The day after exchanging the biggest star in his franchise, Rockies owner Dick Monfort and general manager Jeff Bridich tried to explain themselves to the media.
It wasn’t pretty.
The surreal hour-long press conference on Tuesday had the tone of a public whip as Monfort and Bridich tried to explain why they sent Nolan Arenado to St. Louis, and also agreed to send $ 51 million to make the deal fly. . Monfort could only regret Arenado’s departure while he struggled to deal with an exchange that had already been widely criticized by Rockies fans.
“I’m a fan. I really am,” said Monfort. “I understand how they feel. And to be quite honest, I would probably feel the same way and maybe even feel the same way. When we hired Nolan, it was an attempt to keep him for the rest of his career. But things change. ”
Meanwhile, at another Zoom press conference taking place at the same time, Arenado answered softball questions from the St. Louis media about the Cardinals’ glorious past and bright future.
“As a child, you dream of winning a World Series, and that is still the dream now,” he said. “To join this organization, they are concerned with winning and doing things, and this is really exciting.”
Less than two years after Arenado signed the biggest contract in Denver’s professional sports history – eight years, $ 260 million – he was gone. On Monday, he was officially negotiated with the Cardinals in an unbalanced deal that saw the Rockies acquire holder Austin Gomber and four candidates, none of whom were among the Cardinals’ top five.
The trade took over a year to build. According to the Rockies, Arenado asked to be traded after a disappointing 2019 season, in which he finished 71-91 after going into the playoffs in consecutive years.
“If I had my druthers, I would prefer Nolan Arenado,” said Monfort. “But it wasn’t anyone’s choice. He wanted to move on. I speculated last year (how much) why. I talked a lot with Nolan about it last year. But the fact is, I think he felt it was time to try something else. “
Reporters pressured Bridich and asked if the exchange was the result of the organization’s failure, the result of a feud between Bridich and his third base – or both.
“If you want to pass the blame, blame me,” said Bridich. “It is the GM’s job to create a team that competes and wins as much as humanly possible.”
About a year ago, Arenado, upset at the team’s direction and furious that Bridich ended business negotiations with several teams, said he felt “disrespected” by Bridich.
On Tuesday, smiling from ear to ear as he joined his new team, Arenado did not want to revisit the rivalry.
“I think that when you have a contract like mine and are losing, a lot of contracts are usually moved,” he said. “This is more or less what happened now. I signed (Colorado) to stay there for a long time. I wanted to win there, it didn’t work, so you move on. “
Bridich, who had never spoken publicly about his deteriorating relationship with Arenado, said: “It wasn’t always peaches with cream. There have been bumps here and there and relationships change over time.
“There are relationships in our human existence that last forever. But we are human beings in a business where relationships sometimes don’t last forever and commitments don’t last forever. … In that case, Nolan’s desire was to move on and be with a different organization. We try to honor that. “
The Rockies tried to negotiate Arenado last year, but the teams refused the high asking price. As losses continued into the shortened 2020 pandemic season and financial losses increased as Arenado’s situation worsened, the Rockies decided the time to change was now.
Monfort calculated that Arenado would use his opt-out clause after the 2021 season and realized that choosing five players now would be better than getting just one choice in the draft in compensation when Arenado left.
“We try to get the greatest possible return,” said Monfort. “Many teams with whom we talked about business made no sense. There have been times in the past two weeks when I didn’t think the St. Louis trade made sense. “
Arenado, however, said he was uncertain whether he would have exercised the opt-out clause after the 2021 season, leaving $ 164 million at stake during a period when the pandemic significantly altered baseball’s financial landscape.
“I don’t know if I would have done that,” he said on Tuesday. “It would have been a (difficult) decision to leave my contract out there, obviously.”
Regardless, the eight-year Arenado era in Colorado is over. He is wearing his eight gold gloves, four platinum gloves, 0.293 career batting average and 235 home runs at Busch Stadium, in the shadow of Gateway Arch.
The Rocky Mountains? Despite losing their best player, and despite an exhausted agricultural system that is among the worst five, they insist that Arenado’s departure is not the first blow of the wrecking ball. Bridich, in fact, dismissed the idea that the Rocky Mountains are starting over.
“There are levels and variations in the reconstruction process, but it is certainly not a total disassembly and reconstruction as certain teams have decided,” he said. “I think that if that were the case, certain players would have already been dealt with.”
Finally, near the end of the ordeal, Monfort was asked if he had thought to fire Bridich based on Colorado’s performance after the 2017 and 18 playoff rounds.
“No, I didn’t think to fire Jeff,” he said. “I thought about saying goodbye, but I didn’t think about saying Jeff.”
How did the Rockies do under their general managers?
The Colorado Rockies had three general managers in its history: Bob Gebhard from 1993 to 1999, Dan O’Dowd from 2000 to 2014 and Jeff Bridich since 2015. None has a general record of victories over their time with the Rockies. The graph shows where the Rocky Mountains ended in NL West each season *. The size of the circle corresponds to the games that came back from first place. WC = lost in the wild game, DS = lost in the split series; WS = lost in the World Series. Click / hover your mouse for details.
The trade
In February 2019, Nolan Arenado, third baseman of the Rocky Mountains, signed an eight-year, $ 260 million contract that owner Dick Monfort believed would keep Arenado in Colorado for his entire career.
On Monday, Arenado was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. Here are the details of the trade:
- Rockies agreed to send the Cardinals $ 51 million over several years to help pay for their new deal.
- Arenado agreed to postpone the money, but also added another year to his contract ($ 15 million), taking him to 2027 with St. Louis.
- Arenado resigned his contract without clauses to join the Cardinals, but the non-trade clause was reinstated.
- Arenado maintained opt-out clauses after the 2021 and ’22 seasons.
- The Rockies received five players in return: big-league and southpaw Austin Gomber, as well as right-handed players Tony Locey and Jake Sommer, and field players Elehuris Montero and Mateo Gil.