This upcoming spring will mark my third year coaching Little League Baseball.  The season has yet to begin, but somehow I have already netted the biggest victory of my career.

At the end of every season, we (are supposed to) collect jerseys from the kids to reuse the following season.  When not enough are collected, the league has to buy new jerseys.  You’ll never guess who ”forgot” to collect jerseys for the past two seasons.  No, not me.  I always make it a point at the end of the season to delegate my roommate and co-coach to collect jerseys.  So technically he is responsible for this, although by putting him in charge of jersey collection I have a pretty good idea of where that is going to leave us… collecting 3 of 11 jerseys each year. As a result, the league is going to buy new jerseys and the commissioner was kind enough to ask if we wanted to change team names so he can order the appropriate jersey.  So, as of earlier today, I am the former coach of the Giants and current coach of the Rockies!  This is already my best season ever!

With the start of a new year, this seems like an appropriate time to take a look at what the future holds for the Rockies.

Starting with the immediate future, the Rockies will begin the 2010 season with a new voice in the radio broadcast booth. Jeff Kingery’s departure generated quite a bit of buzz and speculation last fall as to who would be given the task of filling his big original-broadcaster shoes. This week, the new guy was revealed to be longtime Nuggets broadcaster Jerry Schemmel. Needless to say, Rockiescast is very curious as to how this new broadcast team of Schemmel and Jack Corrigan will sound. I’m hopeful that Schemmel will be a solid replacement for Kingery. Kingery’s firsthand knowledge of every moment in Rockies history is gone, but Schemmel will bring his own skill set. A huge part of baseball radio broadcast is finding interesting topics to discuss during lulls in the action on the field, and it appears that Jerry Schemmel has plenty of interesting things to talk about.

The new year is also a good excuse to look at what the Rockies have cooking in the organization for the long term.  I freely admit that I’m terrible at getting good, in-depth info on prospects. Luckily, we recently got a hot tip via e-mail about a blog committed to the art of scouting baseball prospects: Diamond Futures. This week, they did their analysis of the prospects in the Rockies’ system.  Take a look: it’s some pretty interesting stuff. My only complaint is that Diamond Futures failed to rank organizations by the most important criteria: awesome prospect names. Al Alburquerque, Jhoulys Chacin, Rex Brothers, Delta Cleary…how can another organization possibly compete with names like that?!

Rockiescast wishes a very happy Boxing Day to our neighbors in the Great White North!

If you haven’t been following, the news has been encouraging for the Rockies’ resident Canadian this holiday season.  We are eagerly anticipating Jeff Francis‘ glorious return to the States, dominance.

The Rockies have offered arbitration to Jason Marquis. Presumably, this was just so they can receive a compensatory draft pick when he signs with another team, but it still seems a bit risky to me. What if he accepts? Nobody expects him to, but the option is on the table. Not that I’d be opposed to having him back, but Marquis doesn’t seem to fit into the 2010 plans. Neither does the salary he would receive through the arbitration process.

Virginia ranked 8th in the country in deer-vehicle collisions from 2007-2008. 8th? We can do better than that, and I did my part last night to try to help us climb those rankings. I went back to find the deer I hit and it was gone, which means I won’t be able to give Clint Barmes that gift I thought I had for him.