Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer discusses offseason work, areas for improvement, and the White Sox

Two weeks ago, I spoke on the phone with Colorado Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer about the 2026 season.

Below are excerpts from that conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

On the last weeks of the season for Schaeffer and his staff

You continue on with how you prepare for a game, and you are trying to win every night. Just the day leading up to the game looks a little different because you’re having exit meetings.

So, for instance, we would meet with the hitting coaches (Brett Pill

and Jordan Pacheco) and Paul DePodesta and Josh Byrnes and go over what we want the offense to look like in the offseason, what the individual plans (are) for these guys.

And then Paul, Josh, and myself meet with the players individually, and then the hitting coaches meet with that player as well to make sure that they’re on the same page.

The same thing happens with the pitching.

So every day, I would say that whole last home stand, which was a couple weeks long, there were about five exit meetings a day with those guys. It’s more you’re preparing for something that is ultra important, getting them ready for the offseason, and at the same time, you can do you can do two things. You can prepare for tonight and prepare for those as well.

On preparing with a possible lockout in mind

I don’t think so because we just make sure that we communicate very, very well with these guys through the month of October. You give them a couple weeks off, and then you call them, and then through November (until) December 1, if there’s a lockout, that’s when the communication has to stop.

So we have to make sure we’re all on the same page before that, which we already are. But Pill and Pacheco in the month of November, I believe, are going to travel to see each one of these guys offensively and make sure we’re on the same page, and everything’s going correctly before the lockout kicks in, if it does.

On making communication adjustments

I think if you go through a season and you’re not trying to make adjustments positively for the next year, you’re really not doing your job. So, I do think that there are a list of things that I want to do better, and the way I communicate is definitely one of them.

I mean, I think specifically with the staff, there needs to be from my end just more communication, just different meetings set up on a daily basis, making sure that I’m touching base with the pitching more often as opposed to what I did this year — the coaches I’m talking about — so that we’re all on the same page more often. It’s not that we weren’t, but you can always get better on that.

I guess you can always improve the communication with the minor leagues, I think, because you get into a season, and you always want to do that. But then what’s right in front of you usually takes precedence in a daily operation. So I think improved communication with the minor leagues to make sure that we’re all on the same page, you can always get better at that.

So those are probably two big ones.

On working with the new front office

Oh man, it’s been awesome — those two guys (DePodesta and Byrnes) specifically.

I mean, it’s been a whole slew of new people in there, but specifically the two that I work with most often are Paul and Josh, and those guys have been great. I mean, it’s just an even-keel headspace that they’re in at all times. There’s no overreaction. There’s a real perspective that they bring in terms of where we want to go and what we have to go through to get there.

Paul DePodesta, Josh Byrnes, and Ian Levin look on at Rockies spring training.

The communication is great. Just the vision is very good. It’s just a pleasure to go to work with those guys every day. I can’t explain that enough, how much of a pleasure it is. It’s always about the people that you go to work with, and to have two very good human beings that you work with on a daily basis that communicate well, it’s a pleasure.

On things the 2026 Rockies did well that got overlooked

I’d say — what six weeks? — it just wasn’t good, and we didn’t finish the way we wanted to for a myriad of reasons, I think.

But if you step back and look at the season as a whole and see the progress that we made, I think offensively it was absolutely incredible. The turnaround was unbelievable from last year, just in terms of pretty much every offensive category, the the level of competition that we brought every night, the belief in each other that those offensive players brought every single night. Late-inning comebacks all the time, never giving in. That’s what they did better than anybody.

Every offensive statistic and category, it was improved — and improved in a dramatic way. The personnel was better. Just everything overall offensively, I thought was better.

And then, if you look at individual pitcher performances, pushing towards our future, I think you saw a lot of a lot of promise there and a lot of good things moving forward.

Jaden Hill was put in every difficult situation possible early on. That was his role, and he handled it really, really well. I think you can see how great he’s going to be moving forward.

Trade acquisitions like Mark Manfredi and Nick Frasso, part of a young core in that bullpen that are going to be really good. You saw Mason Adams be extremely good out of the starting rotation. You saw some steps forward with Gabe Hughes, with Tanner Gordon, even though it didn’t end well. Juan Mejia went through his struggles, but I think there’s argument that you would rather him go through his struggles right now. We believe in him a ton. Like next year when we’re in a playoff push, he can learn from him and get better now.

Brennan Bernadino had an unbelievable season as our left-hander in a bullpen in a lot of time, which is a very difficult situation, being the only left-hander in a bullpen and having to succeed down there like that. He was absolutely awesome, and he’s part of our future for sure.

I think we saw, obviously, there’s a ton of areas where we need to get better. There’s no doubt about it.

On some of the disappointments and focused areas for improvement

Winning is absolutely a byproduct of how you go about your business, and I do believe that our defense was not even close to where it needs to be going forward.

Infield, I would say in general, the defense was below the bar this year. Now, we have the personnel for it to be very, very good. It just wasn’t.

Obviously, we have a shortstop that has won a Gold Glove already. We have a third baseman that can win a Gold Glove. We have a first baseman that can win a Gold Glove. But I think just overall as a unit, I think it’s a no-brainer that we need to be better defensively.

We did get better in the base-running category this year, no doubt about it. Put more pressure on teams with guys like Jake McCarthy, guys like Cole Carrigg, and just the overall, I guess, atmosphere that they brought to our offense. But, overall, we can exploit another team better with our base running on a nightly basis.

Our pitching has to get better. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. The run differential shrank a ton this year with the offense getting much better, and the pitching was better. But, overall, we need to keep more runs off the board in order to win more ball games. All that stuff matters and is big.

There’s a couple things. We lost a ton of one- and two-run ball games. I don’t know the exact number, but it was a lot. That, for me, that’s where the experience comes in. I think guys learning from this year and going through that. I think something similar happened to the White Sox last year. They played a ton of one- and two-run ball games and lost (them). With an extra year under the belt and learning how to control the emotion, control the at-bat more, focus on the ability for a player to control the count on both sides of the ball takes some experience in the big leagues.

We’ve had a lot of young guys that are learning and finding their way, and it takes some time, and you have to have some patience with that. But I do believe that next year with the lowering of the heart rate in big moments on both sides of the ball, will prove very, very helpful for us.

It’s hard when at the end of the year it didn’t go well, but we were right there all year — one- and two-run ballgames. The year before, not even close.

On addressing defensive issues

Me being a defensive coach before, there’s a couple ways you need to go about this, and Andy Perez does a really good job. You need to attack individual performances, and then you also have the ability to look at it as a unit, as a unit that’s accountable to each other in terms of the infield guys, the personnel that makes it up, and belonging to a unit and how important that is to the success of a team.

But individually, I think each guy goes through something different in the year. I think Tovar’s defense was down — I think in large part because his offense was so down. He did a good job of not taking it out in the field, but it’s a really difficult thing to go through the offensive season he had and it to not affect his defense.

Kyle Karros goes through different things, individually. He can be a very, very good defender. He is a very, very good defender, but there are certain things that he needs to improve upon, no doubt about it, and he knows it.

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Adael Amador, he needs to improve his range. He needs to improve side-to-side movement, which is definitely a physical (issue). Really, the only time you can improve it exponentially is in the offseason. It’s very difficult to improve it during the season when you’re playing every day.

But Kyle Karros, it’s not physical. Kyle has all the physical ability to move side to side. He’s got arm strength. He’s got ability to throw from all different angles. It’s just a matter of being consistent throughout the year, which comes with experience.

So everybody has something different. Like Kyle’s not going to go into this offseason saying, “I need to field a ground ball differently.” That’s not how you go about that. It’s a guy you trust immensely. You trust this guy. When you work with him every day, you trust him that his improvements are going to happen based on how he goes about his business on a daily basis with experience moving forward.

TJ Rumfield could use side to side. He knows this. Even though he’s a plus defender, he can improve side to side and getting more range.

I think if you were to pick one thing as a unit, other than making the routine play, I think it’s the improvement of range based on where we play in altitude. You don’t want runners getting on base, and the range is the biggest area of improvement overall as a unit, I would say.

On his role during the offseason

That’s a hard one to answer because last year, I was going through interview processes and and hiring a bunch of people, and doing that whole thing, and we didn’t have much time to get it done, so it was very intensive.

This year, we’re going to attack issues that we think held us back this year that we can improve directly this year.

So, obviously, you take I think at least a couple weeks, maybe a week or 10 days off here, and I’m going to go camping with my son this weekend. But we’re going to have Zoom calls. Who knows what’s going to happen with the lockout?

But my goal is to have the staff clicking on all cylinders, ready to roll all winter long, and try to just put more work and time into the off-season than any other club because we need it — whatever that is: exercises, in-game exercises that we can simulate, conversations with players. A lot of discussion on philosophy and how to move forward with what we got. Just basically brainstorming and ideas and getting together and trying to have everything ready, so when we get ready to go in spring, we’re all clicking on the same wavelength because you can always get better at that.

And just having plans in place that we all believe in that is going to help us moving forward.

But what you don’t want to do is go into the offseason and just say, “Hey, this is time off” because we can’t afford that. We have to spend this time wisely, and we’ve got a lot to do to push this thing forward.

On his role prior to the lockout

It’s very limited. Just calls asking my opinions on players, probably. That’s Josh and Paul’s job. But if I have anything on players, if I’ve heard anything about players that they’re talking about via connections in the game, all that sort of thing, but just offering up opinions.

My job is more involved with my staff through November, even through December, January. It’s just pushing the staff forward.

On taking hope from the Chicago White Sox

I have hope no matter what because I’m with these guys every day.

But it’s just proof that it can happen. You can go from a 100-loss season to a winning season and a playoff season the very next year. The Arizona Diamondbacks did it not long ago, and the White Sox did it this year. There’s a lot that goes into that. You don’t just snap your fingers. That’s why we have to get to work immediately to get this thing still moving it forward.

I think it was a huge step forward this year, but we need to push it forward again next year.

But you look at the White Sox and what they’ve done and how they acquired their players and the style of play that they play, and their pitching has gotten so much better.

It’s a good formula for sure, and those guys should be proud of themselves.

Final thoughts

I was struck by Schaeffer confirming — like other staff we’ve talked with — the chaos the Rockies organization waded through during the last offseason as they hired new staff. For myself, I am interested in seeing the steps they take to improve this season. (And I’m already irritated by a probable lockout that will delay the progress.)

In addition, I appreciated Schaeffer’s description of how they are preparing players both for their offseason work and a lockout. (That Pill and Pacheco are planning to visit players seems very positive.) And I thought his comments on improving the defense were interesting as well.

I know you all will have thoughts on this, and I look forward to reading them in the comments.