Why the Nolan Arenado Trade PROVES Jeff Bridich is a Great GM
Hello friends, a little while back, I made a post explaining why Jeff Bridich is actually a fantastic General Manager for the Colorado Rockies. Despite the airtight logic of that post, it now seems that some people are again upset with Mr. Bridich due to his trading of franchise icon Nolan Arenado to the Cardinals. While I certainly understand the raw emotions and pain Rockies fans and Non-Cardinal NL Central Fans are currently feeling, saying Jeff Bridich is a bad GM because of it is just such a patently false accusation that I feel I must speak up about it. To quote Cicero, "As some persons persist in their unteachable stupidity, I have to keep on ramming it home." Thus, I am here today to, once again, show the hidden genius of Jeff Bridich.
First, let's go over the details of the trade. The Rockies traded Nolan Arenado to the Cardinals in exchange for LHP Austin Gomber, INF Elehuris Montero, RHP Tony Locey, INF Mateo Gil and RHP Jake Sommers. The Rockies also sent the Cardinals 51 Million Dollars, we can only presume in reference to Area 51, the birthplace of Jeff Bridich.
Now to the uninformed perspective, this may seem like a "bad" trade or, at least, a very underwhelming one. However, while people are stressing out over statistics like Arenado's home run rate, Gomber's ERA+, and Locey's Power rankings, there's one statistic they are utterly ignoring: Life Expectancy.
In the state of Colorado, Life Expectancy is 80.5 years ([Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy)). In Missouri, the home of the St. Louis Cardinals, it is 77.3 ([Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy)). By trading away Arenado then, Jeff Bridich removed 3.2 years from his life, which may seem like a bad thing to do to your franchise player at first glance. However, Bridich also gained Gomber, Montero, Locey, Gill, and Sommers 3.2 years of life each, a total of 16 years overall. Thus, the Weighted Life Created (WLC) for this trade is 16-3.2, or 12.8 years.
Now, some of you might be thinking that this is a pretty utilitarian way of doing business, making someone give up some of their life to create more life for others. However, this is where the true genius of Jeff Bridich comes into play. He wasn't a cerebral Harvard Grad catcher for nothing, you know. According to an article in the New York Times ([Source](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/science/rich-people-longer-life-study.html#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20new%20study%2C%20wealthy%20men%20and%20women%20don,United%20States%20and%20in%20England)) wealthy people, on average, live nine more healthy years than everyone else. Therefore, when Jeff Bridich gave Nolan Arenado that massive contract extension, he, in essence, gifted Arenado an additional 9 years of life by making him fabulously wealthy. Now, Jeff Bridich took 3.2 of those 9 years back when he traded him, but, overall, Nolan Arenado came out ahead with an additional 5.8 years of life thanks to Jeff Bridich. You could argue that Nolan Arenado was going to get paid eventually anyway, which is probable, but one bad encounter with an ornery Wombat could've led to a catastrophic injury that prevented Arenado from signing a big FA deal. While he would *likely* have gotten a big contract and thus extra life, Jeff Bridich *guaranteed* that when he was under zero obligation to do so. Jeff Bridich was even smart enough to put in an opt-out into Arenado's contract to give the third baseman the chance to make more money and thus gain more life as well.
However, we haven't even gotten to the sheer brilliance of this trade. Arenado had already been given extra life due to his money. However, it is quite unlikely that Gomber, Montero, Locey, Gill, and Sommers are going to be making much money off the whole baseball thing. If, say, Jeff Bridich had acquired really good players in the trade, those gentlemen likely would've gotten their 9 extra years eventually due to large contracts, making the trade not as worthwhile. By trading for players who, for the most part, are likely not going to amount to much, Jeff Bridich is showing his compassion for the poor and needy, rather than the wealthy and uber successful.
However, we need to go even further beyond to see the absolute mind-melting sagacity of this move. According to the film *Schindler's List*, "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire." Since *Schindler's List* is based on a factual story, this means this quote is a fact as well. Now, as we know, this trade created an additional 12.8 years of life. Assuming the average life span in America is 78.7 years ([Source](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm)), we see that Jeff Bridich saved 0.163 lives with this trade. Then, if we multiply that by the population of the world entire, 7.8 billion ([Source](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/)), we get 1,245,320,000. Thus, we can see that with this trade, Jeff Bridich saved 1,245,320,000 lives. Incredible.
To conclude, while it's perfectly fine to be sad about losing Mr. Arenado, to say Jeff Bridich is "incompetent" or "bad at his job" is quite false since it is clear he made this trade for moral reasons as they are the only ones which justify it. While baseball is well and good, for me, human life is much more important, and I'm proud that in this sport of cut throat and harassing top executives, there's at least one GM truly willing to put the players first.
TL;DR: Maybe we should care less about WAR and more about LIFE.