There was “no trade market’ for Elias Diaz?
What, like there was no trade market for Trevor Story?
Like there was no trade market for Jon Gray?
Full disclosure: There aren’t a lot of Brad Pitts up in the Grading The Week offices these days. Oh, but we’ve got ourselves a ton of Billy Beanes. And every one of them would happily bet you a case of Voodoo Ranger Juice Force that they could run a front office better than Bill Schmidt and the Rockies right about now.
And Diaz, who was the All-Star Game MVP in July 2023 and released in August 2024, pretty much underscores exactly why.
Diaz walks, Rox shrug — D
OK, so let’s all agree that a youth movement on 20th and Blake is all well, good, and overdue. Per Baseball-Reference.com, the Rockies’ two best players as of Saturday morning, based on WAR (Wins Above Replacement), were center fielder Brenton Doyle (3.2 WAR), who’s 26, and shortstop Ezequiel Tovar (2.8), who’s 23.
Team GTW? We love athleticism up the middle, especially at Coors, where the outfield gaps swallow you whole. You build around those two guys. If 25-year-old Michael Toglia (.220 BA, .785 OPS, 19 home runs going into Saturday night), who could always pick it at first, turns around his BABIP fortunes, there’s another decent piece.
Schmidt is an old scout at heart and an old scout indeed. Like his contemporary George Paton over at the Broncos, he’s made some interesting, if often benign, short-term veteran acquisitions, “bridge” guys. And like Paton, the draft is his happy place.
But the GTW crew is starting to think a.) Schmidt overrates his ability to reshape a struggling roster through that portal alone; and b.) Schmidt maybe likes the MLB draft a little too much.
This is the only rational explanation you can give for why the Rockies repeatedly and stubbornly refuse to sell high, or even mid-high when it comes to veterans on expiring contracts.
Story? Don’t like the returns, we’ll take our chances with the draft pick in return. Gray? We’ll just take the draft pick. It’s safe. It’s risk-averse. And given the meager returns on the players acquired from the Cardinals in the trade that gave away franchise icon Nolan Arenado, maybe risk-averse is the wiser path.
But we also don’t buy the Rockies’ whispered assertions that there wasn’t a market for a 33-year-old catcher with a .270 batting average in 2024, even if said catcher was battling calf issues. Diaz led all Rockies catchers, per FiedlingBible.com, with 5 Defensive Runs Saved, while BaseballSavant.com’s tracking metrics still love Diaz’s arm (28% rate on runners caught stealing), framing and pop time.
And we sure as heck don’t buy the notion there wasn’t a market for Diaz in July and August 2023, when the images of the catcher’s massive All-Star home run in Seattle were still fresh in the mind. Yeah, yeah, we get it — backstop prospect Drew Romo “wasn’t ready” then. But was holding onto Diaz late last summer rather than selling high worth the difference between winning 59 games in 2023 and, say, winning 55 or 56?
In this game, to paraphrase Tim Robbins from the movie “The Shawshank Redemption,” the best franchises either get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’. Look up the definition of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, know what you find? A picture of the Rockies front office. Right next to the word “insanity.” LoDo deserves better. Diaz deserved better, too.
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Originally Published: August 17, 2024 at 11:48 a.m.
