Colorado Rockies: Did the Team Make a Mistake By Not Making a Trade?

The Colorado Rockies stood pat at Monday’s non-waiver trade deadline. Was this the right move? Did they miss out on an opportunity to bolster the roster? Rox Pile takes a look.

The short answer to this question is yes and no. Knowing what we know now, trading for another right-handed bat would have been a nice replacement for Trevor Story. The Colorado Rockies’ Cristhian Adames and Rafael Ynoa are nice players, but they are not at the caliber of Story.

However, the deadline was Monday, and we didn’t find out the extent of Story’s thumb injury until Tuesday.

Hindsight is sure 20/20.

The Rockies offense has not skipped a beat in Story’s absence. In the last two games against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the offense has piled on 19 runs against (admittedly) a weak (through injury) Dodgers pitching staff.

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The team boasts a 14-5 record since the All-Star break, which is the best mark in baseball. The team is above .500 in August for the first time since 2010. The team’s pitching is a combined 3.18 ERA since the break, which is the fourth-best mark in the National League.

The main name who was repeatedly mentioned in trade talks was reliever Boone Logan. But the Rockies wisely hung on to him. Apart from his rough outing against the Mets in New York last week, Logan has been lights out, with an ERA of 3.19 and a WHIP of 0.90 on the year so far.

It is a good idea to have Logan available as your lefty specialist, especially with the struggles of Jake McGee and Chris Rusin.

There wasn’t much point for general manager Jeff Bridich to mess with the chemistry of the players by trading away key contributors and bringing in a new player(s) who would have to get themselves acclimatized to the clubhouse and to the team’s culture.

Bridich did explain that he did focus on the buyer’s side of the trade market.

“We were running parallel courses on the buyers’ and sellers’ sides of the market,” Bridich said via Nick Kosmider of the Denver Post. “When we made those decisions, our focus started to go to the buyers’ side. ‘Are there other things out there that make sense for us?’ Ultimately, nothing came of that at this deadline. That doesn’t mean something won’t come up.”

Bridich was also asked about the importance for the front office to send a message to the players of not being a seller at the deadline, per Rox Pile’s Kevin Henry:

"You’d have to ask the players if it sent any message or not. We set out to do our jobs as a front office like we did last year … to understand the trade market. Last year was a little bit different. This year, there was more attention paid to the buyer’s side of the market than there was last year. We try to do that every year because you really want to know where a deal is going to come up or a concept or idea that you think that might help the club in the near future or down the road."

The Rockies have rewarded his faith by continuing to play top-level baseball. The last time the Rockies played the Dodgers in early July, the Rockies could barely score and were swept (the team scored two runs in total).

Now tonight, the team has the chance to repay the favor.

Though it would be nice to have another power right-handed bat in the lineup who would have been complementary in Story’s absence, the team made the right move in not trading anyone away at the deadline.

Now only three games back for the second NL Wild Card berth, the Rockies have a lot to play for and this current group of players have the confidence and the ability to achieve this goal.

Next: Jeff Bridich: Trade Deadline Thoughts and Postseason Talk

All statistics, records and accolades courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and MLB.com unless otherwise indicated.

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