Innovation!

Innovation!

[A stage sits, dark and ready for it’s performance. A set can be slightly seen though not fully worked out. The crowd bustles as they find their seats and wait for the show to begin. Suddenly, music plays, the lights go on, and the stage is shown. A large billboard with the word INNOVATION!, a comfortable chair, a microphone. The crowd cheers]

Dick Monfort enters

Monfort: WOW! What a crowd! I can’t believe it. Who knew so many people would be excited by our innovation summit? Yeah! [he waits while the crowd finishes their cheering and hushes]. Welcome to INNOVATION! I love that I get to talk to you all about all of the things we are doing to innovate here at the Colorado Rockies. All the fun ways we are working to change the game and the world.

Crowd cheers

This is a really exciting time. There is so much happening. We have tech companies making up ways you’ll never have to write an email again, we have other tech companies figuring out how best you can isolate your family from the world, and of course we have tech companies using your personal data to track your every movement in an increasingly smaller world. Here at the Rockies, we are innovating too. We are thinking of bold new ways to play the game of baseball. I want to show you something really special here. This was from a game we had just a few days ago. We’re playing the Cardinals. They have a couple of guys on and they decide to try a squeeze play, bunting with the guy on third. Well, the easy play is to first base as you all know, right?

Take a look at this play here as we’ve stopped it. Now you might think, the correct throw is to the guy covering first there running along the dirt. But, what if I told you that you could actually cut that throw off. You could create a sequence chain, a la the Ford Factory in 1902. They criticized Henry Ford then, they criticize us now! But like a bucket chain to put out a fire, wouldn’t many hands make light work?

Ok so that didn’t work at all. The cut off man was not at a good angle to throw it to the next guy and he was too far to tag the runner out. But like Michael Caine says…

Each failure is a lesson. Why not add two or three more guys into the line there? Just have everyone on the infield pitch in? The truth is, innovation is messy right? It’s unique and challenging, you’re going to have to try over and over again! The point of this summit, the point I want to make sure you all take home to your families, is that you can try and fail, and fail, and fail, and fail, and fail, and fail, and fail, and fail so many times. You can miss the playoffs for 14 of the previous 16 seasons. You can be on pace to be the worst team in the history of the sport in it’s modern era. You can be a team without any hope. But that doesn’t mean you should stop trying.

Thank you.

Crowd cheers

[The stage fades to black as Dick Monfort departs]

Connor’s Guys Update, An Update on Connor’s Minor League Guys of Note

Sean Sullivan and CVS are the standouts, though Brecht did catch an honor from Purple Row as their Minor League pitcher of the week for his efforts. Brecht is back in Fresno after rehabbing in the ACL and seems to be finding a lot of control so far.

Connor Van Scoyoc is destined for Denver at this point. I don’t know how long they can keep him down. After a tough June, he’s been electric in July. If the Rockies start to move on from relief arms in the next week or so, it’s impossible to not see that become a world with CVS in Denver.

Hard to say if this will make the Rockies good or even more fun to watch, but there is a world brewing where they are no longer relying on the mistake contracts of the past and instead have young homegrown players in those roles.

It’s da deadline

A very consequential trade deadline has all but arrived for the Rockies and now they have to make some decisions about who to keep, who to move, and who to call up to replace those guys.

Apart from the obvious players that have had rumors around them basically since April like Ryan McMahon and Jake Bird, Thomas Harding had an interesting nod in his last newsletter around a couple of younger relievers that are gathering calls.

This would be a pretty Anti-Rockies move if they were to move on from Halvorsen or Vodnik, but it absolutely makes sense for them to do it. If you’re three or more years away from competing, like the Rockies probably are, you shouldn’t be holding on to relievers at all. It’s not that you have to count on having good relievers when you are good, but I would argue that you can’t count on those guys to be good by the time you are either. Unlike a top prospect like Chase Dollander, you’re not aligning any future success around Seth Halvorsen closing games out for you. You have to be smart.

Harding touches on it as well that these guys are probably going to get the most in a return for you, too. It’s not Moneyball exactly, but it is a smart rebuilding tactic.

They should also trade Bird and Tyler Kinley if they can, but if a team is desperate for a reliever with control, why not ours?