The day after they traded the biggest star of their franchise, Rockies owner Dick Monfort and general manager Jeff Bridich tried to explain themselves to the media.
It was not pretty.
The surrealistic hour-long news conference on Tuesday got the feel of a public spanking, while Monfort and Bridich tried to explain why they took Nolan Arenado to St. Louis. Monfort could only regret the departure of Arenado as he struggled to secure a deal that had already been widely panned by Rockies fans.
“I’m a fan. I really am, ”said Monfort. “I understand how they feel. And to be honest, I’ll probably feel the same and maybe even feel the same. When we signed Nolan, it was an attempt to keep Nolan for the rest of his career. But things are changing. ”
Meanwhile, in another Zoom news conference running at the same time, Arenado raised softball questions from the St. Louis media focused on the glorious past and bright future of the Cardinals.
“As a child, you dreamed of winning a world series, and that’s still the dream,” he said. “Joining this organization, they love winning and getting things done, and it’s really exciting.”
Less than two years after Arenado signed the largest contract in Denver’s professional sports history – eight years, $ 260 million – he’s gone. On Monday, he was officially traded to the Cardinals in a sudden deal, which resulted in the Rockies acquiring left-hander, Austin Gomber, and four prospects, and none of them were among the top five of the Cardinals.
The trade was more than a year in the making. According to the Rockies, Arenado asked to be traded after a discouraging 2019 season in which they finished 71-91 after being in the playoffs during the rugby years.
“If I had my druthers, I would rather have Nolan Arenado,” Monfort said. “But it was nobody’s choice. He wanted to move on. I’ve been wondering for the past year why this is going on. I’ve talked to Nolan about it a lot over the past year. But the fact remains that I think he just felt it was time he tried something else. ”
Reporters pushed Bridich and asked if the trade was the result of the organization’s failure, the result of a feud that arose between Bridich and his third husband (or both).
“If you want to blame, take the blame,” Bridich said. “It’s the job of the GM to put together a team that competes and wins as much as humanly possible.”
About a year ago, Arenado, upset about the direction of the team, and angry because Bridich had stopped the trade talks with several teams, said he felt he was ‘disrespected’ by Bridich.
Arenado, who grinned from ear to ear when he joined his new team, did not want to view the feud again on Tuesday.
“I think if there’s a contract like mine and you lose, a lot of contracts are usually moved,” he said. “It’s kind of what happened now. I signed up (Colorado) to be there for a long time. I wanted to win there, it did not work, so you go on. ”
Bridich, who has never spoken publicly about his deteriorating relationship with Arenado, said: ‘It was not always peaches and cream. There were bumps in places and relationships changed over time.
‘There are relationships in our human existence that last forever. But we are people in a business where relationships sometimes do not last forever and commitments do not last forever. … In this case, Nolan’s desire was to continue and be with another organization. We tried to respect that. ”
The Rockies tried to trade Arenado last year, but teams asked at the high price. As the loss continued into the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and financial losses increased while the Arenado situation faltered, the Rockies decided that the time to move was now.
Monfort calculated that Arenado would use its opt-out clause after the 2021 season, and thought it would be better now to pick up five players than to get only a single draft pick in compensation if Arenado walks away.
“We tried to make the best return possible,” Monfort said. “Many teams we spoke to made no sense. There have been times over the past two weeks that I did not think the trade in St. Louis does not make sense. ‘
However, Arenado said he was not sure he would have exercised the opt-out clause after the 2021 season, leaving $ 164 million on the table during a time when the pandemic significantly eroded the financial landscape of baseball. has changed.
“I do not know if I would have done it,” he said Tuesday. “Obviously, it would have been a (hard) decision to leave my contract out there.”
Regardless, the eight-year-old Arenado era in Colorado is over. He takes his eight gold gloves, four Platinum gloves, .293 batting average and 235 home games to Busch Stadium, in the shadow of the Gateway Arch.
The Rockies? Despite the loss of their marquee tent, and despite an exhausted farming system falling below fifth place, they insist that Arenado’s departure is not the first turn of the wreck ball. Bridich discounted the idea of the Rockies starting again.
“There are levels and variations of the rebuilding process, but it is certainly not a total breakdown and rebuilding as certain teams have chosen,” he said. “I think if it were the case that certain players would already be traded.”
Finally, at the end of the trial, Monfort was asked if he had thought about firing Bridich based on Colorado’s performance after the 2017 and ’18 playoffs.
“No, I did not think of firing Jeff,” he said. “I was thinking of firing myself, but I was not thinking of firing Jeff.”
How did the Rockies fare among their top executives?
The Colorado Rockies have had three general managers in their history: Bob Gebhard from 1993 to 1999, Dan O’Dowd from 2000 to 2014 and Jeff Bridich since 2015. None have an overall record of their time at the Rockies. The graph shows in what place the Rockies ended up in each season in the NL West. The circle size corresponds to the games from the first place. WC = lost in wild card game, DS = lost in division series; WS = lost in the World Series. Click / move for more information.
The trade
In February 2019, Nolan Arenado, Rockies’ third baseman, signed an eight-year, $ 260 million contract that, according to owner Dick Monfort, would keep Arenado for his entire career in Colorado.
Monday, Arenado is at the St. Louis Cardinals handed over. Here are the details of the trade:
- The Rockies have agreed to send $ 51 million to the Cardinals over a number of years to help pay for his new deal.
- Arenado agreed to defer money, but also added another year to his contract ($ 15 million), which took him to St. Louis. Louis in 2027.
- Arenado has renounced its no-clause contract to join the Cardinals, but the no-trade clause has since been reinstated.
- Arenado retained opt-out clauses after the 2021 and ’22 seasons.
- The Rockies received five players in return: the big league, left-back Austin Gomber, as well as right-handed prospects Tony Locey and Jake Sommer, and the prospects on the field Elehuris Montero and Mateo Gil.