Former Texas Longhorns infielder Skyler Messinger wanted to clarify something.

“When I say that ‘Tulo’ has a screw loose, I mean that as the highest possible compliment I could give him,” Messinger said.

Translation: Tulo, aka Troy Tulowitzki, the hitting and infield coach at Texas, still brings mind-boggling intensity and passion to the baseball diamond. Those traits made him one of the greatest players in Rockies history, enshrined him in the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame’s class of 2025 and landed him on the ballot for the National Baseball Hall of Fame for the first time.

Injuries cut down Tulowitzki in his prime. The shortstop exceeded 140 games in a season just three times, not once after 2011, his age-26 season. So Tulowitzki will never be enshrined in Cooperstown, and when the votes are announced Jan. 21, he might not receive the 5% of the vote required to remain on the ballot.

But Tulo, who turned 40 in October, says he doesn’t dwell on what might have been.

“No regrets at all,” he said during a phone interview from his home in Austin, Texas, where he’s coached since 2020. “Look, I never saw myself as the most talented guy on the field. If you look at my skill set, I was just average across the board. I wasn’t that super-gifted athlete who was the best player on the field.

“Maybe, with time, I became that — because of the work. I just got the most out of what I had. I did it with toughness and work ethic.

“So, yeah, that became a beatdown on my body. Still, I enjoyed the grind. I loved those batting cage sessions. Just swinging and swinging and swinging.”

Early in his career, when the “Tulo chant” reverberated throughout Coors Field, Tulowitzki looked to be Cooperstown-bound. The 6-foot-3, 205-pounder once hit 14 home runs in a 16-game span.

As runner-up as the 2007 National League rookie of the year, he helped the Rockies win 21 of 22 games and reach their only World Series. After his contentious trade to Toronto in July 2015, he was part of the Blue Jays’ drive to the American League championship series in 2015 and ’16.

From 2009 to 2014, he slashed .309/.385/.553 with 143 homers and collected 50% more WAR than any other shortstop. He won two Gold Gloves (2010-11), and nobody could make an electrifying jump throw from the hole like Tulo.

“The most exciting player I ever saw growing up,” said Messinger, who graduated from Niwot High School.

Ryan Spilborghs supplies a more analytic observation to the discussion.

“When you look at Tulo’s peak WAR for a seven-year stint (40.2), his numbers are better than the average Hall of Fame shortstop,” said Spilborghs, a Rockies TV analyst who played alongside Tulowitzki from 2007 to ’11. “And he’s No. 2 in fielding percentage by a shortstop in the history of baseball behind only Omar Vizquel, by the slimmest of margins (.9847 to .9846).

“Tulo, being the type of power hitter he was, and with his size, in his prime, was just ridiculous.”

When Tulowitzki’s career ended after a five-game stint with the Yankees in 2019, his bottled-up passion and energy had to go somewhere. The five-time All-Star found his second calling as a coach.

“The first word that comes to my mind about Tulo is ‘intense,’” said Trey Faltine, drafted out of Texas by Cincinnati in the seventh round in 2022. “That guy loves baseball. He’s a baseball rat, and he’ll talk baseball until you don’t want to talk baseball anymore.

“And I think one of the reasons why we got along so great is that we both had that football player’s mentality on the baseball field. I grew up playing football, and I brought that to the baseball diamond. Tulo was the first coach I had who had that same kind of fiery attitude about baseball. You don’t see that too often.”

Tulowitzki — he insists that his players call him “Tulo,” not Coach Tulo or Coach Tulowitzki — is content in Austin, where he lives with his wife, Danyll; son, Taz, who turns 11 in January; and Taylee, his 2-year-old daughter. Tulowitzki has declined job offers in the majors and turned down the head coaching job at Southern California two years ago, partly because he’s so involved in raising Taz.

When Taz was just a toddler, he could be found whistling line drives off a batting tee in the Rockies clubhouse. Tulo can envision his son, who, naturally, is a shortstop on an elite travel-ball team, playing in the majors someday.

“For sure, he can take it to the next level,” Tulowitzki said. “He’s athletic and he’s going to be a lot faster than me. He’s big, he likes it, and he works. He’s got all of the qualities, he’s just got to keep attacking it, day by day.”