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The Denver Post has its Spring Training preview up, so spend your time over there:
- Renck: Walt Weiss will work out fine
- Rockies five Spring Training storylines
- Colorado Rockes season preview by position
- Woody Paige still wants Dan O'Dowd fired
- Rockies Weiss relies heavily on three starting pitchers
The last article really is the key as to whether the Rockies can get into the middle of the pack again in 2013 or will instead be vying for 2014's top draft pick. I think there's still distance between Colorado and actual contention barring a couple remote scenarios that typically involve apocalyptic disasters along the West Coast, but having a healthy and productive trio of Jorge De La Rosa, Jhoulys Chacin and Juan Nicasio ---each of whom are capable of being decent MLB starters--- will in turn make this a decent, watchable MLB team. Jeff Francis will eat some innings, and Drew Pomeranz may or may not emerge as a pitcher that can take the Rockies to the next step beyond mediocrity, but the performance and health of the three aforementioned starters that should be somewhere around their career peaks will really be what this season hinges on.
On the rest, I can't really comment much. I like Weiss as much as I would any unknown manager. He seems to have enough qualifications for the position, but he's otherwise a blank slate. I'm not sure what Woody Paige's obsession with firing O'Dowd is about at this point, I think he and Kiszla just generally try to speak for the common Rockies fan in their airing of grievances, but I'm not sure why we think it should be any different this time around. "Oh this column comparing him to Napoleon will get the man fired for sure..," If he's at Napoleon, Paige may be running out of dictator cards to play before he tries the Hitler one, and we all know how well that usually turns out.
Otherwise, I'm sort of at a blank myself for much to talk about right now. So... I'm just going to awkwardly leave this Rockpile here...