Colorado Rockies: The top five reasons why they should not sign Trevor Bauer

They’d still only be the third-best team in the NL, at best

Until they play differently, even with signing Bauer, the Rockies would be no better than a third-place team on paper. Do you, potentially, want to shell out $150-$200+ million for Bauer if you can’t resign Story and/or keep Arenado long term and can’t afford any other reinforcements on the trade or free-agent market for, as it currently stands, a one-game Wild Card game? The Rockies’ answer is probably no.

If Bauer ends up costing less than $200 million and the Rockies can sign him but also address their bullpen and offense in a more meaningful way than they have thus far this offseason, they will have the potential to be a better team and, perhaps, even flirt with winning the NL West title.

But a lot has to happen for that to even be discussed. As it stands, they are a fourth-place or last-place team. You can be an optimist all you want by saying that they had a weird year in 2020, had bad luck, and/or bad injuries in the last two years but all teams have to deal with it. Winning and winning in the playoffs means that you have enough depth and enough talent to overcome it. The two teams with the most talent and most depth were in the World Series in 2020. The Rockies, right now, do not. It’s not a mystery why they have been in fourth-place.