For the entire month of March, the Sportable Staff will look at one Major League Baseball team a day. We?ll look at their lineups and pitching and in the end, assess their playoff chances. Previews will be done by division, starting with the American League East. Each new division will also feature a new podcast devoted entirely to that division.

Mile high hopes. The Colorado Rockies enter the 2007 season with a bunch of young talent in a division filled with a bunch of weak teams. The Rockies will look to parlay that into contention for the division title and hopefully a trip to the playoffs. As usual, there is no pitching talent to be found here, so they will have to rely upon their offense and some luck.

Bats.
Todd Helton is the man everyone thinks of when it comes to the Rockies. He has been the face of that organization for years and will continue to be this year. He can lock down first base, and provide some pretty solid power numbers and be a consistent contributer. The outfield could be a major strength for this rockies team. The speedy Willy Taveras, formerly of the Houston Astros could be the catalyst of this offense and if he can manage to get on base, there are players behind him to drive him in. Brad Hawpe and Matt Holliday are both going to hit around .300 and are both going to put up in the neighborhood of 25-35 home runs, which is exactly what you want to see out of your corner outfielders. The infield remains a question mark. Can Jamey Carroll put up the type of numbers he did last year again? Will Garrett Atkins be able to hit .330 again with 30 more home runs? Will Troy Tulowitzki be able to avoid a deer meat injury? And probably the biggest question for the future of the Rockies; can rookie catcher Chris Ianetta produce? If the infield can answer those questions in a positive manner, this Rockies team can be scary good this year, and have a bunch of talent to build even a few years down the line.

Arms.
To say that pitching is a weak spot for the Rockies is like saying Rex Grossman is a bad quarterback. There is no one worth half a damn in this starting rotation besides Jeff Francis, and even he is questionable. Aaron Cook put together a decent year in 2005 but the odds of him repeating that are hovering somewhere around zero. They round out their rotation with more bad pitching in Rodrigo Lopez and Josh Fogg. The good part of their pitching staff is in their closer Brian Fuentes. Fuentes has talent, but because of the nature of Coors Field he doesn’t get that many opportunities to earn saves. Another thing inhibiting him from closing out games would be LaTroy Hawkins and Byung-Hyun Kim trying to fulfill the setup role. They can’t do it, and so Fuentes probably won’t get that many chances.

Prediction.
The Rockies will be able to score runs, as they almost always have been able to do. But as usual, they will be completely unable to do anything in terms of pitching. You can expect plenty of games where the Rockies give up double digits in runs. This team is fine in the field, and should be for many years to come, but their pitching struggles will find them mired in last place again.