The Colorado Rockies are hot, but don’t fall for this Fool’s Gold quite yet

For starters, the Rockies only have $18.3M committed to this roster for the 2022 season and $7M of that is slated for Scott Oberg (whose baseball future is, unfortunately, in doubt). A host of Rockies are going to have their salaries determined through arbitration, and Charlie Blackmon has a $21M player option for next season, but this paints a picture that the Rockies will have a ton of money to play with but with next to zero guarantees on key players returning.

Trevor Story is all but gone. Jon Gray says he wants to stay, but that doesn’t mean someone hungrier on the market won’t snatch him away. C.J. Cron could be enticing to a large amount of AL teams who need a DH. It’s very realistic that none of them return to the Rockies and that would amount to essentially 25% of the Rockies total production (by fWAR for this season) leaving them. That is a HUGE detriment to a team that’s still 20 games back of the NL West lead and 12.5 games back of a Wild Card spot with no guarantee any big-name bats would want to come here.

So if the plan is still to go after big-name bats, there certainly will be options. But there is no guarantee any big name will want to play in Colorado after watching them destroy relationships with the franchise’s better players seemingly year after year:

• Ubaldo Jimenez
• Troy Tulowitzki
• Nolan Arenado
• Trevor Story