Hi. I'm back. You've probably noticed that. I did a couple of quick posts last week, but I really needed a solid 10 day break from baseball to recharge the batteries. It has nothing to do with wins or losses, either. It's just a long, long season, and we all worked harder than ever during the past offseason. We'll try to be even better during the next 12 months, but I know I certainly needed a break from thinking about baseball and writing. Alas, in the blogging world your audience is built in the offseason so it's time to get back on the horse.
So here's our game plan:
We will again grade every player who found routine playing time either as a starter or a role player during the 2011 season. That will begin tomorrow with the position players.
We'll also be looking at decisions on non-tender candidates, 40-man roster decisions, arbitration eligibles, Tigers strengths, weaknesses and needs, what players might be targets, and all that other stuff. That will begin pretty early because of the accelerated offseason in baseball. Meanwhile our minor league folks will be reviewing how the teams and players did in 2011 as well as pitching in with major league coverage when they want to.
Keep an eye on the key dates (as seen here) and you can anticipate stories about those topics will generally make their appearances a few days before each of them.
Finally, we'll be doing the DIBS awards as always. Voters will receive information about them around Nov. 1.
So make sure you're checking BYB every weekday. It's been slow since the ALCS loss, but things are starting to get back up to speed.