After a successful first season under the guiding hand of Bud Black, the Colorado Rockies are returning an intact coaching staff in 2018. While Black and his staff may have made decisions that not everyone agreed with, the end result of a playoff berth in his first year exceeded expectations.
It’s tough to gauge the success of a manger in baseball. Among sabermetricians, the thought is that even the best or worst managers only win or lose their teams a handful of games over an entire season. Unlike players, there’s not an easy WAR formula for managers, and even the more obvious decisions like lineup only benefit a team around one win a year if perfectly optimized.