Colorado Rockies decline team option on outfielder Gerardo Parra

On Tuesday evening, the Colorado Rockies announced that they will decline their team option for $12.5 million on outfielder Gerardo Parra.

For many options on player’s contracts, the deadline to decide on whether to exercise the option or not is this week. For the Rockies, they only had one player that had an option for this season in Gerardo Parra and on Tuesday, it was reported that the Rockies will decline their option.

It was for $12.5 million but instead of having to pay that, the Rockies will only have to pay $1.5 million to buy his contract out.

In his three years with the Rockies, the left-handed hitting outfielder saw a downturn in both his offensive production and defensive metrics.

Offensively, prior to coming to Colorado before the 2016 season, he had a career OPS+ of 97 while averaging .277/.326/.404, 8 homers, and 44 RBI while averaging 141 games played per season.

While with the Rockies, he averaged .283/.320/.407, an OPS+ of 80, 8 homers, and 52 RBI in just an average of 120 games per season.

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Defensively prior to joining the Rockies, he had 63 Defensive Runs Saved, or DRS, according to Baseball Reference in addition to 2 Gold Glove Awards. While with the Rockies, he had 0 DRS, primarily because he had -11 DRS in his first year with the Rockies.

With the team option being declined, I highly doubt that Parra will find his way back to a Rockies uniform unless it is very late in the offseason and Parra were to take a very large pay cut, like what happened with Carlos Gonzalez this past offseason as the Rockies resigned him to a 1 year contract for $5 million when he made $20 million in 2017.

With Gonzalez a free agent as well, the Rockies outfield depth chart looks rather thin.

In fact, if you look at their depth chart on MLB.com, it has David Dahl as the top player in both left and right field.

Ian Desmond could slot into the mix or a prospect like Raimel Tapia or Noel Cuevas could also factor but I think that it goes without saying that finding an outfielder will be one of the Rockies priorities this offseason.