Tuesday Rockpile links, 3/11: Nolan Arenado, Rex Brothers impressing scouts

In an Insider-only piece, ESPN.com's Jim Bowden profiles 10 players over whom scouts are drooling this spring. Two of the players on that list don purple pinstripes. Here's a couple of excerpts:

On Nolan Arenado:

"Arenado won the Gold Glove last year, but his bat was somewhat of a disappointment. However, scouts are raving about the way he is swinging the bat early this spring and many believe that his offensive numbers will follow this year."

On Rex Brothers:

"After the Rockies signed LaTroy Hawkins, they told him that he would be the closer and they would move Brothers back to the set-up role. That might be the case to start the year, but I'm not buying it and neither are the scouts."

The part about Brothers doesn't really reveal anything, but we all know what we're getting with him anyway -- lots of strikeouts and a fair amount of walks. If Brothers can keep lowering his walk rate, he's as good of a back-end bullpen guy as there is in the game.

As far as Arenado goes, it's no surprise that he's working on his offense, and he's probably due for some positive regression anyway, which renders any improvements he makes in his approach even that much more meaningful. A lot of people are expecting big things from the Rockies' young third baseman, and I'm no different.

Troy Renck of the Denver Post has a blurb about Arenado's hot spring, as well.

The wonderful Jeff Sullivan at Fangraphs basically tells people to chill out on the whole Rockies and Coors Field home/road splits narrative:

" ... home/road splits tell you a lot about what's happened. But wRC+ tells you more about what's going to happen. Sometimes a player really might be a product of his environment, but those cases are less frequent than one can be led to believe."

Also at Fangraphs, Paul Swydan wrote about Franklin Morales' "last chance" before the enigmatic left-hander's poor spring training outing yesterday.

MLB.com's Cash Kruth, who is sitting in for Thomas Harding, profiles Rockies outfielder Corey Dickerson.

OFF-TOPIC

Around the league

Barry Bonds is back in camp with the Giants, writes Renck, partially due to a conversation with Sky Sox manager Glenallen Hill that resulted in Bonds working with former Rockies and current Astros outfielder Dexter Fowler.

Marlins outfielder Giancarlo Stanton committed unspeakable acts upon a baseball yesterday, as David Roth shows.

The Braves are having a boatload of injury problems in their rotation, writes Grant Brisbee.