On Wednesday, the news broke that the Colorado Rockies have signed multi-positioned Kris Bryant to a 7 year, $182 million contract with a full no-trade clause that would send shockwaves throughout the whole baseball world. Now by shockwaves, it is not as much “the Rockies are now contenders” kind of shockwaves, but more so like “the Rockies are a dead-in-the-water team, what are they doing?” type of shockwaves. On Bryant’s end, he is a 30-year-old Las Vegas native who has an NL MVP, World Series championship. and is a 4-time All-Star, so there is not a whole lot left that he has left to prove at this point in his career so it makes a lot of sense for him to get paid, put on a show, and help bridge the gap into a new era of Rockies baseball. From the Rockies’ perspective, this is almost a “do-right” to the fans to try and ease the pain of the Nolan Arenado trade that occurred over a year ago and is still fresh on the hearts of many, if not all. Although nothing will ever make up for it, this is definitely a step in the right direction. (Besides let’s not forget that Nolan is the one who forced the trade, not the Rockies, if it was up to them he would still be here).
AP
Bryant does fulfill a couple of needs that the roster previously lacked. With the departures of Trevor Story and Nolan Arenado, this team lacked the star-power that it previously had, the next closest thing it had from an offensive perspective was an aging Charlie Blackmon, C.J. Cron who is not really a “star” perse, and a Ryan McMahon and Brendan Rodgers who are still trying to find their footing into this league. How I can see the Rockies using Bryant is potentially in right field where Blackmon would move to the new, now permanent designated hitter spot. As much as we adore Charlie, it is time to face the music and that is he just is not the defender he used to be, but he can still swing the bat and this gives him a chance to elongate his career. Some may view this as a negative, but I see the fact that Kris Bryant is here for the next 7 years as a positive, and it will not be long before the calvary shows up in the form of Michael Toglia, Zac Veen, Benny Montgomery, Drew Romo, Ezequiel Tovar, among others and the Rockies are back competing in the west hopefully for a long, long time. Oh, and all this is not to mention that he will be playing behind a roster that overachieved last year, and one of the best starting rotations in all of baseball, which is also the best rotation in franchise history.
To drive matters home, the selling point the Kris Bryant was actually quite simple: he is a need, he gets paid to put on a show which he knows how to do (career .880 ops and 28.7 bWAR), and it will not be long before the Rockies are back into the fold. For those worried about Kris Bryant becoming like Nolan, becoming unhappy, and forcing his way out, I do not think so because Nolan’s biggest issue was with now-former GM Jeff Bridich who is obviously (thankfully) not there anymore, so we are under new management and the moves that new GM Bill Schmidt has made have been setting us up for the future, and let me tell you it is bright Bryant sees that and you should too.
