Now that the Rockies have pretty much completed another part of transforming their last year's team into their next year's team, we can take a step back and look at the work Dan O'Dowd has accomplished at the Pit of Wonders. Here's the breakdown of the players to play 3B for the Rockies in 2011, per FanGraphs, save their games at 3B totals, which came from Baseball Reference:
The four on that list, representing 140 starts at the position in 2011, are all gone. Sayonara! The Rockies are already halfway to the pennant. Replacing them are;
At about the exact moment that I realized that we should be taking Brandon Wood a lot more seriously for the Opening Day third base job, I also realized that this is actually still a remarkably similar spot to the one the Rockies found themselves in a year ago at this time. A different cast of characters maybe, but the same level of risk in youth that if things go wrong, they could go very very wrong at the position. Of course in 2011, they did precisely just that. The bright side then, as it is now, is that there's also a lot of opportunity for things to go right, but the Rockies are gambling a lot on the unproven quartet of hopefuls at the bottom of that list, as well as the shaky knees and back of the 38 year old at the top.
Wood's defense by the advanced stats differs from the picture that emerges from, well, pictures. All his AP photos like the one above seem to be of him either missing on a dive, bobbling a ball, or about to throw wide.
Howard Megdal doesn't mention the Rockies at all in his blog post about David Wright save the title, but in doing so, he perhaps unwittingly jabs another fork into the hearts of Rockies fans:
I doubt Megdal meant it this way, but with Larry Walker's solid HOF case still getting ignored by many Internet writers as well as the mainstream media, Rockies fans will probably see the same implicit "you can't be in the HOF if you're a Rockie" sentiment. So sorry Tulo, sorry Toddfather, sorry Walker, you guys are all screwed and just can't win when it comes to getting your keys to Cooperstown.
Former Rockies organizational coach Bob McClure may be the favorite for the Red Sox vacant pitching coach job. McClure has been with Kansas City since 2006, but was instrumental in developing Aaron Cook and Jeff Francis, among other Rockies pitchers.