Morning Dump — Wednesday, February 16th

Last night, I saw a very interesting tweet from SI’s Jon Heyman. According to Heyman, it is okay under MLB rules for Albert Pujols to have an ownership stake in the Cardinals. At first, I did a double take, but after some thought, I decided that it makes sense. St. Louis can’t afford to lose Albert. Literally, they can’t afford it. If he winds up in a Cubs uniform next season, it would be an absolute disaster for the franchise. However, there is no way they can commit $30 million a season for the next ten years. The Redbirds will have to get creative with Albert and an ownership stake might be the answer. Why not make him the face of the franchise for the next fifty years?

What does this have to with the Rockies? Nothing really, but the Pujols situation is baseball’s biggest story and I thought it merited a little discussion.

Tony La Russa thinks the Players’ Union is messing up the process.

Okay, on to the very stable Rockies…

The other day, I wrote about the risk the Rockies are taking with Iannetta. Jim Armstrong gives us a little insight on how Iannetta is handling the pressure.

Ubaldo spent some time in Europe this off-season and enjoyed the anonymity he experienced overseas. Sounds like it was a pretty cool trip. At the end of the article, Ubaldo guaranteed 20 wins this year. Hells yeah!

Jason Hammel discovered acupuncture this winter. With everyone focusing on the team’s other starters, Hammel has been a bit of a side note this off-season, but it sounds like he is primed for a big year.

Matt Daley gives us a video tour of the Rockies’ new spring clubhouse.

Here is another video of the pitchers and catchers going through hurdles and cones. Interestingly, Armstrong thinks a two second clip of Wilin Rosario jogging through some cones gives us a good picture of how the young catcher’s recovery from knee surgery is going.

The Rox have new spring training jerseys this year. I’ll be ordering mine this week.

Right now, Jim Tracy and company are limiting the Rockies’ bullpen sessions to thirty pitches. I hate pitch counts; I’m just putting that out there.

Finally, Thomas Harding wrote a great piece about Rockies’ player development assistant, Walter Sylvester. Sylvester might be my hero.

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