Sunday Rockpile: Rockies willing to deal position players for pitching

Troy Renck writes that the Rockies would be willing to explore moving some of their MLB position player depth for starting pitching, including breakout center-fielder Dexter Fowler if the right move were to come along. The emergence of Tyler Colvin this season is one factor that's opened the Rockies to moving Fowler or Michael Cuddyer. Cuddyer's contract could be an impediment to a trade, but given the inflation of player salaries ought to be up significantly this year with a new TV contract, that Cuddyer contract might not be as much an overpay as it looked like last year. Fowler, however, should be a significant piece that's able to obtain a solid starter in return.

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Both Renck in his weekly column and Ken Rosenthal in a video states that Jim Tracy's chances of staying with the team are about 50/50 despite the handshake agreement for 2013 that's in place. Tracy no longer would qualify as a suitable scapegoat to take pressure off of the front office, as the fans that want Tracy gone seem to mostly agree that changes are needed above his position in the organization as well, and there's also apparently a good chunk of fans that only blame the GM and front office and buy into Tracy's line that he's merely a victim of his circumstance.

So I guess what I'm suggesting here is that if this unpopular front office does decide to replace Tracy, it's not likely to be the cynical move to keep trying to keep the heat off their own failings, but let's hope it will be out of a more sincere desire to improve the club. The more important question, however, given how poorly they've made this type of decision in the past, is whether they deserve the opportunity and will make the right one this time.

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I don't think the off season will end happily for Rockies fans looking for a change in this regard. I could see Tracy leaving, but the front office will likely remain mostly in place with Bill Geivett being the front of the organization now and Dan O'Dowd playing an as important behind the scenes role. Because of this, it remains to be seen whether there will be much difference in the players and coaches Geivett chooses over those O'Dowd would have favored. So were the Rockies to trade Fowler, would the return be a better pitcher? Should the Rockies hire Mark Wiley as pitching coordinator, would he be an improvement over somebody O'Dowd would have favored, or would O'Dowd even have made a change? How would we even know? The odd reshuffling of the deck chairs for the Rockies front office does make delineating decisions between leadership a lot murkier.

People have a tendency to compartmentalize things even when it doesn't make sense to, "this move goes in the O'Dowd box, that move goes in the Geivett box, this pitcher deserves the 'win', that pitcher doesn't," so I'm guessing the result of this will be that fans will start to automatically assume certain decisions were made by Geivett, and others by O'Dowd depending on who they like and whether they like the decision or not.