Keeler: If Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer wants to right Dick Monfort’s ship, this ex-Colorado closer wants to help

Dave Veres elevator pitch was a sinker This past June the former Rockies closer happened to run into Colorado CEO Dick Monfort during a Roy Halladay Award function If anything opens up with the club Veres the first man to ever record a -save season for the Rox narrated Monfort I d love to put my name in the hat for a coaching job I ll pass it along Monfort assured him It s late November and Veres who s been a pitching coach at Cherry Creek High School for the last seven years or so hasn t heard anything from the club yet Still he informed me Monday night the offer still stands Especially with Paul DePodesta taking over baseball operations and with the interim tag now officially removed from manager Warren Schaeffer s job title Even if it s just an interview hear me out the -year-old coach continued I know they might say Oh you re just coaching high school I mean I pitched at Coors Field And pitched pretty darn well given the circumstances Over games as a Rockies reliever in and the righty posted a ERA and a FIP or Fielding-Independent pitching ERA Veres got the teaching bug in and hasn t looked back helping Creek win state crowns in and We didn t win state because we had the hardest throwers he announced We won state because we made the best pitchers Veres has been teaching his kids what got him through seasons in The Show and more than two decades as a pro Downward movement change of speed location location location In his salad days Veres was more of a split-finger and sinker type As a sensei he still is Especially in this context As a pitcher you ll never entirely beat Mother Nature or elevation But you can sure as heck mitigate the pair of them How With a fastball that dives With a change that deceives As Veres chatted with Monfort he recounted the Rockies boss that while his approach was about science it wasn t the rocket variety And more to the point it could be easily applied to Colorado pitchers at every level of the organization Well you can t make a pitcher what he s not Monfort declared If he s a four-seam guy he s a four-seam guy Funny thing though Plenty of four-seam guys have discovered another grip and made it work even later in their career Tigers ace Tarik Skubal was a four-seam guy who needed more drop on his change-up So he switched to a two-seam grip before the season Dude hasn t looked back I taught a lot of high-school guys how to throw a two-seamer how to make it sink Veres reported You watch the MLB playoffs and where did Kevin Gausman and Yoshinobu Yamamoto live Down in the zone You have to pitch up obviously every now and then I threw the four-seamer up top at - miles per hour and could get away with it I m not saying you can t throw up there But Coors is just a little bit different The Rockies need to think a little bit differently too Although gnashing your teeth over Schaeffer s return is possibly a waste of enamel and time The Rox were the seventh big-league club to lose at least games in a season since Of the other six four retained their managers and two replaced them The new guys averaged a -win improvement in the win column The holdovers averaged more victories the next season The takeaway When you re already on a sinking ship changing captains won t change the icebergs ahead Schaeffer s a good dude A young minor-league-ish roster keeps a young minor-league-ish kinda manager That s fine And let s be real The skipper s job was supposedly unfailingly going to be a can that got kicked down the road For one thing John McGraw couldn t coax the Rox to wins Or to relevance For another MLB is barreling headlong into a nuclear winter a year from now anyway as the current collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec More Schaeff means a couple things but they re things we already knew The Rockies are going to be pretty much next season what they were this one Particular short-term names will change The Titanic will swap particular deck chairs on -year deals but that will be as sexy as it gets Gains will have to come via the margins Or the minors Whatever vision DePodesta and his surrogates are allowed to start planting the real flowers won t be seen until after a new CBA is well underway Right or wrong the owners-vs -owners and owners-vs -players fights to come supposedly mean the Rox can spend a year to self-scout self-assess and self-heal Besides the only free-agent pitchers who are going to sign with this club without a loopy Kris Bryant-level of overpay are either at the end of the line or at the end of their wits Jeff Bridich was the wrong guy with the right idea When it comes to arms you ve got to grow your own You ve also got to grow them right and grow them in waves so that when a meager do break out if chosen do become All-Stars you don t have to become too emotionally or professionally attached So you better draft Veres laughed And you better develop And hey if DePodesta and the Monforts want a guy to ride the buses and prop up the minors Veres is down for that too He loves working with kids He loves teaching the encounter He loves pitching period Which is why it eats him up to watch his hometown Rockies stink so badly at it With analytics I m learning how to blend in specific of the other stuff it s necessary I get it Veres continued But it s funny how chosen things haven t changed It s attainable to teach old dogs new tricks Every year you hear about how somebody supposedly comes up with something new And how the split-finger seems to be the pitch of That s my specialty Columnist Sean Keeler can be reached at skeeler denverpost com