A holiday message from The Beard!

Greetings readers! The Beard here, just dropping in to see how everything is going. During the baseball offseason, I rarely remain in your solar system. Nothing personal, mind you, but Earth is just far less interesting this time of year. Sure, you have your football and your hockey and your day-after-Thanksgiving sales, but I just find that my skills are put to much better use helping the inhabitants of Inglatoid (a delightful little system in the Triangulum Galaxy) in their attempts to realize manned space flight, than poking around here doing my best to get Brett Favre into the playoffs again. Yawn. And if I DID stay on Earth in the baseball offseason, you can bet it would be in the southern hemisphere. Just because I'm a beard doesn't mean I like the cold.

Anyway, The Inglatoids had really found a groove last week, so I decided to swing by to see how Spilborghs and the Rockies were doing, and what did I find? Matt Holliday in Oakland, that's what. Now, as an omniscient Beard from outer space, I saw this coming just like the rest of you, but even so I found the news irritating at best. How do they allow a hitter like Holliday to get away from them? It doesn't make sense, even to a Beard who understands everything.

To play the Devil's Advocate (*-See below) for a minute, I will admit that Holliday gave no indication that he wanted to stay. He said he liked Colorado, but then hired Boras, who nobody hires when they want to stay where they are. He wanted Yankee/Red Sox money, and the Rockies certainly can't play ball with that. So one could argue that the Rockies, who would lose Holliday due to free agency no matter what, were right to trade him while they could.

Now, back to my actual opinion that the Rockies made a mistake. Yes, Holliday did not want to stay here, but the Rockies should have made him an offer that was close to what he'd get elsewhere. If he turns it down, so be it, that's his right... but at least the Rockies would have shown their fans they were serious about this "grow players from within" concept. Why do the Rockies want to play by the Twins/A's handbook? In how many World Series have those two teams appeared lately? The answer is zero, friends.

The Rockies have developed some fine players recently. And sometimes, teams must trade fine young players away either to bring in more youth, or to keep their payroll manageable. However, players like Hollliday don't come around that often. Trade away players such as Atkins, Hawpe, Francis... not Holliday. The sad truth is that the Helton contract was not only a bust from Helton's point of view, but it ruined the possibility of keeping a cornerstone player like Holliday, too. Matt Holliday is one of the three best hitters in baseball today. This one could haunt the Rockies for some time to come.

So these are frustrating times for Rockies fans, but fear not! I shall not abandon you! I will return in the spring, and the Rockies will regain their prowess in the NL West. And I would like to welcome Don Baylor back to the Rockies organization: I am certain he will be an asset to me in my efforts to bring the Rockies back to greatness!

* The above discussion reminds me of a funny story: I acutally was the Devil's advocate once. He was pulled over for having a taillight out, and I guess he wasn't in his usual silver-tongued mood with the officer. Usually he talks his way out of it, or makes some kind of deal and drives away better off than before he was pulled over, but this night was the end of a particularly rough day, and basically just let the guy have it. Ends up not only with a ticket for operating an unsafe vehicle, but also assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. Needless to say, he needed an experienced lawyer, and more importantly, he could afford an experienced lawyer. Not that I needed the money, but Lucifer doesn't exactly open up the coffers very often, so I made an exception to a very old rule of mine, and returned his call. Naturally, I plea bargained and kept it out of the papers. I am not at liberty to disclose the agreement, but Satan was happy with the result, and the cop got the SNL/movie career he'd always dreamed of.