Will Rockies make a big offseason move? | Rockies.com
Thomas Harding takes the post-Christmas slowdown to answer a few questions from fans, including about the future for Jon Gray and Ryan McMahon with the Rockies. He also takes a question about whether the Rockies need to make more moves in order to hold onto Nolan Arenado.
Put me in the camp that the Rockies should make more moves in order to compete for a division title in 2019, but not that they need to do so in order to convince Nolan Arenado to sign an extension. Despite what some would have you think, not every MLB owner is a never-ending fount of cash too greedy to give up their precious money to give to the players; budget realities exist because not all owners are created equal but they all do desire to continue owning the team.
That places the Rockies somewhere in the middle of the pack in MLB for their budget and Nolan Arenado surely knows that. Considering those limitations, there isn't much more that Nolan could ask for than a team that has been competitive for three years, playoff bound for two years, and features enough young talent to remain in competition for playoff spots for the foreseeable future. An extension for Nolan will come down to a simple question: can both sides find a dollar amount and contract structure that will (1) allow the Rockies the flexibility to add payroll as their vital young stars enter arbitration and (2) give Arenado what he (and the player's union) believes he's worth.
Best of Statcast: Rockies | 12/24/2018 | MLB.com
On Christmas Day the Rockpile featured 10 of the most superlative plays of the 2018 MLB season. Today we give you a video featuring an assortment of what Statcast determined were the most superlative plays of the Rockies season. Just 90 days until we start making 2019 memories.
Worst first-round MLB Draft picks | MLB.com
Festivus was actually on December 23 but why not air the grievances now? The Rockies have actually had a pretty successful string of first round picks (with some still needing some time to pan out), so the MLBPipeline crew of Jim Callis, Jonathan Mayo, and Mike Rosenbaum had to go back to 2009 (can you guess who?) to find the worst first-round pick of the last decade.
But why stop at the last decade? Can we not air our grievances over Casey Weathers or Greg Reynolds? What about Matt Harrington or Mark Mangum? And who can forget the Rockies first ever first round pick, John Burke and his -0.5 rWAR in 28 major league games?