At 50-58 entering Wednesday’s 2pm MST trade deadline, the Colorado Rockies and their General Manager Jeff Bridich could not plausibly justify adding to an underperforming, yet solid roster.
Bridich was able to swing two trades, both of which were not on anyone’s radar nor will have any major impact on the 2019 season.
In more of a seller’s mode, the club had an opportunity to supplement the prospect pool and/or free up finances by offloading any number of contracts totaling $79.5MM over the next season or two: Ian Desmond ($25MM), Wade Davis ($18MM), Daniel Murphy ($14MM), Jake McGee ($11.5MM), Bryan Shaw ($11MM).
This quintet of veterans could also make an additional $47MM in various options depending how 2020 and 2021 plays out. Its reasonable to think $29MM of that total could be added through performance bonuses and player options, bringing the final cost to this group up to $108.5MM.
“There was a lot of activity and a lot of interest in a good number of our players,” Bridich said of his conversations with other teams. “Most of the interest, as you can see, was in players we did not want to trade. We could have – not easily, but we could have – traded a large portion of our team, if we wanted too. Such is the typical deadline… We just never got to a point where, talking to teams, it made sense to trade any of the guys that were really targeted by other teams.”
In other words, when the phone rang in the Rockies office, there was typically someone asking about core players that will be factors for the franchise when it looks to get back into contention with all the key pieces returning in 2020.
“We told teams that we were open-minded to a lot of things, if there were certain players that were of interest to other teams. But it’s not like we had strict orders, or anything like that, to do things financially. A lot of times, we were trying to start conversation and get ideas flowing. Obviously, nothing came of that.”
So, while Bridich and the front office was not forced to trim payroll, the most obvious choices for trading away were of little interest to the other 29 teams.
However, Bridich was still able to manage two deals, one each with the Chicago Cubs and the original pinstripers, the New York Yankees.
The first deal of the day involved LHP Alfredo Garcia going to the Yankees for RHP Joe Harvey; in a corresponding move, LHP Harrison Musgrave was designated for assignment.
A reliever with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for much of the season, the 27-year-old Harvey made his major league debut in April and pitch 9 games for the Bronx Bombers to a 4.50 earned run average across ten innings. As member of the 40-man roster, Colorado needed to make a move and Musgrave was deemed the odd man out.
“In our estimation, (he has) two plus-pitches for a younger guy on the roster who needs an opportunity to pitch,” Bridich said of Harvey. “We had good numbers on him from an analytical perspective. We had good reports on him. Sou our scouting and our stats matched in a lot of ways. It’s adding another power arm with potential.”
Garcia, originally signed out of Venezuela for $1MM, began the season at Low-A Asheville, making 19 starts and pitching to a 6.28 ERA before being demoted to the Northwest League on July 17th. The 20-year-old southpaw has made three starts with Short Season Boise with a 4.30 ERA.
In the second deal of the day, the Rockies made a shrewd move to acquire the Cubs’ outfielder Jimmy Herron for international signing bonus pool allotment. The 2018 3rd round selection (98th overall), Herron is in his first full-season of pro ball after batting over .300 all three years at Duke University in the ACC.
With High-A Myrtle Beach in 2019, he has a slash line of .220/.320/.336 in 92 games played. The 23-year-old swiped 19 bases with the Pelicans and had a modest strikeout percentage of 18.2% while predominantly playing center field. “We liked (Herron) out of the draft last year, so he’s a good young prospect. He’ll probably go into High-A (Lancaster) for us once he comes over from the Cubs,” Bridich said.
Though it may be a while until the details of the international signing bonus pool allotment are announced, it should be noted that Colorado used a sizable portion of their $5.5MM pool this summer to sign talented 16-year-old Adael Amador. The middle infielder from the Dominican Republic was ranked the 12th best international prospect by MLB Pipeline.
