Colorado Rockies Make Lots of Deals: Will They Make a Difference?

As the winter meetings approached, we heard various leaks of players the Colorado Rockies were going to pursue. Names that were mentioned were Michael Cuddyer, Josh Willingham, Martin Prado, Jair Jurrjens, Edinson Volquez, Jon Neise and Wade Davis.

Most Rockies fans were looking forward to a revamped lineup as payback for the 3 million fans that filled the park last season.

So as the meetings wrapped up today, here is the rundown of the Rockies' haul.

First, they traded a solid catcher in Chris Ianetta for pitcher Tyler Chatwood and his 6-11 record and 4.75 ERA.

Next up is Kevin Slowey, he of the 0-8 record and the 4.66 ERA.

Continuing the trend, the Rockies traded Huston Street to the Padres, basically just to relieve the team of the $7 million owed Huston.

Finally, the Rockies moved Ian Stewart and minor league (former first-round pick) Casey Weathers to the Cubs for infielder DJ LeMahieu and outfielder Tyler Colvin. Tyler Colvin hit .150 last year and DJ LeMahieu is a low-power prospect that plays both second and third base.

Personally, this feels similar to last season when the Rockies picked up a number of reclamation projects hoping to get lucky. We all witnessed how that worked out—Paulino, Lopez, Morales and Wiggington all were busts and the team fell way below expectations.

I hope this is not the path the Rockies management continues to go down during this offseason. Instead of GM Dan O'Dowd dumpster diving at these meetings by picking up other teams' disappointments, it would be refreshing to see the team go for quality over quantity.

Currently, we now have DJ LeMahieu instead of Martin Prado, Tyler Colvin instead of Michael Cuddyer and Tyler Chatwood instead of Edinson Volquez.

What we will probably hear in the upcoming days is that the other deals fell apart at the end of the negotiations, and he is quite happy with the deals that were made.

Dan, please prove me wrong!