[Westheim]

By January, the Raccoons more or less considered to have their team together for the 2046 season. Sure, an ace to add to Wheatley wouldn’t hurt, but aces didn’t come free. It had also not been a great winter for free agent starting pitching, and by early January the best options available on the market were Natanael Abrao and Lachlan Clarke, solid early-30s options, but not an ace for a team that had played in two consecutive World Series (never mind that Clarke would miss the first few months of the season recovering from Tommy John surgery, too).

An ace would have to come in a trade, and teams were notoriously picky with letting them go.

Me personally, I had taken a liking to English-born right-hander Arthur Pickett years ago when he was in the draft pool. He had gone #6 to the Stars back then, had first reached the majors in 2042, two years after the draft, and had stuck for good by 2044. He was already 27, but he had also been a late-comer to baseball and hadn’t started pitching in earnest until college. A righty groundballer with four pitches and decent control, Pickett had won 20 games with a 3.12 ERA last year, whiffing 180 in 213.2 innings in his first full season in the majors.

And the Stars were willing to talk game about a trade, but they also made it clear that only the juiciest slices of the Raccoons’ prospect list would do. Trading them a major leaguer of value was not even possible – Pickett made only a sliver over $1M from arbitration and the Stars were actually over-budget to begin with.

They were especially after Victor Salcido, a 19-year-old Dominican righty we had signed for $485k in the 2042 July IFA period. Salcido had pitched at all three minor league levels in ’45, with a 1.97 ERA in 12 starts in Aumsville, a 4.34 ERA in 14 starts in Ham Lake, and a 2.08 ERA in three starts as a filler in St. Pete late in the year, where he had walked 17 in 21.2 innings and somehow had not gotten destroyed for it, indicating that he would best start the 2046 campaign in Ham Lake.

And while Pat Degenhardt had a penchant to despise and rate own all of the players I liked and that were dear to me, he was writing sort of glowing reports about Salcido, apart from his control, which he rated as average even for the future. Salcido’s potential was rated 14/14/9 going forwards, compared to Pickett being a 13/15/14 *now*.

It didn’t really look like we could get any deal for Pickett without Salcido. There were also no obvious bad contracts on the Stars, except maybe the one for 36-year-old Mark Holliday, who made over $3M a year while pitching in a very average way, had a scouting report indicating that he should have retired yesterday, and was signed for two more seasons. But even if the Raccoons would pick up the tab on Holliday and then released him – Holliday had none of any of those schemes, exercising his 10/5 veto rights as soon as he got wind of the goings-on.

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January 6 – The Gold Six former Raccoons reliever Nate Norris (24-21, 4.08 ERA, 18 SV) to a 3-yr, $4.74M contract.
January 7 – Another addition for the Gold Sox is ex-PIT RF Troy Greenway (.278, 252 HR, 840 RBI). The 34-year-old joins for two years and $6.72M.
January 8 – Former Canadiens pitcher Matt Sealock (135-68, 3.19 ERA), inks a 3-yr, $6.56M deal with the Blue Sox.
January 18 – 37-year-old ex-OCT SP Natanael Abrao (93-97, 4.13 ERA) signs with the Falcons for two years and $6.72M.
January 22 – The Condors deal RF Justin Waltz (.215, 4 HR, 62 RBI) to the Miners for a prospect.

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Nope, no trade for Pickett. But their GM and me call each other every day at least once, just asking the other whether he will stop being so ******* stubborn, and neither is willing to say yes. This drama could stretch into February!