Let’s cut through the “mutual decision” nonsense. Jeff Bridich is now the former GM of the Rockies because he was fired. My imagination of most mutual decision making conversations go as follows:
“You’re gone, Jeff…but it’ll look better if you quit.”
“I like it here, why would I quit?”
“You can call it a mutual decision and take this here check as a parting gift, or we can fire you, and then find a reason to say it’s for cause, and you get squat from us.”
“I agree to be paid to leave rather than not paid and have to leave anyway.”
“Attaboy.”
The move would have been surprising two years ago. The Rockies made the playoffs in 2017 and 2018. Then they signed Nolan Arenado to a $260M deal. Everyone was happy…then the team cratered in 2019 and things got worse last year. Arenado was disgruntled, and then got traded for not much with the Rockies still paying a significant part of his salary to play for the Cardinals. Trevor Story is set to be a free agent after the season and will likely command more than the Rockies want to pay. Expect him to be gone by the trade deadline. Charlie Blackmon can opt out after next season, and it’s hard to imagine him not doing so without either significant improvements to the team or his poor start this season suddenly becomes a trend. If he starts playing well, he becomes an only slightly less obvious trade candidate than Story. The Rockies have very quickly become a very bad team, and it’s no surprise the team’s GM took the fall for it.
Fan Interference 
Hard to see any GM, let alone a MO-ron like Bridich, rebuild the entire organization with Montfort owning the team. And a top to bottom rebuild is what it will take.
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The latest team to jump on the rebuild wagon. No one wants to be a perennial contender anymore. The new model is rebuild, sell off parts, and rebuild. Its the Bain Capital approach to baseball management.
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They don’t have much choice now, but it’s crazy how badly they’ve handled things after being on the verge of overtaking the Dodgers after the 2018 season.
The tear down/rebuild model often does follow periods of gross incompetence, so the Rox do fit that model.
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I was talking to a Phillies Phan at work who thinks DD is going to make them a winner. I said prepare yourself now for him to gut your farm system. He said, well, we don’t have much to trade away. Anyway, rebuilds often follow desperate measures for sure.
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