Nellis' arachnoid crew are out to prove that it's not quantity but quality that matters.  The eight-legged frontrunners have only two real upgrades of any note (set against upwards of 20 downgrades!), but those two are massive. First, we hear that reining batter of the month Rocky Colavito makes good contact, moving him up into the rarified talent air occupied by only the very best players in the league. His talent ratings now look like something off the Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Frank Robinson stat sheets.  The other upgrade is truly a rare commodity. 21-year old Houston native Curt Flood saw his talent for making contact increase to 4. To the best of my knowledge, this makes Curt only the second player in the entire league to hold this distinction along with Granny Hamner. How supremely valuable will Flood turn out to be? Hes also a GG caliber CF! Fortunately for the rest of the league, Curtis doesn't do anything else particularly well, but one might ask, if you have a GG CF capable of winning batting titles for the next dozen years, what more do you need? 
 

Sometimes its better to be lucky than good. In player dev news from the twilight zone, Irv Noren was downgraded in four categories to his current ratings!!!! That's right, he lost a step, but still has a 5 speed. He's lost some momentum in the OF, but he's still a 4 in right, etc.

Outside of the well-documented devastation of Stan "The Man" Musial (also at that not-so-magical age of 37), the Dark Red upgrade news is pretty good.  Twenty-something Bills -- Hoeft and White -- got good bumps relating to
walks.  Hoeft giving up less, and White tallying more. These youngsters see
their contracts expire this year. White, the Maroons first-round draft pick in 1956, is currently laboring away in the minor leagues, but one has to believe that this talented youngster with electric pace and quick feet around the first-base bag merits an extension. Hoeft is a product of that incredibly deep 1952 draft class, and at 27 is enjoying one of his best seasons beside the Mississippi River.
 

From the only happens to Holloway file,  continuing a long-standing trend, disgruntled Griffins owner Sean Holloway looks upon a player development page full of bad news for his young (and formerly talented!) pitching staff. Gross, Brewer, Ceccerelli, and Johnny Pod all have taken knocks of one sort or another. But all is not lost: Tony Kubek got an upgrade to his talent at making contact all the way up to poor!
 

The reining champs are takin it in the shorts on the downgrade front. An amazing 27 of LOUs 30 talent changes were knocks -- that's not player development, that's a revoltin' development!!! Perhaps we're seeing such big concentrations of downgrades because there are some older guys just getting raked over the coals. In GM Mark Allen's case, that guy is Al Rosen, who was signed to be the answer at third base. Instead, he's turned out to be an answer of a different kind: what UL player makes four million dollars a year and has exactly one hit for the 1959 season?
 

All the upgrade/downgrade action in the Windy City takes place in the OF. Part-timer Gus Bell benefited from a valuable upgrade to his contact, but the platoon player is in the final year of a near-$4 million deal. Gus is a gas in the OF, too, but can cash-strapped GM Lance Mueller re-up the 29-year old? Surely, this is one of the toughest decisions "Fancy Pants" Lance faces this off-season. Lancie has invested several recent high draft picks in the OF in an attempt to fill expiring contracts left by Bobby
Thomson and Gus Zernial this year and next. Two of those young players, Don Demeter and Jackie Brandt, suffered relatively minor downgrades but remain solid three-star or better prospects.
 

In the Bronx, they are passing more than gas.  We're witnessing the hand-off of the torch from the great Larry Doby to his likely successor in center field, Bob Allison. Doby's bat speed and prodigious power are in decline, signaling the beginning of the end for the 34-year-old, three-time Gold Glove winner. Allison, ten years Doby's junior, improved his range in OF and makes more contact, though that comes at the expense of some patience at the dish.
 

Anyone else get the feeling that 30, 40 years from now thexre gonna make a movie about McCreight's Outlaws called Down and Out in Beverly Hills? What happened to the franchise that the day after the expansion draft I would'e told you would win the pennant in five years? Anyway, if you were wondering where the threshold on players' careers is in the new version of the game, look no further. Iron Mike has set about systematically destroying 37-year olds Cliff Chambers, Art Fowler, and Spec Shea. If you can see beyond this thicket of downgrades, you can glimpse a bright future where Frank Robinson gets on base more often than he once did and Albie Pearson is still a five-star prospect who catches batted balls like Jesus catches fish.
 

The news in the nation's capital isn't all bad.  The player development pages show big gains, with McDougald, Kindall, Snider, and Power all showing improvement. Most of the downgrades have been utterly inconsequential; witness Erskine's downgrade to his endurance, which amazingly remains a 5. Caveat emptor: next year's free agent bidders will want to take note of the fact that Oklahoma City, OK native Hank Thompson -- certainly the best second baseman in league history -- took hits to his average and power, as well as reading pitchers poorly in their moves to first. Then again, I don't know if that's news to anybody. Amazingly, Thompson was underwater on stolen base attempts (83 out of 168) even before the year began.