TUCSON - It will be the pitching, stupid.

Or maybe it will be the stupid pitching, that being the way of things with the Rockies, and presumably dimmer now than before with top dude Jason Jennings gone.

"We like what we picked up," Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said.

Of course, there is nothing else that can be said, and everything that is said is true until proved otherwise.

Willy Taveras is just the center fielder the Rockies need, a player with speed and daring, and Jason Hirsh is the fourth starter, so proclaimed by Hurdle, and Taylor Buchholz is a righty out of the bullpen.

"Willy brings a dynamic to this team I haven't seen since I've been here," Hurdle said.

It is not a great trade that makes everyone happy, it's just a trade.

Jennings went off to Houston to replace Andy Pettitte, or maybe Roger Clemens, one of those, a duty of greater weight than Aaron Cook replacing Jennings.

Parting with Jennings is the most significant action taken by the Rockies since last season and the one with the most direct bearing on how this season will work out.

And taking only nine victories last season with him seems easy enough to make up, except that Jennings was on the point, taking the first blow for the staff, usually against the other team's best pitcher.

Losing a No. 1 pitcher comes at a serious cost, if not the $15 million that Jennings wanted to stay. And to repeat the logic of why Jennings will not be missed, the Rockies got three players for one.

"A starting center fielder and two young arms," general manager Dan O'Dowd explained, not even mentioning the money saved.

This might be a more common baseball argument than a play at first base, the three-for-one claim. I once heard it applied to Greg Maddux, who was not re-signed by the Cubs, coming from a general manager who happily applied the money he saved on Maddux for three players of shameful quality and temporary mischief.

Maddux merely went off to Atlanta, won 20 games a year for the next decade and enough Cy Young trophies they should have renamed the thing for him. Maddux became, along with Clemens, the best of a generation.

Not to say that Jennings is Maddux, but Taveras, Buchholz and Hirsh, the new pitchers, must at least be worth together what Jennings was by himself.

Here's what it feels like: The Rockies' pitching is worse.

First impressions might be undependable, but they are all I have so far, and having not yet seen Opening Day starter Cook in spring training, I am left with a sense of the other team running around the bases.

Every time I looked up, it seemed like the same guy was batting again in the same inning.

If it wasn't Byung-Hyun Kim donating eight runs to the Giants, it was Jeff Francis giving up four and Matt Herges contributing five to the Rangers. And just as I was settling in for Tuesday's game against the Cubs, there goes the second pitch from Brian Lawrence sailing over the center-field fence at Hi Corbett and new Cub Alfonso Soriano circling the bases.

"I caught too much of the plate," Lawrence explained. Well, certainly, Soriano caught too much of the ball.

Lawrence then settled in and threw a respectable five innings, and suddenly a swift, tidy, pitchers game broke out, ending up 4-2 for the Rockies. Maybe things are better off than they appeared.

Still rehabbing from injury, Lawrence might be too much risk to take a roster spot. But he is keeping the Rockies from making up their minds too soon.

"They (the Rockies) have the luxury of enough pitching," Lawrence said, causing me to reconsider just the opposite conclusion.

I was beginning to think it is just me because heretofore the Rockies' pitching had not been so loudly awful this spring, considering a team ERA of 5.77 at Coors is acceptable.

Cook is the clear heir to the top job, and Francis is close enough to not consider one of them without the other. After that is Rodrigo Lopez, a middling right-hander obtained from Baltimore, then Hirsh, 6-foot-8 and still an official rookie.

Beyond that is most likely leftover Josh Fogg or maybe the erratic Kim or possibly Lawrence, who had decent years in San Diego before a shoulder tear put him out of baseball for a season.

Still, it is not a staff to strike fear, or even worry, in others.

"The five pitchers we leave camp with may not be the five pitchers we have in midseason," Hurdle said.

Pitching options, like a mind, are best kept open.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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