Colorado Rockies’ Nolan Arenado: “We need to get better”

Even the best can get better. This offseason, Colorado Rockies superstar third baseman Nolan Arenado is setting his sights on improving his game to help his team return to the playoffs in 2020.

After reaching the 40-home run plateau for the third time in his career and setting career-highs in batting average (.315) and OPS (.962), Nolan Arenado insists he can still work harder.

“I don’t want want to be content with what I’m doing,” Arenado told reporters, including Rox Pile, after the season came to a close. “I mean, I think, obviously this year was pretty special and I’m very thankful for that but there’s always room to grow and the last thing I want to do is be content with what happened. I feel like I can work harder than I did this last year and get stronger, get quicker.”

The third baseman isn’t the only one looking to improve over the coming months. The offseason offers the Rockies a chance to reevaluate their roster to determine what’s the best path forward for the team.

The club is in an awkward position after making the playoffs consecutive seasons from 2017-2018 and then watching injuries and underwhelming performances lead to 91 losses in 2019. While, on paper, this is still mostly the same team that entered 2019 with World Series aspirations, it seems there is plenty of work that needs to be done to make Colorado a contender again.

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Arenado addressed the work the team needs to do this winter to reach the postseason next year.

“From the outside looking in, it looks like there’s a lot of things that need changed,” Arenado said. “But in here, we feel like we have good players — but at the same time, we did finish pretty far away [from the playoffs] so I think it shows that we need to get better.”

The pieces are there for the Rockies, but putting them together properly and figuring out what’s missing will be a tall task. Do the Rockies need a big splash to address their rotation? Do they rely on young players that showed promise at the end of 2019? Do they start a partial rebuild to re-tool the roster with prospects?

Whatever happens, one thing is clear: The team needs to get better. Arenado knows it as do Rockies fans in what will be a very interesting offseason.