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Originally Posted by alexsimon99
Let's gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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That's the spirit!
Quote:
Originally Posted by UltimateAverageGuy
I’m so interested in seeing how you maneuver this off-season, hope you get some banner money
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As usual, that depends on Nick Valdes' mood swings and how much the government in a certain Asian country wants to meddle with his child labor practices in an open-pit zinc mine ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bub13
[desperately searches for 'like' button]
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I know the feeling.....
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While my snout wasn’t used to champagne, it got a taste of plenty of it after the Raccoons pulled a stunning upset and rallied from 0-2 down to take four in a row from the heavily favored Gold Sox to win the second title of the current bunch (after 2044) and the sixth in total (1992, 1993, 2026, 2028).
There was an alarming pattern here that we’d always win two close together and then enter decades of mediocrity, but that is something I will whine about at length at various points before and during the new season and now we had other things to do.
For example go through Nick Valdes’ angry mail. He was incensed we went almost $54k over the allotted budget in 2046. I called him to explain that there were an unplanned for $115k of repair works to the rotunda after he had crashed his golden Mercury into it last February. That had actually happened three years ago, but he didn’t remember, and was placated by the explanation. Everybody wins.
To my great surprise, Nick Valdes even opened his purse and buttered up the budget for 2047. A raise of $4.5M would give us a whole $51M to play with. This would tie us for fifth place in the league with the damn Elks (angrily shakes fist northwards), the top-endowed teams in the CL North, and both in the top three in the CL. Last year we ranked ninth in the league.
The remainder of the richest teams were the Gold Sox ($59M), Miners ($55M), Cyclones, and Bayhawks (both $52M).
The bottom five included the Warriors ($37M), Loggers ($36.5M), Aces ($36M), Indians ($35.5M), and Wolves ($31.5M).
As far as the CL North was concerned, the missing teams were the Crusaders, who ranked 10th with $45.5M, and the Titans, who had been slashed to 18th with $39.5M after years of spending big for little returns.
The average budget for a team in the league rose to $44.27M, rising a whopping $1.7M compared to 2046. The median team budget or 2047 was $43M, up $500k from last season.
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Before we’d get into what $51M would and wouldn’t buy, first the news that Victor Merino had eventually been diagnosed with a flexor-pronator strain in his elbow after his CLCS Game 5 exit, which would not be something that would bother him beyond November. And yet, we had won anyway…!
The goal was clear: don’t stop with two titles this time. Make it three! However, while we had some key personnel under long-term contracts (Maldo, Herrera) or still under team control (Wheats, Merino, and others), there were also some players that had taken part in our 2044 and 2046 title campaigns that were pending free agents. The question was what to do about it.
Seven players were due to reach free agency in total this year, including five pitchers. These reached from the frustratingly scintillating Ryan Person (with type B compensation attached) to unlikely Game 4 hero Aaron Hickey, back-end stalwart Nelson Moreno, and washouts Chuck Jones and Todd Lush. We enjoyed Chuck Jones as long as he lasted, but we would make no effort to prolong the experience here, and the same was true for Lush, who came from Boston, got on the nose, and disappeared in AAA without much noise. [the full, unaltered arbitration table will as usual be below]
The position players were perhaps among the best players in the league that didn’t reach 500 PA because of the crowded roster they were on: Derek Baskins and Pat Gurney (the latter of whom had not been here yet in ’44, so this was his first ring). They made a combined $4M in 2046, and the Raccoons had a vested interest in their continued presence on the roster, with Baskins especially given that Manny Fernandez (37 in February) was not getting any younger and had been through a rotten season, but for now we had to take this bit by bit.
Then there were eight arbitration cases, also including five pitchers. These included obvious keeps like Wheats and Okuda (even though the latter might become trade bait with the emergence of Bubba Wolinsky) and assorted southpaw relievers Mike Lynn, Aaron Curl, and Zack Kelly. The latter (0-5 with a 6.00 ERA in ’46) was a hot candidate for non-tendering.
On the position player front there was an obvious Keep in Matt Waters, and the same two ho-hums that seemed to creep in every year now in Arturo Carreno and Van Anderson. To be honest, second base was a mess, and Carreno would never solve it.
In fact, second base was probably the most sore spot on the team, with an assortment of ho-hum filler players (Martell, Castner…) taking turns there – not counting Gurney, but Gurney was a defensive problem up the middle and our attempts to hide him at third base in times of Maldonado absences had also not exactly been a riot. He lacked range here, arm there, and really needed to play first base perhaps, but where do you put Bryce Toohey, Home Run King? We were not exactly short on corner outfielders…
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October 19 – Rebels CL Jesse Beggs is forced into retirement by his torn labrum. The 29-year-old had a 6-year career with two Reliever of the Year titles and a World Series ring in 2045. He pitched to a 28-25 record, 2.92 ERA, and had 185 saves.
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Yeom Soung, a Raccoon for the first three of his 11 ABL seasons after coming over from Korea, retired at age 41 on his own volition. He was also a 2-time Reliever of the Year (including in his rookie season!), and 9-time All Star. He went 52-50 with a 2.71 ERA and 329 saves, whiffing 778 in 754.1 innings and would surely be considered on the Hall of Fame ballot in a few years.