Colorado Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich supports Ian Desmond's decision to sit out the 2020 season to focus on his family and help rejuvenate youth baseball in his hometown in Florida.
Bridich said he spoke with Desmond about the decision a few times recently.
"Ian is extremely thoughtful in what he does, he's thoughtful in how he prepares as a professional athlete, he's thoughtful as a husband and a father ... he's thoughtful about things that are bigger than him," Bridich said. "And to this point, the reference has been the team or the clubhouse or the locker room, or things that affect the organization, his charity work, passion projects of his outside of the game of baseball.
"He's willing to devote a lot of time and energy and thought to all of the things that he does. And so when you have somebody like that who is a professional athlete who is in the thick of it every day and trying to do the very best that he can to hold up his end of the bargain as an athlete, a teammate, a performer, and then he's always willing to think about other people on the team, in the organization and outside the organization, it's easy to gravitate to people like that."