The Rockies’ biggest star is gone, and nobody is more shocked than he

The contrast inside the clubhouse at Salt River Fields was stark.

While his Rockies teammates soaked up the sun and reveled in the optimism of spring training, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki was in a serious mood on the day he reported to camp.

The one touch of lightness was Tulo’s purple T-shirt with “Taz” blazed across the front, a tribute to his toddler son.

Five-and-a-half months later, Tulowitzki is healthy, happier and playing baseball for the Toronto Blue Jays, a team going all out to make the playoffs. In his Blue Jays debut Wednesday night, Tulowitzki hit a home run and two doubles and was serenaded with a standing ovation.

Following is a look back at the final chapter in Tulowitzki’s nearly 10-year career as a Rockie:

Gentleman’s agreement

There was a lot on Tulo’s mind when he reported to spring training in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was coming back from surgery the previous August to repair a torn labrum in his left hip and had yet to test himself on a baseball diamond. He spent the winter doing rehabilitation work at his offseason home in Las Vegas, where he also paid close attention to an avalanche of trade rumors.

“Yeah, I saw my name being thrown all over,” Tulowitzki said that mid-February day. “This offseason was the first time it really hit me, just because it was every single day and pretty hard.”

It was no secret that he wanted out of Denver if he wasn’t convinced the team could win. The previous summer, he had made headlines when he told The Denver Post he didn’t want his career to mirror that of Rockies icon Todd Helton.

“I don’t want to be the next in line as somebody who was here for a long time and didn’t have a chance to win every single year,” Tulowitzki said.

Upon his arrival in spring training, Tulowitzki’s tone was different, less strident. He had talked to owner Dick Monfort during the offseason, and there was a gentleman’s agreement that he would be informed of any trade talks that got serious and would have some say in where he might be traded. For that assurance, Tulowitzki would play the good soldier.

At the time, coming off a major injury, a trade seemed unlikely. If the Rockies were going to trade him, they wanted him playing at a high level to increase his value.

There was a lot at stake. For the first half of the 2014 season, Tulowitzki played like an MVP candidate, batting .340, with 21 home runs and 52 RBIs through 90 games. But then came a hip injury and surgery Aug. 16 to repair a torn labrum. In eight full bigleague seasons, he had played in more than 130 games just three times.

A “media production”

As the Rockies broke spring camp, the oddsmakers at website Bovada set the overunder for Tulowitzki’s games played at 129½.

He scoffed at that number, convinced he was going to have a bounce-back season and stay healthy, though he had agreed to take occasional planned days off.

“If anything, this spring has given me confidence,” he said. “When I was diagnosed with a torn labrum last summer, you think about a lot of things. You think about your career and whether or not you’ll be the same player. You check out how you feel, day in and day out. I know it’s just spring training, but for me, I’ve gained a lot of confidence. I know I can be the same player, if not better.”

Tulowitzki began the season well but soon cooled off. In April he hit .308, but with only two home runs. In May, he again hit just two home runs and batted .262. Alarms sounded when he was pulled in the third inning from a May 15 game at Los Angeles because of tightness in his left quadriceps.

It turned out to be a minor injury, but manager Walt Weiss, already vigilant about giving his shortstop scheduled days off, became even more determined to give him rest.

“We communicate consistently,” Weiss said. “I told him, ‘I want you to feel like you can take your best shot whenever you are out there.’ He was out there kind of guarded, so I said, ‘I am going to start giving you more days off, so when you are out there, you can go all out and play the way you want to play.’ Because it was getting in his head, too.’ “

The day before Tulowitzki tweaked his quadriceps, he was busy dousing trade rumors that flared up as the Rockies struggled through an 11-game losing streak. His agent, Paul Cohen, had told the New York Post he would soon be meeting with his client for breakfast in Los Angeles and they would discuss the possibility of a trade.

“To say that it is not a possibility would be silly,” Cohen said, adding that “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist” to see why the subject was heating up. Even though it was his own agent who sparked the rumors, Tulowitzki tried his best to defuse the situation.

“The one thing I do want to make clear is that I don’t know where the talk came from of me demanding a trade,” he said. “There is no talk like that and never has been. And my relationship with the Rockies … We never wanted it to get to that point.”

Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich was angered by the trade talk.

“What’s gone on the last few days, especially the last 72 hours, really has a been a media production, more than anything else,” Bridich said.

For the time being, nothing was happening on the trade front.

The blockbuster trade

As the weather heated up in June, so did Tulowitzki, with a .381 average and four home runs. He was in the midst of a careerbest on-base streak that eventually reached 41 games. At age 30, he had become a more patient, mature hitter.

“There are times when you don’t quite feel like yourself,” he said, “but you still find a way to grind through it and have effective ABs. When I was younger, I don’t think I could have done that.”

With the increase in production came increased trade interest. Bridich and Toronto general manager Alex Anthopoulos were talking and had been since the winter meetings in December.

“It’s not like we were out there pushing teams,” Bridich said. “Troy was our player, and he was at the time for us the best shortstop in the game. They initiated those talks in the wintertime. No surprise there.”

The talks reignited last weekend and on Monday went into overdrive once the rival GMs sensed the framework of a deal. On Monday night, in the bottom of the ninth inning in Chicago, Weiss pulled Tulowitzki from the game.

“I knew something was up,” Tulowitzki said later. “I don’t get replaced for defense, so that felt really weird.”

After the game, Tulowitzki was called into Weiss’s cramped office in the ramshackle visitors clubhouse in the bowels of Wrigley Field. A tearful and equally stunned Weiss told Tulowitzki he had been traded. Tulowitzki, shocked and angry, immediately called Monfort to find out the details. He also talked to Bridich, who was all business.

Meanwhile, media camped outside the clubhouse as news spread that the trade was official and teammates whispered the news to one another. But Tulowitzki wasn’t up for talking to the media. He wanted to gather his emotions, and he slipped out a back door. He waited until the following afternoon to address the media.

“I felt like I got blindsided a bit. I thought I was in the loop, in the conversation,” Tulowitzki said from his suite in a downtown Chicago hotel. “It definitely caught me by surprise. I was shocked. Maybe I was a little naive to think I would be so connected to the process.”

Monfort, talking to the media back in Denver, shed tears.

“This is a big, hard one,” he said. “Because Tulo is the best shortstop in the game. He’s been the face of this franchise. He was on our World Series team. He’s very near and dear to my heart.”

At the same time, Monfort backed Bridich, whom he had given permission to make the deal.

“For him to be successful, he has to be able to make trades he thinks he has to make,” Monfort said.

As the reality of the trade sunk in, Tulowitzki seemed to embrace it.

“I want to win,” he said. “I’ve looked at some of these teams, like the Astros, that have turned things around very quick. And I liked our position players in Colorado, so I thought, ‘Well, you never know. Maybe we can turn it around.’

“But now that it’s played out, I think this will be good for me in Toronto. I think this can rejuvenate my career.” And what of the Rockies? “At the end of the day, you don’t ever hate anybody,” he said. “You want success for the people. So if this is what they feel like they had to do, then so be it. I have a lot of faith in myself, in who I am and what I bring to a clubhouse. I can’t say this is the best move for the Rockies. I guess time will tell.” Patrick Saunders: psaunders@denverpost.com or twitter.com/psaundersdp