Are the Rockies Finally Ready to Rebuild?

The Colorado Rockies do weird things. Whether it’s reorganizing the front office in a way that puts the GM in charge of the farm system instead of the major league roster or having the new GM put an office in the clubhouse, they operate in a way that is unusual for an MLB franchise. Even their player personnel decisions can be a bit odd; heads were certainly scratched after the team made Michael Cuddyer a qualifying offer on Monday, for instance.

The big knock on the Rockies is that they seem unable to commit to a direction or a purpose. Despite four straight losing seasons, they’ve been unwilling to attempt to rebuild, rebuffing offers for not just their star players but for expensive role players like Jorge de la Rosa. Making Cuddyer the qualifying offer appeared to be yet another sign of a team that seems intent on trying to keep the pieces in place together, despite the fact that there’s mounting evidence that this roster just isn’t good enough to contend.

Except maybe extending the qualifying offer to Cuddyer didn’t mean that. A few days after that decision was made, Ken Rosenthal reported that the team has “their eyes and ears open” to potential trades for both Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez, a significant change in stance, as previously both players had been off-limits to suitors. You don’t let teams know that your two best players are finally available if you don’t think there’s a real chance you could trade either or both, and so it seems like the Rockies are finally ready to shake things up and try something different.

So, why make the 35 year old Cuddyer a qualifying offer if you’re planning on blowing things up? Because the calculations for making a QO for a rebuilding team are quite a bit different than for a team that expected to need to maximize payroll efficiency.

Cuddyer’s open market value is probably somewhere in the $10 million range on a two or three year deal, so making him an offer of $15 million for one year means that the team has committed to overpaying by a few million if he accepts the offer. But having an overpaid player that other teams still want isn’t the worst thing in the world for a rebuilding team, as they could simply pay part of his 2015 salary to make him a more desirable trade chip over the summer. With spending restrictions on signing amateur talent, paying the salaries of veteran players to acquire prospects in trade is one of the few ways left to essentially buy talent. Even if Cuddyer accepts the qualifying offer, the Rockies could likely flip him for something of value as long as they kick in a few million dollars, so having him accept isn’t really that harmful to the franchise.

And if he turns it down and gives a contender a discount in annual salary in order to get the multi-year deal he prefers, then the Rockies will receive a compensatory pick in next summer’s draft. Either way, they’d get the chance to add some young talent to the organization. Keeping Cuddyer at $15 million is only really an issue if having him on the books prevented them from making other necessary upgrades, but if they’re trading Tulowitzki and Gonzalez, few free agents of note would have been interested in taking their money to begin with. If you’re blowing things up, it’s better to have expensive trade chips that you can pay down in trade rather than having a bunch of unspent money that no one wants to take.

While it might seem counterintuitive, making the qualifying offer to Cuddyer actually makes more sense in the wake of the news about the availability of Tulowitzki and Gonzalez. It seems like perhaps new GM Jeff Bridich has finally convinced ownership of the need to rebuild, and perhaps the Rockies can start to commit to a direction and stick with it for once. While both Tulo and Gonzalez dealt with injuries again, and both have proven to be quite fragile, putting them on the market this winter actually seems to make some sense, rather than trying to let both prove that they’re healthy before accepting bids.

The idea of keeping both stars until they’re healthy in order to raise their market value seems wise, but let’s think about the logistics of what that might actually look like; in any scenario where both Tulo and CarGo are healthy and playing well, the Rockies are probably also probably a semi-competitive team. After all, they did go 16-12 in April when Tulo was tearing the cover off the ball, and even though this isn’t a great team when both are healthy, it will be a more difficult decision to move either player while the team hangs around the periphery of the Wild Card race.

With a healthy Tulo and CarGo, the Rockies are good enough to convince themselves to not blow things up; the reality of the necessary rebuild only becomes obvious when those two are not able to take the field, exposing a weak supporting cast that can’t make up for the loss of the team’s best players. The dream scenario of being able to trade both players at the peak of their value is probably unrealistic, because at the peak of their value, ownership is going to remember why they’ve been previously unwilling to trade them, and commence the annual spinning of their wheels.

The Rockies best chance to get out of this death spiral is to trade both players now. A weak free agent class on the position player side of things will help drive up demand for the team’s two star hitters, even as both have questions surrounding their health. Teams are more inclined to make blockbuster deals in the offseason anyway, and with teams like Boston actively looking to exchange multiple players for a controllable star, there are teams who will likely take the risk on the health of a younger star rather than taking the risk on a long-term deal for an aging free agent.

After all, while the talking points always center around Tulowitzki’s health, keep in mind that he posted a +5 WAR season in 2014 even while playing just 91 games, and he was over over +5 WAR in 126 games in 2013 as well. Over the last two years, while combining for just 887 plate appearances, Tulo still ranks 11th among position players in WAR. You pay for production, and Tulo’s health risks are offset by his absurd ability to play well when he’s on the field.

Even with the injury problems, Tulowitzki is one of the game’s premier players, and his contract is still well below market value. Shin-Soo Choo got $140 million over seven years last winter; Tulo is due $15 million less than that even if his seventh year option is picked up, which would likely mean that he stayed healthy enough to be worth keeping. Jose Reyes got $102 million over six years coming off an excellent season shortened by injury, and that was three years ago; baseball salaries have only gone up since.

There will be a strong market for Troy Tulowitzki, and Gonzalez should be able to fetch a decent return as well, especially if the Rockies pick up some of the cost of his salary. We’ll deal with a fair return for both players in another post, but for now, I’d suggest that Rockies fans should take this as somewhat promising news. A directionless franchise might actually be ready to commit to an overdue rebuild. Things might really be changing in Colorado for once.