Rockies prepared to spend at Winter Meetings

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The approved increase in payroll is real.

Rockies owner, president and CEO Dick Monfort said last month that the team will increase its payroll, which set a team record at $120,586,480 at the end of last season. General manager Jeff Bridich has been operating that way, having seriously approached free-agent first basemen Mark Trumbo and Edwin Encarnacion, whose price tags could conservatively exceed $75 million and require deals of four or five years.

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But the Rockies’ final payroll ranked 19th in the Majors in 2016. So Bridich keeps getting questions that amount to, “Seriously, can you really increase the payroll?” 

Tuesday at the Winter Meetings, Bridich answered that if a big contract is necessary, and the player is right, he can go where he needs to go. And Monfort will allow it.

“He and I are saying the same things right now,” Bridich said. “It seems like it. We’ve talked about it. We’re totally in lockstep on all this stuff. Dick and I communicate every single day.”

So money does not appear to be a prohibiting factor in filling the first-base opening, where the team needs run production.

“It’s not like we’ve done anything to that degree here yet, and I don’t know if we will, but we’re not just talking about these things about our payroll growing and planning on turning around and doing the exact opposite,” Bridich said. “We’re talking about them because we believe that will happen and we’re expecting that to happen.”

But Bridich will not spend just to spend, which is why he has spoken to essentially every available first baseman. So if the Rockies don’t land Trumbo or Encarnacion, they can pursue an idea such as signing veteran Mike Napoli, late of the Indians, on a …

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