Jul

Rockies will not make trade unless current team improves play

By Ryan

The Rockies have been playing bad. They just finished a road trip where they went 2-9 and each facet of the game produced poorly.

If management believes one or two well-placed additions could put the club over the top, it is more likely to add payroll or sacrifice youth for experience, as the Rocks did last year when they added a pair of bullpen arms for the pennant race.

But when a team can’t seem to do anything right, sacrificing the future for the present starts to look pointless.

“We’ll still talk to clubs and do what we always do, but we’re going to have to make sure it’s something that fits for us, more so than maybe when we went out on the trip,” Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd said Tuesday. “It’s not like you can go out and make a trade and improve every aspect of the club. The bottom line is some of the players are going to have to start playing better.”

“There’s really not a ton of players on the market right now in the impact category,” O’Dowd said. “There’s one in particular I think if we’re not able to acquire by the 31st probably wouldn’t be there. The rest we’ve come across I don’t think the 31st is necessarily a firm deadline.”

The Rockies are sinking quickly. They find themselves 8 games back in the NL West and 5 1/2 games back in the Wild Card. Hope is not lost in picking someone up as O’Dowd believes many players will clear waivers come August.

Information from Dave Krieger of the Denver Post was used in this article.