Colorado Rockies Quick Hits: Marquez, Monfort, Arenado, CarGo

This weekend, the final weekend of the football season and the final weekend before it’s officially baseball season, there have been some things about the Colorado Rockies in the news.

On Friday, Matt Kelly of MLB.com published

about 12 sleeper candidates for the

Award in 2019. One of the twelve that Kelly mentions is Rockies starter

. Kelly cites how Marquez had an under-the-radar 2018 season and he was even better in the second half of the season in particular. Kelly mentions how, in the second half, Marquez led all of baseball by a wide margin in strikeouts on breaking pitches with 100 (the next closest was

Patrick Corbin

at 80). He also cites how opponents only hit .215/.266/.338 against him in the second half. There was a winner last year in the American League,

Blake Snell

of the Tampa Bay Rays, that nobody would have picked to win so a dark horse could emerge again this season. With both Marquez and

Kyle Freeland

, who came in 4th in the NL Cy Young voting himself, the Rockies rotation is the strongest facet of their team headed into 2019.

More from Rox Pile

Thomas Harding of MLB.com recently spoke to Rockies owner, chairman, and CEO Dick Monfort about the possibility of signing franchise star third baseman Nolan Arenado to a long-term contract after the club and Arenado agreed to a 1 year/$26 million deal to avoid arbitration. Monfort showed optimism to locking him up long-term. “I think we’ve gotten it to the point where we’re to the finals,” said Monfort. “We’re to the crescendo.” He also added that if Arenado does end up trying the free agent market, “it’s not going to change my feeling on him — I love Nolan.” He also said that usually the Rockies are a ‘file and trial’ team, in which if the team and the player can’t come together on a deal before the deadline to file, the team will head to arbitration. However, he said that, with Nolan, it was a special case. “It was important to Nolan, and as it turned out, it was important to me,” Monfort said. “In these deals, everybody sort of guesses what the other side is going to do. Why this, that or whatever. It sort of put to rest on both sides that we want Nolan and Nolan wants to be with us. So that’s probably half the battle.I felt really good about it. Jeff and I got a text from Nolan and Joel, and they felt good about it.” Harding also talked to Monfort about the Rockies TV deal, that expires after the 2020 season. Monfort said that the Rockies are getting more money in their current deal than was previously reported but negotiations for the new contract will likely start this summer.

Harding also reports that the reports earlier this week about the Rockies being interested in a Carlos Gonzalez reunion are overstated. As of now, he believes that David Dahl will assume a starting role in the outfield and Raimel Tapia will be carried on the Rockies bench as a backup outfielder. This is a bit disappointing for some fans as our poll that we did on Twitter about whether Rockies fans wanted CarGo back and the vast majority of the voters said that they do want CarGo to return.

Next. Why the Colorado Rockies are ruining their chance to keep Nolan Arenado. dark

With pitchers and catchers reporting in less than two weeks, unless someone falls in their laps, I would not be surprised if the way that the Rockies look currently is the way they look when spring training starts.

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