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Melvin Mora signed a $1.3M deal to join the Rockies, which basically fills out the 40-man roster barring any earth shaking moves. The consensus around baseball circles, which I happen to agree with, seems to be that if Mora is your 25th man, you’ve got a pretty good roster.

These are new days in Colorado baseball, friends. Now, a good reserve infielder in the final years of his career, who could start in many lineups across the bigs, takes a one-year deal to ride the bench for the Rockies. This move simply doesn’t happen prior to 2007. The Rockies are now on the list of potential contenders that free agents look at. To me, that’s more important than the deal itself. Mora will be fine, he’ll come in off the bench and hopefully apply some pressure to Barmes and Stewart to perform – I still would have preferred Cabrera.

But what this deal symbolizes can not be minimized: the Rockies are for real. O’Dowd simply fine-tuned a roster that was pretty much complete. Players want to come here. Giambi wanted to stay. Mora wanted to come. Heck, Torrealba wanted to be here and was basically shown the door. For once, we can look at the Rockies and legitimately think division title contention – at the least. NL West crown is the first goal, then another pennant.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. A successful spring training with a healthy roster would be a fantastic start.

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