Cal Quantrill and Brendan Rodgers are a lesson the Rockies continue to refuse to learn

As the offseason begins to take further shape and we pass deadlines to keep or release players with team control, Friday night represented a key point in the future state of the 2025 (and beyond) Colorado Rockies. The non-tender deadline represents a team’s final step to either release a player with which they currently have exclusive negotiating rights to free agency or keep them rostered on a guaranteed contract at the amount they are either entitled to or negotiate in arbitration. With these decisions, you can usually get a firm glimpse at who the team believes can contribute the following season and who is going to play ball elsewhere (there are exceptions, some times a player and team will renegotiate a lower contract or return on a non-guaranteed deal, but usually not).

The Rockies decisions at this deadline represented two things, the first being a brief positive feeling that they will not stick by veterans when there are exciting prospects in the wings, and the second that they had once again failed to learn a lesson that they should’ve learned a long time ago. Yes, the Rockies announced they had non-tendered Brendan Rodgers and Cal Quantrill, two very different players with very different histories with the team, but who both represent the same frustrating pattern. They continue to overvalue their own players and it continues to lead to ruined opportunities to build a better, more foundational team because of it.

Let’s start with Cal on this, as his acquisition and departure was short lived and less painful within the grand scheme of the Rockies.

Acquired in a deal last November for outfield prospect Kody Huff, Quantrill seemed like an ideal type of pitcher for a rebuilding team like the Rockies to bring on. The 29-year-old had struggled in his previous season with Cleveland, but the Rockies needed someone to pitch innings and in a best case scenario they could find something in his pitching that would rehabilitate his value. Then in July, they could flip him for something more meaningful, and build the future of the club beyond 2025.

The first part mostly came true. Quantrill excelled in his first two months with the team. Peaking in May with a 1.71 ERA across 30 innings throughout the month. Though he came back down towards mid-rotation numbers in June, Quantrill looked to be a rare hit in Rockies player acquisition, and a guy they could use to grab more building blocks in the process.

But, as the deadline passed, Quantrill stayed. General Manager Bill Schmidt played the same tune that his predecessors played before him about his lack of movement, that it takes two teams to trade and they just didn’t find the right fit, and Quantrill geared up hoping to continue his bounce back year in Colorado.

He did not continue it.

In his final six starts across August and September, Quantrill compiled more earned runs (23) than strikeouts (20). He imploded right in front of our eyes, even as the Rockies saw better performances from other players in the final two months that gave fans hope. Worse yet, Quantrill’s 180 turn into complete garbage seemed to tank his value completely, leaving the Rockies no choice but to move on from him for nothing.

Quantrill’s impact on the Rockies is minimal, even in the long term. He came, he pitched, he left. It’s not uncommon for veteran players to do that on crappy teams. But the organization’s stubborn refusal to part with him at the deadline, only to watch that stubbornness blow up in their faces, represents a key flaw in Rockies roster management. From Dan O’Dowd to Jeff Bridich and now Bill Schmidt, the Rockies have now spent nearly two decades telling fans that to make a trade you need a trade partner and they didn’t get what they wanted for these guys. But all that seems to happen when you don’t move these guys when you can is that eventually you just stop paying them and you don’t have anything to show for it.

With Rodgers, the crime is somehow more and less egregious. His release now, four or so years into his MLB career, is not fully unexpected. He’s more expensive than the internal resources they have (and apparently Kyle Farmer for some reason), he’s blocking a top 100 prospect’s Major League ABs, and he’s painfully league average. That Brendan couldn’t be traded now, in the autumn of 2024, is mostly a symptom of his injury plagued history and the probability that he won’t win enough games to justify his arbitration negotiated paycheck. But if you spin the clock back to the summer of 2018, that this is how the Brendan Rodgers saga ends feels criminal.

In 2018, the Rockies were competing for a second straight playoff berth and fighting the Los Angeles Dodgers for their very first NL West division title. The Rockies had talent at numerous positions, they were getting an incredible season out of Kyle Freeland, they had real juice. But they were not without weakness. One of those weaknesses was at catcher. But what luck, there was a premier catcher on the market in the Marlins JT Realmuto. By golly, the Rockies could make a huge splash, snag a catcher, and win a division for the first time in history!

Or not.

It has been heavily rumored (but never verified) that Dick Monfort shut down a trade for JT Realmuto because it involved our now departed friend Brendan Rodgers. At the time, Rodgers was a top-100 prospect and appeared to be a very solid hitting middle infielder. The Rockies were looking at a DJ LeMahieu contract situation and a potential in-house replacement and thought a Realmuto trade was not worth the risk. Maybe justifiable at the time, if you squint real hard, but as we watch Brendan Rodgers depart for free in 2024 it sure doesn’t feel so.

Many teams are victims of prospect hugging. The Yankees famously wouldn’t part with their top prospects for Luis Castillo in 2022. Other teams have blocked deals over these things. But, for the Rockies, this one felt annoying even at the time. LeMahieu wasn’t a bad investment if they wanted to continue to play the window with him at second, Realmuto added a significant boost to an already strong lineup. The reward certainly outweighed the risk here, even if Rodgers panned out to be a good second baseman. Sometimes you win first and ask questions later.

The Rockies, unfortunately, neither win nor ask questions.

This is what ultimately separates organizations in professional sports, how well you can operate within the resources you have to win games. Some of that is based on external factors like a salary cap or a miserly owner, some of that is based on internal factors like “should we hire better coaches?”. The nature of American sports is cyclical in that no matter who you root for, eventually that team will have good players. Bad teams draft higher, they have more chances to get those guys. But good players and good teams can be separate entities, so much so that they can even be at odds with each other. The Rockies are not an organization that have lacked good players. But when they make decisions like holding onto Cal Quantrills or Brendan Rodgers’ it’s clear why they are an organization that has lacked good teams. The margins matter, even when you have a 200 million dollar payroll like in New York or LA. The decisions you make on the players that fill out your roster can alter a lot more than a random regular season game.

This is a lesson the Rockies continue to fail to learn. If they had traded Cal Quantrill, would they have gotten any value back? That is an unknown, certainly not a guarantee. But it is more than fair to wonder why a losing team would continue to hold onto a player that only has downside risk. It is prudent to ask a team with five playoff appearances in 30 years why they are seemingly the only one in the league that can’t grasp the concept that replacement level players are replaceable.

The departure of Quantrill and Rodgers will have limited impact on the 2025 Rockies. It’s likely this valuation error doesn’t really set the Rockies window back at all. It’s such a minor move in the grand scheme of team building that it would be surprising if it did have any impact. But, it is bad tidings that the club continues to make the same mistakes with the fringes. While we wait for the next great Rockies player to emerge, they have already presented a warning that they might still not be capable of building a great team.

It’s not a lot, but it all adds up.