Sunday Rockpile: Arenado officially AFL MVP, Rockies interest in Jonny Gomes may rise now

Nolan Arenado homered in the Arizona Fall League title game and claimed the league's MVP trophy (for real this time, not as myself and others prematurely gave him a week ago.) 

With Grady Sizemore approaching a new deal with Cleveland, and Michael Cuddyer and Josh Willingham looking for multi-year contracts Colorado's unwilling to give, the Rockies now may be pursuing Jonny Gomes. The lefty masher Gomes has been undergoing a bit of a career shift that leaves me a little hesitant to fully endorse this plan, as some of his appeal as a player in the past was home run power that's slowly been fading as he now takes more of a gap contact and take a walk type of approach versus southpaws. That said, he's solid enough that as long as you can avoid flukey low seasons like his 2008, you're going to have a worthwhile player in a platoon with Seth Smith. 

That said, I still think Gomes should be kept a "Plan B" for as long as possible. While I understand the pass on Willingham for three years, I think I'd still prefer Cuddyer at that contract length over a short term Gomes-fill as a way of bridging the current offensive gap that exists between the Rockies and the Diamondbacks and Dodgers within the division. A stagnant Los Angeles lineup isn't as much as a concern as the situation in Arizona, where the gap could widen over the next two or three seasons without a significant upgrade for the Rockies.

That last link to Troy Renck also includes his take on the playoff expansion, which I'm personally in favor of as a sudden death wild card. Many of baseball's most memorable games have been playoff play-ins, or games five or seven in playoff series, and guaranteeing that there will be at least two such all-the-marbles games each year will help maintain the current generation of fans.