The top five reasons you can’t blame the Colorado Rockies for signing so many reclamation projects

Best of the rest: The Rockies love their veterans

The Rockies love their veteran players and often times, that’s to a fault. Sometimes, they hold on to them too long or play them in an everyday role too long despite having younger players waiting in the wings.

In recent years, that has been showcased with Daniel Murphy and Ian Desmond when they had guys like Brendan Rodgers, Josh Fuentes, Garrett Hampson, Sam Hilliard, Raimel Tapia, and Ryan McMahon (who could have moved positions to accomdate the playing of others) waiting in the wings.

But there are plenty of other instances where this has happened with the Rockies.

Best of the rest: The Rockies have always done this.

Even in the days of Bob Gebhard and Dan O’Dowd being the Rockies GM, the Rockies have always done this.

You can point to Bryn Smith, Ron Gant, Greg Vaughn, Vinny Castilla, Steve Reed, Jeff Fassero, Turk Wendell, Roy Oswalt, Todd Zeile, Steve Finley, and Dale Murphy just to name some off the top of my head.

Nearly all of them were former All-Stars and all of them were in the twilight of their careers.  Some faded away … but some played well (e.g. Castilla and Reed) for the Rockies.

Now, let’s dive into the Top Five Reasons Why You Can’t Blame the Rockies for signing reclamation projects.

5) Clubhouse atmosphere

Especially right now, the Rockies have a lot of young players. While, at least as of now, they are getting the majority of the playing time, the veterans have provided some stability in the clubhouse.

Some of the veterans that have provided that stability in the clubhouse in recent years have been with the Rockies for a long time, like Charlie Blackmon, Trevor Story, and Kyle Freeland but guys like C.J. Cron have been brought in for that too.

Younger players like Alan Trejo have said how the veterans (Trevor Story in Trejo’s case) have been very influential and helpful for them growing as players and as people.

4) They are cheap options on the free agent market

Since the Rockies have been burned numerous times on the free agent market with big contracts, they have turned to players that are cheap on the free agent market.

Almost all of the reclamation projects that have been signed via free agency have been on minor league deals. If/When they make it to the majors, they get a one-year deals for $1 million (give or take).

If they don’t make it to the majors or do poorly in the majors, the Rockies are out very little in money (in the grand scheme of the franchise) and at least they provided a mentor or leader to the clubhouse and, perhaps, something that the veteran showed a younger player will pay dividends for the Rockies and the player in the future.

3) The Rockies are familiar with most of the players that they signed

Of the players they have recently signed, nearly all of them are former Rockies or have ties to Rockies personnel.

• Greg Holland: His bullpen coach in Kansas City was Steve Foster, the Rockies pitching coach
• C.J. Cron: He was in the Angels organization when Rockies manager Bud Black was in their front office in 2016
• Jorge De La Rosa: Former Rockie
• Chris Rusin: Former Rockie
• Chris Iannetta: Former Rockie
• Jhoulys Chacin: Former Rockie
• Zac Rosscup: Former Rockie
• Matt Holliday: Former Rockie
• Ubaldo Jimenez: Former Rockie

And even some of the reclamation projects from yesteryear, like Vinny Castilla and Steve Reed in 2004, were (you guessed it) former Rockies.

So since they were already familiar with the organization and vice versa, there was less of a learning curve with getting to know how things are/were run and they may even know some of the players that are on the team because they may have been in spring training when the players were around in their first stint.

2) They provide/have provided the Rockies with some much needed depth

Right now, one of the Rockies biggest problems is their depth.

As we mentioned when we discussed Nova earlier today, the Rockies five-man taxi squad had four guys on it who had never been on a MLB roster before and the other had six innings of MLB work.

The Rockies were already depleted in numbers before the pandemic after the pandemic and the cancellation of the minor league season in 2020, a lot of players in the minors retired. The dissolution of dozens of minor league teams and less rounds in the Amatuer Draft impacted that too.

That’s part of the reason why Jordan Sheffield, the aforementioned Alan Trejo, Lucas Gilbreath, Ben Bowden, Chris Rabago, and Colton Welker are either in the majors or on the taxi squad with playing little (14 games for Rabago and 26 innings for Bowden) to no games (the others) at the Triple-A level.

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1) Daniel Bard

The Rockies got lightning in a bottle with Daniel Bard.

Bard, who was 34 when the Rockies signed him last year, hadn’t pitched in the majors since 2013 due to injury. He retired and became a mentor/mental skills coach in the Diamondbacks organization for two years when he decided to try and make a comeback.

And he pitched well enough for the Rockies last year that he won the NL Comeback Player of the Year Award. He’s also the Rockies closer and most reliable reliever.

So, if the Rockies can get lightning in a bottle once, why can’t it happen again?

It may not happen again but with low-risk, high-reward signings like they have made, they could perhaps have lightning strike twice again … and even if they aren’t as successful as Bard, guys like Ivan Nova could be an innings eater or Chris Rusin could be a left-handed reliever in the Rockies bullpen for the remainder of the season.