The Rockies will hopefully begin a competitive run starting this season, but Dan O'Dowd's focus for the last three seasons has been on 2008 as the official launch of the Rockies dynasty. All the moves have tried to build a team that will be World Series competitive then and for years thereafter, with only stop-gap solutions for filler in between where we were at the bottom then and where we are now - a slightly higher bottom.
Anyway, this approach definitely has aspects that are worthy of detraction, but at least it's focused and there have been encouraging signs that it will be at least partly successful. As Tracy Ringolsby points out in today's Rocky Mountain News, the deal extending Jeff Francis through his arbitration years is part and parcel to that plan. Francis is just 25 years old and is already the Rockies third best starter, and with progress this season, he should cement himself as a legit number 2, for any team, as Aaron Cook has in this past season and a half. Jason Jennings' season last year seemed to indicate that maybe he was finally ready to take the step to that plateau as well, but there is reason to be skeptical there, as his 2006 was at odds with most of his career. The same can't be said of Francis, who's season was another step in a natural rise from 2005.
So for the rest of this post I'm going to try and predict how the rotation will evolve through the next few seasons of Francis' contract. Given what I just said about 2007, I'm right now expecting the rotation at the beginning of the year to look like this:
Jennings
Cook
Francis
Kim
Fogg and/or Jimenez
Alternate:
Cook
Francis
Kim
Fogg
Jimenez or prospect traded for JJ
It's clear to me that the Rockies haven't made a decision yet on Fogg for two reasons. One, they don't know if Jennings will return to start 2007 or be traded (if he's gone, they have to keep Fogg regardless) and two, they were waiting to see whether Jimenez was able to dominate the Dominican League like he blew over the Cubs in late September. The Jennings saga is still in limbo, while Jimenez has had a middle of the road performance in the DR. In other words, there are no answers yet, and if it stays like this into December, my guess is that the Rockies will likely tender Fogg a contract anyway, particularly in a free agent market that's as pitching thin as this one is. Tendering a contract doesn't secure his spot in the bottom of the rotation, however, and the Rockies may choose to go with Jimenez to start the season anyway. I don't expect any other change for the rest of the year other than Jimenez getting a regular slot by July.
Beginning 2008:
Aaron Cook
Jeff Francis
Jennings or another veteran starter
Ubaldo Jimenez
Greg Reynolds
The Rockies now have two fifths of their rotation secure for that season in Francis and Cook, and it seems to me they want to assume that Ubaldo Jimenez will be ready to take a spot at the bottom of the rotation as well. One of the biggest reasons the Rockies chose Greg Reynolds first in 2006 was in the hopes he would be able to fill another gap left by the departing Josh Fogg and/or Byung Hyun Kim after 2007, and as insurance against U-ball not measuring up. They also have Franklin Morales, Denny Bautista and Juan Morillo waiting in the wings in case, but it seems they are placing most of their eggs for 2008 with Jimenez and Reynolds at this time. You will note that all of this implies that only two-fifths of the 2008 rotation is seemingly meant to be occupied by players with less than two seasons of experience, as the Tigers showed this year, young rotations don't necessarily rule out contention.
I think the target for Morales right now appears to be for him to come on board the Rockies full time in the middle of 2008, but I do expect him to receive September call-up nonetheless to give him a taste in 2007. This also would seem to imply that we would be willing to trade one of our other starters at that deadline to fill other needs, but I'm not sure of that. If we're strongly competitive, I expect we'll just keep everybody status quo and slide the young Reynolds (or Morales) to the pen for half a season before he takes on a more permanent spot in 2009. Meanwhile, Jennings' contract posturing this off season greatly lowers the odds of him being on even the 2007 staff. So I'm just going to assume that the third starter is someone else (Carl Pavano perhaps? Somebody we pick up in a trade for Matt Holliday next year about this time?)
So here's my late season 2008 projection competitive:
Cook
Francis
Mystery #3 (Pavano, or someone, possibly Jennings if he signs an extension)
Jimenez
Morales
uncompetitive:
Francis
Jimenez
Reynolds
Morales
Morillo/Bautista/Ching-Lung Lo/Roe
The five starters at their peaks in the competitive projection should be talented enough to get us deep into the playoffs as long as the offense steps up, Reynolds will either be used out of the pen or as a swing starter. Due to his and Morales' youth, I figure we'll swing a trade for a both good and experienced starter at some point either before or during the season. Pavano is clearly not at his peak right now, and might not get back there ever, so that's probably a silly name to put there, but with all our trading chips we should be able to acquire somebody useful. The only reason we wouldn't be contending is through injuries or other bad luck, but if we're not competitive, I'd just bump everybody else up and move Reynolds back into the bottom. Also, if that's the case, Cook in his walk year will probably get dealt to a contender, hence the alternate.
2009 starts the same as the uncompetitive alternate:
Francis
Jimenez
Reynolds
Morales
Roe/signed FA or traded starter X
If we re-sign Cook, put him back in there with the Francis/Jimenez group. I hope we do, but I'm trying to be practical in this. Speaking of which, I'm not sure whether Morillo or Bautista are ever going to reach their potential as starters, obviously, but if either does, they would be a more seasoned starter than Roe at this point and would slot just ahead of Reynolds. Jimenez might actually slot ahead of Francis, depending on how far he's developed. At any rate, by the middle of the season I would expect our rotation to be more reflective of each starter's true abilities:
Mid-2009
Jimenez
Francis
Morales
Reynolds/Starter X
Roe
That slot I have pencilled in for Roe could just as easily say "Sullivan" or "Aneury Rodriguez" or any of a number of pitching prospects in the system, by the way, I'm just expecting the best of the bunch to be here at this point. The next season, then will start out with the same combination, and we'd have the same sort of young devastating top to the rotation as the Twins did this past season, with a highly talented group coming up from below to keep the machine fed:
2010:
Jimenez
Francis
Morales
Reynolds
Roe/Josh Sullivan
The very good news is that there's enough pitching talent within the system that if something were to happen removing one of these names from possibility, we have the ability to cover it for once, or at the very least we won't have the problem of trying to fill in multiple weaknesses that we do now. Make no mistake about it, though, the stability at the top of the rotation that Francis now provides into this 2010 season now makes me more confident that the multi-year run of contending Rockies teams will happen.