The Rockies are exploring acquiring a catcher to pair with starter Tony Wolters and will also look at adding pitching depth, general manager Jeff Bridich said Wednesday.

Bridich, who is attending Major League Baseball’s GM meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz., appeared on MLB Network’s “High Heat Show” with Matt Vasgersian. Following is the text of Wednesday’s interview:

MLB Network: After the Rockies back-to-back playoff seasons in 2017-18, the Rockies went through a difficult 2019 season. What is the Rockies (offseason) agenda? What are you looking to accomplish at the GM meetings?

Bridich: “I think you got that pretty much right. I think we had — coming off our back-to-back playoff seasons in 2017 and ’18 — we were looking at kind of staying on that trajectory and taking another step up. Obviously, as sit here now, that didn’t happen. For a number of different reasons.

“I think we knew it was going to be a different team, right? It wasn’t the exact same team in ’19 as it was in ’18 and ’17. So there was going to be some changes and some growing that the team was going to have to do, most likely.

“Some of that happened, but there were a lot of injuries, and a lot of bad baseball and the team … we did not play collective quality baseball throughout the course of the season. There were snippets of it. There was a time in late June when we got to five or six games over (.500) and we felt like we were making some progress in getting healthier. But we just never got that traction.

“I think some of the stuff that needs to happen for us moving forward in 2020, we need to get healthy, especially in our rotation. We need to have guys return to performances that they have shown in the past, whether that’s a Kyle Freeland in the rotation, or whether that’s a Wade Davis in the bullpen. (First baseman) Daniel Murphy is going to have a better year for us, even though his year turned out to be OK. It wasn’t a terrible year by any stretch. He’s got better baseball in him next year for us.

“Here, we will look for a complementary catcher, maybe, to Tony Wolters. (We’ll) see if we can figure that out. Being in Colorado we will always see if we can upgrade pitching in one way or another.”

MLB Network: Because of the challenge of the (altitude) at Coors Field, is there a statistic you like to look at, that you like to use? Maybe a statistic that GM at sea level wouldn’t take into consideration?

Bridich: “Relative humidity, in the air. That seems to help (laughs). There is a collection of stats that I would say are important to us. But I think one of the lessons that we have learned over time is that it’s easy to pigeonhole, and it’s easy to say, ‘Well, this is the one way to go with pitching and this will be our total solution to everything.’ And that’s not realistic.

“We try not to pigeonhole the type of human being and the type of competitor and the type of pitcher that is going to succeed in altitude and find some consistency. German Marquez is not the same type of pitcher as Kyle Freeland, who is not the same type of pitcher as Tyler Anderson or Jon Gray. I mean, these guys do things differently. So a lot of the common, strong elements for these guys have to be on the mental side and the emotional side, in conviction and confidence and resiliency.

“In addition to that, sure, there are stats that we value that I won’t talk about here. But the overarching thing is that we need to be flexible in terms of the types of guys we bring in.”

MLB Network: In regard to the National League West, the media sometimes says other teams in the division are waiting for when the Dodgers are vulnerable before spending their free-agent dollars. Is that the case or is that the media putting words into your mouth?

Bridich: “I would say it leans more towards that — (putting) words in the mouth. We were one game away. We took (the Dodgers) to Game 163 two years ago. And specific to free-agent spending, we, over the past three or four years, have actually spent a decent amount of money in free agency. So it didn’t really have anything to do with what the Dodgers were doing or really anything anybody else in the NL West was doing.

“It was more of a self-evaluation process. It’s tough to guess and try to guestimate what each and every team in your division is going to do — and be accurate in those guesses. If you are going to kind of create your own strategy around that, or in large part because of that, you are probably walking down a rabbit hole you don’t want to walk down.

We focus on us. Certainly, we pay attention to (other teams), but we focus on us, primarily.

MLB Network: The last couple of years, the free-agent market waits until the 11th hour to sort itself out. Certainly, with so many big-name guys being represented by a firm (agent Scott Boras) that likes to hold its assets until the very last minute, do you see this offseason differently than in the past? Or is it going to be March when all of these big stars sign contracts?

Bridich: It’s tough to predict. I’d say I wouldn’t be surprised if it operated in similar fashion to the past few free-agency periods. I think some of it is human nature. We, as human beings, in any industry or in most walks of life, operate and start to make decisions when there are deadlines in place and when you can see the end of the road coming. I do believe there is some of that for everybody involved in this situation, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see this market go in similar fashion this year.”

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