I somehow got Rafael Novoa back from the Cardinals. They dealt a 24 year old coming off a rookie season of 18-10 with a 2.64 ERA and 194 strikeouts for Gregg Olsen and Chris George. Olsen has been a 5 star prospect for us since we drafted him, but I've never fully bought into him. He had 18 saves for us a rookie, but he had a team worst 4.75 ERA. He's just 25, he's older than Novoa. George is an ok reliever, he was 1-4 with a 2.61 ERA with 48 strikeouts in 48 innings.

Our starting rotation is disgustingly good. Plus we have Willie Hernandez who threw a no-hitter last year and Kevin Houston, who has averaged 15 wins a season in the bullpen.

Novoa 18-10 2.64 ERA 194 K 7.7 WAR 34 starts
Hawkins 10-9 3.10 ERA 105 K 4.1 WAR is 25 starts
Fernandez 17-4 2.60 ERA 210 K 4.0 WAR 2nd in Cy Young 34 starts
Cone 16-5 3.25 ERA 182 K 3.8 WAR in 27 starts
Hitchcock 11-6 2.82 ERA 155 K 3.6 WAR in 25 games

Haven't commented much but enjoying following along. Are you planning to keep it here or are you going to move the save to 26?

Yep. But I am reaching a very important part of my career; it's the season prior to the Marlin/Rockies expansion and I want to take control of the Marlins from the expansion draft onwards.

I am hoping that by spending to the highest cap in the league for the 1st time will get me another World Series and then I need to figure the timing of taking the job in Florida.

As opening day of 1992 is here, just an update on the draft and other off-season news;

1-Brewers-Jason Giambi
2-Royals-Richard Hidalgo
3-Angels-Jason Schmidt
4-Padres-Magglio Ordonez
5-Rangers-Shawn Green
6-Mets-Derek Jeter-unsigned. LOL
7-Cubs-Melvin Mora
8-Yankees-Cliff Floyd
9-Pirates-Johnny Damon
10-Braves-Jason Kendall

We had two HOF inductees, both no-brainers on their 1st ballot, Bobby Bonds with 96.7% of the vote and Robert Elliott with 91.8%

Bonds had a career of: .281/.358/.474 416 HR 410 2B 1418 RBI 1559 R 509 steals 1 MVP 6 Silver Sluggers 11 All Star

Elliott had a career of: 212-126 3.24 ERA 2985 K 1.19 WHIP. Led the league twice in wins, twice in ERA, 8 times in strikeouts, 4 times in WAR, 5 Cy Young Awards 9 time All Star

Several prominent players retired in the off season. (probably should have been doing this all along, 22 years too late)

Al Cowens 2779 hits 231 HR 1265 RBI .526 steals 1337 runs .290 BA
Gene Richards 2365 hits 450 steals 1202 runs .306 BA
Dwight Evans 2567 hits 369 HR 1554 RBI .279 BA

Surprisingly, our payroll only went up 10% total despite signing Larkin to the highest contract in league history and re-signing Lynn to the 6th highest contract. We did shed payroll in several trades of pitchers. But we still have over double the payroll of 9 clubs and over triple of the bottom 4.

1 month in and we are 15-8, 1 game up on San Diego and 2 over the Braves.

Our 2 big additions, John Kruk and Barry Larkin have been great so far. Kruk is .381/.500/.607, 3rd in runs and 5th in RBI. Larkin is only hitting .252, but is OBP is .370 and he's slugging .480. Lynn and Clark are hitting a combined .200, so their hot start has been needed.

Our pitching hasn't been great, we are 8th in runs allowed. Fernandez and Cone have been particularly poor and we still haven't settled on a closer. We are healthy, so just trying to get the pitching sorted out and we should be ok

Our 1st series in May was against the Expos and if you recall, I said I was planning on revenge for Dave Smith breaking Dave Clark's foot with a pitch in the playoffs last year.

As it turned out, Smith wasn't going to start during the 3 day set, so I decided to hit their best player, Reggie Sanders, in his 1st AB. As fate would have it, Luis Alicia homered off Rafael Novoa with 1-out in the 1st, so when I hit Sanders.......the benches emptied.

Novoa and Sanders were suspended and the bad blood just got worse. We play in Montreal next week and Smith is scheduled to start.

.....they drilled Mike Stanley with 2 outs in the 9th with a 4 run lead. The sim is nasty