Rocktober in March

TUCSON, Ariz. – There’s some talk among the Rockies about how every other team in the division has been in the spotlight lately.

It goes something like this:

The Dodgers made a splash with arguably the biggest signing of the offseason, landing manager Joe Torre. They picked up Andruw Jones to play center field and pitcher Hiroki Kuroda from Japan. Not bad, not bad.

The Padres added second baseman Tadahito Iguchi, center fielder Jim Edmonds, and pitcher Randy Wolf. Mark Prior is the potential No.5 man in the rotation and let’s not forget about Mr. Everything/All-World, pitcher Jake Peavy.

The Diamondbacks picked up Oakland ace Danny Haren and a pair of solid relievers – Chad Qualls and Juan Gutierrez – from the Astros. Randy Johnson is healthy and Brandon Lyon is going to step in where Jose Valverde left off.

The Giants still have Barry, but not that Barry.

The Rockies? All they did was land a couple of possible contributors like reliever Jose Capellan, Marcus Giles and some other guys not on anybody’s radar. Oh yeah, they just locked up their future by signing Manny Corpas, Brad Hawpe, Aaron Cook, Matt Holliday and Troy Tulowitzki to long-term deals. Third baseman Garrett Atkins could be next.

It was more than enough. Aside from signing Sean Casey, the Red Sox are going into the 2008 season with the same club. So what does that tell you?

It tells me the Red Sox are stacked again. So are the Rockies. The Red Sox are my favorites to get back to the World Series. So are the Rockies.

Let’s give the Rox a little credit here. I respect every manager and basically every player in the National League West telling me how it’s going to be a tight race again. They tell me how it’s going to come down to the last week of the season again and how it might come down to another playoff game just to the determine the champion and runner-up.

I want to buy it. I want to believe it. I really do. It’s a logical argument and it reads well in virtually every publication that discusses the NL West but I just don’t.  I see young starter Ubaldo Jimenez and I see the Peavy-Haren-Webb-everybody’s top pitcher equalizer. I see Franklyn Morales and I see the potential to be one of the NL’s top pitchers.

Manny Corpas will be the next great closer from Panama. Granted, Mariano Rivera is the only great closer from the country but Corpas has the stuff, and more importantly the demeanor to be good for a long time. That whole “I am calm. I am peaceful. I am tranquilo” act is not an act.

He’s really that centered and grounded. Enjoy the day if it’s a good one and forget about it if it’s a bad one. He said the key is humility and keeping it real no matter how much money he makes or is going to make. That’s exactly the type of mentality you need in a closer and that’s exactly why he will be among the save leaders this year.

The fact that he has a live arm helps. It helps a lot.

Tulowitzki is a legitimate star and everybody knows how good Matt Holliday already is. A healthy Wily Taveras is a good Wily Taveras and he’s healthy this year. Todd Helton and catcher Yorvit Torrealba are the rocks on these Rox – only in different ways. Helton leads by example and in statistics. Torrealba does his part behind the plate by keeping his pitchers in check and keeping a smile on their faces.

Rockies manager Clint Hurdle has backed off the micro-managing style that he was criticized at times for last year, allowing a good coaching staff made up of guys like Jamie Quirk (bench), Bob Apodaca (pitching), and Alan Cockrell (hitting) do their jobs.

Will the club win 21 of 22 games like it did last year to steam roll into the playoffs? Likely not. It’s likely that we won’t see that type of run by any team in any league for a few years.

What it will do is make another run at the playoffs and maybe a World Series title just like it did last year. The pieces are there -- even if nobody really wants to talk about them.

The Rockies will defer the attention this March but don’t be surprised when they get it come October and all of this pre-season talk about how the NL West is up for grabs is forgotten.