Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system projects the Colorado Rockies to win the National League West in 2010 despite a quiet offseason in which the team’s biggest acquisition was part-time catcher Miguel Olivo.

Still, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: The Rockies will return nearly the exact same team that won 92 games and the Wild Card in 2009.

There’s no doubt that it took their GM, Dan O’Dowd, a while to settle on the formula for success in Colorado. The early parts of his tenure were marked by mostly bottom-dwelling teams and, in Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle, a couple of awful, awful free-agent acquisitions.

But in his 10 years at the Rockies’ helm, O’Dowd has apparently learned a thing or two about how to construct a team to face the unique challenges presented by playing home games at altitude in a not-huge market, quietly assembling a staff of groundball pitchers and building a deep roster full of (mostly) homegrown young athletes.

I like O’Dowd because I feel like his work flies under the radar when the league’s best GMs are discussed, maybe because of how long it took him to get his team out of the cellar, maybe because of the Rockies’ simple geographic isolation. And I think it’s nice to be reminded that some front-office types, given enough time, can demonstrate the ability to learn from their mistakes, and to determine the appropriate approach to overcome the hurdles facing their franchises.

I reiterated my mancrush on O’Dowd on the Rockiescast with my old college friends, Scott and Ted, on Friday evening, then helped them preview the NL West a bit. Even if you’ve only got a passing interest in the Rockies or that division, it should make for a mildly entertaining half hour.