Thursday Rockpile: How to have both guns and butter...

Alright, so in the "not ever going to happen, but totally fun to think about category," the Dallas Morning News' Gerry Fraley apparently thought of the Rockies as a potential Josh Hamilton destination in a radio interview yesterday. Signing Hamilton would certainly erase fears we've had and free up Dexter Fowler to be traded for young pitching, adding to both sides of the run scoring and run prevention ledger at the same time.

We get a lot of readers expressing the desire for the Rockies to spend their money on pitching, but if I were dreaming on Monfort money that's not likely there to be spent, I'd rather the team take this route instead of the extreme overpay they'd have to commit to in order to lure top shelf free agent arms. It's just guaranteed to be a more efficient use of salary commitments for a Colorado team over the long term, plus Cargo/Tulo/Hamilton heart of the order would be daunting to get through in any stadium.

Troy Renck writes that the Rockies need to find an identity before they find a manager, but I actually think with the very strange (by traditional baseball standards) way they've gone about things this past summer points to the fact that the i.d. might be in place, but they really have had a mismatch with the baseball people they've had on hand. Much like Joe Maddon with the Rays, the next Rockies manager can't have an outsized ego and has to buy into the team's philosophy for it to have a chance to be successful (we can argue whether it has a chance beyond the manager, but if it were to work, that man would need to be on board.)

Several Rockies tweeted support for Tracy.

Former Rockies manager Don Baylor was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame.