This is my almost-daily look at the California League. I attended a great many games in Visalia as a kid and have always followed the major leagues on the day-to-day, boxscore-reading level.
I got interested in the financial side of baseball and player movement around 2010 and started buying the Baseball America Prospect Handbook. When the California League was high-A, I enjoyed having players at that juncture of their careers showing up on all of the Cal League teams and following them onward, to the bigs, another organization or out of baseball.
Since the Cal League became a low-A league in 2021, it’s different in that there isn’t much professional track record to go on. Baseball America is a guide but it’s not the be-all, end-all. They’re wrong a lot too, just like the rest of us. But now I have the Handbook and maybe some rookie ball numbers to give me an indicator of what to expect.
That’s fine with me, I pay attention to what I see while they’re here.
So, I look around at various blogs and follow a lot of Twitter accounts while following the games each day and digging into the box scores afterward. Resources for the California League itself seem to have dried up. The old MiLB webpage is no more, and you have to navigate your way to the scores and stats unless there’s something out there that I haven’t figured out yet.
I’m just glad it’s not the Low-A West anymore.
But this blog is what I see each day. I’m not looking at players as a scout and I’m not just a casual fan. I’m somewhere in between. I root for all of the clubs to have good attendance and to be successful and most of the time I don’t have much of a rooting interest in who wins. My major-league allegiances come into play a little bit but not much. I embrace advanced stats and analytics in some areas and not others. I am good with installed runners in extra innings and robot umps but I don’t like the DH.
Finally, I’m on Twitter all throughout the day, every day, and I “like” and “retweet” but I don’t put my own opinions out there much. I’m always surprised how little interest there is in this league and I don’t really understand why there isn’t more reaction to the teams’ tweets, especially when they involve a big-name prospect. A few years back there seemed to be more lively conversation. But I follow along with what’s going on and my own tweets are links to what I put here more than anything.
This blog is just how I stay engaged and informed. A look into a baseball-sick mind. I hope you see something you enjoy here.
