Headlines

Go To Pro Hockey Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Rockies Rumors

Rockies Place Garrett Hampson On 10-Day IL, Recall Colton Welker

By | at

The Rockies have announced that they’ve placed infielder/outfielder Garrett Hampson on the 10-day injured list with a right hand contusion and recalled infielder Colton Welker from Triple-A.

Hampson has only appeared in three of Colorado’s games on the season thus far, stepping to the plate 12 times. He has a slash line of .111/.273/.111 in what is obviously a very small sample. The 27-year-old now have at least ten days to rest his hand and perhaps head out on a rehab assignment to try and get into a better groove at the plate.

Welker had been shelved during Spring Training with an eye infection, per Danielle Allentuck of The Denver Gazette. (Twitter links) He made his MLB debut last year and didn’t hit much, slashling .189/.250/.216, though in a small sample of just 40 plate appearances. In 98 Triple-A plate appearances last year, he hit .286/.378/.476, 114 wRC+. He’d been off to a great start in Triple-A this year, hitting .375/.447/.594 in 38 trips to the plate. As a corner infielder, the 24-year-old could give third baseman Ryan McMahon or first baseman C.J. Cron the occasional day off, or slot into the DH mix.

Rockies Haven't Discussed Extension With Kyle Freeland

By | at

  • Kyle Freeland’s arbitration hearing is set for May 24, and Freeland tells The Athletic’s Nick Groke that the Rockies hasn’t yet discussed a long-term extension.  The left-hander is scheduled to reach free agency after the 2023 season, and while Freeland has battled his share of injuries and inconsistency, he has been a generally solid pitcher over his five-plus MLB seasons — a career 4.28 ERA and 48.7% grounder rate over 663 innings, all with Colorado.  Rockies GM Bill Schmidt sounded open to the idea of eventually discussing an extension, saying “Nothing’s out of the question but we need to see what happens.  We love [Freeland] and we hope he’s here for a long time.”

Jon Gray Discusses Free Agency Decision

By | at

Jon Gray spent nearly a decade in the Colorado Rockies organization, from being drafted by them in 2013 until reaching free agency after the 2021 season. Although there was apparently mutual interest in Gray staying in Colorado, the club was ultimately outbid by the Rangers, as they signed Gray to a four-year, $56MM contract.

The Rockies opened a series against Texas today, giving the Colorado media, including Danielle Allentuck of The Denver Gazette, a chance to catch up with Gray and discuss recent events. Once he became a free agent, the Rangers aggressively pursued Gray, not only in terms of their financials, but also their sales pitch in general. “It felt good to have someone say ’You are this good and this is why and we’re going to help you get there,'” Gray said.

The Rockies were apparently not pleased with this turn of events, as Allentuck reports that the relationship between Gray and the team soured to the point that there was “a little bit of fighting” as he considered taking the offer to move to Texas. There’s evidently no lingering bad blood, as Gray says that he would have been “on the fence” if the Rockies had matched the Rangers’ offer, and the sides are apparently on good terms now. Still, it’s noteworthy that the organization is developing a track record for having friction with its marquee players.

Just over two years ago, Nolan Arenado went public with his dissatisfaction, saying “there’s a lot of disrespect from people there that I don’t want to be a part of.” Before the 2021 season, he would be traded to the Cardinals. At the trade deadline last year, Trevor Story wasn’t dealt, despite being an impending free agent on a non-competitive ball club. After the clock ticked down to zero and Story was still in Colorado, he also spoke publicly, saying he was “confused” and adding, “I don’t have really anything good to say about the situation and how it unfolded.” He would eventually sign with the Red Sox. In Gray’s case, the club apparently made him an extension offer in the $35-40MM range, but then didn’t make him a qualifying offer at season’s end, ultimately losing him for nothing. Although the situation with Gray doesn’t seem quite as dramatic as with Arenado or Story, that still makes three consecutive star players that have left town with at least a hint of tension.

While outside observers can only know so much about the inner workings of the team, it surely doesn’t help matters if the club is building a reputation as one that is difficult to work with. They already face challenges luring in free agents, especially pitchers, due to the difficulties of playing at elevation. That’s compounded by the fact that they share a division with aggressive and competitive teams like the Dodgers, Giants and Padres. The appearance of conflict with important players will likely only exacerbate those burdens.

Rockies Hire Todd Helton As Special Assistant

By | at

The Rockies announced that franchise legend Todd Helton has been hired as a special assistant to GM Bill Schmidt.  According to Danielle Allentuck of The Denver Gazette (Twitter links), Helton’s primary responsibility will be working with minor league players, and Allentuck notes that Helton has already been working with prospect Michael Toglia (Colorado’s first-round pick from 2019) during Spring Training.

Helton spent all 17 of his Major League seasons with the Rockies, and is the team’s all-time leader in multiple major categories, including games, plate appearances, home runs, runs, hits, doubles, RBI, walks, total bases, and bWAR.  The first baseman hit .316/.414/.539 with 369 homers over his 9453 big league PA, with a resume that includes five All-Star appearances, four Silver Slugger awards, and three Gold Gloves.  It seems as though Helton will one day be wearing a Colorado cap into Cooperstown, as his vote total has been steadily climbing through four years on the writers’ ballot — Helton received 52% of the vote this past winter, up from 44.9% in 2021, 29.2% in 2020, and 16.5% in 2019.

Special assistant duties tend to vary greatly from person to person and from team to team, with the duties generally tailored towards the specialties of the individual.  In Helton’s case, he “will essentially be a roaming coach,” Allentuck writes, as Helton had expressed an interest in taking on more of a role with his old organization.

Offseason In Review: Colorado Rockies

By | at

Despite three straight losing seasons, the Rockies believe in their core and backed it up with a series of extensions, along with one huge free agent strike.

Major League Signings

Options Exercised

  • Charlie Blackmon, OF: exercised $21MM player option. (Blackmon also has a $10MM player option for 2023 and has already said he will exercise that option as well.)

Trades and Claims

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

Notable Losses

The Rockies have long had a reputation for loyalty, often filling their front office vacancies from within. The most recent evidence of this was last year’s hiring of Bill Schmidt to replace departing general manager Jeff Bridich. Schmidt has been with the Rockies since 1999 and became interim GM in May of last year. The “interim” tag was dropped from his title just as the regular season was winding down in early October, allowing Schmidt to head into his first offseason as the one making the baseball decisions.

Schmidt decided to pay that loyalty forward to the players, as he handed out extensions to four members of the roster. Just a few days after officially becoming GM, even before the playoffs were done and the offseason began in earnest, C.J. Cron and Antonio Senzatela were signed to stick around. In Cron’s case, he was a few weeks away from hitting free agency. Senzatela was still two years away from the open market, but the club also announced his extension on the same day as Cron’s, keeping him in the mountains through at least 2026, with a club option for 2027.

A few weeks later, it was Elias Diaz’s turn. The catcher had one year of team control remaining, but the club gave him a three-year deal, allowing them to hold on to him for an extra two seasons. After the lockout, the Rockies managed to get one more player to put pen to paper, signing Ryan McMahon to a five-year extension that bought out his final two years of arbitration eligibility and his first three free agent years. (However, McMahon can earn the right to opt out of the deal if he becomes an MVP contender.)

The club’s apparent faith in their guys is admirable, though it often clashes with the way they are viewed from the outside. In February of 2020, owner Dick Monfort predicted a 94-win season for the club, despite the fact that they were coming off a 71-91 finish in 2019 and hadn’t made any significant outside additions. After the pandemic reduced the season to just 60 games, Colorado ended up going 26-34. Given the unprecedented nature of that bizarre year, it would have been understandable if they didn’t want to drastically alter their view of their own organization. However, they did trade away Nolan Arenado after a public spat between the star and the team. Despite that, the faith remained, as Monfort had this to say in the wake of the Arenado deal in February of 2021: “I truly in my heart believe that this is a very talented team that underperformed the last couple of years. I’m not even going to count last year because it was a difficult year, but I think we underperformed.” Despite that belief in the core, it was another disappointing season in 2021, as the club went 74-87, staring way up at the Giants and Dodgers, who topped the division with 107 and 106 wins, respectively.

There won’t be 100% continuity, though, as there will be a couple of significant players absent. As last year’s trade deadline neared, the Rockies were sitting on a record of 46-59, 13 1/2 games out of a playoff spot. They had a couple of quality regulars in Jon Gray and Trevor Story who made for logical trade chips as they were both heading into free agency at season’s end. However, both players stayed in Colorado beyond the deadline, something that left Story feeling confused. In Gray’s case, the club made an attempt to extend him with an offer in the $35-40MM range, an offer he wisely turned down, eventually securing a $56MM guarantee from the Rangers. The Rockies curiously declined to make him a qualifying offer, meaning they received no compensation for his departure, making the lack of deadline deal all the more confounding. In Story’s case, though he hung around free agency past the lockout, it never seemed like there were much interest in bringing him back to Colorado. He eventually signed with the Red Sox, with the Rockies at least receiving a draft pick due to his rejection of the qualifying offer.

The period between the end of the season and the lockout was fairly quiet for the Rockies, at least in terms of new additions. In addition to the aforementioned extensions, they also re-signed Jhoulys Chacin in November. At the end of November, just before the lockout, their interest in Kris Bryant was first reported. But at the time, that seemed to be something of a pipe dream, as he was predicted to sign a contract in the range of $160MM, while the Rockies had never given a free agent more than the $70MM they gave to Ian Desmond. The lockout came with Bryant still unsigned and the Rockies still without the power bat they desired.

During the lockout, with transactions frozen, the club focused on in-house matters, extending manager Bud Black’s contract by another year. He was set to enter a lame-duck season in 2022 but now has a bit of extra security. As for other internal matters, the club fired director of research and development Scott Van Lenten, whom they had just hired months earlier in an attempt to pay catch-up in the analytics game. Though we don’t know exactly what the “major disagreements” were that led to the firing, it’s fair to wonder if this is another example of the club’s commitment to certain approaches actually becoming an alienating stubbornness.

Although teams were forbidden from contacting players and agents during the lockout, word trickled out that the Rockies had some interest in Kyle Schwarber and Michael Conforto as alternate routes to adding some power to their outfield mix. However, once the lockout ended and communications re-opened, it became clear that Colorado’s interest in Conforto was mild, and Schwarber quickly signed with the Phillies.

The Rockies’ first significant addition in the post-lockout period was adding Jose Iglesias, a low-cost move designed to fill the shortstop vacancy left by Story. That was followed by yet another low-cost move, adding Chad Kuhl to take Gray’s rotation spot. Alex Colome was then added to the bullpen mix. Those three additions combined for just a $12.1MM increase to the club’s payroll.

The big move was still to come, as reports started emerging that the club was aggressively pursuing Bryant. Although they reportedly considered other options like Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler and Corey Dickerson, their desire for Bryant never wavered and they eventually landed him on a seven-year, $182MM contract, more than doubling their Desmond deal. The Rockies finally had the big slugger and face-of-the-franchise superstar they desired, taking the mantle previously held by Arenado and Story.

That would certainly be the biggest move of their offseason, though they managed to add a bit more pop to the outfield by acquiring Randal Grichuk from the Blue Jays, sacrificing the speed and contact profile of Raimel Tapia, who went to Toronto. The club’s payroll is currently projected at $134MM, per Jason Martinez of Roster Resource, just a bit shy of their franchise record of $145MM, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

In the end, a lot of the core is being carried over. Gray, Story and Tapia are out. Bryant, Grichuk, Iglesias, Kuhl and Colome are in. Whether that latter group marks a significant improvement over the former is a matter of debate. (For what it’s worth, Gray, Story and Tapia produced 6.2 fWAR last year, while the latter group was worth 5.0.) As much as Bryant makes sense for the team, he alone can’t turn a 74-win team into a 94-win one. There isn’t likely to be much help coming from the farm either, as each of FanGraphs, MLB Pipeline, Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus have just one Colorado farmhand on their top prospect lists: 20-year-old Zac Veen, who has only played A-ball in his lone season in the professional ranks.

In order for the Rockies to perform better than they have in the past three years and get back to postseason contention, they will need that core to step forward. Ryan McMahon, Brendan Rodgers, Garrett Hampson, Connor Joe, Sam Hilliard, Kyle Freeland, and Austin Gomber are the players who will have to justify the team’s faith and prove they’re capable of either greater production or consistency than they’ve shown so far.

While it may be hard to see the club’s plan at times, it’s at least admirable that they believe they can win and are acting like it. Though that may seem more like a baseline expectation than something to boast about, it’s certainly not something that can be said of every team these days.

Drew Butera Retires

By | at

Drew Butera has made the leap from the roster to the coaching staff, as Sam Blum of The Athletic reports that Butera will now act as the bullpen catcher for the Angels.

Butera was selected by the Mets in the fifth round of the 2005 draft but was traded before making it to the big leagues. In 2007, he was sent to the Twins as part of the deal for second baseman Luis Castillo. Butera went on to make his MLB debut as a Twin in 2010 and played parts of four seasons in Minnesota. Although he didn’t hit much in that time, he did rack up one significant career highlight in that stretch, as he caught Francisco Liriano’s 2011 no-hitter.

He was traded to the Dodgers at the deadline in 2013 and spent a season and a half there, catching a second no-hitter, this time with Josh Beckett in 2014. After that season, he was traded across town to the Angels, playing just ten games for them in 2015 before being traded to the Royals. This proved to be an extremely fortuitous deal for Butera, as Kansas City would go on to win the World Series that fall. In the final game of the series, the club’s starting catcher, Salvador Perez, was removed for a pinch runner, which led to Butera catching the final strike as Wade Davis struck out Wilmer Flores to clinch the title.

The following year was probably Butera’s best, at least at the plate. He hit .285/.328/.480 for a wRC+ of 115 in 56 games, a showing that earned him a two-year, $3.8MM deal to stay in KC. He was traded to the Rockies in the second year of that deal and then spent the next few seasons there, with a brief interlude in the Phillies organization for Spring Training 2019. Last year, he got into 12 games with the Angels, the team with which he will now stay on in his new role.

Butera, 38, finishes his career having made 1,473 plate appearances in 556 MLB games over 12 seasons, racking up 262 hits, 59 doubles, 5 triples, 19 homers, 123 runs scored and 123 runs batted in. He caught the final out of a World Series and a pair of no-hitters. MLBTR congratulates Butera on a fine playing career and wishes him the best in his coaching career and any other post-playing ventures.

Rockies Select Ty Blach

By | at

The Rockies announced this afternoon they’ve selected left-hander Ty Blach. The Denver native returns to the majors for the first time in three years, doing so with his hometown club. To create space on the 40-man roster, Colorado placed southpaw Ryan Rolison on the 60-day injured list.

Blach pitched in the majors each season from 2016-19. He spent the majority of that time in the NL West, suiting up with the Giants. Blach soaked up 163 2/3 innings for San Francisco in 2017, posting a 4.78 ERA. He never missed many bats, but the Creighton product filled up the strike zone and posted better than average ground-ball numbers.

After a capable first few seasons in the majors, Blach had a rough showing in 2019. He served up ten runs in his first 6 1/3 frames as a Giant that year, leading the club to designate him for assignment. Baltimore claimed him off waivers, and he made five starts for the Orioles down the stretch. Blach’s results weren’t any better there either, as he served up an 11.32 ERA. The O’s designated him that September, and he cleared waivers.

Blach returned to the Orioles as a non-roster invitee to 2020 Summer Camp, but he suffered an elbow injury that necessitated Tommy John surgery. He returned late in 2021 to toss 15 Low-A innings on a rehab assignment, but for all intents and purposes, the procedure cost him the last two seasons.

After qualifying for minor league free agency, Blach signed a minors deal with the Rox. He’ll break camp with the big league team, presumably in a long relief capacity. While he has experience as a starter, Colorado is set to open the year with a rotation of Germán Márquez, Kyle Freeland, Antonio Senzatela, Austin Gomber and Chad Kuhl. The depth behind that group is pretty thin, however, meaning Blach could get a look in the event of an injury to any of the starting five.

Rolison was among the depth options, but he’ll miss at least the first two months of the season with what the team is calling a shoulder strain. Thomas Harding of MLB.com reported this afternoon (Twitter link) that he’ll be shut down for two weeks after receiving an anti-inflammatory injection. He’ll need a fair bit of time thereafter to gradually ramp back up, so it’s not a huge surprise the club is ruling him out until at least early June.

A former first-round pick, Rolison has yet to make his big league debut. He made ten starts with Triple-A Albuquerque last season, pitching to a disappointing 5.91 ERA in 45 2/3 innings. Despite those struggles, Baseball America slotted him fourth in the Rockies farm system this winter. According to BA, his plus curveball and command could give Rolison a chance to emerge as a back-of-the-rotation option, but he’ll first need to get healthy.

Kyle Freeland To Make Second Opening Day Start

By | at

  • Kyle Freeland will get the ball on opening day for the Rockies, per Danielle Allentuck of The Gazette. It will be his second time as the Rockies’ opening day starter, having done so in 2019 as well. No Rockies starter has ever made three opening day starts for the club. The 28-year-old has put together 191 1/3 innings of 4.33 ERA/4.64 FIP over the past two seasons after a disastrous 2019 campaign.

Blue Jays, Rockies Swap Randal Grichuk For Raimel Tapia

By | at

3:32PM: Toronto will send Colorado $9,716,333, according to Rob Gillies of The Associated Press.  Those payments are split up as $5,383,333 this season and $4,333,333 for the 2023 season.

1:57PM: Both clubs have officially announced the trade.

12:01PM: The Blue Jays and Rockies have agreed to a trade sending outfielder Randal Grichuk from Toronto to Colorado in exchange for outfielder Raimel Tapia, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com (via Twitter). The Jays will acquire infield prospect Adrian Pinto from the Rockies, and they’ll also send cash to Colorado to help cover Grichuk’s contract, Feinsand adds.

Grichuk, 30, has been viewed as a trade candidate for more than a year now as the Rockies have deepened their outfield mix and Grichuk’s performance has slipped. Signed to a five-year contract covering the 2019-23 seasons, Grichuk is still owed $9.33MM both this season and next, while Tapia and the Rox settled on a $3.95MM salary earlier this week. He’s arbitration-eligible and controlled through the 2023 season himself. The difference in salary between the two players clocks in at about $14.7MM.

Randal Grichuk | David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

Grichuk signed a five-year, $52MM contract back on April 2, 2019 — fresh off a 2018 season in which he’d batted .245/.301/.502 with what was then a career-high 25 home runs in 462 plate appearances. It was something of a head-scratching deal even at the time, as Grichuk’s perennial OBP struggles worked to offset his power and solid glovework in the outfield. That’s not to say he wasn’t a useful player, but the Jays already controlled Grichuk for two seasons and were effectively committing about $39-40MM on top of what he might’ve earned in arbitration to buy out his first three free-agent seasons.

Since putting pen to paper, Grichuk has posted a .242/.286/.448 batting line with 65 home runs in 1414 plate appearances. Among the 159 players with at least 1000 plate appearances in that three-year stretch, he ranks 158th in on-base percentage. To his credit, Grichuk curbed his strikeout rate from 26.4% in 2018 all the way down to 20.9% in 2021, but the gains in contact didn’t result in a better average and his walk rate dipped to a career-low 5.0%. It’s clear that there’s above-average pop in his bat, but defensive metrics have also soured on Grichuk’s work in center over the past couple seasons. Meanwhile, the Jays have signed George Springer and received breakouts from Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Teoscar Hernandez since signing Grichuk to that long-term pact.

There were reports even while the lockout was still ongoing that Tapia could be on the move when transactions resumed. Adding Kris Bryant as the new primary left fielder surely only hastened the Rockies’ efforts to move Tapia, who’d previously occupied that position. Grichuk can serve as a primary center fielder or right fielder in Colorado, and he’ll bring the Rox quite a bit more power than Tapia ever offered — albeit at the expense of some speed, on-base percentage and (arguably) defensive value.

Raimel Tapia | Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports

In Tapia, the Jays will get a much-needed lefty bat to help balance out an entirely right-handed outfield mix (and a generally right-leaning lineup overall). The 28-year-old has served as Colorado’s primary left fielder since 2019, logging a .282/.327/.394  slash line that appears solid on the surface but falls well shy of average after weighting for home park and league (79 wRC+). Tapia has strong bat-to-ball skills but an extreme ground-ball approach that has resulted in just 16 home runs through 1186 plate appearances since 2019. He can swipe a base when needed (37 steals with a 77.1% success rate across the past three seasons. Like Grichuk, he’s not one to take many walks (6.3% since ’19), but he’s also a tough strikeout, evidenced by last year’s career-best 13.1% mark.

Tapia has received solid marks in left field from metrics like Defensive Runs Saved (4), Ultimate Zone Rating (6.0) and Outs Above Average (7) since emerging as a regular in the lineup at Coors Field. He’s at least capable of playing center in a pinch, having logged 189 innings there in his career (15 this past season, none in 2020, 83 in 2019). Those ratings, plus his left-handed bat, make him a better fit for Toronto’s roster than the right-handed-hitting Grichuk was.

While Tapia may not be the star the Rockies envisioned when he ranked among the sport’s 50 best prospects in the 2016-17 offseason, he’s emerged as a solid defensive outfielder with better-than-average speed and bat-to-ball skills. The Jays will likely hope to coax some more fly-balls out of Tapia, thus generating some extra power, but even if his batted-ball profile remains unchanged, he can be a useful fourth outfielder for a club that is deep in slugging right-handed options.

As for the 19-year-old Pinto, he’ll give the Jays something of a prospect wild card to plug into the low levels of their farm system. Baseball America rated Pinto 19th in a fairly thin Rockies system this spring, labeling the 5’6″ second baseman as a “breakout candidate” who could take substantial steps forward as he moves from the Dominican Summer League to a full-season affiliate.

Pinto hit .360/.486/.543 in 224 DSL plate appearances last season, walking at a massive 17% clip against just an 8% strikeout rate while leading the league with 41 stolen bases. BA’s scouting report lauds his “outstanding” hand-eye coordination, advanced pitch recognition skills and plus-plus speed. Players of his size and stature will always have their share of skeptics, but the Jays probably feel better about paying Grichuk to play elsewhere if they’re viewing part of the transaction as an effective purchase of Pinto from the Rockies.

Rockies Extend Ryan McMahon

By | at

The Rockies and infielder Ryan McMahon have agreed to terms on a six-year contract extension that will guarantee McMahon $70MM, tweets ESPN’s Jeff Passan. McMahon is represented by Wasserman.

Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reports the specific financial breakdown (on Twitter). McMahon will make $5MM this year, $9MM in 2023, successive $12MM salaries in 2024-25 and $16MM in each of 2026 and 2027. Should he finish in the top five in MVP voting in any of the next three years, he’d earn the right to opt out of the contract after the 2025 campaign. If he finishes in the top five in MVP voting in 2025, he’d have an opt-out possibility after 2026.

Ryan McMahon | Sergio Estrada-USA TODAY Sports

Prior to hammering out this new six-year pact, McMahon was arbitration-eligible for the second time in his career and projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz to earn $5.5MM this coming season. The contract buys out his final two arbitration seasons and four would-be free-agent seasons. There’s no way of knowing exactly what McMahon would’ve earned in 2022-23 via arbitration, but using that projection and a rough estimate for the 2023 season, the contract is paying McMahon around $13-14MM per free-agent season. The terms fall roughly in line with some older deals we’ve seen for infielders with four-plus years of service time, including Brandon Belt (six years, $79MM) and Brandon Crawford (six years, $75MM — also negotiated by Wasserman).

McMahon, 27, had a the best season of his career both at the plate and with the glove in 2021. The former second-round pick batted .254/.331/.449 with 23 home runs, 32 doubles, a triple and six stolen bases (in eight attempts). Park-adjusted metrics like wRC+ (95) and OPS+ (98) both felt McMahon’s overall contributions with the bat were a bit south of league-average, but given the strength of his glovework, he still proved plenty valuable.

McMahon not only provided the Rockies with versatility, logging 368 innings at second base and 842 innings at third base — he did so while playing both positions at award-worthy levels. McMahon logged a whopping nine Defensive Runs Saved in just that tiny 368-inning sample at second base, and he racked up 13 DRS at the hot corner despite not playing a full slate of games there. Virtually any metric one might prefer agreed that McMahon was outstanding with the leather; he registered Ultimate Zone Ratings of 6.1 and 2.9 at third base and second base, respectively, while Statcast credited him for 10 outs above average at third base and another two at second.

It’s easy to imagine that with a full season of games at the hot corner in 2021 — Brendan Rodgers is expected to man second base, with free-agent signee Jose Iglesias taking the reins at shortstop and Kris Bryant playing primarily left field — McMahon might find himself taking home some hardware for that defensive excellence. He was a Gold Glove finalist in 2021 as it is, although the man standing in his way is a very familiar face: longtime teammate and five-time Platinum Glover Nolan Arenado, now with the Cardinals.

Like any long-term deal, the signing isn’t without its risks for the Rockies. While McMahon’s strong defense and solid walk rate (9.9% in 2021; 10% in his career) give him a high floor, the offensive gains made in 2021 will need to be sustained for the deal to pan out in Colorado’s favor.

McMahon buoyed his production by finally curtailing some pronounced strikeout issues that had dogged him throughout his MLB tenure. From 2017-20, McMahon whiffed in 30.8% of his plate appearances — including a career-worst 34.2% in 2020’s shortened slate of games. That rate fell to a much more manageable 24.7% in 2021. McMahon has always had power and a knack for making hard contact, so as long as he can keep the punchouts down, there’s good reason to believe he can continue to be a reasonably productive bat — at least against right-handed pitching. The lefty-swinging McMahon slashed just .229/.312/.353 against southpaws in 2021 (173 plate appearances) and is a career .239/.310/.433) hitter against same-handed opponents.

The Rockies underwent a front office shuffle early in the 2021 season, dismissing longtime general manager Jeff Bridich and elevating scouting director Bill Schmidt to the GM post on an interim basis. Rather than perform a search and look for external candidates, owner Dick Monfort instead dropped the “interim” tag from Schmidt’s title before the season even ended.

Schmidt, who’s been running the Rockies’ scouting department since 1999, quickly went to work ensuring that several members of the Colorado roster would remain in place. Trevor Story had seemingly made up his mind to move on before the year ended, and the Rox were unable to sway righty Jon Gray in extension talks. However, they’ve also succeeded in brokering long-term deals for Antonio Senzatela (five years, $55MM), catcher Elias Diaz (three years, $14MM) and now McMahon — in addition to re-signing first baseman C.J. Cron before he even reached the market (two years, $14.5MM). That group now joins the team’s marquee addition, Bryant, among a restructured Rockies core.

Show all

MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com

Do not Sell or Share My Personal Information

hide arrows scroll to top