The Rockies Stink (Yep, That's the Title) | Baseball Bits

shout out to squarespace for sponsoring today's video [Music] on october 1st 2018 the colorado rockies and los angeles dodgers met for a rare game 163 to decide the national league west champions it's a miracle that they reached this point because of run scored and allowed the greek philosopher pythagoras expected the dodgers to be a 101 win team while the rockies were expected 85 yet in reality they met in the middle with identical records of 91 wins and 71 losses the better team won that day the dodgers driven by a cody bellinger homer grabbed the nl west crown while the rockies went to the wild card game where they defeated the cubs matched up in the nlds against the brewers they floundered rocktober was canceled early as colorado scored just two runs in three games that off season rocky's gm jeff bridich and owner richard l monfort cooked up a plan they would give franchise cornerstone nolan aronado a large contract extension but they wouldn't really mean it no the whole extension was a fraud here's why nolan arenado might just be the best thing to happen to the rockies this millennium since his 2013 rookie campaign the four-time platinum glove winner is fifth among position players and wins above replacement his nickname is apparently sandblaster and his cousin is josh fuentes sorry i'm just reading off his baseball reference page now the absolute burden of having a good baseball player on your team is that after a while they want a lot of money and if you let them reach free agency they usually go to a different team that's going to give them a lot of money but when baseball geniuses jeff bridich and dick monfort stuck their heads together they hatched a brilliant plan they would get all the positive pr of extending aronado without actually committing too much money from you know dick's meat packing and i'm demonetized the key was an opt out after the 2021 season if arenado opted out and pursued free agency he'd forfeit the majority of the money his eight-year 260 million dollar deal would simply become a three-year 96 million dollar deal this inclusion of an opt-out gives the player leverage it's called a player option for a reason surely no one renato negotiated for this escape hatch himself right i'm about to read you perhaps the most shocking thing i've ever heard come out of a gm's mouth relating to the arenato deal jeff breidich said in those negotiations i was the one who actually pushed for that opt-out to no one's credit he didn't have a ton of interest in that initially being there it wasn't a priority of his for it to be there i was the one who thought it might be a good idea the rocky's front office didn't want nolan arenado their franchise cornerstone long term but they didn't want the backlash of letting him walk in free agency no they wanted nolan aronado to exercise the opt out when he was 30 and tried out the open market and when the rockies inevitably lost the bidding war they could go to the denver watch him to call it and say oh we really wanted him to stay that's why we extended him but he chose to leave you know he's really not a nice guy when it became clear that wasn't going to happen they shipped him off plus 50 million dollars in cash to st louis for an unimpressive prospect package and hoped that no one would notice unfortunately baseball fans noticed that the rockies paid 50 million dollars to not have nolan aronado on their team although aronato did one out of denver it was only because management had failed to build a winning ball club around him in fact jeff reidish's administration has failed to build anything at all [Music] with hindsight it's surprising that the rockies grabbed wild card spots in 2017 and 2018 because they might just be the first franchise to consistently make their team worse by spending on free agents over a stretch of four off-seasons following the 2015 season the rockies signed eight free agents to multi-year deals gerardo parra jason mott ian desmond mike dunn wade davis jake mcgee brian shaw and daniel murphy during their following tenures in iraqis uniform they all generated a negative wins above replacement total the rockies spent 256 million dollars for negative eight war mind you the entire arenado extension was 260 million the rockies won't end up spending 260 million on arenato because they traded him but they shelled out that same amount for below replacement level production the warning signs were there for many of these players daniel murphy could no longer play second base and wasn't hitting well enough to deserve a multi-year deal as a first baseman the ian desmond signing was even more confounding for some of the same reasons desmond was a shortstop turned center fielder who was signed by the rockies to play first base he was roughly a league average hitter leading up to free agency but league average hitting isn't very good at first base that's not how any of this works they gave 31 year old ian desmond a five-year deal he retired after three in the two years leading up to his signing mike dunn was a four era four-fifth guy in miami's cavernous ballpark is it really that shocking that he was a 6 era 5-fit guy in coors how does that guy get a 3-year deal i don't want to be so critical of a team spending money but you'd think at some point they would have accidentally signed charlie morton or carlos santana just someone good by pure chance why did mike mustakas have to take a one-year deal back to the royals after setting their single season franchise home run record could the ronkies not have converted mustaches to first base instead of ian desmond and daniel murphy look sometimes deals don't work out sometimes you trade for stanton and he can't stay healthy sometimes you give jason hayward a bunch of money and he forgets how to hit for three seasons sometimes you give three pitchers half a billion dollars and you win a world's wait sorry that one that one actually worked the point is those deals at least made sense at the time not these rockies deals of course free agent spending is just one part of building a team [Music] jeff breidich took over as the rockies gm following the 2014 season taking over for dan o'dowd the last good rockies team came four years later in 2018. here's the 12 players that accumulated at least one fan graph's win above replacement on the 2018 rockies when dan o'dowd resigned arenado blackman lemay hugh ottovino and cargo were already on the team and then in the farm system the rockies already had story freeland gray anderson oberg and doll so really besides marquez the rockies won with daniel dowds guys not bridich's guys now the brightish regime does deserve some credit for acquiring marquez marquez is probably the best starting pitcher in the history of the franchise he's the only rockies pitcher with four qualified seasons of 100 era plus or better he and max kepler are definitely the best german players in mlb [Music] in terms of roster construction the rockies have been and this is a nice way of putting it driven by their stars the mean way of putting it is that they've had maybe four good players and a bunch of randos if you were to just look at the top two hitters and top two pitchers from each nls team over the past couple seasons you'd expect the rockies to be in contention with the dodgers by these measures story arenado marquez and gray have been a comparable package to bellinger muncie bueller and kershaw unfortunately the rest of the team's production has been below replacement level negative 1.3 wins above replacement over the last two seasons for all rockies players not named story arenado marquez and gray part of this is that colorado just hasn't fixed any of their problems in the last six seasons their first basemen have collectively put up an 88 wrc plus this is a park adjusted stat where 100 is average that's worst in the league but wait there's more their catchers have also been worst in the league once you adjust for coors field with a stat like wrc plus they've been hemorrhaging wins at these positions with no end in sight being a fan of the rockies is kinda like living in a mud hut with no plumbing and a really nice tv but the tv is really not useful to you so you give the tv to a guy in st louis in return for some rice no one renato's the tv you get it you're smart the point is they created this situation they couldn't build jack squad around their good players so it actually makes sense to trade them not just arenato but hopefully story and marquez too tear it down because things won't get better until the organization looks itself in the mirror and says we are the rockies and we play in coors field [Music] that's really what so much of this is about course you spend a bunch of money on the royals bullpen it doesn't go great oh well it's course the offense is crazy dj le mayhew starts playing near sea level and is a better park adjusted hitter than ever before oh well it's coors the offense is crazy see what the rockies shouldn't do is play copycat they tried to be like the royals who were very successful as brideage took over and they failed their playing environment is exceptional what works for others won't work for them what works in coors field for pitching it's generally four seam fastballs and sliders that's ramon marquez that's 2018 kyle freeland that's scott oberg that's daniel bard you know what doesn't fare well in coors almost everything else wade davis and brian shaw's cutters didn't work john gray's curveball he threw it way more on the road when he was getting acclimated it's really hard to pitch in cores they've relied on sinker ballers in the past but the real answer may lie in the magnus effect high backspin four seamers and high topspin fastballs seem to defy gravity but pitches and cores have less magnus force due to the high elevation pitchers can't rely on their spin to produce as much movement this means lower spin might actually be good herman marquez's fastball is 86th percentile in velocity yet tile and spin rate but it works he's the best pitcher in franchise history john gray's fastball has similar characteristics as well and what happens when those balls get hit because of the thin air and massive size of the stadium a batted ball is far more dangerous in coors than any other venue in the league arenado and story are great defenders but the massive outfield is where the rockies lose extra base hits if they could have stolen one thing from the royals it shouldn't have been the bullpen it should have been prioritizing rangy outfielders like alex gordon lorenzo kane and gerard dyson to cover all that ground instead they gave charlie blackman a big extension when he was 31. yeah he can hit but he's a terrible fit for that ballpark defensively as a centerfielder in 2018 he put up by far the worst defensive run save total in the league there's potential to rebuild this team from the ground up with coarse field in mind but the rockies just don't get it in a sea of smart baseball organizations they're clueless before kovid owner and ceo dick monfort stated that the rockies would win 94 games in 2020 that's not optimism that's ignorance don't just think of him as the owner this is the ceo that's the same position derek jeter has with the marlins the logical conclusion is this there's no hope for the rockies until gridich is gone and montford is willing to be less hands-on but the two are still attached to each other in a weird bit of post arenado trade groveling monford stated that he hadn't thought about firing kreidage rather himself he should think about firing both because they've ran this team into the ground not only have the dodgers and padres built super teams the d-backs and giants are positioning themselves to be great in the future the rockies should start over fresh because they stink sorry for my language [Music] squarespace gives you a powerful and beautiful online platform to create your own 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Channel: Foolish Baseball

Views: 461,583

Keywords: colorado rockies, nolan arenado, nolan arenado trade, st. louis cardinals, nolan arenado cardinals jeff bridich, gm jeff bridich, rockies bridich, dick monfort, rockies monfort, worst team in mlb, german marquez, trevor story, jon gray, dj lemahieu, ian desmond rockies, coors field, coors field air, worst team in baseball, baseball bits, foolish baseball, mlb, baseball, rockies draft, rockies prospects, rockies free agents, rockies trade, rockies bad, rockies stink

Id: CRQLsqlQgb0

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/sererson]

Dorktown and Baseball Bits in the same day!

[u/Skraxx]

Hey u/foolishbaseball,

I love you.

[u/Errorterm]

"They stink!" Yeesh FB tell us how you really feel.

It's heart wrenching seeing the pieces we had in place 3 years ago, and how few of those were Bridich's doing.

Also, "Before COVID... Monfort stated the Rockies would win 94 games in 2020. That's not optimism, that's ignorance."

I was thinking about this yesterday. They refuse, even after the Arenado trade, to commit to saying we're in a rebuild. This indicates one of two things:

• They know its all BS, and their lying to try and cover up this PR nightmare- feigning that this is all part of a plan to retain season ticket holders.

• They are truly clueless that we've missed our contention window, and are too ignorant to understand just how poorly they've executed the last 5 years

Its sort of a moot point. Whatever the case, it's clear they're not on the side of the fans

[u/Lynxx360]

Ian Desmond from SS to CF to 1b

[u/NotAYuropean]

Wow, I knew it was bad in Colorado but not this bad. There's incompetence and then there's malice, Bridich seems to be leaning towards the latter.

[u/JRob370]

u/skraxx

Congrats, Foolish BB is helping spread your agenda!

[u/Monk_Philosophy]

Does the entire NLW fanbase just feel bad for Rockies fans at this point like I am? They’re hard to hate for very different reasons than teams are usually hard to hate.

[u/JackeryA3]

I'm glad that Bailey brought up the fact that the Rockies need to build their team around Coors Field itself. For them, the option of signing an elite SP or RP is not feasible unless they drastically overpay for them, which isn't ideal in constructing a roster. It's a very unfortunate thing that people don't like to bring up, but baseball in Colorado is a different game, and it takes a very savvy and conscience GM to navigate around. Something that Jeff Bridich is not.

[u/muffinman277]

Then combine all this with the fact that the team refuses to understand that modern technology actually helps players. The Rockies need to be blown up on field and off, I'm talking Front office, pitching staffs, hitting staffs, GM, Owner....EVERYONE. (except spilly, he can stay)