[Westheim]

After Elimination Saturday, I didn’t eat for a week and didn’t drink for two, just lying around on the couch, rolled into a ball. Once or twice Slappy dusted me off, which was more cleaning than he usually did in a decade. I was almost at a point that I could muster enough strength for a bone-shattering sigh when the Titans won the World Series. That set me back to square one.

Or at least until Nick Valdes wired his angry budget for 2037. Angry, because he wanted his team to raise the championship pot often enough so the league would be forced to engrave his likeness on the trophy, and the Raccoons weren’t one tiny step closer to that after the 2036 season.

For 2037, he would increase the budget to $39M, our biggest ever, which was up $1.5M from ’36, raising the Raccoons from a tie for 12th place in the league to a tie for 9th place with the Bayhawks.

The five most-endowed teams were the (grumble-grumble) Titans ($53M), Pacifics ($49M), Stars, Condors ($47.5M each), and Warriors ($45M). The paupers of the league contained the usual suspects: Aces ($31M), Indians ($29M), Falcons ($26.8M), Loggers ($24.8M), and Rebels ($23.6M).

The average budget was $37.3M, about $250k more than a year ago. The median budget amounted to $36M, which was down $1.5M from last season.

+++

The Raccoons were going to have money to spend in the offseason not only because of the additional million and a half. They knew they’d have money to spend back in April when Kevin Harenberg went down for the season after all of six at-bats, killing his $2.2M vesting option for ’37 straight away.

He was far from the only free agent the Raccoons had coming up. The list also included Gilberto Rendon, the never-ending box of wonders, Tim Stalker, Kurt Wall, Casey Moore, and Mauricio Garavito. Altogether, these players had made just over $8.3M the previous season, or in other words, about as much as the Raccoons had paid to players languishing on the DL, with considerable overlap between the groups.

There would be a case to be made for keeping the sturdy pen with Moore and Garavito together, although both were 34 years old, and there was always an argument to be made in favor of Tim Stalker, the 38-year-old middle infield wonder. On the other paw, he was going to be 39 at some point next season, and the Critters had to look into getting a long-time solution for second base, which neither Stalker was, nor Rich Vickers, Yukitsura Hirai, or Edgar Barrios. Second base was a problem right now…

Then there was the arbitration table with eight players eligible. This included Vickers, a super-2 case, as well as Manny Fernandez (oh, boy, that’ll be expensive…), Preston Pinkerton, Justin Marsingill, and Adam Downs, the midseason botch job of a replacement for Berto, who had batted .346/.398/.551 for the Scorpions in 51 games, then went on to punch the air for a .231/.283/.331 line with the Coons across 81 games. And YET, they won 94 games …! Somehow. Nobody knows quite how.

On the pitching side, Raffaello Sabre, John Hennessy, and Antonio Prieto were eligible. Again, there was a case to be made to just chain all the relievers in the ballpark dungeon until the new season began. Sabre was in his final year of team control in ’37 and the Raccoons had to work out whether he was for keeps afterwards or at least compensation eligible the following winter.

Who could the Raccoons add in free agency? Well, there was a case to be made to break the bank on Enrique Trevino, who had an expiring contract with the Caps. Basically think Alberto Ramos, but switch-hitting and on second base. Apart from Trevino’s lesser defense, they were about the same player. Trevino was almost two years younger, but that was about it. If you paired those two atop the lineup, they might steal 100 to 120 bases between them and drive opposing teams completely insane with that act. Assuming they’d stay in the lineup and not languish on the DL. They had, even now, at 30 and 29 years old, respectively, a combined total of 1,055 stolen bases and 12 stolen base crowns (six each) between them. Ramos narrowly led in the SB department, 534 to 521.

We probably had no need for an outfielder (and the market didn’t look like it would be fat in that regard anyway), but even without Rendon leaving I felt like adding a starting pitcher wouldn’t be the worst move of all times.

Interestingly, there was a potential bullpen addition on the board, with Boston closer Jermaine Campbell heading for free agency in a few weeks.

And then there was the big-*** hole at first base. Harenberg wouldn’t be back, and I wished Chiyosaku Maruyama would go along with him. Maruyama was the default replacement at the steady corner in 2036, somehow rumbling into over 400 plate appearances batting for a .675 OPS, which is one of 27 possible angles to look at something and say that THAT… THAT thing right there had cost the Coons a shot at glory.

ONE GAME. ONE ****ING GAME.

(Maud pours some soothing tea into bowl with Capt’n Coma)

Is Jimmy Wallace the solution at first base? We know the outfield has become a bit crowded with Ed Hooge’s breakout season, and Wallace is no use, dead or alive, in leftfield. He played 221 innings at first base after returning from injury late in the season, and initial reviews are absolutely devastating. He made four errors, and was slapped for a -3.0 zone rating and .744 defensive efficiency. Cristiano says that he can’t find a worse first baseman in his database. Nobody had handled at least 200 chances at first base last season with that dismal an EFF rating. In fact, the next-worst first baseman that handled at least 100 chances at first base (WAS Andy Sears) posted an .863 EFF rating. That’s a cool 119 points in between …

And I had yet to begin to complain about how we had four players that had to come off the 60-day DL and back onto the choke-full 40-man roster right now…