Warren Schaeffer is, by any standard, an energetic and positive person. He also tends to keep busy, though that has been especially true since becoming the Colorado Rockies permanent manager as he participated in hiring new staff, communicated with players and a new front office, and began planning spring training.
So, how was his offseason?
“It’s been a lot of work,” he says — but with enthusiasm, not exhaustion.
On the eve of Rockies Fest, Schaeffer answered a few questions about building a staff, communication, and changes coming to Scottsdale.
After being named the Rockies permanent manager, there was the matter of him finding his own staff.
“[It’s been] a lot of interviews,” Schaeffer said, “a whole lot of interviews to get it right — who we need to hire — because we had a lot of people to hire: new pitching coach, new assistant pitching coach, new bullpen coach, new first base coach, new hitting coach. I mean a lot.”
In addition, Schaeffer is currently focused on hiring the minor league coaching staff.
“It’s been a huge collaborative effort,” he said, “all of these hirings between the minor leagues and the major leagues, looking for that unity going up and down the chain.”
Something that can get lost in this Rockies rebuild is that team-building is happening throughout the organization. New front office and coaching stuff are meeting each other and learning to work together just as the players will next month. Prior to Rockies Fest, president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta convened a “summit” where all parts of the organization came together and began sorting out their roles and planning for the future.
“It’s been great getting to know Paul [DePodesta] and what he’s about,” Schaeffer said. “It’s been great getting to know Josh Byrnes and what he’s about and the new assistantGMs, and it’s an exciting time right now.”
It’s not just the manager; the players are enthusiastic about the changes, too.
“They’re all, almost pretty much to a man, extremely excited,” Schaeffer said.
“Players in general are always excited about the next season, and I would say specifically ours because they want to right the wrong that has been going on.”
”[R]ight the wrong that has been going on” would be those consecutive 100-loss seasons with the most recent being historically bad.
He added, “It just seems like the momentum that we’ve got going on, the players are extremely excited about that.”
Schaeffer’s calling card has always been his emphasis on communication, and that hasn’t changed heading into 2026. If anything, it’s even more important.
“I have strong relationships with the players already, and I continue to cultivate those with the new ones coming in and trying to create leaders in that area,” Schaeffer said. “And at the same time, we’re all in this together, in terms of Paul and Josh and Tommy Tanous and Ian Levin, all the new guys, and Walker [Monfort].”
Then he added, “But I love doing that because of the relationships you can build.”
Schaeffer’s plans to revamp spring training are also taking shape, and they start with “higher expectations.”
As Schaeffer puts it, “It’s one thing to talk about them, and it’s another thing to put them into action.”
The changes to spring training will be notable.
“Spring training will look completely different scheduling-wise, where we spend our time, what we spend our time on,” he said.
He was light on specifics since he’s not yet shared the details with the players, but he did says this: “It’ll look clearly different to the players, which is what matters, with a huge focus on winning.”
Too, there will be an emphasis on sustainability.
“We want to build a sustainable winner here for the city of Denver,” he said. “We believe that that could absolutely happen, and this is the first step.”
For Schaeffer, 2025 was a year of learning, and he has two primary lessons he’s bringing into 2026.
“Number one, preparation for the win that night,” Schaeffer said, “how to prepare better, and bringing in Jeff Pickler as a bench coach, who is exceptional at that part of the game, is going to be an enormous help for me and everybody else in terms of preparation.”
Then there’s the second lesson.
“The second thing that I learned, I think big time last year, is that at the big-league level, development never stops. It can never stop,” he said.
“Through the interview process this winter and being with these [new coaches] the past four or five days and getting to talk to them over the phone, the new coaches I’m talking about, it’s clear that they’re going to get that a relentless obsession with getting the player better, which is what they want. The point is, this isn’t the final product of the players we have. They’re going to get better. And that’s a learning experience from last year. We’re not finished getting better. There’s more in the tank.”
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Please enjoy this snippet from Rockies Family Feud, featuring Chase Dollander:
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