Welcome to Football Friday, a baseball column by Connor. Each week I will dive into the previous seven days of baseball news, shout my opinion into the void, discuss some things about the Colorado Rockies, and answer your emails. Some of them.
The 2016 Rockies are four games under .500.
But the coming challenge isn't necessarily the results of 2016; the Rockies have made a conscious effort to build for the future and for now with a team that may be outplaying expectations in certain areas. The most worrisome time of that plan has come.
Before 2004, the Rockies were in the worst position a baseball team can be in. Yes, you might be arguing that the Rockies are worse off now but I wholeheartedly disagree in that instance.
From 1996 to 2003, the Rockies finished above .500 three times and tallied more than 70 wins in all seven seasons. The Rox weren't bad, per se -- they were mediocre. There's no worse spot for a sports franchise to be than stuck in mediocrity. A 95-loss season ensures an elite draft pick; an 84-loss season gives you a middle round pick and a front office that thinks it's closer to contention than it actually is.
So, you see my worry.
If the 2016 Rockies continue to outperform expectations -- maybe they go on a run and finish close to .500 -- the front office might find itself in a perilous tipping point that has doomed many organizations. A tipping point that sank this organization for eight years.
I call it Milwaukee Bucks Syndrome (TM). The idea that you have a roster that can compete and with a little luck, will contend. But it never works out like that. You spend years -- heck, decades -- in a sports purgatory, knowing your team can't compete for a title but admitting it isn't bad enough to convince anyone to rebuild or retool.
The Rockies have built a potential contender with their current roster plus young players coming up in the next 12-24 months. But, the sliver of hope in a quicker contention window can lead to a deadly shortsightedness. There's a tipping point that the Rockies are approaching and I'm spooked.
Think about the Rockies as though they are Aubrey "Drake" Graham. They've built a potential empire and elite success is waiting in the wings, but if they hedge their bets on the near future instead of playing the long game, they'll probably release Views.
Nobody liked that album, it was not a good album.
Drake traded The Weeknd for a potential contending window and it's backfiring big time. Nobody would like a mediocre Rockies team; I'd rather watch them lose 100 games than lose 85 for three to five straight seasons. If the Rockies mortgaged their future and traded prospects for a mid-range starting pitcher, it would be like every song on Views that wasn't "Controlla" or "One Dance" played on repeat for twelve hours.
Views sucked, is my point here.
You never want to half-ass a build. The worst thing the Rockies can do right now is to believe they're one or two established players from a contender. I would be much more worried about a Rockies team that trades prospects for veterans than one that is trading veterans for prospects or doesn't trade at all.
Builds take time and require many, many steps to complete. The Rockies are close, but this is the most worrisome tipping point the organization is reaching.
★ ★ ★
The Good Opinion of the Week
Each week, I will personally scour Rockies-related Twitter feeds for good opinions on food, music, movies, or even bottled water. I will feature anything that I look at and think "that is a good opinion." This week, the good opinion comes from Purple Row associate editor Eric Garcia McKinley, who tweets:
I remember a time when I vaguely considered that Kris Bryant might be better than Nolan Arenado. LOL
— Eric Garcia McKinley (@garcia_mckinley) June 23, 2016
Haha!
Kris Bryant is a great player, possibly an MVP candidate on the best team in baseball, so let's not discredit how good of a player he is.
Nolan Arenado is potentially the best player we've ever seen in Rockies history if he continues this career arc.
Over the past year, I've argued that the Nolan may be one of the rare type of players who has the talent and work ethic to improve every facet of his game every year. Major League Baseball is about adjustments just as much as it's about talent and skill. You have to be able to adapt and improve at every turn because the minute a team figures out how to beat you, you're beat. Eric and Ryan Freemyer both wrote great things on this website about how Nolan is still getting better and I think it's time to start believing it.
Yes folks, Nolan is rounding out his offense to potentially be a player that can't be beat.
Kris Bryant may still rise to heights previously unheralded but there is no doubt in my mind right now that Nolan is a more complete, better weaponized player.
We're watching someone special in No. 28; it's pretty neat.
★ ★ ★
Connor watches The Bachelorette
This season, I've decided to watch The Bachelorette. I have never watched this show before, and I'm not sure if I like it or if I am just a fan of people making themselves look like idiots on national television. Maybe a little of both. Anyway, in this section, I will talk about something I noticed during my viewing of the show.
This week, we all mourned the final departure of Chad. After JoJo told Chad he had to go home, he wandered through the woods for what I assume was miles to return to the lodge where all the other Bachelors were staying and accuse them of slandering his good name.
After this happened, Chad left, and with his departure I realized something about the show now: It's super boring without Chad.
For the rest of the two hours I watched JoJo go on dates and kiss five or six of these guys, slowly realizing throughout the course of the episode that I can't tell most of them apart and even worse, that none of them were particularly interesting people.
I found myself stretching for things to like and dislike about JoJo's potential suitors. Things like "Jordan's hair is stupid." Or "Alex definitely has a Napoleon Complex." But even with these slights on the remaining men I struggle to find a reason to cheer for or against any of them. They're all just giant sticks of string cheese to me, both interesting and uninteresting in every way.
I'm still going to watch, but with each passing day I think more and more, "I hope she doesn't pick any of these dairy goobers."
★ ★ ★
Has Connor Been Owned? (By someone other than Thomas Wilson)
Each week, our team of investigators and officials here at Connor, Inc., will look into whether Connor was the victim of an "own." For the uneducated, an own is often a comeback or put down that renders the person speechless and unable to turn the conversation around. It's also described as a "serve" or "savage." I'm a medical miracle in that at no point in my life have I been owned by anyone not named Thomas Wilson online or in real life.
Here is what is being brought forth to the Committee of Owns this week as alleged evidence of my owning:
@PurpleRow @rockiesVSconnor no thanks
— NorrisSelkeByngHaver (@atf13atf) June 24, 2016
Wow, today's own attempt comes from Aaron who takes my polite request for follows from the Purple Row account and shoves it in my face.
But guess what Aaron, you're a Dodgers fan.
No worse own than that. The committee has ruled that I was not owned because owns must come from fans of teams that have equal to or greater than the amount of pennants the Rockies have won since 1993.
Regards,
Connor