Rockies GM listens, but how available is Tulo?

SAN DIEGO – New Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich said he will continue to listen to trade inquiries regarding superstar shortstop Troy Tulowitzki at the Winter Meetings here. However, it’s been six weeks of listening, and Bridich conceded nothing “serious” has developed.

And there’s ample reason to wonder whether anything will develop this winter involving the 30-year-old star.

While Bridich consistently suggests he’s open to deals for his best player, there’s considerable question whether Rockies owner Dick Monfort, who is extremely close to Tulowitzki, shares that very interest. Monfort is said to have suggested to inquiring teams at the owners meeting in Kansas City a couple weeks ago that Tulowitzki isn’t available.

A trade for Tulowitzki never was going to be easy. Monfort’s relationship with the lifelong Rockies shortstop is such that people close to the situation don’t believe he’d trade Tulo to a team the shortstop didn’t approve, even though he technically doesn’t possess no-trade rights. And they further suggest Monfort has even less interest in a trade for Tulo than does the shortstop himself.

Tulowitzki loves the organization and the owner, and he loves Denver, although he did invite the possibility of a deal last summer by telling Rockies higher-ups that he’d be amenable to a trade if they felt it might help the struggling team, and he has intermittently suggested the same amenability to a trade.

Tulowitzki’s love for the Rockies, is such that he’d have interest in leaving only for about a half-dozen clubs, according to people familiar with his thinking. Owing to his home state (he’s from Northen California and starred at Long Beach State) and well-known love of Derek Jeter, those teams are believed to include the Yankees, Dodgers, Angels, Giants and perhaps Cardinals and one or two others.

Unfortunately for the Rockies, a vast majority of those teams don’t currently have an overwhelming need for a shortstop. And a couple of those teams also may be reluctant to take on $118 million-plus through 2020 while giving up big-time young players for a 30-year-old shortstop coming off hip surgery (on that score things are said to be progressing well, with Tulo is said to be running unencumbered).

Word is, Tulo repeated to Monfort within the past few days his stated willingness to go for the good of the team. The departure of GM Dan O’Dowd, in power when Tulo was drafted and who has remained extremely close to him — even beyond difficulties in improving the Rockies’ pitching situation that frustrated Tulo at times — may in slightly loosen Tulo’s ties, according to one of his friends.

But that may not matter, as there remains no overwhelming evidence of true interest in making this happen beyond the GM’s unambiguous willingness to listen.

“We’ve been open from the git-go. We’ve been open and we’ve been transparent,” Bridich said by phone.

Yet one of baseball’s two or three best all-around players — he was hitting a league-leading .340 with 21 home runs and 52 RBI before going down with a hip injury little more than halfway through the season — and there has been no suggestion anything at all is afoot.

And there’s a good reason for that: Nothing is.

There was said to have been interest shown by the Mariners, Cardinals and Red Sox, though the St. Louis and Boston inquiries may have come as long ago as last summer (Seattle is said to have inquired around the time of the GM meetings), but nothing came of it any of it. And the Mariners appear to have long ago moved on, acquiring star DH Nelson Cruz for $57 million and strongly pursuing an outfielder (Melky Cabrera, Justin Upton and Matt Kemp among the targets).

Jeter’s former team intrigued Tulo almost from the start, though at one point he is said to have hesitated after hearing that maybe they weren’t as gung-ho as he hoped (though apparently, it turns out they were interested). Tulowitzki’s unannounced trip to see Jeter play at Yankee Stadium reminded everyone again how enamored he is of the Yankees legend, and Rockies people are aware that’s been his favorite outside choice, at least at times.

The Yankees signaled a couple days ago they had effectively given up that possibility with their trade for Didi Gregorius, who they like very much as defender. Yankees GM Brian Cashman and Bridich spoke a couple times at the GM meetings in Phoenix a month ago, and Bridich said the Tulo subject never came up — though it’s possible that either the Yankees assumed Tulo wasn’t going anywhere, or the Yankees were thinking that finding a new shortstop would be easier than it turned out.

The Yankees had trade talks regarding veterans Jimmy Rollins, Elvis Andrus and others before settling on the young defensive whiz Gregorius, who received a glowing recommendation from trusted Yankees scouting guru Stick Michael.

The Mets obviously have a need at shortstop and possess the perfect pitching prospects to entice the Rockies, but their interest at least has seemed muted by Tulo’s interest in the Yankees, and probably rightfully so. There’s no indication he has any interest in going to Queens, despite an almost inhuman lifetime 1.368 OPS at the Mets’ impossible Citi Field (though the Mets have moved the fences in again).

Bridich, in fact, didn’t indicate he was aware of any serious inquiries at the ownership meetings. And very little seems to have developed, nothing that has any sort of “foothold,” Bridich conceded.

“There hasn’t been anything serious enough yet with Tulo — just talk, ideas thrown out,” Bridich said.

At this point, it would be a major upset to see him go. One rival GM said he believes the Rockies would have to be absolutely blown away by one of a very select group of teams, and even then doubted a trade would be consummated.

Meanwhile, Bridich doesn’t appear to have completely given up. The young, Harvard-educated GM said he talked to Monfort only Friday, and that nothing’s changed.

“Our eyes and ears are open,” Bridich said, though the one or two real opportunities may be dwindling.

While Tulo doesn’t have strict veto power, longtime Rockies people suggest there’s almost no way Monfort sends Tulowitzki away against the player’s will. Tulowitzki and Monfort have stuck to their plan to update each other every couple weeks or so, and Bridich said that while there’s nothing to strictly prevent them from shipping Tulowitiz to an unapproved team, the process is a “collaborative” effort. In effect, that rightfully means they’d go directly to Tulowitzki before any trade is made.

“He’s a franchise player with a franchise contract,” Bridich noted.

At this point, he appears very likely to remain their franchise player.

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