The fundamental changes that the Colorado Rockies must make this offseason

In the coming days and weeks, we are all going to be inundated with autopsy reports on the Colorado Rockies’ 2020 campaign, one that started out soaring like an eagle before finally falling down and flopping around on its deathbed like a limp fish.

Fingers will be pointed. Blame will be assessed.

The same old fights will be had about who is responsible and who should be held accountable. Debates and arguments about what is wrong with this current version of the team and how much of that has to do with the entire 28-year history of the franchise.

Sadly, most of these conversations will not be focused on anything productive for the future of the team.

They may help add ammunition into an ever-raging war of ideas the way we spent all last season arguing over an opt-out we already knew existed rather than focusing on, say, analytics.

But, for most Rockies fans, the far more important and interesting question is what happens now? What are the options?

Yes, there are some fatalistic viewers who believe that the team will be bad forever or at least as long as current leadership is in charge.

There are plenty of folks in the media who have no interest in discussing the Colorado baseball team beyond making them a punchline.

So, for anyone who is interested in getting past all of that – as opposed to banging their head against the same old door – we are going to take a proactive look at possible improvements this organization can make across the board.

Management

Let’s get this out of the way first.

Unless you are in the room where decisions are happening, you don’t know the specifics of which coaching strategies are or aren’t working out for the Rockies.

At the same time, you don’t need to have all the details to see that this team has plenty of issues with a philosophical approach that is causing them to get less out of talented players than they should.

While recognizing that Bud Black has been the young-pitcher-whisperer around here and without getting into specifics beyond that, there absolutely have to be coaching and management changes made this offseason with specific emphasis on analytics moving forward.

Colorado has made some small steps in this direction with the hiring and then promoting of Steve Merriman inside their pitching ranks. However, this notion needs to be kicked into overdrive.

To put it another way, if the Rockies had only $5 million to spend this winter – they’ll have much more…. don’t worry, we’re getting to that – they’d be better off spending it entirely on their analytics department rather than signing a single player.

To list just a few topics we’ll cover in the coming months in both article and podcast forms: the outfield playing to deep; the pitchers aren’t throwing up-and-in often enough; the batters being generally too aggressive, especially on the road; opposing game plans catching them off-guard; striking out far too often; and collectively slumping at the plate.

These elements need be addressed via change in the thought process.

Every job in the organization should be on the table including, and especially, the hiring of the first Team President of Baseball Operations in more than a decade.

Retool or Rebuild?

The first question that needs to be answered is whether the Rockies will retool around their current core or elect to blow up this thing and try for another run with a different group in a couple of years.

The latter is, of course, less likely as Colorado has never committed to a full rebuild since joining the National League in 1993.

One major factor that could push them in that direction is if they cannot come to terms with Nolan Arenado, personality wise.

If Arenado informs them this offseason that he is still unhappy with the state of the team and hints at an intention to opt out following the 2021 season, the Rockies have three options.

1. Make drastic changes to keep him happy

2. Trade him this offseason and re-assess

3. Live with his unhappiness and/or try to deal him before the 2021 trade deadline or risk losing him for pennies on the dollar

None of us can say for sure what would qualify to make No. 1 work. Presumably, bringing in a new GM or hiring a Team President would be a huge step in the right direction.

So would, again presumably, making some roster changes with which your star third baseman happens to agree.

While any/all of these moves could be great for the team, there is still no guarantee that Arenado has the belief he can win a World Series in this mid-market. There is even less of a guarantee that he will be able to make as much money with any other club as he will with Colorado.

As such, the prudent thing to do would be to hang onto Arenado for as long as possible and trade him at the 2021 deadline if the team is still in a terrible spot after this offseason.

You could go the other way and begin a rebuild by trading him, necessitating trades of players like Trevor Story (free agent after next season) and Charlie Blackmon ($51.5M remaining) as well.

Or you could move Arenado for young players who are close to ready now, give his contract to Story and build around a new core that looks similar to but is sans Arenado.

Since most Rockies fans and fair evaluators would agree that Colorado already has a solid core, tearing it all down when they finally have financial flexibility seems short-sighted.

With or without Nolan, the best thing to do for now is try to re-tool since doing so doesn’t take the possibility of rebuilding out of the equation entirely. Going for the rebuild right now is an all-in move which you can’t go back on.

So…how could you build?

A New Supporting Cast

While I’ve fought – and will continue to do so – against the notion that the Rockies are a three-person team, one cannot escape a bad supporting cast, not just in these last two seasons of failure, but even in the prior two seasons of success.

You know the names.

Jake McGee, Bryan Shaw, Wade Davis, Ian Desmond, Daniel Murphy.

Just about every free agent that General Manager Jeff Bridich has acquired as reinforcement for this team has been a failure. Oftentimes, a disastrous one.

This is also a big part of why we are looking to the future rather than lamenting the past.

For 2021, none of those players will be the burden they’ve been for the last three years.

McGee, Shaw, and Davis are all gone.

Murphy is almost certain to be bought out for a $6 million hit to the books for next season. Not nothing, but certainly not crippling. The same can be said for Desmond’s $8 million, though it remains the worst contract on the roster.

The great news is that after Desmond and the three core position players everyone agrees are good, and two pitchers everyone should agree are good (German Márquez, Scott Oberg), the Colorado Rockies financials are wide open.

That’s seven players who are getting paid real money. And, if they choose to buyout Desmond, zero roster spots will be reserved for players projected to make more money than their on-field value is worth.

They’ll have, by my estimation and guesses based on salaries of the recent past, about $55 million to spend.

This brings us back to where we started…

Bridich Back at the Beginning

It could easily be argued that now is the perfect time to hand the reigns of this team to someone else.

Regardless of how you feel about the job Bridich has done so far, the ship needs to go in a new direction and that often requires a new captain at the helm.

To overextend the analogy, it isn’t enough to simply throw the current captain overboard and proceed with no further action as the same icebergs will float towards whoever sits in that chair.

In his first offseason as a GM, Bridich accurately assessed the Rockies biggest area of need to throw over $100 million at what came to be deemed the “super bullpen.”

As discussed, it all went to hell.

And now, he is in almost the exact same spot. He can’t do the same thing, either conceptually or in terms of execution.

Assuming they choose not to rebuild, this roster is in much the same condition it was in back in 2016. You actually have even more faith in the young starting pitching than you did back then since each of Márquez, Kyle Freeland, Jon Gray, and now Antonio Senzatela has built a resume.

You can even feel fine about the rotational depth with Ryan Castellani looking better than could have been expected in his handful of starts and Peter Lambert working his way back into the mix next season.

This is not to say that the rotation couldn’t use a veteran addition. It almost always can. But even in this nightmarish 2020 season, the rotation has kept them in more than enough ballgames to have been a playoff team.

The best argument for targeting a starter in the offseason is that it might push one or more of your younger starters into a bullpen role a la Yency Almonte who has put together a solid campaign.

We’ve seen before that going after the big-ticket items for the bullpen has far too much risk and we’ve seen the potential lack of reward.

Then there’s the issue of the offense. While not as bad as wRC+ would have you believe, it desperately needs a boost, especially with the continued uncertainty surrounding David Dahl.

Though it might be tempting to just fix the damn bullpen – easily the worst part of the current team – and make another run at it, it isn’t quite that simple.

This is why Colorado has to take a scatter-shot approach to the offseason and just make a ton of mid-level moves. Without looking at specific options just yet (stick with us all offseason), we aren’t talking about players worth getting the blood pumping for the fanbase.

Unfortunately, they can’t bring in one or two exciting players to fix this thing. And punting on this core, featuring the best left-side in baseball and the best rotation the franchise has ever seen, just doesn’t make sense to do until you absolutely have to.

They’ve got to make another run with this group given a better supporting cast but they can’t pour so many resources into that supporting cast that they can’t pull the plug as early as the trade deadline next season.

That means no contracts longer than a couple of years, maximum, and no major money to any one player.

You need to bring in a couple of relievers, a couple of bats, and maybe a starter.

You need to attack the problem with numbers – aka depth – because regardless if the are paid like Wade Davis or Daniel Bard, you need to be able to make those decisions in the moment and ride whoever figures it out and move on from whoever doesn’t.

Its a conundrum: this team can’t be tied to anyone the way they’ve been tied to the veteran free agents who have sunk them the last several years, but they need new players somehow. It’s a tough Goldilocks zone to ask them to walk, but this is the way.

They have money to spend and open roster spots to fill. They have a strong core of good-to-great baseball players.

And they’ve got one more shot with this bunch.

Time to either finally figure it out or end this era of Rockies baseball and start the long, slow slog toward the next one.

Five Big Questions

The way I see it, the offseason boils down to five huge questions:

1. Jeff Bridich or Someone Else?

2. Trade or keep Nolan Arenado?

3. Retool or Rebuild?

4. Team President or Nah?

5. New Direction or Dig-in Traditionalism?

If they can get three out of these five questions right, they’ll be fine. If they can do better than that, maybe – just maybe – they can salvage this thing.