Colorado Rockies: GM Jeff Bridich’s conference call draws criticism

Colorado Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich made a conference call with less than an hour of notice in the late afternoon of Thanksgiving Eve after making a trade with the Cincinnati Reds and some of his responses drew criticism.

Colorado Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich spoke with the media, including Rox Pile, for the first time since the 2020 pandemic-shortened season kicked off in late July.

A lot has obviously has happened since then, including the four-player trade that the team pulled off on Thanksgiving Eve, involving Jeff Hoffman, Robert Stephenson, and two minor leaguers.

Bridich indicated that the Rockies have been interested in Robert Stephenson since before he was drafted by the Reds back in 2011. The Reds took Stephenson with the 27th overall pick and the Rockies drafted 20th in that draft. They decided to take Tyler Anderson with their pick. They also had a second draft pick in the first round at 45th overall. That one turned out even better: They drafted Trevor Story.

While Bridich was farm director (until 2015), he says that he liked Stephenson when he would watch him in the minor leagues as Bridich mentioned seeing him when the Rockies still had their Advanced-A team in Modesto, which was last affiliated with the Rockies in 2016.

However, since media members haven’t spoken to Bridich in months, they wanted to ask him some other questions as well. Bridich was asked by The Denver Post about Rockies owner Dick Monfort’s letter to season ticket holders a few weeks ago. Bridich, via conference call and not on Zoom or with any other video, sighed and said this:

“Yup, hey, like I said, there are very specific things for us to talk about right now in terms of the trade and the roster protection moves last week. In terms of that question, if and when something comes up in free agency, we’ll talk about it then.”

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With those quotes from Bridich on Wednesday night, Sean Keeler of The Denver Post called Bridich’s comments “chicken spit” and called Bridich “a coward.”

Bridich was pressed about his offseason plans later in more of a roundabout way in wondering what his plans for the offseason are. He still kept his plans very discreet.

“Well, a lot of the mechanics are strange even in light of a weird year,” said Bridich. “Just for front offices, I think that’s probably the oddest thing. There’s so much missing from the typical decision-making processes and yet, we still have to make these decisions, right? We still have these deadlines that we have to adhere to. The beat goes on that way and so similarly, some of the mechanics of finding out what may be available to us in the coming months, whether that’s via free agency or a trade or whatever, some of the mechanics are still the same even with such an odd year so we’re going through those processes like normal or close to normal and seeing what comes of it.”

In regards to the Rockies’ financial situation in the future, Bridich says that he and “most of, if not all of the industry” is “still unsure” of how things will be this offseason and entering 2021 due to the pandemic.

So, in other words, expect the offseason to be much like things developed on Wednesday: If/when things happen, you will likely hear about it with very little notice. And, yes, you can forget about hearing anything in regards to the disappointing 2020 season.