ARENADO’S DISPUTE WITH ROCKIES MAY ESCALATE FURTHER

All-star third basemen feels ‘disrespected’ by trade discussions, writes Dave Sheinin.

WASHINGTON It has taken less than 11 months for the relationship between the Colorado Rockies and superstar third baseman Nolan Arenado to plummet from an all-time high — when the team, coming off a 2018 playoff appearance, signed their franchise player to an eight-year, Us$260-million extension — to an all-time low.

This week, after the team’s failed efforts to trade him, Arenado went public with his sense of feeling disrespected by “people there that I don’t want to be a part of.”

It is a situation that bears close watching, as the days creep by until the opening of spring training camps in mid-february, when such public rifts have a way of accelerating amid the heightened media presence. Given his stature, Arenado could turn this from a simple spat that can still be smoothed over to a full-blown crisis with implications for the rest of the industry.

The Arenado situation stems from the Rockies’ disappointing 71-91 finish in 2019, followed by an off-season of relative inactivity — outside of the very public attempts to trade Arenado.

Although the timing of the first Arenado trade rumours seemed strange — less than a year after signing Arenado to the largest contract in franchise history — the apparent change in direction they signalled for the Rockies made some sense: the team’s 2019 stumble, which followed a handful of disastrous free agent signings, revealed a franchise in need of a reset. And nothing would have accomplished that more completely than getting out from under Arenado’s massive deal — as shocking as such a thing might have sounded 11 months ago when he signed it.

It was also a matter of timing. This was a winter of frenzied pursuit of elite third basemen, with a half dozen or more teams jockeying to sign Anthony Rendon and Josh Donaldson, who wound up with the Los Angeles Angels and Minnesota Twins, respectively. But that still left several teams in desperate need of a third baseman.

And those teams — the Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers — were the primary ones the Rockies engaged in trade talks with for Arenado, a five-time all-star, seven-time Gold Glove winner and threetime National League home run champ.

From the beginning, there were major hurdles to an Arenado deal — most significantly the player opt-out after 2021 in his contract. Essentially, any team trading for him would have been assured of only two years of his services.

There is also a full no-trade clause in Arenado’s contract that may have required a buyout to get him to waive.

Partly because of those factors, teams with strong interest in Arenado were unwilling to meet the Rockies’ price for him. It made sense: the Rockies couldn’t give away one of the best allaround players in the game for little return, but other teams didn’t want to give up their best young talent for an expensive veteran they might only have for two years.

“We have listened to teams regarding Nolan and nothing has really come of it,” Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich told the Denver Post this week. “We are going to move forward pretty much as we expected — with Nolan in the purple and black and as our third baseman.”

But it appears the damage was already done, with Arenado telling the paper, “I really don’t care what’s being said. I just know that I feel disrespected over there.”

He failed to clarify what made him feel that way, but said it went beyond the trade talks. The implication: the Rockies ticked off their franchise player by failing to improve the roster this winter, then made things worse with their clumsy attempts to trade him.

While Arenado stopped short of demanding a trade for the time being, any such escalation would be disastrous for the Rockies, as it could reduce their leverage with potential trade partners, even as it increased the pressure on them to pull off a deal.

At the same time, those potential trade partners could move on to other solutions for their holes, as the Braves did this week by signing outfielder Marcell Ozuna to fill their need for a middle-ofthe-order bat.

When Arenado inked his deal last February, a massive show of commitment between player and team, he thought the Rockies were a franchise on the rise — coming off an NL Division Series appearance (and a franchise-high payroll) in 2018 and looking to take on the Los Angeles Dodgers for supremacy in the National League West. Instead, almost nothing that has happened since then has been good: the Rockies finished fourth in 2019, 35 games behind the Dodgers. They saw division rivals in Arizona and San Diego make strides. They made almost no impact additions this winter.

And now this.

Keep on eye on this one. The mere notion of the Rockies entertaining trade offers for Arenado was enough to jolt this winter’s talent market. Imagine what would happen this spring if it escalated from a possibility to a necessity.

We are going to move forward pretty much as we expected — with Nolan in the purple and black and as our third baseman.