The Colorado Rockies have too much young depth

As the Colorado Rockies come off their first postseason appearance in nearly a decade, they have a lot to be optimistic about. That being said, they face one peculiar barrier to their path forward.

They have too much young depth.

Now I know everyone always says that there’s no such thing as too much young depth — but they’re wrong. Baseball is a business and the players that make up a team’s roster don’t just drain the payroll, they fill positions that other players would otherwise occupy. There are only nine positions in the field. There are only five slots in the starting rotation.

Of course any competitive team needs depth. But, especially for a smaller-market team such as Colorado, unstructured, reckless depth can become a liability.

General Manager Jeff Bridich has done an excellent job of putting together a competitive young team, but if the Rockies want to continue to move in the right direction, he has some major decisions to make.

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Everyone expects that Los Angeles, the Chicago Cubs, Washington, and Arizona will continue to build on their 2017 success next season. That leaves just one postseason slot open and we haven’t even talked about Milwaukee, St. Louis, or a possible resurgence in San Francisco.

All of this means that in order for the Rockies to make consecutive playoff appearances for the first time in their history, they have to get better.

While assembling a team full of young talent, Bridich has been reluctant to trade away almost any of that talent. To this point in the team’s development, this has been a good principle, however we all knew that at some point decisions would need to be made.

For Jeff Bridich, that time needs to be now.

To demonstrate why the Rockies MUST make some moves this offseason, lets look at two specific areas of surplus where the Rockies have too many options.