Colorado Rockies: Would the dropoff be that bad between Nolan Arenado to Josh Donaldson?

The Nolan Arenado trade rumors just keep coming. What once appeared to be nothing more than writers reporting on teams doing their due diligence by checking in on the All-Star Third Baseman and seeing what Bridich’s appetite for trading him was has now started to heat up into a situation more realistic than many Colorado Rockies fans would like to admit.

Jon Morosi recently reported on Twitter that the chances Nolan Arenado gets dealt are 50/50. And while that number is certainly debatable, the fact remains that we can no longer view this situation as a farcical and fanatical idea being perpetuated by writers for clicks. The Colorado Rockies are hardly rumored to ever be making any moves before they’re actually made, so when there’s continuous smoke like this we shouldn’t ignore the potential fire.

In the event that Arenado does indeed get traded, one idea that was suggested by Rockies broadcaster Ryan Spilborghs on MLB Network Radio was for the Rockies to use the money they save in any Arenado deal to go after another standout third baseman: Josh Donaldson.

Bringing in Donaldson would carry some risk as he’s 34 years old (compared to Nolan at 28), so there’s a shorter shelf life on Donaldson’s potential production. However, his salary would provide some relief to the Rockies based off of the reported deals that have been put in front of Donaldson.

In 2020, Arenado is slated to make $35M. The offers sent Donaldson’s way have been rumored to be around $100M for 4 years, putting his salary at $25M per year. That additional $10M per year would likely be a welcome sight to the Rockies to spend on extensions for guys like Trevor Story. And with contracts set to potentially come of the books for Wade Davis, Daniel Murphy, Bryan Shaw and Jake McGee (all have team options for 2021), that’s a lot of potential new money the Rockies could spend in the 2021 offseason.

But any change at the hot corner is certainly going to feel like a dropoff from Arenado, whether $10M makes it feel better or not, and by a bunch of metrics, that’d be correct. But how far off would that dropoff be if the Rockies were to plug in Donaldson?

Let’s take a look.