1/23/10 Odds & Ends

Insert random babble here. Nothing too exciting has happened to me in the last week, so let's cut to the chase, shall we?

Box Score:

- 2006 Goldpanner and the Cleveland Indians' '07 first round pick Beau Mills will go to camp with the big league club in this year's spring training. Of course, we will follow his progress and I'll keep my fingers crossed that he makes the Cleveland roster.

- Jered Weaver (Bucs, 2002) is going to get the BIG MONEY next year. The Angels inked a one-year deal with the 16-win hurler to avoid getting run through the wringer in salary arbitration. $4.265 million. Not too shabby. I hope he doesn't spend it all in one place! (Photo courtesy of AnchorageBucs.com)

- Speaking of the Angels, I wrote an article last week about 2008 Miner Garrett Richards, but totally forgot to mention that Baseball America ranked him the #5 prospect in the Angels' organization last week. Oops. Well now you know.

- Some other stuff we talked about last week: #10 All-Time ABLer J.D. Drew and a comparison of 2009 ERA and xERA stats.



- The Peninsula Oilers have given me a link from their website. As always, I am seriously appreciative of their support, and the support of all the other teams who have linked to me and helped me out in any way. To all the Oilers people out there, I will try to prove my worthiness by writing things that don't suck! In any event, I definitely hope to make it down to Kenai this summer to take in a ballgame and do some scouting and photos. OK, and maybe some king fishing, too. Last time I was on the river I caught a 40-pounder, pretty sweet.


On Deck:

- I scored a copy of "Touching the Game: Alaska", the new documentary about the ABL, on DVD. It took me about a week to watch all of it but I'm finally finished and I'm wrapping up my review, which will be posted tomorrow (probably).

- On Tuesday we'll continue with our countdown of the All-Time Top ABL Players. We're up to #9 now. Who could it be?

- Thursday will feature that 2010 Player Profile of an Anchorage Bucs player that I promised you last week. It looks like it'll be two-way player Tyler Spurlin in the spotlight.

- Somewhere amidst all of that regularly-scheduled programming I'd like to take a closer look at the Heroes of the Diamond roster. They're not a "real" ABL team, of course, but they're coming all this way for some exhibition matches against several of our teams, including the Goldpanners for the Midnight Sun Game, and I reckon some of you might be interested to see who the competition is.