Rockies fire pitching coach Alon Leichman after one season, per source

The Rockie Horror Pitcher Show claimed its first offseason victim.

Pitching coach Alon Leichman is gone after one year, fired on Thursday, according to a source. An official announcement is expected on Friday.

Leichman arrived from the Florida Marlins, and embraced the club’s philosophy of reimagining the staff, of finding starters with varied arsenals, while he called pitches from the dugout . After a strong first month, the rotation spiraled following injuries to Chase Dollander and Jose Quintana that exposed the lack of depth. Aside from veteran Tomoyuki Sugano, the Rockies struggled to get length from anyone, and as the season progressed the problem became amplified by the failures early in games. The Rockies were outscored by more runs in the first two innings than they were the remaining seven innings combined. After the trade deadline on Aug. 3, the Rockies’ starters posted a roughly 7.00 ERA. Couple that with the failed pitch-calling experiment and it became enough for the Rockies to move on.

Paul DePodesta, president of baseball operations, suggested last week that the club would be open-minded to addressing the pitching issues. “We have to look at answers from everywhere. And we have to be creative in how we do it. It might look different,” DePodesta said. “Our process was to test and learn. We are going to try a lot of things. One of the things we wanted to try was pitch calling from the dugout, and I think we learned a lot. This is a tough environment to pitch in, and if you are going to do something different, you are going to give up runs. It is easy to blame what you are doing that is new. But you have to ask does that impact the credibility of those people and how does it affect the relationship with the players?”

The Rockies staff finished with a major-league worst 5.59 ERA. Along with hiring a pitching coach, the Rockies are considering adding a position to help with advance reports and produce quicker in-game adjustments.

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