I love when people act crazy and act as though they can see the future. What am I on? Common sense pills? I don’t know.

The Rockies scored more runs than the Dodgers last year and have far more players on the upswing of their careers (5 of their 8 regulars are 26 or younger). The Dodgers have 2 big holes in the line-up in the 7 and 8 spots. Not to mention I’m not exactly counting on big years from the now-36 Casey Blake or the now-not-on-PEDs Manny Ramirez.

You are also 100% incorrect about their farm system. Baseball Prospectus ranks them as the 18th best in baseball and their 2 best pitching prospects are 21 years old and won’t be ready for at least 2 years. Keith Law of ESPN ranks their system 19th in baseball and has their top pitcher 83rd in his top 100. I could go on, but I’ll let you do the research to see that you aren’t even close.

So no, I didn’t miss that huge (non-existent) detail.

Without an unlimited payroll, spending $20 million on one player handcuffs you in other areas. The only guys worth $20 million on this team are Halladay and Utley.

It’s hard to come up with a solution before this season plays out (Either player could have a real bad season, or particularly good season). But the justification for trading Howard would be…

• He’s not worth a long-term deal due to the fact that bigger/power guys decline more rapidly and he will be 31 at the time.
• In a short series, he can be easily neutralized by lefty relievers with good breaking balls.
• In general, HR and RBI are somewhat overrated stats and lead to higher-than-value salaries. If we traded him, we could use the $20 million we save more economically elsewhere (Werth, for instance).
• Since HR and RBI are somewhat overrated stats – we could probably get a good prospect haul for him.
• If you keep winning, you can justify pretty much anything. If we trade Howard, a lot of people might be mad, but if we come back the next year and win, people will soon forget. Good organizations know when to let people go.

If Howard were willing to take a shorter deal (3-4 years) – I’d be OK with that.

Howard crushes right-handed fastballs. He hits about one home run for every two strikeouts off right-handers’ fastballs. But look how the odds grow tremendously against him as the ball spins and/or comes from lefties: roughly one homer for every three strikeouts against right-handers’ breaking balls, and one homer for at least every 11 punchouts against lefties’ fastballs and breaking balls. Here’s another way to put it: Howard saw 1,129 breaking balls and hit only 17 of them for home runs, including just three from left-handers.


The bottom line is that the book on Howard is the most extreme scouting report in the game. The guy sees more breaking balls than anybody else in baseball, he sees more and more of them every year, and after what the Yankees did to him in the World Series, he should expect even more of them this year. Looks like Howard and Uncle Charlie will be spending a whole lot more time together.

Their absence, however, has never been a clubhouse issue among the Rockies, who have created a unique mentality in this pro sports era of multi-million-dollar, multi-year contracts.

“From the time you start playing this game you play to win a World Series, and the only way to get that done is to get together a group of guys who know how to play the game right,’’ shortstop Troy Tulowitzki said. “We have a group of guys here who are not concerned about contracts and things outside of baseball.

“They are committed to not just winning, but winning with the Rockies. We had some great guys who left and I know they wanted to win as much as the next guy, but they had other things that they felt were important and we respect that. We wish them well.’’ 





“What you want to create is a situation where you can bring up a young player and they can be fit into a core of veterans instead of a case (that many mid-market and small market teams face) of breaking in a number of young players at the same time, meaning you go through a learning curve where you have no chance to win initially,’’ O’Dowd said.

“The only way a mid-market team can win over a sustained period is to have a core group of guys that are willing to work within the parameters of the organization,’’ general manager Dan O’Dowd said. “They may not get as much money as they could find in other places, but they have to be driven by more than money.

“They are still going to be paid well, don’t get me wrong. But each of them is willing to give up something for the benefit of the whole.’’

“I’m not passing judgment on players who have moved on, but most of our players have stepped up and bought into the concept. It’s not about worth. That’s arbitrary. It’s about what we can afford to try and keep the core of players together. And if a player feels he is better served moving on, then we have to hope we have younger players ready to take their place or we get younger players in return.’’

I am in no way saying that we are a small or a mid-market club.  However, it sounds similar to the approach that we have taken to get where we are.  On top of that, even though we are operating at a higher financial level than the Rockies, we still find ourselves at our payroll limit and will need to work under that constraint going forward.  Employing this strategy sounds like a logical way to proceed to me.

To that end, Howard, as difficult as he would be to trade from a fan-friendly or a team-loyalty perspective, really is the low hanging fruit here.

Amaro seems to be able to leverage what we’ve got here to get players to take less to play here, so if Howard buys into it (he seems to have done it once already with his current contract) and decides to take less money and/or years (a la Halladay), then fine.  If not, if he really wants the mega-contract, then I think we need to move him and do what’s best for the long-term good of the club.  We will be able to fill two spots on the diamond with quality players for what we would be paying him alone, not to mention what we could get back for him.

Also,  I find gradual turnover  every year preferable to keeping everyone until a huge payroll bill comes due in a few years and then having to make wholesale changes that will most likely be more disruptive.

He was an English major.