The Rockies conjured up their very own commerce deadline magic, extending their nearer, Daniel Bard, to a two-year contract extension reportedly worth $19 million. Bard, who turned 37 final month, has accomplished a stable job as Colorado’s nearer for the second straight season, placing up a 1.91 ERA — although with a significantly much less spectacular 3.55 FIP — in 37 appearances for the last-place Rockies this season.
Colorado had beforehand dropped hints that there have been not going to be many, if any, trades of veteran expertise this week. As this extension highlights, this was not a negotiating place to entice different groups to make extra profitable affords for its Most worthy gamers. At this level, I doubt anybody in baseball thought in any other case, because the Rockies have lengthy been infamous for not treating the commerce deadline as a possibility both to enhance the staff in a pennant drive or to rebuild/retool to assist obtain future targets. For among the finest examples, look no additional than final season, after they determined to not commerce Trevor Story (to Story’s confusion) or Jon Gray, as an alternative preferring to let the previous stroll for a compensation decide and, since he obtained no qualifying supply, the latter transfer on with no compensation for the franchise.
Don’t get me unsuitable: for lots of groups, getting Bard as both a short-term rental or on this precise contract would have been an excellent transfer. If he weren’t the very best reliever plausibly out there this week, he was actually within the prime tier, and all kinds of contending groups with middling-or-worse bullpens, such because the Cardinals, Twins, or Blue Jays, should have had an curiosity in swapping prospects with actual futures for his companies. Bard’s 1.91 ERA this yr is not any extra “actual” than his 5.21 ERA final yr in the other way, however he’s an above-average nearer, and it’s good to have the ability to signal a type of in free company to a two- or three-year deal at an affordable worth.
ZiPS Projection – Daniel Bard
| Yr | W | L | ERA | G | GS | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 6 | 4 | 3.91 | 51 | 0 | 50.7 | 42 | 22 | 6 | 27 | 63 | 127 | 0.7 |
| 2024 | 5 | 4 | 4.03 | 45 | 0 | 44.7 | 38 | 20 | 5 | 25 | 55 | 123 | 0.5 |
Liking Bard for the remainder of 2022 and/or the following two seasons isn’t in the slightest degree odd; it simply makes little sense for the Rockies to be the group to behave on that optimistic analysis. Much more baffling is that, when it got here to Grey, they by no means went above a three-year, $35–$40 million supply — one they didn’t even make till the very end of the 2021 season. Valuing a stable beginning pitcher solely just a little greater than a stable nearer is simply the most recent instance of this group’s dysfunction. Why commerce for a 22-year-old and have to attend 15 years for him to turn out to be a 37-year-old veteran when you’ll be able to simply maintain the participant you may have?
A couple of decade in the past (I can’t discover the unique reference), I used to be keen on describing the Rockies as having the very same plan as Homer from the episode of The Simpsons through which he needed to cross a category in nuclear physics so as to maintain his job. Particularly, his acknowledged scheme was to cover beneath a pile of coats through the ultimate examination and hope all the things would simply work out.
I don’t suppose something has modified. The franchise’s decision-makers have demonstrated little understanding, in 2022 phrases, of why good baseball groups are good baseball groups, why unhealthy baseball groups are unhealthy baseball groups, and what occasions trigger groups in a single class to shift to the opposite one. The Rockies are poorly run in the identical method {that a} staff from 1982 can be poorly run. Yr in, yr out, they throw a roster along with the finesse of somebody dumping their underwear load from a laundromat dryer into their cart at 3 AM on a Thursday morning.
On occasion, the Rockies develop a younger participant that they’re compelled to play as a result of they don’t have sufficient Ian Desmonds or Gerardo Parri to dam them, and they’re briefly aggressive, as they had been in 2009–10 and 2018–19. The remainder of the time, they’ll meander between fourth place and final within the NL West, misidentifying their bullpen as the first motive they’re not profitable. That is the worst-run group in baseball because the Syd Thrift-era Orioles, and so long as the Rockies maintain getting practically 3 million followers within the park not demanding something completely different with their wallets, there’s little motive to suppose issues will change.
