The Colorado Rockies need to start “cutting bait”

For a moment, let’s head back in time to 2020. Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort “interpolated” that the team would win 94 games. That never happened because the Rockies only played 60 games that year.

Still, the Rockies still only won 26 games. In 2021, the Rockies went 74-87 so, again, nowhere close to 94 wins.

But back in early 2021 and other few times, Dick Monfort said that while he believed that the team was truly a playoff team, the Rockies had some players that they needed to “cut bait” with if they didn’t start performing.

“I truly in my heart believe that this is a very talented team that underperformed the last couple years,” Monfort said during the press conference announcing that the club had traded Nolan Arenado to St. Louis in February 2021. “We have a lot of guys that, to be quite honest, it’s time to cut bait. So this could be the challenge they need. They need to step up and fill this void.”

Fast forward to more than a year later and the Colorado Rockies have played some awful baseball in the last 3+ weeks. In their last 22 games, they have gone 6-16. That downfall has made the Rockies go from a 15-10 record (3rd place, 2.0 games back of first place) to a 21-26 record (last place, 12 games back of first place).

The problem for the Colorado Rockies is that nearly everything has been bad. Now would be a good time for Dick Monfort to live up to his word and start cutting some bait.

Brian Serven has been a success so far for the Colorado Rockies

The Colorado Rockies have started to see that they need some new faces on the team to see how they will play. For position players, catcher Brian Serven was recently called up and he has been a welcome addition defensively and offensively (120 wRC+) in six games.

For the bullpen, the Rockies called up Chad Smith, who made his MLB debut on Sunday. Smith, who was acquired by Colorado from Miami in exchange for Jesús Tinoco in August 2020, had a sub-3.00 ERA in 36 relief appearances in 2021 in Triple-A Albuquerque and a sub-2.00 ERA in 17 appearances in Albuquerque this year before being called up.

The problem with that is that the corresponding move was sending Justin Lawrence back to Triple-A. He had a rough outing in Pittsburgh on the road trip (1 IP, 4 ER) that ballooned his ERA up from 3.29 to 5.52 but he still was one of the better relievers in the bullpen.

His FIP is 3.97, which is fifth-best of any pitcher on the team that had more than 10 innings pitched entering Sunday.

There are some other players in the minor leagues that should get a shot at some playing time in the majors over veterans who aren’t cutting it.

These include Elehuris Montero, Ryan Vilade, and Wynton Bernard offensively and Brandon Gold, Jake Bird, and Zach Lee as pitchers (all playing well with Triple-A Albuquerque). They may not play well in the majors or may not be part of the future but they may be better than what the Rockies have currently.

The Rockies, if they think that they can make the playoffs (which is a bit far-fetched at this point), should also consider some cheap outside options as well.

They made some decent moves on the cheap this past offseason (Chad Kuhl, José Iglesias, Randal Grichuk, Alex Colomé) so they could definitely make some in-season as well.

But something has to change for the team and getting in some new faces on the roster should be the way that they do it and to do that, they will have to “cut bait” with some veterans who aren’t pulling their weight.

The 2 players that should be on thin ice with the Colorado Rockies

There are two players that should be on thin ice with the Colorado Rockies because they have done little for a long time: Garrett Hampson and Sam Hilliard.