What are the Rockies Doing?
Do the Rockies know what the Rockies are doing?
Photo Credit: Dustin Bradford (Getty Images)
I called the Colorado Rockies the worst organization in baseball after they traded Nolan Arenado one year after giving him an extension to be the franchise player. On Wednesday, the Rockies did something that again makes them look like a clueless organization.
Yesterday the Colorado Rockies put catcher Elias Diaz on outright waivers just over two weeks after the MLB Trade Deadline. The Rockies could have explored trading him for a prospect or two that could have helped the organization in the future. Now, the Rockies have to hope that another team will claim him and the two teams could work out a deal that may include prospects. If no team puts a claim in on Diaz, he can reject his assignment to AAA from the Rockies because he has five years of big league service time. If that were to happen, Diaz would become a free agent and the Rockies would be off of the hook for $1.5M but get nothing for Diaz’s service to end the season.
But every baseball fan should be asking why the Rockies did not decide to move him at the deadline since he is a soon-to-be free agent.
At the deadline, the Boston Red Sox traded for Toronto’s backup catcher in Danny Jansen and gave up three prospects to get the deal done. At the time, Jansen was hitting .212 with a .369 slugging percentage. Elias Diaz was hitting .270 with a .378 slugging percentage at the time of his release. And if you want to break Diaz’s numbers down a little more, Diaz hit .307 with an .800 OPS through June 30th. The former Colorado catcher may have scuffled over the last 30 games (.204) but are you telling me there wasn’t a team out there that would have been interested in trying to tweak something for the 2023 MLB All-Star game MVP?
According to Ken Rosenthal, there were MLB executives that believed Diaz could have been moved at the deadline. The Rockies chose to hold on to Diaz for two additional weeks just to release him to save a little money. Colorado could have saved the money by trading Diaz while getting a prospect or two to continue to bolster the farm system.
The Colorado Rockies farm system has taken a step forward according to Baseball America. The Rockies entered 2024 with the 23rd ranked system but they jumped up to 13th in the mid-season rankings. The Rockies may not have added a big time prospect to their system by trading Diaz but getting a package similar to the one that the Blue Jays got for Jansen would only be beneficial for the organization. Instead, Colorado did nothing.
The Rockies are going on six years without experiencing playoff baseball. They are an organization that does not feel relatively close to competing anytime soon. You have to wonder who is making the baseball operations decision. Releasing Elias Diaz two weeks after they could have traded him is just another bad move in a line full of really bad moves.