This post isn’t arguing anything in particular, but just a little contract background and how it might affect his trade value:

He’s signed cheaply—$7.5M for 2010, with a team option for $10M for 2011. That’s a plus. However, according to Cots, he can void the option yr if traded. So he’d either be a one year rental, which would bring down his trade value, or the new team would have to negotiate an extension to replace the option yr. That would depend on how badly Hawpe wanted to test the free agent market.

It’s also hard to know whether this offseason he’d be more, or less in demand for non-on-field-baseball reasons: the economy could cause some teams to avoid taking on much money, vs. a lack of corner OF free agent options this offseason. A number of big market teams will have corner OF vacancies (Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and Mets among them). It’s basically Holliday, Bay, and a lot of older players like Damon, Vlad, and Abreu. The market for Holliday should be brisk, and like last year there should be a dropoff for the older players. It will be interesting to see how teams view Bay (and Hawpe, if O’Dowd were to shop him).

Hawpe has to be in the right positioning to throw out a runner, which also limits his chances. While I agree Brad has a better arm than Smith, would you say Hawpe has a better arm than CarGo? Because starting Seth would place CarGo in RF where he has the range to get to more balls and gundown runners, like he did in Anaheim.

It’s to the big boys, right? How could the Rockies even have a hope of landing him?

That would be just the sexiest outfield, though. You can indeed dream.

but I don’t really see how its fair to compare a starter’s stats with a non starter. It seems like it skews the results in favor of the nonstarter because he has had far less opportunity to fail. I agree with rockieprogress on the leadership factor . How do you figure Hawpe’s time has passed?
I think Seth Smith excels because of his role exactly as it is.

Charlie presented an argument that this is not the case and clearly put some time into it.

but Hitler didn’t want Spilly to start…he wants Seth Smith to start.

I like Hawpe. Right now, I think the best line up and the best OF is Hawpe, Fowler, CarGo with Smith off the bench. The main factor in favor of Hawpe is veteran and stability. A team needs leaders, and Hawpe seems that to me for the Rockies (though that may not be the case IN the locker room where we fans have no clue)

Now trading Hawpe in the off season? That’s a possibility. Would he bring close to what Holliday did?

but this was my thought as well, that it’s a bittttt late to unseat a veteran bat, despite the late season slumps he’s prone to.

His first year was bad, but didn’t he also have a groin injury that season? Holliday was solid by UZR in Colorado, and solid in Oakland.

I do think one does have to be very careful with single season samples, and thus, even more careful about a 421 inning sample.

I didn’t really have much interest in the “your 2010 Rockies” entry at first because I was much more interested in this season.

But the thread had traction. I don’t see how it hurts. There will be more discussions along those lines, so folks who don’t want to participate now can join in during the hot stove league. Ditto for Hawpe.

Particularly if your premise is that he’s not a better “hitter” than Hawpe,in which case you’d need to take all the hitting stats available, regardless of what role he was in when he came to the plate. And like I said yesterday, I hate this line of reasoning because it’s still operating under a false assumption that Smith’s calling and purpose is as a PH. He’s a starting quality outfielder, his bat’s good enough to play as a starter for a contending team, it’s just the situation that the Rockies have four of them and only three slots to play them in.

It just shows that Smith has a higher floor than Hawpe.