The Rockies' official site tonight has a good, first person article on a trip to the D.R. by assistant director of player development, Marc Gustafson. To me the best news for our club next season is on Clint Barmes, who "looks good and is playing healthy." One report I read had said he looked sluggish, so it's good to see some conflicting stories from our side of the coin come out.
Apparently Juan Morillo's velocity hasn't dropped at all, and Samuel Deduno is striking out as many as ever. Take note of the additional Hector Gomez mention -with the Post coverage of the other day, I asked an NL scout who's seen several of the players seeing action down that way his thoughts, and he said that Gomez was "damn good", but should take a few seasons to be ready for primetime. The last player noted by Gustafson was Aneury Rodriguez, who along with Chaz Roe will make Asheville an interesting rotation to watch again this year so long as they both make it there.
If you didn't see this in the comments to the post below this one, a couple of Rockies questions were answered by Chris Kline at Baseball America in an AFL chat today. The first was a very rough evaluation on Jeff Salazar, but considering the brick wall Jeff ran into in his progress after Visalia, probably fair. The second showed that Kline shares my cautious take on Ian Stewart's wrist injury. It should be interesting to note that in the final question, Stewart wasn't mentioned as having some of the best potential to be an "all-star caliber" player, which is a definite step down from where he was considered last season. Here, I think Kline and I disagree, as I still like Stewart's superstar potential. So long as the wrist proves healthy, look for a big rebound in 2006.
Update [2005-11-18 19:55:22 by Rox Girl]:
I had just posted this when malakian let me know in the comments down there that the Rockies protected Manuel Corpas on the forty man before the roster freeze and the Rule Five draft. Gone is Randy Williams, who is sort of redundant with the pick-up of Jaime Cerda earlier this offseason. Since Cerda has a better skill set (more velocity, better movement on his pitches) and since Williams struggled for the Rox in 2005, you can see how the writing was on the wall.