Colorado Rockies: How the Dodgers signing Trevor Bauer actually helps the Rockies

The reigning World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers signed 2020 NL Cy Young Award Trevor Bauer to a three-year deal that makes Bauer the highest-paid player (by average annual value) in the entire sport for two of those seasons. He also has an opt-out clause after each season, if he wants to exercise them. And the signing actually helps the Colorado Rockies.

Considering how the Rockies just officially traded their franchise cornerstone Nolan Arenado earlier this week, on the surface, you may be wondering “how does the World Series champions getting better benefit the Rockies?” And it’s really one simple answer: it will give the Rockies a better draft pick.

The San Diego Padres were already a playoff team in 2020 and they got even better this offseason with their rotation additions and the Dodgers won the World Series. In 2020, if you extrapolate their winning percentages out to a full 162-game season, the Dodgers would have gone 116-46 and the Padres would have gone 100-62. So it’s not a stretch to say that both teams could finish with 100 or more wins in 2021 considering that both have gotten better on paper.

With almost all current projections, the Rockies are projected to be dead last in the NL West and one of, if not, the worst teams in baseball. Really, the only possible exception in some projections is the Pittsburgh Pirates, who did have the worst record in baseball last year at 19-41 (equivalent to a 51-111 team in a full season).

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If you look at the rosters of the teams that had the same or worse records than the Rockies, many of them (excluding Pittsburgh) have made moves by adding players to their MLB roster that have MLB experience or from overseas.

• Texas: Signed David Dahl, traded for Nate Lowe, signed Kohei Arihara from Japan, signed Mike Foltynewicz, traded for Dane Dunning (lost starter Lance Lynn in the trade, though)
• Boston: Signed outfielder Hunter Renfroe, signed utility man Enrique “Kike” Hernandez, signed starter Garrett Richards, traded for reliever Adam Ottavino, signed pitcher Matt Andriese
• Baltimore: Claimed Yolmer Sanchez, signed Freddy Galvis, signed Felix Hernandez
• Detroit: Signed Robbie Grossman, signed Wilson Ramos, re-signed Jonathan Schoop, signed Jose Urena, signed Derek Holland
• Kansas City: signed Carlos Santana, signed Michael A. Taylor, re-signed Greg Holland, signed Hanser Alberto, signed Mike Minor, signed Wade Davis
• Angels: traded for Dexter Fowler, traded for Jose Iglesias, signed Kurt Suzuki, signed Jose Quintana, traded for Alex Cobb, traded for Raisel Iglesias, signed Alex Claudio
• D’Backs: signed Joakim Soria
• Mets: Traded for Francisco Lindor, traded for Carlos Carrasco, signed James McCann, signed Jose Martinez, traded for Joey Lucchesi, signed Trevor May, signed Aaron Loup

The Rockies? Traded Nolan Arenado and got Austin Gomber and traded Jeff Hoffman for Robert Stephenson. Not exactly a banner offseason for the Rockies.

It will be a long, tough season for Rockies fans as they very well could lose 100+ games in 2021 and could see Trevor Story be traded in the coming months as well but one of the first draft picks in 2022 may help the Rockies replenish their farm system that, in and of itself, is not very good at the moment either.