[Westheim]

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

How do you move along so quickly. It's taking me a week or two just to get one game started. What's your secret?

I try not to get too tangled up with every single stat, and sometimes I just flat out ignore things. I don't think I have ever even glanced at player personalities when evaluating their value.

And decision making isn't my strongest suit (in fact, eating lots of food is, fitting the picture here), and if I can't make up my mind over something, a trade or a contract offer, I have reverted to just not doing it and move on. That hurts at times.

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Sad fact: prior to 2007, 98 wins have been good enough to win the North 20 out of 30 times. Meh.

Finding personnel has never been easy in this city. The first move in the offseason was to make an offer to SP Javier Cruz, certainly not the best option for the #3 spot in the rotation, but economically a good one.

I explored trade possibilities for the third base job. The Pacifics had a promising young third baseman in Raúl Valle, who was hitting for a bit of power and was a competent fielder, but had been used only off the bench in 2007. Somewhere, that name rang a bell, though. Valle? Raúl Valle?

Oh right, we traded him to the Wolves in the Carlos Sackett trade in 2004. Carlos Sackett! How did that work out for us? Badly. He arrived in L.A. six months later as part of a package for SP Raúl Chavez. Sackett didn’t last in Portland, as you might remember, and was back down in Salem six months later in the trade for Eddie Fernandez and a no-good minor-league pitcher who is still no good and in Ham Lake, but is 26 already. Eddie meanwhile became a free agent after getting only 48 major league at-bats with the Condors this year, where he ended up in the Kelvin Yates trade.

So maybe everything worked out for us after all? Turned a minor league third baseman into Kelvin Yates. Took a few years and a few unloved catchers as additional incentives along the way, but - … oh well.

As we are on the topic of Kelvin Yates…

The Raccoons’ window of opportunity is small, as the entire team has backpacked themselves onto Kel and Brownie. Those two horses are pulling the wagon. Yeah, we have an awesome back end to the bullpen, and yeah, we have a number or promising hotshots like Pruitt and Castro and Yoshi and Miller, who isn’t counted out yet, but after all, everything depends on our two co-aces.

Both of these co-aces are slated to leave the team after the 2009 season. Brownie’s deal ends there, and Kel’s has a cheap player option for 2010. Yeah, come on. They are both leaving after 2009. Given our market and our annoying owner, who can hardly make any profit with the team as it is (pocketing $6M in 2007…), the best we can hope for after that is to resign ONE of them, and at a hellish rate. We will never be able to resign both of them.

While they’re still around, there’s a cow that desperately needs to be milked. We need to load the roster for 2008 and 2009 and worry about later later. And with that, the goal of the postseason became to go all-in. For the right return, we will deal top prospects.

November 17 – The Titans deal C Freddy Rosa (.246, 33 HR, 159 RBI) to the Pacifics for INF Eugene Nelson (.216, 2 HR, 19 RBI) and a middling prospect.
November 20 – The Wolves sign ex-CHA SP Pancho Trevino (99-69, 3.47 ERA) to a 5-yr, $12.38M contract.
November 20 – 28-yr old ex-BOS SS Dave Hutchinson (.305, 84 HR, 613 RBI) is going to get paid in Denver, receiving a 4-yr, $11.52M contract from the Gold Sox.
November 21 – The Raccoons acquire 25-yr old SP Colin Baldwin (2-3, 3.75 ERA) from the Pacifics for 27-yr old C Bob Wood (.202, 5 HR, 51 RBI) and 20-yr old #18 prospect A SP Dave Self.
November 23 – The free-agency-rattled Stars reload themselves by signing ex-CIN 1B/3B Dennis Berman (.274, 166 HR, 771 RBI). The 31-yr old will make $15.6M as part of the 6-year deal.
November 24 – Legit superstar 3B Sonny Reece (.313, 182 HR, 1,197 RBI) hitches a ride with the Crusaders, signing a 2-yr, $4.88M deal for his age 35/36 seasons.
November 27 – The Crusaders keep adding, signing ex-DAL INF/RF/CF Ramón Garza (.285, 54 HR, 858 RBI), who has 2,161 career hits at age 34, to a 2-yr, $3.64M contract.
November 27 – Ex-BOS MR Risto Mäkelä (19-19, 2.52 ERA, 9 SV) might become the Buffaloes’ new closer at a 3-yr, $2.08M rate.
November 30 – The Capitals acquire 32-yr old 2B Jesus Palacios (.288, 113 HR, 636 RBI) from the Miners, leaving them with two prospects,
November 30 – The Pacifics sign ex-OCT C Antonio Ramirez (.246, 27 HR, 269 RBI) for 3-yr, $1.71M. The 29-yr old was already with the team until a mid-2006 trade sent him to the Portland Raccoons.
December 1 – Rule 5 draft. 12 players are selected over two rounds. The Raccoons are not affected.
December 2 – To start the Winter Meetings, the Raccoons trade 31-yr old SP Raúl Fuentes (58-58, 4.39 ERA) to the Pacifics for 25-yr old MR Dan Parker (1-0, 6.29 ERA) and 27-yr old AAA SP Carlos Vázquez.
December 3 – The Raccoons ink 35-yr old ex-NAS Javier Cruz (194-122, 3.73 ERA) to a 2-yr, $1.6M contract. Cruz was the FL’s Pitcher of the Year in 1997 and 1998.
December 3 – Former Raccoon SS/2B Kunimatsu Sato (.271, 21 HR, 393 RBI) inks a 1-yr, $502k contract with the Scorpions.
December 3 – The Blue Sox trade with the Titans to acquire 33-yr old OF Ramiro Cavazos (.267, 90 HR, 565 RBI) in exchange for 28-yr old MR Jason Long (6-7, 2.98 ERA, 3 SV) and a third-rate prospect.
December 4 – 34-yr old INF Bob Hall (.281, 136 HR, 881 RBI), who last played with the Pacifics, is signed to a 2-yr, $4.16M contract by the Cyclones.
December 5 – The Gold Sox pick up ex-MIL CL Gabriel Garcia (27-31, 2.96 ERA, 40 SV). The 32-yr old takes home $4.56M as part of a 3-year deal.
December 6 – The Canadiens trade 25-yr old OF Jose Gonzalez (.262, 35 HR, 277 RBI) to the Thunder for 27-yr old MR Cris Pena (17-12, 3.59 ERA, 3 SV) and #94 prospect INF Jaylin Lawrence.

Now BEFORE you freak out about the Baldwin trade: both these pitchers were former first round picks, Baldwin in 2004 and Self in 2006. Dave Self walked more than he struck out in both of his A level campaigns and that has given Whitebread serious doubts about him. OSA loves his stuff more than Whitebread, but also ranks his command potential as poor, which is a valid second opinion in this case. Of course the ceiling for Dave Self is hard to predict right now. Whitebread has his stuff as a potential 14, OSA gives him 19. That’s a world of difference, but if he’s a walk machine, he’ll never be an ace.

Baldwin’s ceiling is established already. This 25-year old left-hander won’t be an ace, either. He has four decent pitches, including a 94mph cutting fastball and a good splitter, complemented with a curve and a changeup, the latter still a work in progress. Whitebread rates him a straight 11/11/11. That does not make him that #3 starter we were longing for, but it sure as hell makes him the very best candidate for the #5 job over Boda, Webster, and Fuentes, and turns the latter into a trade chip for other moves, since Fuentes has no options, but does have 10/5 rights.

And who knows, maybe Cássio Boda has an awesome start to his AAA season and then we’ll reconsider. But right now we’re riding Baldwin, who debuted late in 2007 and made eight starts for the Pacifics, going 2-3 with that 3.75 ERA and struck out 25 in 50 1/3 innings. And we KNOW that Bobo Wood would not get us any further along our path to the playoffs…

Fuentes was chipped in quickly. The Pacifics originally came asking for 19-yr old Hector Santos, but that wasn’t going to happen. Parker, a left-hander who got lit up in his first cup of coffee in 2004 and is still gnawing on the double-digit ERA from then, but he has a vicious slider that could well make him the second left-hander in our pen in 2008. Or maybe something else will develop. Parker used up his last option in 2007.

Vázquez is a throw-in. He has four pitches, but the fastball comes dead straight. He was good in AAA, but he might not survive major league hitting. Truth be told, the Pacifics had no “middling” prospects they could throw into such a deal, and they surely weren’t going to give up top prospects for a bum like Fuentes. But since Fuentes had no further value to us, given his slimmer than slim chances to pass waivers, Vázquez as backup is better than no backup (besides he backs up pretty low down the pecking order to begin with and might even pitch out of the Alley Cats’ pen).

We signed our #3 guy in Javier Cruz the day after the Fuentes trade. A career Blue Sock, his best days obviously were behind him, but he had held up remarkably well despite being used as a swing man for two seasons, and the $800k per year are really a cheap investment.

The Crusaders tried to trade for Kenichi Watanabe, offering 35-yr old 3B Ian Burns in exchange. Burns only made his debut at age 31 after being signed by the Indians out of the independent FSL (Florida Swamp League). He has only had 333 AB since, with little success. We might still have a gaping hole at third base, but he’s not it. And not for Winless Watanabe anyway, who attracted quite some interest as an efficient, cost-controlled starting pitcher, but we weren’t going to send him away.

And that’s it through the winter meetings!