An update on the Colorado Rockies rebuild

Generally, Rockies Pitch appears on Friday, but two pieces of news dropped yesterday that seem significant, and I wonder if we might know who the new president of baseball operations/general manager is very soon. So with that in mind, I wanted to bring together what we know as of Thursday morning.

(Find last week’s PBO/GM search update here.)

Darryl Scott is out

MLB.com’s Thomas Harding reported on Wednesday night that the Rockies were parting ways with their long-time pitching coach.

Given how bad the Rockies’ pitching has been, especially in 2025, it’s a move that makes sense and, frankly, is overdue.

As Evan Lang explains:

In the four seasons Scott has been pitching coach, the Rockies have regularly had one of the worst team ERAs in baseball. During that time, the pitching staff has the third-worst adjusted ERA and ranked dead last in strikeout rate and team in each of those four seasons. In each of the Rockies’ three consecutive 100 or more loss seasons the pitching staff had an ERA of 5.40 or higher.

So far, we know of two front-office resignations: general manager Bill Schmidt and assistant general manager Zack Rosenthal. Whether Scott has been fired or resigned is unclear, but the result is the same: It’s another sign that the Rockies are serious about their rebuild.

We probably won’t know the fate of interim manager Warren Schaeffer until the new PBO/GM is announced.

James Click and Scott Sharp are no longer under consideration

On Wednesday afternoon, Brittany Ghiroli and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic provided an update on the Rockies’ search that I’ll break into two parts.

First, we know that James Click and Scott Sharp will not be finalists for the position. (I wrote about both candidates here.) Why they were eliminated, who knows? But it’s another indicator that the Rockies, presumably under the leadership of Walker Monfort, are moving to the end game of their search.

Plus, these high-profile candidates serve as a reminder that this is a serious search, something that fans have been hesitant to take a face value given the Rockies’ insular history.

(Also worth noting, Patrick Saunders’ reported yesterday that the position title — PBO or GM — will not be determined until the candidate is selected. According to Saunders’ reporting, the Rockies do not intend to hire personnel to fill both positions.)

Matt Forman and Amiel Sawdaye, however, are both finalists for the position though Ghiroli and Rosenthal added that there may be additional finalists who remain unknown. (The Rockies can keep a secret when they want to, and in this case, they clearly do.)

Forman, I’ve written about before, so I won’t belabor that further except to say that I wonder if the Rockies’ familiarity with the Cleveland Guardians, one of their rare trading partners, might have something to do with Forman’s candidacy. However, the Rockies are also probably attracted to the Guardians’ style of baseball and their modest payroll. These strike me as factors that very much work in Forman’s favor.

Let’s talk about Amiel Sawdaye

This was the first mention of Sawdaye as a contender for the Rockies’ front office position.

Sawdaye‘s story is worth considering, and a good place to start is with this article published about him in a University of Maryland alumni magazine. (He graduated in 1999.)

A native of Baltimore, Sawdaye started as a neurobiology major hoping to perhaps work in sports medicine. However, he soon realized that information systems was a better fit and changed majors.

Check this out:

Sawdaye realized his Smith [business school] coursework could apply to a career in sports when he took a class taught by Lawrence Bodin, who is now professor emeritus. “He incorporated baseball into our coursework.” Bodin developed a model that enabled the San Diego Padres to rank players eligible for the 1997 baseball expansion draft. So, while his students  learned about big firms’ logistical issues, they also learned statistical and computational methods involved in player, hitting and pitch modeling in baseball. “It always stuck with me. I learned about things we can apply today on a daily basis,” says Sawdaye.

Let me just say, that sounds like a terrific class, but it’s fascinating to hear Sawdaye describe how his career path became clear to him.

After graduation, he started at General Electric in a corporate position, but soon decided to return to his love of sports by interning with the Boston Red Sox in 2002. He quickly advanced in their system and became assistant director of amateur scouting, a job he held from 2005-2009. In 2010, he was promoted to director of amateur scouting.

During his time with the Red Sox, Sawdaye also met current D-backs executive vice president and general manager Mike Hazen. In total, Sawdaye was with the Sox for 15 seasons. He also worked on three World Series-winning teams.

As for the D-backs, Sawdaye joined the organization in 2017 with Hazen and is a senior video president and assistant general manager in which he oversees scouting and provides input on baseball operations. And, you know, he helped the Snakes get to the World Series in 2023. Sawdaye operates as Hazen’s second-in-command and was the acting general manager when Hazen took a leave of absence in 2021.

Let me return to that alumni magazine:

Sawdaye’s ascension through the MLB front office ranks can be attributed to three major factors: honesty, accountability and cultivating relationships. He describes his leadership style as being centered around making himself approachable to everyone at all levels of an organization. That includes maintaining open, candid dialogue and sometimes holding tough and vulnerable conversations.

Granted, this is a puff piece, but a few things stand out here, and the first is that this is very much the language Brené Brown uses in her Dare to Lead leadership series: accountability, honesty, and a willingness to have vulnerable conversations — that last one is the real tell.

I’ll add to this two notes that are worth what you’ve paid for them.

First, Rockies interim bench coach Clint Hurdle is a serious Brené Brown fan — and I know this because I’ve interviewed him about it. If Hurdle has a voice in this search — and I’m confident that he does — an executive with a Brené Brown-esque approach to leadership is probably something he would approve of.

Second, I first became aware of Sawdaye when I was writing about the D-backs. At that time, Mike Hazen was still recovering from the grief of losing his wife, Nicole, to brain cancer. What has stayed with me in Hazen’s recounting of that time is the extent to which it illustrates how the D-backs staff became a support system for the Hazen family. Because Hazen had four sons to raise, he reduced his travel with the D-backs, and Sawdaye was one of front office staff entrusted with those duties when the team was on the road.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Sawdaye absolutely has the necessary baseball acumen — that’s apparent — but I also get the sense of some emotional IQ skills that strike me as important, especially for a young and rebuilding team. (From what I’ve come to understand, James Click’s leadership style is very different. Yes, the Monforts are making big changes, but I’m convinced they remain committed to having a positive work environment. Sawdaye’s history strikes me as consistent with that.)

Sawdaye will also have the added advantage of some understanding of baseball at elevation, mostly because he’s had years of studying Coors Field whenever the D-backs play the Rockies, and he is intimately familiar with the National League West.

This kind of familiarity is no small thing, and Sawdaye strikes me as a highly viable candidate.

Final thoughts

As Ghiroli and Rosenthal make clear, there may be additional candidates — and I, for one, have not yet ruled out Thad Levine (though he’s been absent from any of the reporting).

But as it stands, Matt Forman and Amiel Sawdaye strike me as good fits for a Rockies organization in desperate need of updating and change.

In case you’re interested, earlier this week, Sawdaye went on Rob Bradford’s Baseball Isn’t Boring podcast, which I’ve linked to below:

This gives you a sense of how Sawdaye interacts with media — and it’s so nice to hear from a front office executive who, you know, speaks in complete sentences and acts like he enjoys talking about his job.

(Also, Bradford asks Sawdaye to commit to getting a a “Baseball Isn’t Boring” tattoo should the D-back win the World Series next year, to which Sawdaye politely declines. “I can’t commit to that,” he says. Now we know why.)

I’m not sure if there will be another newsletter tomorrow — we’ll see how the news goes.

But in the meantime, I am all in for the Toronto Blue Jays, and I’m glad to see the Nuggets and Avalanche back in action. (Yes, the Avs new Nordiques uniforms rule.)

As always, thanks for reading —

Renee

Rockies Pitch is a newsletter that focuses on Colorado Rockies baseball.

Find me on Bluesky at @ReneeDechert.com or send an email to Renee@RockiesPitch.com.