[Westheim]

I gotta suspect that somewhere deep down in his Mexican residence of decadence, Carlosito had a stroke late in the season. Despite the Raccoons ultimately failing on all accounts, he increased our budget from $24.2M to $26M, which is actually the biggest increase in recent years, even bigger than when we were actually playing .600 ball.

Carlosito also advised me that the Raccoons needed to increase their batting average and that I was supposed to look for players in that direction, and dump Craig Bowen. Say! First, someone tell the ****ing flies Matt Pruitt hits to ****ing fall into the field somewhere, and second, Carlosito, have you ever sold a thoroughly dead horse?

A thoroughly dead horse that was going to gnaw through $1.88M worth of hay for another four years, at that. Yes, that’s an annual value. Say what you want, he led the team in home runs. (fakes a pitiful grin)

In terms of the other teams in the league, the Raccoons now rank 11th with their budget. The Crusaders still lead the world in blowable money with $37M under their belt, and they sure knew how to use it. They were followed by the Cyclones ($34M), Thunder ($33M), Titans ($31.5M), and Pacifics ($30.5M). The other teams in the CL North ranked 8th (VAN, $27.8M), 9th (IND, $27.2M), and 24th (MIL, $17M). There were six teams with budgets under $20M, including half the CL South and the Rebels and Wolves.

We weren’t in a good spot moneywise, yet. A first glimpse at even the enlarged budget showed that we only had $1M to play with, less than what was left of the 2011 budget. There were a number of escalating contracts on the books, but chiefly to blame was that Adrian Quebell played for $830k in 2011, and now was to make $1.61M annually through 2016. Plus, a good number of personnel throughout the organization left the building, including longtime pitching coach Pancho Padilla, 67, who went home fishing. And the market on pitching coaches was pretty thin… The major league vacancy was filled by the Alley Cats’ pitching coach for the last five years, 51-year old Venezuelan Edmondo Zanelli, while we looked for replacements at the lower levels.

There was still an item on the list of expenses that was going to come off. We would non-tender Jong-hoo Umberger, who dropped off completely in his age 33 season, and received a chainsaw treatment to his ratings by head scout Juan Calderón. That would free up $1.8M for 2012, his second-to-last year of team control. He was a good soldier for a few years, but some risks we cannot take, at least not until Craig Bowen has plunged into the Willamette and we have collected insurance.

Which really brings us swiftly to the list of arbitration-eligible players, of which there were a whopping dozen, and a single free agent. The latter is quickly dealt with. It’s MR Ricardo Huerta, who posted a 4.70 ERA in his age 37 season and didn’t have the stuff anymore that made him a great pitcher on a bad team in the mid-2000s. He was not compensation eligible, so no draft picks for us this year.

Here are the 12 arbitration-eligible players along with their 2011 stats, service time, 2011 salary, and 2012 estimate:

SP Colin Baldwin, 29 – 14-10, 3.20 ERA, 154 K – 4.029 - $350k - $550k
SP Bill Conway, 26 – 15-11, 3.39 ERA, 141 K – 3.106 – minimum - $240k
SP Jong-hoo Umberger, 33 – 8-11, 3.68 ERA, 84 K – 4.000 - $1.45M - $1.84M
MR Kyle Mullins, 29 – 1-1, 3.68 ERA – 3.040 - $254k - $280k
MR Joe O’Brian, 28 – 2-0, 3.27 ERA – 5.098 - $300k - $340k
C Travis Owens, 32 - .246/.333/.373, 4 HR, 14 RBI – 3.000 - $166k - $240k
INF Manuel Gutierrez, 31 - .250/.282/.333, 1 HR, 15 RBI, 2 SB – 4.169 - $250k - $280k
INF Michael Palmer, 29 - .260/.323/.309, 5 HR, 46 RBI, 7 SB – 4.114 - $406k - $450k
LF/1B Matt Pruitt, 28 - .228/.283/.325, 9 HR, 58 RBI, 1 SB – 4.167 - $400k - $450k
OF Santiago Trevino, 29 - .263/.333/.316, 0 HR, 2 RBI – 4.028 - $252k - $280k
OF Pat White, 28 - .175/.213/.202, 0 HR, 9 RBI, 4 SB – 2.125 – minimum - $240k
RF/LF Keith Ayers, 30 - .227/.275/.377, 8 HR, 35 RBI – 4.028 - $230k - $260k

That is quite the collection there…

Well, we covered Umberger, who goes. Easy decisions can also be made on Baldwin, Conway, Palmer, and Pruitt. All four stay, and we might want to get the first two to sign team-friendly 3- or 4-year deals. Palmer is not a long-term solution, I feel, while Pruitt was so unlucky in 2011, that it is a miracle he didn’t knock himself a batted ball into the naughty zone.

We got early agreements with a few other players than those coveted starting pitchers, though. Still in October we got three 1-year deals signed. Manuel Gutierrez signed for $275k, Travis Owens for $250k, and Michael Palmer for $470k. Palmer was the only one who was offered a 2-year deal, which he rejected. Pat White signed for $232k early in November, also a 1-year deal.

In early November we also agreed to multi-year deals on multiple players.

Bill Conway and Colin Baldwin both signed their team-friendly medium-term deals, in both cases covering their arbitration years and one year of free agency at a quite low cost. Conway agreed to 4-yr, $2.8M, starting with $400k in ’12 and adding $200k every year, while Baldwin’s 3-yr, $2.4M contract basically ignores just the first step and starts at $600k right away. These two along with Nick Brown and the minimum-making Hector Santos are already a good rotation. Now you could get a beast of a #2 starter for about $2.5M, which is a problem for the Raccoons as long as Craig Bowen is on their checkbooks, or you could try to find another Conway/Baldwin type misfiled in some Federal League teams’ long relief department.

Also, don’t you think their names would be more awesome if they were Colin Conway and Bill Baldwin?

Keith Ayers also signed a multi-year deal, two years for $600k total. This does not include a year of free agency. This might also be a mistake on the cheap side if he somehow gets into a significant role (doesn’t look like it now, but the offseason is long, and Tomas Castro is injured all the time…) and does break out at some point. He DID make it to a tie for fifth place in home runs on the ’11 Coons despite only getting a third of a season’s worth of at-bats.

That left Mullins, O’Brian, Trevino, and Pruitt as the calendar flipped over into actual arbitration week. Matt Pruitt signed a $460k deal for 2012 four days before the deadline. By then I had also made up my mind on O’Brian, who would cost quite a bit of money to watch him walk people, so he was non-tendered. Mullins and Trevino would go to arbitration, where they were offered $290k apiece, which they both received.

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Other news as the offseason begins:

While the World Series was in progress still, Jason Seeley was declared healthy and came off the 60-day DL. He had to be put back on the 40-man roster, from where Tommy Ward was waived and designated for assignment. He went unclaimed, as did outfielder Pete Schipper, who was dropped from the 40-man roster to get Tomas Castro back on at the start of the offseason. Since getting 73 AB of .783 OPS with the 2009 Coons, Schipper has batted under .210/.310/.300 for two years in AAA and is not worth bothering with anymore. He made $452k thanks to a grenade hitting the table where our outfielders played cards at in ’09, which is about $451k more than the average last-rounder makes.

A few notable players elected retirement, including Daniel Richardson, who had the second-worst year of his 17-year career with the Raccoons in 2000, Jesus Bautista, who pitched for the Titans for a number of years, and Dan Morris, the career home run leader with 408 dingers over 20 years.

The first mildly, vaguely relevant trade was made on November 9, when the Titans got MR Melvin Andrade (8-10, 5.67 ERA, 2 SV) from the Wolves, a 25-year old righty, for two middling prospects.

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2011 ABL AWARDS

Player of the Year: LAP LF/CF Jimmy Roberts (.315, 28 HR, 102 RBI) and NYC LF Martin Ortíz (.311, 33 HR, 121 RBI)
Pitcher of the Year: LAP SP Brad Smith (15-7, 2.54 ERA) and OCT SP Antonio Donis (16-8, 2.74 ERA)
Rookie of the Year: WAS 3B Jesus Soto (.314, 13 HR, 71 RBI) and MIL OF Philip Locke (.274, 17 HR, 99 RBI)
Reliever of the Year: WAS CL Tommy Wooldridge (7-5, 2.12 ERA, 40 SV) and VAN CL Pedro Alvarado (2-3, 1.44 ERA, 38 SV)
Platinum Sticks (FL): P DAL Paul Miller, C DAL Dylan Alexander, 1B DAL Dennis Berman, 2B SAL Alberto Rodriguez, 3B WAS Jesus Soto, SS PIT Tom McWhorter, LF RIC Earl Clark, CF LAP Jimmy Roberts, RF CIN Will Bailey
Platinum Sticks (CL): P VAN Rod Taylor, C IND Jose Paraz, 1B VAN Ray Gilbert, 2B NYC Francisco Caraballo, 3B LVA Francisco Soto, SS OCT Emilio Farias, LF NYC Martin Ortíz, CF SFB Jasper Holt, RF NYC Stanton Martin
Gold Gloves (FL): P DAL Victor Scott, C SAL Miguel Torres, 1B SAL Frederic Roche, 2B WAS Jose Correa, 3B NAS Antonio Esquivel, SS DAL Armando Rodriguez, LF PIT Brian MacNamara, CF RIC Victor Enriquez, RF RIC Winston Jones
Gold Gloves (CL): P BOS Mauro Castro, C LVA Eduardo Durango, 1B POR Adrian Quebell, 2B CHA Daniel Silva, 3B TIJ Dan Jones, SS POR Michael Palmer, LF NYC Martin Ortíz, CF NYC Roberto Pena, RF NYC Stanton Martin

Brownie and Angel both finished in the top 3 in their respective categories.

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It’s November 16. Jong-hoo Umberger is gone after going 58-32 with a 3.10 ERA and 542 K in his four seasons in Portland. I’d say, $4.5M for that was not too much. It was some good fun while it lasted.

After also dumping O’Brian and dropping Schipper and Ward off the 40-man roster, the Raccoons open offseason proper with about $3.2M in budget space.

Oh, there are some juicy Japanese international free agents on the market…