so…

Any baseball going on? I’ll be honest. I’m pretty bored right now.

Does it seem to anybody else than when the Cape League season ends, somebody flips a switch and turns the whole thing off? (I’m looking at you, Cape Cod Times).

It seems to me that when you’ve just closed out a sprint to the finish line of a marathon, you should have a cool-down period. I’ve never run a marathon, though, so maybe not. I guess some people just collapse at the finish line.

But I will not collapse. It’s time for a little jog. Maybe some race-walking. Anything to wind down the summer without going this cruel cold-turkey route.

So, later in the week, I’ll have some season-in-review stuff up and then I’ll formulate a plan for the off-season, which unlike last year, will not involve three months without a post.

For now, a few things to catch up on.

• This got lost in the shuffle for me, but Jason Stidham and Mark Fleury were named co-MVP’s of the playoffs. Stidham had seven RBI, all in the first game of the championship series. Fleury only had one hit in the four-game postseason, but it was a big one.

• Speaking of awards, are we getting a Cape League Pitcher of the Year? Unless I missed it, nothing’s been announced. I have issues with the way the awards are presented (i.e., you might find out if you’re at the game where it’s handed out), but the fact that this award hasn’t been announced yet just muddies the waters further. Maybe there’s a good reason for the delay, but I don’t like it.

• The deadline for signing draft picks came and went on Friday night, and plenty of Cape Leaguers were in the news. Pitchers J.J. Hoover and Bryce Stowell, who had tremendous showings this summer after getting picked in June, leveraged their big summers into big contracts. Hoover, a 10th-round pick of the Braves, signed for $400,000. Stowell, who would have been a redshirt junior at UC Irvine, got an even bigger payday. A 22nd-round pick of the Indians, Stowell inked a deal worth $725,000, which is well above MLB’s slotting recommendation for that pick. By my count that makes seven ’08 Cape Leaguers who signed after, or in the midst of, a strong summer: Mike Bianucci, Jimmy Cesario, Dusty Coleman, Danny Meszaros and Cole Figueroa.

• In other draft news, 2007 Cape League Top Prospect Aaron Crow, the ninth overall pick in June, failed to come to terms with the Washington Nationals. Rather than return to school, Crow is now expected to pitch the rest of this season and the early part of next year with the Fort Worth Cats of the Independent American Association. That’s the same team that former Tennessee star Luke Hochevar played with in 2006 after he didn’t sign. The next year, Hochevar was the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.

• The other piece of news from the draft that may or may not have Cape League implications is the decision by first-rounder Gerrit Cole to stick with his commitment to UCLA. Cole, a righthander from Orange, Calif., who has an electric fastball, was selected by the Yankees near the end of the first round. He opted not to sign, which marks the first time in a long time that a high-school first-rounder will be going to college. There’s a decent possibility that Cole is already on a Cape League roster for next year, and if he’s not, somebody’s trying to get him as we speak.

• In the first six rounds of last year’s draft, there were nine high-schoolers who opted for college. Several of them, including Brandon Workman, Matt Harvey and Brett Eibner, played on the Cape this summer. The number of unsigned high-schoolers in the first six rounds was down to four this year: Cole, first baseman Chase Davidson, and outfielders Zach Cone and Khiry Cooper. Davidson and Cone are both committed to Georgia, so that’s a huge coup for the Bulldogs. Cooper has committed to Nebraska, but he’ll be there to play football.

• A few other names to remember from the group of unsigned players: seventh-rounder Jason Esposito (Vanderbilt), and 10th-rounders Drew Gagnon (Long Beach State), Ryan O’Sullivan (San Diego State), Chris Joyce (UC Santa Barbara) and Danny Hultzen (Virginia). We can expect to see many of them on the Cape next summer.

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