The Colorado Rockies are about to pull off the most Colorado Rockies move of all

The Colorado Rockies have been frequently been a team that is known to be in the middle. Not good enough to contend but they don’t know when to close up shop and get as much as they can for their players.

As a result, the other teams going up leapfrog the Rockies or always stay above them (e.g. the Dodgers), and the teams going down pass the Rockies and in a few years, pass them again going back up (e.g. the Giants and Padres). And when the Rockies do catch lightning in a bottle, they do little to nothing to help keep it going (e.g. 2017 and 2018).

According to Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post in his conversation with Rockies interim general manager Bill Schmidt, it seems like the Rockies may pull the most Rockies move of all.

The Colorado Rockies may make no moves at the trade deadline.

From what Schmidt says, it looks like the Rockies may stand pat at the trade deadline … or even buy.

“I think there are pieces here to make us good,” Schmidt said. “Do we need more? Yeah, we need more. I realize that. But it starts with good pitching and we have that in place.”

Honestly, that sounds like a guy that thinks the team should be buying or, at least, shouldn’t be selling.

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If the Rockies were to keep their impending free agents, like Trevor Story and Jon Gray, they could extend qualifying offers to them at the end of the season. If they decline and sign with another team, the Rockies would get a compensatory draft pick and, almost certainly, the picks would be in the second round. Schmidt said that the compensatory picks “might be better than what teams are offering us,”

As Schmidt also notes, Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, and Ryan McMahon were drafted in the second round but it would be a huge mistake not to trade Story, Gray, and others at the trade deadline. It will help the team move on to the future, not hang on to the past.

The Rockies should be able to get more than that for players like Story and Gray and definitely Germán Márquez but Schmidt made it “absolutely clear” to other teams that Márquez isn’t available (which is yet another colossal mistake by the Rockies).

In reality, the Rockies may be getting lowballed for Story, Gray, Mychal Givens, C.J. Cron, or others. But, frankly, if that’s the case, it’s the Rockies own doing because they accepted a low-ball offer from St. Louis for Nolan Arenado.

If that was the only trade offer (and we know that they thought that he would opt-out when he said later that he likely wouldn’t have), then maybe they shouldn’t have extended him in the first place, especially if they knew that they couldn’t sign anyone else to make the team better.

One poorly handled situation and a history of poorly handled situations (e.g. Troy Tulowitzki) do not mean that the trend needs to continue. The Rockies were in fourth place in 2019, 2020, and will be in 2021 for a reason: they are a fourth-place team … a fourth-place team that is nowhere near playoff contention, not a team that should be standing pat or buying at the trade deadline.