DENVER — Hope springs eternal for Walker Monfort, the son of Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort and the team’s newly minted executive vice president, as it introduced its new president of baseball operations Thursday at Coors Field.
Monfort sat down 1-on-1 with Denver7 Sports’ Lionel Bienvenu, promising autonomy for Paul DePodesta at the helm of baseball operations and pledging to get the Rockies — a sub-.500 club seven years running and fresh off three straight 100-loss seasons — back on track.
“Every decision that we're making and every decision we will make moving forward is based on what we need to do to win more baseball games,” he said. “Where we want to get this place is that we're a consistent winner. People come to this ballpark and expect that they're going to see great Rockies baseball, and it's going to take work, but we're trying to put all of our ducks in a row to get there as soon as possible.”
Colorado Rockies
Rockies intro DePodesta, Dick Monfort signals he’ll step back from baseball ops
DePodesta, whose shrewdness was made famous in the 2011 film Moneyball, was formally introduced Thursday and met with questions about whether he’ll be granted the freedom to make decisions.
Monfort addressed critics of ownership for withholding that freedom from previous baseball ops executives.
“Autonomy is something that people have criticized us about — that there's not enough autonomy for the person in this position,” he said. “Whether or not that has been a concern in the past, that's not our plan with Paul. Our plan with Paul is to really take what knowledge he has, let him utilize that here and really build a team and a plan that can take us to the next level.”
Lionel asked Monfort about his motivation in his elevated role, the calls for his family to sell the team and how his father, Dick, runs the club. Watch the full 1-on-1 interview in the video player below.
