MLB Trade Rumors: Latest Reports Heading into World Series Bracket
October 21, 2024
While the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees prepare for the World Series, front offices of every other organization have turned their attention to the offseason and the myriad of deals and moves that will help define the 2025 season.
One such team is the Colorado Rockies, a team seemingly perpetually out of the championship hunt.
Instead of beefing up the roster and increasing payroll in hopes of fielding a playoff contender, the organization is preparing to cut payroll, per Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post.
It is one element of what the team calls its "construction project," an effort to rebuild (again) and head in a youth-oriented direction. Another element is the trading of veteran players, with Brendan Rodgers and starting pitchers Austin Gomber and Cal Quantrill among those mentioned by Saunders, with the latter of the pitchers most likely to be moved.
In 29 games, Quantrill went 8-11 with an ERA of 4.98, 110 strikeouts, and a 1.52 WHIP in an unfriendly ballpark for pitchers.
He is due $8 million in arbitration while Rodgers and Gomber are each due $5 million.
Quantrill previously spent time in San Diego and Cleveland. In his final season with the Guardians, Quantrill saw his ERA balloon to 5.24, something he improved upon in his first (and potentially only) season in Colorado.
His control was a problem at times, with a K/BB rate of 1.6 in 2024, but he is a veteran arm who can benefit a contender as a fourth or fifth-day starter.
Gomber has consistently had an ERA over 4.0 but has also spent the majority of his career pitching in Coors Field, a ballpark that will make even the most effective pitcher look mediocre or worse on the stat sheet.
He did give up the most hits of his career in 2024 with 178, though, meaning he would be both a veteran and reclamation project of sorts for a team looking to add another arm to its rotation.
Rodgers tied his second-best performance in terms of home runs in 2024, blasting 13 and driving in the second-most RBI of his career with 54. He has a career slash line of .266/.316/.40 in his six seasons in Colorado.
All three players have experience in the Majors and would likely be an asset to any locker room they appeared in should a trade occur. How leaving the Rockies organization, one synonymous with losing in recent years, would affect their play is the real question.
