Woody Paige rips the Colorado Rockies with same tired arguments

It happened again on Sunday, the Denver Post pumped out another story by Woody Paige about the terrible, no good, awful Colorado Rockies. It was as predictable as it was annoying. It also reminded us of one thing; Woody Paige is completely irrelevant when it comes to baseball.

Paige, as he stumbled and bumbled his way through a standard diatribe, wondered why Rockies fans continue to put up with Dick Monfort running the club. He called out several Rockies blogs, Rockies Review included, for backing the Rockies in every aspect of the team, something that is laughable considering what has been written in this blog about ownership.

After the rant, Paige penned a piece for the Sunday paper ripping the club, but more specifically Dick Monfort. Going into too much detail is a pure waste of time, however, instead of coming up with rational reasons as to why Monfort has messed up (there are plenty), he predictably picks reasons that don’t hold much water. First, Paige rips the Rockies for only drawing 1,000 fans to their doubleheader on Wednesday. He uses that as a reason for Monfort to realize that he is failing.

The problem, Paige fails to acknowledge that the doubleheader was started in the middle of the day, with cold, windy rainy weather predicted throughout the day. Many local forecasters called for both games to be rained out. The other factor is the timing. Not only was the weather brutal, a day game when school is still in session isn’t exactly the best fodder for an attendance argument. One in which reschedules and delays were commonplace makes the argument irrelevant.

Consider the fact that the Rockies generally pull in the neighborhood of 30,000 fans on a weekday summer night and the reality is simple, the attendance argument isn’t a good one for Paige’s side.

Paige rips Monfort for trading for Drew Stubbs a year ago, and signing Kyle Kendrick in the offseason. While both of those players have been nothing short of a disaster in 2015, Paige, who may have never heard of Drew Stubbs, conveniently forgets that the speedy outfielder actually had a very good season for the Rockies a year ago. He has been terrible in 2015, but the argument Paige should have made was that Monfort has been the president of a team who hasn’t been able to produce a homegrown outfielder to platoon in center field, forcing the team to give at-bats to a struggling Stubbs.

Kendrick’s signing is much of the same. It certainly wasn’t a move that was lauded around the league, but the argument isn’t that the Rockies went out and signed the righty, the proper argument is that the Rockies didn’t produce enough talent on the farm to allow them to pass on Kendrick. The team’s failures came from not drafting and developing enough talent to be ready to compete in the big leagues. The Kendrick signing is a stop-gap that is required because of the failures on the farm. That isn’t mentioned by Paige.

Paige rips the Rockies for not spending enough money, coming $10 million short on payroll over what Monfort once told Troy Renck he uses as a gauge for the payroll. The problem is, Monfort told Renck that he uses half of the revenue for the player’s salaries. According to Forbes, the Rockies generated $214 million in revenue a year ago, yet the payroll is “only” at $97 million. What Paige forgets is that is the Opening Day roster. That doesn’t include players salaries who will be called up from the minor leagues when someone gets hurt, and also doesn’t account for a potential trade, which the Rockies could be giving themselves a cushion for. Most importantly, it doesn’t account for the fact that the player’s salaries are very close percentage-wise to exactly what Monfort says.

For those still reading, Monfort then gets ripped for the team sending Tyler Matzek down to Triple-A and bringing back Wilin Rosario, a non-pitcher, when the club is in desperate need of pitching. That argument is so short-sighted it is completely ridiculous. The Rockies are headed to Anaheim to take on the Angels for two games. They get to use a designated hitter in the American League park. With Matzek’s spot in the rotation not coming around for five full days, why not use his roster spot for someone who can actually contribute in that time period? The reality is, the Rockies may have every intent of sending Rosario, or another position player, back to Triple-A once they need another starter to take Matzek’s spot. That move, whether a person loves or hates Rosario, is very savvy and actually not very difficult to figure out.

Paige then makes it personal, essentially calling Monfort a nut, saying that he must fire himself as the president of the club.

Here is the reality, Dick Monfort has plenty of reasons to be criticized. He has failed in many ways and his franchise has never won a National League West division title. However, the way Woody Paige criticizes the Rockies ownership is completely out of line. His ridicule isn’t well thought out, it is simply the age-old tired argument that the Rockies should go spend money on top-of-the-line starting pitchers, not guys like Kendrick, and that the Rockies should have replaced Drew Stubbs with someone else, even if no one is suggested.

For Rockies fans, Paige is just as much of an issue to the team’s success as anything. See, Rockies ownership hears cries from the fans for changes — like they did for so long with Dan O’Dowd in charge — but they can write off those complaints because of one simple reason. Ownership can read a piece like Paige published and believe that the fans are getting their fodder from those words. They believe that Paige and guys like Mark Kiszla are inciting fans with their uneducated rants. Therefore, any fans argument for change, regardless of the depth and rationality of it, is lumped in as an uneducated, knee-jerk reaction to an article that was written by a columnist who couldn’t tell the reader the best player in the Rockies farm system, the No. 1 draft pick a year ago, or who the long-reliever in the bullpen currently is.

The reality is this, pieces like Paige’s on Sunday don’t help the Rockies, they make them more reclusive. Fans lose their voice when the franchise starts going on the defensive, and unfortunately, columnists like Paige become the voice of the fan, even though they represent just a small percentage of them.