Nolan Arenado is that rarest of rookies — one who might make an Opening Day roster without regard to service-time considerations.

The Colorado Rockies likely will wait another 7-10 days before deciding whether Arenado will be their starting third baseman. But the team is giving the idea serious consideration, according to major-league sources

“It’s a tough call,” one club official said.

Chris Nelson, the team’s incumbent third baseman, batted .344 with an .881 OPS in 180 at-bats after the All-Star Game. But Nelson, 27, lacks an established track record, and the Rockies might simply decide it is Arenado’s time.

For Arenado and surging rookies such as Boston outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. and Minnesota outfielder Aaron Hicks, the final weeks of spring training will be critical as they face pitchers sharpening their repertoires in advance of Opening Day.

Teams generally hold off on promoting rookies immediately in order to delay their eligibility for salary arbitration and free agency. But the Rockies are willing to make an exception for Arenado, who is batting .276 with a 1.069 OPS in 29 at-bats this spring.

Arenado is a gifted defender, and should fit well in an offense that the Rockies expect to be quite productive. Nelson probably isn’t strong enough defensively at second and short to be an effective utility man, and he is out of options, which could lead to a trade.

The Rockies want to add one more veteran starting pitcher, and Nelson isn’t their only potentially expendable part. The team wants to move catcher Ramon Hernandez, and will assume part of his $3.2 million salary to make a deal, sources say.

Hernandez, who turns 37 on May 20, is expendable because the Rockies are likely to name Yorvit Torrealba the backup to Wilin Rosario, with infielder/catcher Jordan Pacheco giving the team another option.

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Apparently, carrying baseball’s highest payroll doesn’t guarantee a worry-free camp.

For a team that’s supposed to win the World Series, the Dodgers have an uncommonly high number of questions at this stage of spring training.

Two urgent topics: Will Carl Crawford be ready for Opening Day? And how about Zack Greinke?

“We have to see,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said Thursday. “Carl’s feeling better. We’ve still got some time. If Carl was a guy that we just said, ‘Turn it loose. You can play every day, all you want, hit all you want,’ the chances would be really good, because he’d be ready.

“But in the situation that we’re only going to allow him so much per day takes it back a little bit. Carl’s still optimistic. Until somebody says he cannot do it, then we’re going to be optimistic also. We’re just pleased he’s moving forward.”

Crawford, who was shut down recently because of nerve irritation in his surgically repaired left elbow, took at-bats in a minor-league game Thursday.

Greinke hasn’t pitched in a Cactus League game since March 1 due to inflammation in his right (throwing) elbow. Greinke isn’t scheduled to resume bullpen sessions until next week at the earliest.

With Opening Day barely more than two weeks away, Greinke must return to game action very soon in order to be on track for a regular-season start by the beginning of April. The Dodgers also could slot Greinke as the “fifth starter,” so to speak, and not schedule him to pitch until April 11 against San Diego.    

Of Greinke’s status, Mattingly said, “We’ll see where it goes, see how he feels. We’re not going to force anything. We’ve got different scenarios we’ve looked at, that we don’t need to guess at right now — at least publicly.”

The Dodgers’ entire rotation remains in a state of flux. They began the spring with eight starting pitchers: ace Clayton Kershaw, Greinke, Chad Billingsley, Josh Beckett, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Ted Lilly, Aaron Harang and Chris Capuano. It’s possible that one or two could be traded, with Harang and Capuano the most obvious candidates. But because Billingsley and Lilly battled injuries last year — along with Greinke’s new elbow concern — the Dodgers could be forced to delay any trades.

Asked how many starters are certain at this point, Mattingly said, “I don’t think we know. It’s hard to say any of them are really set. I think we have some ideas about what’s going on, different plans. But right now, we’re just trying to figure out how to use them all.”

The Dodgers’ uncertainty is hardly limited to the pitching staff. All-Star center fielder Matt Kemp is hitting only .105 this spring, coming off left shoulder surgery. (Mattingly said his at-bats have been “OK.”) Hanley Ramirez is expected to be the Dodgers’ everyday shortstop but has been playing third base for the Dominican Republic during the World Baseball Classic.

Outfielder Yasiel Puig has been one of the Dodgers’ most impressive position players this spring, with a .988 OPS, but Mattingly said it’s probably not “realistic” for the 22-year-old Cuban defector to make the Opening Day roster.

“Not really, in my mind, if we’re going to be realistic,” Mattingly said when asked about Puig’s chances to make the team. “It’s probably not the best thing for him. He may not agree with that, but I don’t realistically think that’s the best thing for the organization, with a guy who’s had the (low number of minor-league) at-bats he has. But he’s played well. He’s done a lot of good things. We see a lot of things that tell us he’s still young.

“Like we’ve said with a lot of guys, they tell you when they’re ready. If he’s ready, wherever he ends up (in the minor leagues), he’s going to tear it up. If he doesn’t, that tells you he’s maybe not quite ready.”

Puig looms as an intriguing call-up possibility during the season, particularly if Kemp or Crawford is sidelined again due to injury.

— Jon Paul Morosi

Kyle Lohse went through this as a free agent once before. Five years ago on Thursday, he signed a one-year, $4.25 million contract with the St. Louis Cardinals.

This time, Lohse is taking even longer to find a new team.

Lohse, 34, is working out both near his home in Arizona and at a facility operated by his agent, Scott Boras — the Boras Sports Training Institute in Aliso Viejo, Calif. He is facing hitters at the institute, and threw 85 pitches in his most recent outing, Boras said.

The Texas Rangers remain in contact with Lohse, according to major-league sources. Boras said only that multiple teams are interested.

“He’s doing his workouts, and we’ve continued talking with a number of teams,” Boras said. "A lot of teams are evaluating their existing situations, but have called and have interest in Kyle.”

Lohse’s market is slow in part because he is subject to draft-pick compensation, but executives also cite his high asking price — a three-year deal with a “big” average salary, according to one exec.

The Rangers, though, continue to make sense for Lohse on a couple of levels.

Two of their starting pitchers, left-hander Martin Perez and righty Colby Lewis, are expected to be out until early May with injuries. Another of their starters, righty Alexi Ogando, is converting from the bullpen to the rotation.

The Rangers also are in better position than most clubs to forfeit a draft pick for Lohse. They select 24^th – a relatively low position – and gained the 30^th choice when they lost free-agent outfielder Josh Hamilton to the Angels.

Draft-pick compensation for Lohse would be eliminated if he waited to sign until after the draft, which takes place between June 6 and 8.

Boras continues to express confidence that the pitcher will sign before then.

— Ken Rosenthal

MIAMI – For all that is now quantifiable in baseball, there are still some things that cannot be measured. The effect of St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina on a pitching staff is one of them.

‘Now that I get to watch him a little bit, he’s the best,” said former major-league first baseman Carlos Delgado, Team Puerto Rico’s hitting coach in the World Baseball Classic.

“He’ll go to a pitcher and tell him, ‘Make a pitch. I’ll block it. It’s on me.’ He’ll take that responsibility,” Delgado said.  “When you’ve got a younger guy on the mound, and he’s a little hesitant about bouncing a breaking ball to put a hitter away, and you’ve got the best catcher in the game that goes to the mound and says, ‘Finish your pitch. Don’t worry about it. I’ll do it. I’ll block it.’ . . . it gives pitchers that confidence that they can finish their pitches.

“They don’t even have to think. Throw what he puts down. Trust him. It takes a lot of weight off them.”

Puerto Rico allowed only seven runs in three games in the first round of the tournament, and their opponents included two powerhouses, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Even Tuesday night, in a 7-1 loss to Team USA in the opener of the second round, Puerto Rico stayed close before the U.S. scored three runs in the eighth inning.

So, how do you quantify any of this?

Molina ranked eighth in the majors with a 3.60 catcher’s ERA last season, but the flaw in that statistic, as noted by sabermetricians, is selection bias; a catcher’s ERA is largely contingent on the quality of his pitchers.

Team Puerto Rico’s pitching staff in the WBC is mostly young and less than major-league caliber. The Cardinals, too, are going with younger pitchers this season; they’ve lost Chris Carpenter to injury and almost certainly will lose free agent Kyle Lohse. But the Molina advantage allows his teams to take such chances.

You can’t quite measure it. But it’s there.

-Ken Rosenthal

Reds left-hander Aroldis Chapman is destined to remain a closer, at least in the opinion of one rival scout who saw him start a minor-league game on Monday.

“I hope they do start him, but they’re crazy if they do,” said the scout, who works for another National League club. “It’s Joba Chamberlain all over again.

“His velocity dropped off in the second inning. He couldn’t get his off-speed stuff over the plate consistently. No question in my mind, he’s the closer.”

The Reds, for the second straight spring, are auditioning Chapman as a starter. But manager Dusty Baker and pitching coach Bryan Price prefer him to remain the closer, according to Hal McCoy of Fox Sports Ohio.

Chapman topped out at 93 mph on Monday and consistently threw 91, the scout said. His average reading as a reliever last season was 98.2 mph, according to Fangraphs.com.

Right-hander Mike Leake pitched in the same game, starting for Class AA Pensacola while Chapman started for Class AAA Louisville. Leake, according to the scout, was at 88-92 mph, and threw four pitches for strikes.

Both Chapman and Leake pitched three scoreless innings.

-Ken Rosenthal

Welcome to the Nationals, Denard Span, and enjoy your new corner outfielders, Bryce Harper in left and Jayson Werth in right.

“They got their own sign language out there,” Span, the Nationals’ new center fielder, said Monday morning. “I’m trying to pick up on it, just the communication part of it, what they like to do, what they like to say to each other.”

Sign language?

“Jayson Werth, it's like he plays charades out there,” Span continued. “He’s out there, giving me all different types of hand signals. I think the last game we played with each other, I looked at him like, ‘What are you doing?’ He just started laughing.

“I think he was just playing with me. Somebody was on the mound, he was looking at his watch, going like this (raising his hands above his head). I got back to the dugout and said, ‘What the heck were you trying to tell me?’ And he said, ‘Man, this guy is a human rain delay.’ I’m just like, ‘You’ve got to give me some note cards or something, so I can know what is going on.’”

Werth, smiling, said that he is only trying to welcome Span, whom the Nationals acquired from the Twins last Nov. 29 for pitching prospect Alex Meyer.

“This is a pretty loose club. I don’t think he’s ever played on a team as loose as this,” Werth said. “I’m just messing with him a little bit. But that’s part of it. You get to learn each other. You’ve got to start somewhere.”

Actually, there is a method to Werth’s madness.

Outfielders stand too far away from each other to communicate verbally, so Werth said that he indeed used hand signals to relay messages to his previous center fielders, Shane Victorino with the Phillies and Harper with the Nationals.

“When I had Victorino in center, he’s a mess,” Werth said. “He has so much energy. For him to stand still or not talk or not communicate . . .

“Bryce, I had to lead Bryce around like a little puppy dog for half the year (in 2012). And he figured it out. Now Denard seems like he knows what he’s doing. I don’t have to position him every pitch.”

Still, it’s spring training. And Werth is a little bored.

Outfielders, as Werth noted, “are a long way from the action.” And Grapefruit League exhibitions, particularly in the early spring, can get monotonous.

During the season, Werth said that his signals are on point. But for now, he is keeping things fresh and fun while trying to engage Span.

Span, according to Werth, doesn’t talk at all in the outfield. Harper, according to Span, does not engage in Werth-like antics.

“All three of us are on the same page. But you know Jayson. He does some different things,” Span said, smiling.

Span should stay alert. Werth doesn’t plan to stop.

“Denard looks at me and just shakes his head half the time,” Werth said. “I laugh, and I look over at Bryce, and he’s laughing. We’re having a good time out there.”

-Ken Rosenthal

ORLANDO – When I visited the Kansas City Royals’ camp last month, right-hander James Shields surprised me by pulling a glove out of his locker that had the inscription, “Bossman Jr.”

Bossman Jr.? That’s B.J. Upton’s nickname (Upton’s father, Manny, is Bossman). What the heck was Shields’ doing with Upton’s glove?

“I break in all his gloves for him,” Shields said, smiling. “I texted him the other day: ‘What are you going to do without me?’”

The glove story dates back to when Shields and Upton were minor leaguers with the Tampa Bay Rays. Shields, 31, and Upton, 28, both were drafted by the Rays, and played together at Double A and Triple A.

Now, for the first time, they are in different organizations.

Upton signed a five-year, $75.25 million free-agent contract with the Atlanta Braves on Nov. 29, and the Rays traded Shields to the Royals 10 days later.

“Every year when I came in, I would take my gloves out of my lockers and give them straight to him,” Upton recalled. “He would give them back to me a week before the season started. I kind of miss him right now.”

Shields joked that he had an ulterior motive for taking such good care of Upton’s gloves, saying, “That way, I knew he was going to catch it.”

As for the glove in his locker, Shields said he had kept one of Upton’s discards to use as his “shagging glove” with the Royals.

“We went golfing this off-season,” Shields said. “He was like, ‘What am I going to do without you? I’m going to have send gloves to your clubhouse so you can break ‘em in.’ I said, ‘I’ll break ‘em in after the second road trip of the year when I face you.’”

It’s true: The Braves host the Royals on April 16-17.

-Ken Rosenthal

Luca Panerati is slated to start for Team Italy on Saturday night against Team USA, in a game that could eliminate the Americans from the World Baseball Classic.

A brief bio: Panerati was born in Grossetto, Italy. He pitched in the Cincinnati farm system from 2008 until 2011, when he was released. The 23-year-old left-hander spent last season in his homeland, pitching for Bologna of the Italian Baseball League, and has contemplated the possibility of playing in Japan.

Panerati’s role model in this itinerant pitching life?

Naturally, R.A. Dickey.

“I was reading R.A. Dickey’s book,” Panerati said Friday, as he stood on the field before Italy’s 14-4 triumph over Canada. “It’s a crazy story. That really made me realize if you get released by a team, it doesn’t mean you don’t belong. You decide when it’s over – just you.

“Nobody can tell you that you can’t pitch. Nobody can tell you that you can’t run. Nobody can tell you that you can’t hit. It’s just you. You’ve got to believe in yourself. You have to be confident in what you’re doing. It’s a small edge between being confident and cocky. If you keep it to yourself, it helps a lot.”

Dickey’s personal and professional journey to last year’s National League Cy Young Award has become familiar to baseball fans throughout the world, but his signature knuckleball was less effective than usual in Friday’s loss to Mexico.

Panerati said he would love to meet Dickey during the tournament.

“I would say (to him that) he has an amazing story, and it was a great idea to tell everybody,” Panerati said. “I don’t think everybody has perseverance he had, completely changing his life, pretty much, from a conventional pitcher to the knuckleball.

“It’s not just about baseball. It’s about a life revolving around baseball, how his family supports him. It would be awesome to meet him and say congratulations that he made it and won the Cy Young Award last year.”

-- Jon Paul Morosi

Anyone expecting Nolan Ryan to rejoin the Houston Astros, don’t hold your breath.

Ryan is pondering whether to remain as CEO of the Texas Rangers, according to major-league sources. But even if he departs over an apparent power struggle, Ryan likely will balk at returning to the Astros, according to two major-league sources familiar with his thinking.

The Astros, under new ownership and a new front office, purged many of Ryan’s friends and associates last fall. In some cases, the Astros declined to renew the contracts of their employees. In others, they offered pay cuts that were rejected, sources said.

“No way Nolan will work for them,” one source said.

Ryan, 66, pitched for the Astros from 1980 to ’88. After retiring, he owned the team’s Double A and Triple A affiliates and served as a special assistant to the general manager before joining the Rangers in 2008.

He would resist any overtures from new owner Jim Crane out of loyalty to his old Astros’ associates, many of whom were longtime employees of the team, sources said.

Those associates include:

• Former bullpen assistant coach Stretch Suba (36 years with the club).

• Former strength coach Gene Coleman (34 years).

• Former traveling secretary Barry Waters (33 years).

• Former senior adviser Matt Galante (28 years).

• Former farm director Fred Nelson (27 years).

• Former executive assistant Traci Dearing (15 years).

• Former assistant GM Dave Gottfried (14 years).

• Former Triple A pitching coach Burt Hooton (13 years).

— Ken Rosenthal

CLEARWATER, Fla. – The two ex-Rangers in the Phillies’ clubhouse, third baseman Michael Young and reliever Mike Adams, aren’t privy to the political maneuverings within their former team’s front office.

All Young and Adams know is this: If Nolan Ryan resigns as chief executive officer, as one published report recently suggested, the team’s fans will be upset.

“I have no idea the ins and outs – that’s obviously Rangers business,” Young said Thursday morning. “But after 12 years there, I have a pretty good understanding of what the fans like. When it comes to all things Rangers, Nolan is at the top of the list of everything that fans like.”

Adams, a native Texan, agreed.

“Nolan is a legend -- a Texas legend, and not just Texas baseball, but the state of Texas,” Adams said. “(They would) lose almost face of the franchise, really. He hasn’t played (since 1993) and he’s still pretty much the face of the franchise. If it’s personal reasons, that’s a totally different story. But if he’s pushed out, I think it’s going to be perceived badly.”

The departure of Ryan almost certainly would not affect attendance – as Adams put it, “the fans ain’t going to stop going because Nolan is not with the organization. Still, the fans aren’t the only ones who would miss Ryan.

The Rangers’ players would, too.

“He was around a lot in spring training. He went to pretty much every game,” Young said. “He’d be in the dugout. You’d bump into him and say hello. He was always available if you’d want to talk baseball, which is what baseball players do.

“In spring training, we’d sit in the kitchen, Nolan would come in and tell stories of when (Robin) Ventura charged him and Bo (Jackson) pulled him out of the pile when he was about to black out. It was always great to talk to a Hall of Famer, bounce ideas off him, let him do the same to you.”

Young said that Ryan served as a particularly valuable sounding board for him during the 2010-11 offseason, when Young asked for a trade during a dispute with general manager Jon Daniels, saying he had been “misled and manipulated.”

Ryan and Daniels had said that Young “changed his mind” about his willingness to become a DH and super-utility player after the team’s signing of free-agent third baseman Adrian Beltre. Young took exception to those remarks, and a visit from Ryan helped clear the air.

“He came to my house two nights before I was going to drive to spring training. He heard me out, heard what my concerns were,” Young recalled.

“The reason it was helpful is because at that point Nolan understood that it had nothing to do with baseball. I had already agreed to my role. But there was a lot of stuff that had happened behind the scenes that led to it going south. It was good to be heard out, simple as that. And I appreciated it.”

Adams’ relationship with Ryan was different. He grew up in Sinton, Texas, and attended Texas A&M-Kingsville. Ryan was his hero, and Adams, during his time with the Rangers, found it difficult to even approach him.

“It was one of those, 'He’s Nolan Ryan. You don’t want to bother him too much,'” Adams said. “I was a Texas kid also. He was my pitching idol when I was growing up.

“I was more in awe than anything whenever I was around him. It was huge for me, him being there, being part of the organization, just to say I know Nolan, and count him as a friend.

“I still get Christmas cards from him. It’s kind of cool.”

-Ken Rosenthal