The Rockies in 2012 will be relying on a lot of pieces both young and old to fall into place to turn around their abysmal performance from the season prior, but have no doubt that central to the plan for success this upcoming season is the performance of the team's two in their prime engines, the fiery leader, Troy Tulowitzki, and the run producing load bearer, Carlos Gonzalez. Jamie Moyer may mysteriously transform into Alex White, an April Casey Blake may shed its skin to reveal a September Nolan Arenado, but through it all, the performances of Tulo and Cargo will either carry this team or fail to get out of the middling mud it's been in the last couple of seasons.

With the commencement of Spring Training games yesterday, we will start to get articles about how great the pitching looks - such as seen for Drew Pomeranz here, or for Tyler Chatwood here, which is good news certainly, but take these articles with a grain of salt, particularly this early in the Cactus League. With young pitchers such as Pomeranz and Chatwood you certainly want and somewhat expect steps forward and the Rockies could use them if they want to compete in 2012, but how a pitcher looks in ST can be deceiving at times.

I don't know if we've mentioned this or not, as it's the sort of story that's been flying under the media radar, but apparently, 49 year old Jamie Moyer is attempting a comeback with the Rockies.

The future of the NL West seems to be heading toward a competitive jumble of five good teams over the next half decade. Two players that figure to be pains in the Rockies backside in that span blipped on the Rockpile Radar yesterday. With those same early Spring Training caveats applying to Diamondbacks pitchers, Trevor Bauer looked very solid in his two innings of the Rockies/D-backs tie, and the Padres signed outfielder Cameron Maybin to a five year extension.