’ or whatever it is.”

While we walked through the underbelly of the stadium to follow the pallets towards the loading dock, I happened to run into Jeff Bridich. He stopped, said hello, and wanted to make sure all was well which it was. As I said, nice guy, and I appreciated that he wasn’t under any obligation to stop and chat.

Besides seeing the behind the scenes, it was also great to see Thomas Harding there. Make sure to read his recap of Truck Day.

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And off they go!

Not long after, I saw the Rockies front office and public relations people at the 2015 SABR Analytics Conference Unlike 2014 when a Rockies version of WAR was just hinted at, more detail into the organizational philosophy was discussed during both Jeff Bridich’s General Manager’s panel and Assistant General Manager Zack Rosenthal’s Baseball Operations Panel. And when I went to Spring Training later on that week, the Rockies were warm and accommodating.

Got that fuzzy feeling yet? That the Rockies seem to be communicating more? Well, since Spring Training has ended, that door has swung both ways.

Jeff Bridich was in the booth on March 21st, 2015 during a Spring Training Root Sports Broadcast. Jhoulys Chacin was on the mound, too many runners were still on base and Bridich’s evaluation of Chacin’s performance seemed, well, “measured”, to put it politely. The next day, Chacin was released. Bridich rationalized the move by saying that others on the roster had outpitched him. In some ways, this echoed the “minor” move earlier this offseason where Juan Nicasio was allowed to leave. Soon enough, it was followed by the demotion of the still talented yet still wild Rex Brothers to the minor leagues.

Juan Nicasio was someone I was high on, then gave up on. Weiss might have pulled the plug on his 6/15/14 start after just 66 pitches at a time when Rockies injuries ran rampant through the starting rotation, but then he was tried in the bullpen. It’s not a bad idea to try to get some value out of someone, but even Nicasio’s peripheral stats, whether you look at effectiveness in pitches 1-15 or effectiveness versus the first time a batter sees him didn’t suggest he’d do all that better as a reliever. He did improve a bit beyond what you would normally expect from a starter-turned-reliever except half the runs he gave up were due to home runs. Meanwhile, whether Nicasio would be a starter or a reliever lingered around most of the season. By releasing him in November of 2014, he wasn’t given more time to linger with the Rockies. After Nicasio’s poor spring in his new Dodger Blues, perhaps Bridich might have been right as the Dodgers are paying for taking the chance with more than just money, but with lost opportunities for their other pitchers.

Chacin is, in some ways, a similar animal in terms of lingering on hope. After six years in Denver, the Rockies got two and a half full seasons out of him. Unlike Nicasio though, Chacin’s lingering was due to his potential talent being offset by some sort of injury. First reported as far back as 2012 though he might have been hiding his health issues for longer, there was some hope that this might be his year. There was hope last year would be his year too, but between injuries and effectiveness wrapped in a “Chacin is about to return” mantra which was repeated every few weeks, it never really materialized. It’s a shame to let someone who did have success, however brief it was, depart. Yet just as the uncertainty affected what the Rockies could do with their pitching rotation in 2014, the Rockies apparently didn’t want that question mark in 2015.

Brothers is somewhat similar to both Chacin and Nicasio in terms of potential. He went from the closer of the future to the fan flinch of the seventh inning. Perhaps he was our version of former Cubs closer Carlos Marmol who was effectively wild enough to rack up strikeouts by the bushel until professional hitters learned that the best way to not strike out was to avoid swinging in the first place. Nonetheless, with lights out springs from fellow lefties Boone Logan and Christian Friedrich, the Rockies felt he was outperformed.

And that might just be one of the differences between the “new-old” front office and the “old-old” front office. Yeah, Jeff Bridich did not make any major transactions this offseason and the Rockies owner still thinks they are contenders. And hey, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have an optimistic owner. Yet, there is a sense of accountability that has come out from spring training so far, especially with the recent releases and demotions. To echo Bridich’s comments from FanFest, the Rockies have shown this spring training that while trying hard does matter, at some point the players have to execute. Furthermore, there’s been more transparency coming from the Rockies across multiple levels. There are explanations why Chacin was released, statements at the SABR Analytics panel that “attitude is more important than altitude” and that “talent plays anywhere”. Even for the more non-baseball, “fun stuff” such as Rockies Caravan events and Truck Days, the Rockies are trying to be reach out to their fan base, through the media, and show more about what goes on with the Colorado Rockies and who the personalities are beyond what’s on the diamond.

Perhaps on paper, not much happened this offseason. But outside the lines, the Rockies appear to be showing a bit more of what’s going on and that they know they can’t merely just think they are contenders or try to be contenders, but that they must execute. If not, anyone can be accountable.