Colorado Rockies drop the ball once again with Jon Gray

Colorado Rockies starting pitcher Jon Gray has repeatedly expressed that he would love to remain with the team going forward. The Colorado Rockies have said that they would like to have Gray back … but they aren’t showing it.

Nick Groke and Eno Sarris of The Athletic reported on Monday (subscription required) that the Colorado Rockies did make a contract offer like we mentioned in this article after Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post reported that recently but Groke and Sarris shed more light on the matter, which begs the question:

Do the Colorado Rockies really want Jon Gray back?

If the Colorado Rockies do truly want Jon Gray back, they aren’t really showing it.

Groke and Sarris reported that the Rockies offered Jon Gray a three-year deal for $35-$40 million. That is a lowball offer … to put it nicely.

Pitchers similar to him are earning more than $12-$13 million per season on the free agent market. As Groke and Sarris note, since 2016, Gray has a WAR of 15.1, per FanGraphs. Yu Darvish had the same WAR and, in 2018, Darvish signed a six-year deal for $126 million, for an average of $21 million each season. Darvish was also two years older in 2018 than Gray is now so, conceivably, Gray should earn more, both with inflation and his age.

Patrick Corbin has had a WAR of 15.2 in the last six seasons and he signed a six-year deal for $140 million in 2018 with the Washington Nationals. That average annual value (AAV) is $23.3 million.

Were those contracts overpayments? Honestly, probably, especially with Corbin. But an offer that is half of that in years and nearly half of the AAV is quite a lowball offer.

(Insert your best Billy Mays voice) But wait! There’s more!

Additionally, Groke and Sarris said that the Rockies made Gray this contract offer during their final homestand. This screams “Well, we’ll make a cursory offer to the guy so when he leaves, we can say, ‘We offered him a contract to say but he said no.'”

If they truly wanted to keep him, why wouldn’t they offer him a contract extension earlier in the season or even last offseason? It could have helped to determine how far the Rockies and Gray’s camp were apart from each other, if at all.

In this case, the Rockies could have seen that they were far apart. If the Rockies determined that it was too far, then they could have traded him at the trade deadline and, likely, received more in return than then a compensatory draft pick. That comp draft pick will come when the Rockies (presumably) extend Gray a qualifying offer before hitting free agency.

It looks like the Colorado Rockies messed up yet another contract situation with another impending free agent. As long as they keep upsetting and/or lowballing their players, the franchise will suffer and, most importantly, they will keep losing the trust of their fans, many of whom may decide not to be a fan of the team at all.