Upcoming Shenanigans

The plan, tentatively anyway, til 2024 spring training and beyond

Well, the first truly full season in the SB&S Universe is just about in the books and I hope you all had a good time. I learned a lot. Had a blast. Connected with some great folks. Gotta say it’s been a good trip so far. Now it’s that time to see what’s coming up next, at least tentatively.

First up will be a CDNSinMILB season recap. I’m now gathering a list of Hosers in the minors and will give a quick stat line review for as many as I can. These should start coming out in the next couple of weeks broken down by MLB division. Stay tuned!

Future entries/postings will essentially fall into 4 “categories” or “tags”:

• CDNSinMILB. More or less what we have been doing and exactly as it sounds. Canadians playing in the minors. Profiles, reviews, stories, etc.

• Prospect Pages. Similar to the Canuck section above just not necessarily Canadian-born players. Top-ranked prospects on Top 100 lists or Organizational Top 30s will fall in here as well as any “under the radar” type names that we come across that are interesting and should follow more closely. I found as I focused on Canadian players in the MILB I lost a bit of touch with other top-level prospects. This will be my way to bring them back to the party so to speak.

We spend most of our time in the two above groupings in-season but there will be plenty of prospect talk all year regardless of being in or out of season.

• Collegiate Canucks. Canadians playing in college. It focuses mostly on draft-eligible players but may include new college commitments and other player stories as they arise. We typically won’t be seeing much in this section until the new year and then of course throughout the NCAA, NJCAA, and NAIA seasons.

• Dugout Digest. This will be where we’ll find Inductee In An Instant along with stories from Canadian baseball history. Other baseball stories that are not necessarily Canadian-themed will be included here as well. There are so many stories out there and it would be irresponsible and frankly downright silly to not get into some of them! We’re going to spend some time here this off-season and I’m really looking forward to sharing some of these tales.

This off-season I’m going to be dedicating more time to reading books. I read a fair bit already, on SubStack plus the usual suspects within the baseball sphere that I check daily or every other day but I’m talking actual books. I have two on the go as I write this with two “started”. That’s in quotes because I’m only a chapter or 2 in at the most so they’re technically started but I’m not as deep as the other two with another five on my “Next Up” list. In my infinite wisdom, I have also put a call out on Notes for NPB/Japanese baseball suggestions as well as Negro League/Player books as well. Drop any suggestions you have in the comments. You can say I’m a firm believer that you can’t have too many books. I find that I think clearer and more creatively when I read routinely. It’s about time to dedicate a little effort to it. I find that I read in spurts rather than in a more regular fashion so reading consistently is the goal of this.

There has been a self-evaluation of my time writing on the SubStack machine. Typical stuff. Things that I believe have been going well and things I feel need some tweaking to make improvements upon in both the near and longer terms. My notebook is filled with notes of varying degrees of gibberish and penmanship quality in four different colors outlining things on the Sub-50 Grade and The 50 Grade-And-Up columns of my profile. Some changes are quick and easy to implement while others may take a bit of work but that’s all part of the fun. Experiment and see what happens. If it works…great! If not you learned what NOT to do. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. There’s value there too.

You better believe I have more than a couple of these lying around!

I’m also starting to pencil in something new next year for SB&S. This is in the very early stages of planning and sketching out. I’m sure this will take on numerous forms and versions before settling in but the process has started and I’m excited at what this may bring to the table to share. I’ll keep everyone in the loop with any major updates as this gets further along.

Upcoming Shenanigans: CDNSinMILB season recaps plus working on a couple of ideas falling under both Prospect Pages and Dugout Digest that are becoming more coherent. These likely won’t be completed until after the recaps but make sure to keep an eye out in the upcoming weeks.

Thank you for checking in today and thank you to those who subscribe & share. Until the next time, you know what to do…Keep It 80 Grade!