Colorado Rockies: Should they acquire Christian Yelich from Miami?

One of the biggest storylines of the offseason has been the firesale of the Miami Marlins under new ownership, led by Chief Executive Officer Derek Jeter. They have already traded right fielder Giancarlo Stanton, left fielder Marcell Ozuna, and second baseman Dee Gordon to the New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, and Seattle Mariners, respectively. Even though they have traded three of their main players, it doesn’t look like they are content with trading away just three players.

Yesterday afternoon, Jon Morosi of FOX Sports, MLB.com, and MLB Network reported on Twitter that the Miami Marlins still are looking to complete a firesale as they are “engaged in ‘active trade discussions’ with multiple teams” to trade their catcher JT Realmuto and center fielder Christian Yelich.

A little over a week ago, we made the case for why the Rockies should acquire Realmuto but today, we will make the case for the Rockies acquire Marlins center fielder Christian Yelich.

Before we look at his stats, let us look at his contract. First off, he just turned 26 on December 5 so he has not even reached the prime years of his career yet. Prior to the 2015 season, he signed a seven year contract for $49.5 million. In the four years remaining on the contract, he is only owned $43 million. Most of the money is backloaded as he will not make more than $10 million until 2020. After the four years, there is also an option for $15 million for the 2022 season.

Defense

Even though he won a Gold Glove in 2014, he did not do particularly well in 2017. He ranked below league average in Defensive Runs Saved, Statcast’s Outs Above Average metric, and Statcast’s Catch Probability Leaderboard.

However, it should be noted that 2017 was Yelich’s first full season playing center field. In 2017, he had -6 Defensive Runs Saved, according to Baseball Reference. Prior to 2017, he never was below 6 Defensive Runs Saved for a full season in his MLB career (in 2013, he only played in 62 games after making his MLB debut in July). His numbers when he played in center field, though, were noticeably lower in previous seasons.

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Baserunning

In 2017, he had 16 stolen bases and in four of the five seasons that he has played in the major leagues, he has had double digits in stolen bases. His career high is 21 from 2014 and gone down since but he is still a very good baserunner.

According to Statcast’s Sprint Speed metrics, Yelich averaged a sprint speed of 28.7 feet per second. For comparison, the only player on the Rockies in 2017 that was faster was Raimel Tapia at 29.5 feet per second. Trevor Story was just behind Yelich at 28.4 feet per second.

Final Thoughts

To acquire Yelich, considering that he is on a team friendly, long term deal, it would probably take a lot to get him. However, as we mentioned in our article about JT Realmuto, the Marlins have been known to not get great returns on their players. However, if there are two players that the Marlins would want to get high returns on, it would be Realmuto and Yelich.

For Yelich alone, I would say that the Marlins would probably want one of the Rockies top five prospects, another prospect who was in the Rockies top 10, and probably one more in the top 20.

Honestly, I think that it would be perfect if the Rockies could get Realmuto and Yelich both but, quite frankly, there is virtually no chance of that happening.

However, acquiring one of the two is a lot more realistic.