Hope you all had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. We sure did. The food was great, and Ryan Leaf didn’t disappoint. You could see both of those fumbles coming from a mile away. What fun!

Been doing a little cleanup around the site. Finally finished converting all the 1999 articles to the new design. It was kinda fun going back and rereading some of that stuff, although it was also a bit humbling. Yamil Haad as a future 15-20 HR guy in the bigs? What the heck was I thinking?

Thinking out loud here. Coming up next on the article front, toward the end of this month, the second part of the series on Kevin Towers’ trade record. After that I’d like to revisit something I’ve been sitting on for a long time and which I think may be of interest: research into the success rate of prospects. I’ve presented bits and pieces of it in various forums but I’d really like to synthesize everything I’ve got and assemble it into a more cohesive package. I hope to do that sometime in December.

In other news, Lake Elsinore’s pitching coach from last year, Darren Balsley, has been promoted to the same position at Double-A Mobile. Balsley is given a great deal of credit for his work with Eric Cyr, Ben Howard, Jake Peavy, and Dennis Tankersley, among others. Mike Harkey has been named the new pitching coach for the Storm, with Rob Deer signing on as hitting coach. Ponder that last one for a moment. Then again, he did understand the value of a walk as a player, so maybe it’s not all bad.