In new role within Rockies' revamped front office, Monfort knows much work remains

GREELEY, Colo. – New Rockies president Walker Monfort has seen this fan response his entire life.

Rockies Fest on Jan. 24 drew some 5,000 fans who came into Coors Field on a windy, sub-20-degree day. Then on Saturday, a strong crowd showed up in Greeley, Colo., a little more than an hour north of Denver, for the Friends of Baseball Breakfast of Champions – an annual hot stove event where Gary Sheffield served as special guest speaker and sports memorabilia was auctioned to raise money for youth and college-level baseball programs.

What a response, considering the 2025 Rockies are coming off a 43-119 season, their seventh in a row below .500.

Yes, there has been massive change. The front office has been remade. Warren Schaeffer is going into his first full year as manager after serving on an interim basis last year. And several player additions have been well-received by fans.

But Monfort knows there is still much work to be done.

“We’ve established some support, which we appreciate very, very much,” Monfort told MLB.com. “I know there is still skepticism. That’s what we’re going to have to combat over the course of time. But I’m really thrilled with where we are from a leadership perspective.”

Monfort, son of club owner, chairman and CEO Dick Monfort, moved into the role of team president at the start of the year, replacing the retiring Greg Feasel. He knows better than to promise to turn the Rockies into a winner instantly.

“We’re on a mission to make this team much better, produce better outcomes than we’ve experienced over the last few years,” Monfort said. “It’s a wait-and-see approach. We’ve done some things intentionally. We’ve got our leaders in place. We’ve made a lot of hires. We’ve got very smart people focusing on this operation.”

The biggest impact Monfort has made so far is adding personnel to the decision-making circle. Gone are former general manager Bill Schmidt and former assistant GM Zack Rosenthal. The Rockies in turn added president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta, general manager Josh Byrnes, assistant GMs Tommy Tanous, Ian Levin and Chad MacDonald, and director of pitching Matt Daniels – all while keeping most of the assistants from the previous front office. The coaching staff underwent massive change, but it’s important to note that it also increased by two.

Will more minds and voices lead to better results?

In fairness, many who have worked for the club in recent years – some still around, others not – have called for a front-office beef-up. Monfort used the early months in his role to study more successful small- to mid-market teams. Those teams’ front offices weren’t as thinly stretched as the Rockies’.

“We knew we were more lean than other organizations, specifically in our baseball operations,” Monfort said. “We were able to bring on experience from other organizations. These people know how a best-practice organization should be composed, and it’s been evolving since day one. We’re getting close to really being in a good place.”

Eventually, it’ll be the on-field performance that will be the focal point. Pitchers will have to perform in a high-altitude atmosphere, and hitters will have to deal with the difference in how pitches and batted balls travel – as well as how they feel physically – while bouncing from home to road.

And everyone will need to do what the Rockies have never done before – sustain winning. The Rockies have had three straight winning seasons just once, from 1995-97.

Yet the fans have shown they want to be there when things turn around. Since 2008, on the heels of the franchise’s only World Series trip, the only times the Rockies’ per-game attendance average has dipped below 30,000 were during the COVID-affected 2020 and 2021 seasons.

“Fans appreciate that we’re changing things up and trying to take this organization in a new direction,” Monfort said. “At heart, I’m a Rockies fan. That’s what made me want to be a Rockies employee. Ultimately, we all want the same things – I want to win a World Series. I want to be a perennially successful organization, and that’s what we’re chasing.”