Colorado Rockies: Nolan Arenado on the ‘disconnect’ with Jeff Bridich, front office

Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports spoke to Colorado Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado on Friday while he was training in Arizona and Arenado spoke candidly with Brown on the story of the offseason for the Rockies.

There seems to be developments daily on Nolan Arenado, whether it’s on his relationship with the Colorado Rockies front office or on trade rumors to a number of different teams.

Three weeks ago, in a text to MLB.com’s Thomas Harding, Arenado said that he felt that there was  “a lot of disrespect” from the Rockies front office to him. He declined to elaborate much further and Jeff Bridich has yet to speak on the situation, even though he told Harding that he would soon.

While training at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona (about 10 miles away from the Rockies spring training home in Scottsdale, Arizona), Arenado spoke candidly with Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports on the situation.

He first spoke on the perception of himself right now and tried to explain his perspective on the situation.

“You know what, and I want you please to write this down, the perception of me right now, some people have different things, right?” he said. “It’s, ‘Oh, you make money, keep your mouth shut. You signed this deal and this and that.’ But, at the end of the day, man, people misunderstand. Us, as players, we only get one chance at this. I only get one chance at this. I have seven years left on my deal. I don’t know how it’s all going to turn out. And I want to win. I’ve been to All-Star Games. I’ve done some special things, you know? I’ve won Gold Gloves. Those all mean a lot to me. At the end of the day the goal is to win. They signed me to win. And I want to be on a winner. If that’s in Colorado or somewhere else, I want to win.”

In his limited postseason career, Arenado has not played well by his own admission (in 23 plate appearances, he has hit .190/.174/.333). However, the more opportunities he gets, he says he can “show what I can do.”

On his relationship with the Rockies’ front office, he said that there is a “disconnect” but he tried to extend a bit of an olive branch of sorts.

“To be honest with you, there is a disconnect right now, right?” he said Friday. “There’s a little bit of a disconnect. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. It doesn’t mean that I’m not gonna go out there and play hard for my teammates. Or be a negative presence in that locker room. That’s just not me. It’s not how I’m going to do things. I’m not going to be there trying to show them I don’t want to be there. I’m not going to be that way. That’s not fair. That’s drawing attention to me.

While there has been an obvious disconnect, he says that he needs to move on from it because it could hurt his performance and it could hurt his teammates too.

“I know there’s already been attention toward me right now,” said Arenado. “That’s not really my style. I’m not trying to put my teammates in a bad position. You know? That’s not really my thing. They know I’m going to go out there and play hard. There is a little bit of a disconnect for sure. But, like I said, that doesn’t mean I can’t go out there and play hard. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to have a bad attitude. It means there’s a disconnect. And I’ve got to move on from it. I don’t need to surround myself with the negativity, because that’s going to factor in my performance.”

Even though he wants to move on from the situation, he says that he does not regret what he said in the text messages to Harding. However, he does regret one thing about the situation.

“No. I don’t,” he said. “I know there’s some things that I said. I won’t take them back. I won’t apologize for what I’ve said. At all. The only thing I do regret is my teammates answering questions for me, maybe. That’s something that I wish I wouldn’t have put them in that position and I apologize for that. But, as for what I’ve said and how I’ve gone about my offseason, I have no regrets and I’m not going to apologize for anything.”

Arenado said that he’s “optimistic for the season” but “I have to be.”

“And if we put things together and compete?” He shrugged. “Hey,” he said, “you never know.”