Nolan Arenado can’t let go of 2018 — Rockies fans shouldn’t either

Apparently, Nolan Arenado is just like you and me, replaying moments in 2018 and wondering about the what-ifs and how the Colorado Rockies could have won the National League West.

Arenado is in town with the St. Louis Cardinals, four years removed from the blockbuster trade that forever changed baseball in the Mile High City. Just ahead of a trade deadline when he could once again be on the move, he caught up with the Denver Post. The star third baseman shared that he, too, thinks about the slew of different things that could have gone differently for the Rockies in 2018 and how that may have changed everything.

“Oh yeah, I think about it,” Arenado told The Denver Post on Monday before facing the Rockies. “I mean, we’ve talked about it. I’ve talked to DJ (LeMahieu) about it and (Trevor) Story about it.”

As somebody who covered every single game that season, I go back to Sept. 19 for the season’s defining moment. It perfectly showed the team’s shortcomings as opposed to the Dodgers and how simple the fix would have been if brass were more committed to winning than the soft move of adding Drew Butera.

Scott Oberg came jogging in from the bullpen in a 2-2 game to start the seventh inning, and he had a gauntlet ahead of him. Left-handed hitting Joc Pederson was to lead off the inning, followed by the left-handed hitting Max Muncy and switch-hitting Yasmani Grandal, three players who are now multiple-time All-Stars. That’s why manager Bud Black turned to Oberg, one of the best bullpen arms in baseball at the time — and perhaps the club’s best option against left-handed hitters. One issue: Oberg is not a lefty—he’s right-handed, he just happens to do pretty well against left-handed batters.

Pederson popped up to catcher Chris Iannetta. Muncy came on as a pinch hitter for Enrique Hernandez and walked. Grandal then gapped a double, leaving runners in scoring position with one out for All-Star Brian Dozier, whose fifth-inning double against left-handed starter Tyler Anderson tied the game at two. Black’s great friend, legendary Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, called back Dozier for All-Star right-handed hitter Yasiel Puig. One problem for Black’s boys, Puig hits righties better than lefties.

Two pitches later, Puig delivered the single most devastating swing in Rockies history, knocking a three-run homer for a 5-2 lead that secured Los Angeles’ sweep over Colorado.

Did Black get it wrong? Should he have let Anderson face the lineup one more time? Should he have gone to somebody other than Oberg? Unlike the Dodgers, who added three All-Stars, a former reliever of the year, and another arm who captured two World Series, Colorado didn’t address its biggest need — a left-handed reliever — and on that September night, that’s exactly what the Rockies lacked.

A few weeks later, Colorado lost its fifth-straight matchup in Los Angeles, a Game 163 tiebreaker to give the Dodgers the NL West. The Dodgers’ 91 wins in the regulation season were the team’s fewest in any season going back to 2013, while Colorado’s 91 wins were just one off the franchise record for victories.

2018 was the closest the Colorado Rockies have ever been to winning the NL West, something they’ve never been able to do. Since that year, the Dodgers and Rockies have been ships in the night, with Los Angeles winning 100-plus games every year and Colorado not even getting back to .500.

“I think we were more disappointed with the lack of deadline moves at the time,” Arenado told the Denver Post on Monday, years later. “If we had just gotten over the edge to win that division.”

He added, “I think about some games that season that we didn’t win, and I think, ‘My gosh, we blew that game.’ Or, ‘We didn’t score enough runs.’ If we had added just a little bit more, we would have won the division. That’s what I believe.”

The Rockies still went to the postseason, beating the Cubs in an epic Wildcard game, but a lack of offense against the Brewers meant a sweep, and their season was over. Meanwhile, the Dodgers battled the Braves and Brewers en route to the pennant but lost the World Series to Boston.

In the winter that followed, Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich followed up his awful trade deadline with a terrible offseason; however, he did make one huge move for the Rockies’ future. Colorado let key players LeMahieu, Adam Ottavino and Carlos Gonzalez walk. LeMahieu went on to finish fourth and third in AL MVP voting the following two seasons. Ottavino kept being a lockdown reliever and maybe had the finest season of his career in 2019, pitching for the Yankees while Gonzalez played his final season in MLB outside of Denver.

To replace DJ, Colorado signed career postseason hitting menace Daniel Murphy to nearly the same contract LeMahieu got from New York. Murphy was no longer capable of playing second base, so the Rockies shifted him to first base, had prospect Ryan McMahon tabbed as the second baseman and moved other former Washington National on big money Ian Desmond from first to center field.

Murphy, like Desmond, ended up being a negative WAR player for the Rockies. Colorado added veteran bopper Mark Reynolds to the team, a key player in 2016 and 2017, but he ended up as the worst player in baseball that season.

The Rockies’ final two big offseason moves were letting catcher Tom Murphy go — he later became a starter for the Mariners — and signing franchise face Arenado to an eight-year, $255 million deal.

It’s the contract Arenado still plays under, just on another team, as the 34-year-old, no longer an All-Star, reflects on the hypotheticals of his career that has resulted in little postseason success.

“I think what I’m seeing now, compared to that group, was that that group was super excited to come to the field every day and get to work,” he shared with the Denver Post. “I felt like everybody was chasing being great — individually.

“We weren’t that good, we were pretty good, we weren’t great. But it was a totally different vibe from what I see now from players, compared to those players (in ’18). The guys got to the field at 12:45 every day. Guys were excited to get to the field early, and we stayed late all the time. Now, it’s just different.”

Arenado was traded to end a feud with Bridich, who quit shortly after dealing the star. Arenado wanted to chase winning — and he did for a few years with the Cards before things went downhill there. The Rockies have been rudderless since the trade and have lost many fans and somehow even more ballgames.

The 2018 season will always be full of what-ifs: that one game in Texas, the Puig homer, Game 163, the Milwaukee series — and plenty more. And now, years later, even Arenado can’t help but wonder what might have been — not just for the Rockies, but for the arc of his entire career.

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