Since I last updated, there was the dalliance with Hank Blalock & Josh Beckett. However, there were a number of smaller (subjectively) news items that occured. I wanted to note them here.
Jon Leicester acquired: On Nov 16, we acquired Jon Leicester from the Chicago Cubs. I don’t know a whole lot about him, but Jamey Newberg called him a “decent prospect” back in August of 2004. That’s about all I know. He was acquired for essentially nothing. The old trade for “cash or a PTBNL” type of trade never seems to work out well. But it’s a low risk move, and if it works out, great!
40 Man Roster additions: We added four players to the 40 man roster last week. They are infielders Ian Kinsler & Joaqun Arias as well as pitchers Wes Littleton & Omar Beltre. With these guys (and Leicester) that brings the total on the 40 man to 36. It’s usually more crowded than that when the Rule 5 protection addtions are made. We did leave a decent number of good players off the list, but are unlikely to be selected. Some of those names are John Hudgins, Nick Masset, Drew Meyer, Vince Sinisi, & Ruddy Yan.
Juggling of Coaches: The Orel Hershisher/Dodgers dance ended with Orel staying here, but not in the way most of us expected. He resigned as pitching coach, and took a job in the front office as “executive director”. Sounds like a no real duties job to me – just training for his next job. Because of that move, Mark Connor was promoted from bullpen coach to pitching coach. Lisewise, Dom Chiti who was previously the ‘directory of player personnel’. Not sure why that qualifies him. I would have thought John Wetteland would make a perfect bullpen coach, myself.
Also, the times for all the regular season games as well as the spring training games were announced. I’ll have that update soon, as I’m still thinking about how I’m going to do 2006 game updates – the format will probably change from what I’ve done since the 1999 season, but I’m not sure how yet.