Jonathan Broxton and another trade the Colorado Rockies did not make

Let us establish the same qualifiers here that we did for the outfield trade that the Colorado Rockies did not make: there is no way to know how these trade negotiations have gone around the league or whether the Rockies ever even got reasonable offers for a relief pitcher or any other player.

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With that out of the way, we can still look at the action around the rest of the league, identify the fact that contending teams saw value in certain types of players and were willing to give up assets to acquire those players, and notice that the Rockies made zero moves and appeared to not even try.

The latest example under consideration is a deal executed on Sunday between division rivals. In a waiver trade with less than 24 hours until the September 1st deadline for postseason eligibility, the Cincinnati Reds sent hard-throwing relief pitcher Jonathan Broxton to the Milwaukee Brewers for two players to be named later.

Now submitted for your consideration, the statistics and contract situations for Broxton and Rockies’ closer LaTroy Hawkins.

• Broxton: 48.1 innings, 1.86 ERA, seven saves, and a three-year, $21 million contract with a club option for next season
• Hawkins: 47 innings, 2.26 ERA, 22 saves, and a $2.5 million deal with a club option for next season

To be fair, Hawkins’ tiny contract is likely why the Rockies want to keep him another year, but are you telling me that the Rockies could not obtain value for Hawkins given the package the Reds got for Broxton? That’s not to mention the premium that a playoff team might place on Hawkins’ leadership in the locker room.

There clearly would have been a market for Hawkins if the Rockies were selling. That means they had a chance to sell high on a reliever who will be 42 next season, a season in which the Rockies are unlikely to contend.

They made no such trade, apparently choosing to forget that bullpen arms are wholly unpredictable from one season to the next while also being the cheapest to replace, relatively speaking. But hey, let’s definitely keep a 42-year-old closer who has arguably been protected this season by the fact that he hasn’t had many save opportunities to begin with because the Rockies are so awful.

This has been the latest installment of trades that the Rockies didn’t make.