Lots of changes for ex-Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy

DENVER - A little more than a year ago, Jonathan Lucroy was one of the biggest names moved at the trading deadline. Sent to the Texas Rangers along with reliever Jeremy Jeffress, Lucroy helped net the Milwaukee Brewers their top overall prospect Lewis Brinson and one of their top pitching prospects in Luis Ortiz.

But as well as that deal worked out for the Brewers and their rebuild, Lucroy's experience has been markedly different.

He finished 2016 solidly but an expected World Series push by the Rangers fizzled out in the ALCS. He was hitting just .242 with four home runs and 29 runs batted in with Texas this season before being dealt to the Colorado Rockies on July 30 in exchange for a player to be named later.

Lucroy was in the starting lineup for the Rockies once again on Saturday night as they faced the Brewers at Coors Field and could only shake his head at how differently things have turned out for him – beginning with the initial trade he nixed to the Cleveland Indians, how things went sour in Texas and how happy he's been so far in Colorado.

"A lot’s changed," said Lucroy, who's also sporting a different look personally with a shaved head and bushy beard. "It’s been a pretty big adjustment moving around. At this time last year, I never thought I would be in Colorado. The baseball landscape, the business side of it, it is what it is.

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"There are always going to be a lot of changes throughout your career. There are very few players that stay with one team anymore. That’s just the way it is. A lot of players go through it. At some time in their careers, players are going to change teams."

Lucroy, a third-round pick of the Brewers in 2007, developed into a two-time all-star with Milwaukee. His finest season came in 2014, when he hit .301 with 13 homers, 69 RBI and a major-league-leading 53 doubles en route to a fourth-place finish in National League MVP balloting.

He outperformed the five-year, $12 million contract extension he inked with the Brewers by that point, and heading into 2016 it had been made abundantly clear that the organization had no interest in extending the extremely club-friendly deal that included a team option for 2017.

The Brewers initially traded Lucroy to the Indians, but because they were included in a no-trade clause in his contract he nixed the deal. That left the Brewers to send him along with Jeffress to the Rangers for Brinson, Ortiz and outfielder Ryan Cordell, who's since been flipped for reliever Anthony Swarzak.

But what Lucroy believed would be a great fit never materialized. While he played well through the rest of 2016, the Rangers showed no interest in extending his contract and less than a year after thinking Texas might be a team he could finish his career with, he was on the move again.

"It wasn’t easy," acknowledged Lucroy, who declined to go into specifics about his time with the Rangers. "Texas this year was very difficult, obviously."

Lucroy has fared much better in his short tenure with the Rockies. Playing in a hitter's ballpark and back in the familiar NL, he entered Saturday hitting .342 with a .490 on-base percentage in 13 games (12 starts) for a Colorado team that's surpassed expectations and currently leads in the NL wild-card chase.

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While he says he likes playing for the Rockies, Lucroy is keeping his options open heading into next season – his first foray into the free-agent market. He wants to remain a starting catcher, but with his market value diminished he might have to settle for a one-year deal in order to re-establish himself.

"I think setting expectations in this game is a mistake. I’ve done that before," he said. "I’ve made that mistake several times, and then it doesn’t work out. I don’t have any expectations right now.

"You can’t have expectations in this game, because in my experience it usually doesn’t work out. Worrying about the day-to-day aspect of it and seeing what happens is the best approach to it, I think."

While the dollars will be important, so will the fit for Lucroy. 

"I don’t want to be somewhere that doesn’t (want me)," he said. "It’s like being married, it really is. If you don’t want to be with your wife, you shouldn’t show her any love. It’s the same thought process for me.

"Whenever I’m somewhere and I know the team is invested in me, I get invested in them emotionally. That’s just the way I was made. I guess you could say I care too much.

"That’s what’s burned me – that I care too much."

Not many faces remain from Lucroy's tenure with Milwaukee, which is par for the course with a rebuilding project. He says from afar, it appears as though the Brewers are on the right course.

"They have some good talent over there," he said. "A lot of young talent, and they’ve definitely got a bright future ahead of them if they can stay consistent and healthy."