Prospect Rankings and Thank Yous: The Plans for the Next Few Weeks

We made it.

With the end of the regular season comes the end of the traditional format of the Cape Cod League Blog.

I am leaving the Cape on Thursday to begin my fall job covering the Maryland Terrapin football team for The Diamondback, the student newspaper at The University of Maryland. Training camp starts Monday, and classes for my senior year start August 31.

But this is not the end of the Cape Cod League Blog. After a brief traveling hiatus, I will begin posting my end-of-summer prospect rankings on Sunday.

Beginning Sunday morning with the catchers, I will count down the Top 5 players at each position with a brief scouting report on each player. I will do one position each day, culminating with the Top 40 pitchers and the Top 40 overall position players. The rankings will be based on the players' professional potential, with Cape League performance only one factor in that analysis.

So, definitely check back for that beginning on Sunday. It might actually be more entertaining than my daily game reports.

I would like to take this time to thank everybody who read my blog either regularly or occasionally over the course of the summer. It was fun getting your e-mails and accumulating Twitter followers, and I enjoyed meeting some of you at the ballparks. I really appreciate all the positive feedback I got from everybody. Thanks.

A special thanks goes to Buster Olney for posting links and excerpts on his ESPN.com page as often as I sent them to him, and for really getting the ball rolling with my readership. Thanks also to the guys at Right Field Fog and Codball for linking to my blog on their sites and helping me build a local following even more.

When I first started the blog I figured it would be a good way to keep my writing sharp and share my opinions with the few people who actually came across it. I didn't imagine I would accumulate hundreds of readers and generate feedback from writers, scouts and even a few executives across Major League Baseball. It has really been a great experience.

Thanks also to Kevin Blackistone for telling me I should start a blog, and to Ed Schimmel for occasional informal copy editing.

It's been real Cape Cod. I'm out.

Until Sunday,

Greg Schimmel

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? E-Mail me at schimmeldbk@gmail.com

Want to be alerted every time I update this blog? Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Greg_Schimmel