Colorado Rockies GM Jeff Bridich is rebuilding... the 2014 Milwaukee Brewers

Welcome to Football Friday, a baseball column by Connor. I am 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.

Send those emails to connorsmailbag@gmail.com and we'll see what happens, OK?

Once again, folks, I've cracked the code.

Yesterday, Jon Heyman linked the Rockies to some level of interest in starting pitcher Yovani Gallardo in a tweet that sent people into a dark hut of confusion and disappointment. Why is general manager Jeff Bridich pursuing a pitcher with declining numbers and without a K-rate to sustain success at Coors Field?

It's simple folks, the answer is simple. I've figured it out and I will walk you through it now.

First, let's look back at the Rockies previous signings this offseason, an interesting hodgepodge of veteran guys who don't seem to make sense for any direction the team is looking to go.

Mark Reynolds and Gerardo Parra don't fit together on one roster building plan, that much is obvious. One is a low-priced buy for a team looking to hold out on 2016 and not rush a replacement at first base. The other is a more aggressive risk-taking move to shore up an outfield that could've had Brandon Barnes or Kyle Parker taking significant at-bats and hurting the Rockies ability to hit well consistently. One speaks to a team looking to win in the short term, the other to a team with a long term model that backs up their farm resources and future assets.

Gallardo fits into neither of these plans, but also somehow he fits into both. He could hold the rotation together as a veteran presence who can be a stopper when the young kids start to lose their way the next couple years, and he also could be seen as a cheap way for the team to convince people to still buy tickets while also building the true good team underneath that won't actually see success until, like, 2018. It makes sense but it also makes no sense, like the Schrödinger's cat of logic. Once you try to dive in, it's already dead.

They don't fit together if you look on the surface, they don't even fit into the Buzzfeed beard theory I proposed over a month ago due to Parra not having a very good beard and Gallardo having just a pile of mush on his face. You have to dig deep to find where all of these players fit together and... I think I've done it.

Jeff Bridich is trying to rebuild, all right.

He's rebuilding the 2014 Milwaukee Brewers.

Gerardo Parra, Mark Reynolds, and Yovani Gallardo have only one thing in common: they all played on the 2014 Brewers. Those plucky Brewers were a team that surprised many with four months of very strong play that had them on top of an extremely competitive division until September.

There's really not much else exciting to say about the 2014 Brewers. They collapsed in September and missed the playoffs, the roster regressed the next season and cost the front office their jobs, and now the team enters it's first season under a big rebuild. This timeline doesn't seem to support the argument that Bridich would attempt to recreate the Brewers roster, especially considering he can't get the 2014 versions of these players and would be stuck with older, potentially worse versions of them.

But a counterpoint to this argument can be found on Jeff Bridich's Wikipedia page:

Holy smokes.

Jeff Bridich grew up a Brewers fan.

We all want to recreate the best moments of being a fan. If I could, I would build the 2009 Rockies all over again and this time, I would put in Joe Beimel in the 9th inning to face Ryan Howard and we would win the damn World Series.

It looks like Bridich wants to create the most recent (relative) success of the Brewers at Coors Field while attempting to change the book on the collapse and get those Brewers into the playoffs.

Want more coincidence? (Or is it evidence?) The Brewers employed a 30-year-old power hitting outfielder in 2014.

Carlos Gonzalez is a 30-year-old power hitting outfielder.

Draw the conclusions for yourselves, you guys, but I've laid out cold, hard facts.

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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 Rockies catcher Dustin Garneau, who tweets:

Dustin, buddy, I'm with you.

For those that are unaware, Making a Murderer is a Netflix documentary series that profiles the murder case of Steven Avery. Without spoiling too much of it, let's just say Manitowoc County law enforcement is a bit... shifty in their criminal investigating,

But that's not why I'll never go to Manitowoc. I'm not going there because rural Wisconsin looks like the worst.

I've been to Milwaukee, it's nice. I've heard Madison and Green Bay are also nice. But if you leave a city of any kind, it seems like there's more cows than people, and certainly more giant fields that freeze over for 8 months of the year. How in the world did anyone convince settlers to stay there?

I've long had the suspicion that winter settlers were just a bunch of stubborn men who wouldn't admit to their wives that they had made a huge mistake moving everyone into middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin. They walked into their ninth straight mile of frozen field with nine or so trees surrounding it, snow piling up on their wagon and everyone in the party shivering and they said, "This is exactly what I was looking for!"

And their wives rolled their eyes but they didn't bother questioning it.

"Time to build a stupid house in the middle of stupid nowhere because freakin' Bjorg decided he had to leave Sweden and start a new life in the United States," she thinks to herself. Even though she was PROMISED cities and fun and money she'll be given hardship and frozen lakes and three of her 14 kids dying of exposure.

But such is life and love in Manitowoc County, as we've learned.

Good opinion, Dustin.

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Rockies Club Status

It's back! Each week, this column will dive into the Rockies' Club Status. I will be judging the Rockies' prior performance by comparing them to what type of song they would be at the club. The worst is a country song; the best is a BANGER. This week the Rockies are:

COUNTRY SONG

I don't like giving this out. I really don't. But the Rockies are a country song right now. Nobody asks for a country song at the club. Nobody WANTS a country song at the club. There is literally nothing worse than a bunch of white people gathering in rows and dancing in a formulaic dance behind Billy Ray Cyrus. It just feels like at any moment we'll rise up and destroy the banks. I don't like it and I don't trust it.

Nobody asked for Gerardo Parra and four outfielders, and frankly I don't think anybody really needed Gerardo Parra and four outfielders. But here we are, four freakin' left-handed hitting outfielders just hangin' out.

Clayton Kershaw is excited as heck.

For reference here, Wagon Wheel is the worst song of all time. The Rockies aren't quite Wagon Wheel but they're probably something by Florida Georgia Line right now, and that's not good.

Reader Mailbag

Welcome to the mailbag, every week I'll read what you degenerate jerks have to say to me. Better make it good.

Connor,

Appreciate you bringing attention to the risk of the Rockies being sold to an unknown entity, but your suggestion that the risk is the team be relocated is off base.  This team (regardless of performance) is consistently in the top 10-15 in home attendance and any true businessman/woman would never move away from Coors....and we all know anyone with the cash to buy the team is a businessman/woman and would seek a solid ROI.

A more accurate point would have been the risk of increased costs in the form of ticket prices/parking/mile high dogs etc.  The Rockies are consistently in the bottom third of the league in average ticket prices and arguably have the worst TV contract (ROOT) in MLB. A new owner would likely increase prices...not move the team to Las Vegas or Charlotte.

Now I am sure the initial reaction would be that with increased ticket prices we would see lower attendance. Not true. This market would support an increase for two simple reasons....1) Coors Field/ LoDo and 2) average income/net worth.  Forget the mid-market bs.  They can't play any worse and just imagine if they started winning (which is whole different subject/email!)

Thanks,

Jim

Jim, I hear you here and I understand the disagreement.

I do think an owner coming in here and MOVING the Rockies would be the ultimate worst case scenario and a long shot at best. You're absolutely right.

But I don't think my warning should be dismissed because of it. Like I said, playing the ownership game is a risky gambit, and fans not going to games to force out an owner can start to turn that gambit into a play against the odds.

Take the Expos, for example: the fans didn't go to the games in Montreal, an owner purchased the team with unsound motives and a poorly structured plan, and he eventually made enough poor business decisions that the team lost it's stadium and moved out of town.

Montreal never really supported the Expos like the Rockies, so the comparison isn't spot on, but I think the warning rings true. The Expos didn't plan for Jeffrey Loria to be garbage, but he turned out to be. He turned out to be one of the worst villains the city's ever known.

So what happens when you take an ownership that isn't likable but still has SOME of the fan's best interests in mind and kick them out? You automatically get good owners? Savvy businessmen with a great baseball mind? I don't think so, I really don't. I think you play a risky game and sometimes you lose, it's enough of a risk that I don't feel like playing.

Thanks for the email!

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Has Connor Been Owned?

Each week, our team of investigators and officials here at Connor, Inc. will look into whether or not 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 a "savage." I'm a medical miracle in that at no point in my life have I been owned by anyone 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:

Purple Row rapscallion Bobby DeMuro has been presented to the board this week for pulling a screen cap of an old tweet in which I claim to watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians (a show Bobby himself admits to loving). Let it be known, before we get any further, that I was not in control of my account at this time. I had given up control and it was a mistake I continue to regret to this day.

The board has taken into account the fact I was not in control of my account and Bobby's stretch to create an own out of thin air and has decided, rather quickly, that I was not owned in this instance. Any spreading of information to the contrary of this decision will be met with swift retribution by the legal team here at Connor, Inc.

Scoreboard still in development, but I am three-for-three in not being owned in 2016. Please keep up as we improve the score taking system here.

Regards,

Connor

[Editor's note: You, too, can own Connor—literally everyone else does! Send questions, comments, and owns to connorsmailbag@gmail.com to get in on the fun.]