Portland Agitator
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Brown, Coons out for '13 - at least
by Cate Strophie
At nine o’clock last morning, the Portland Raccoons announced that they had placed star pitcher Nick Brown on the disabled list with an elbow ailment. The full extent of the injury was initially not clear, but by now everybody is in agreement that the injury to Brown’s flexor tendon is season-ending, and as such, the Raccoons’ 2013 season and all their high-strung ambitions quite definitely ended on Sunday night, when Brown threw only two pitches in a nationally televised game against the Tijuana Condors.
A national audience got to witness not only the major league debut of 23-year old right-handed pitcher Juan Gallegos, who by dumb luck alone survived three innings and claimed victory in the Raccoons’ 4-1 win over the perennially disregardable Condors. When your good fortunes rely on a home run by colossal money sink Craig Bowen – hit entirely by accident – and a long relief effort only enabled by the Condors hitting ball after ball right at a fielder, against a pitcher whose name six weeks ago would not have turned up by sifting through pages upon pages of prospect rankings, then the team in question’s following might as well grow accustomed to the cellar of the Continental League North, because said cellar is now exactly what the Raccoons are going to be heading to.
The signs are all too clear. Another 1997 meltdown is in progress in the middle of our city. The wonderful sport of baseball and its beauty – besmeared by another nightmarish and ultimately futile campaign.
The 1997 Portland Raccoons came off a semi-decent 108-54 campaign in 1996, although they also managed to throw dirt at what little achievement that was by getting swept by the Richmond Rebels in the World Series, and managed to drop into freefall and finish the following season in fifth place in the Continental League North, at 68-94. What followed, was the entire exodus of all meaningful talent, let go for draft picks ultimately wasted on players that never performed anything at any level, and sent away in trades that yielded nothing but disappointments on a galactic scale. Ten years of nothing but losing and depressing baseball ensued. And that is where the Raccoons are heading back to.
Almost half the roster is eligible for free agency after the season, potentially including Nick Brown, who might be rightfully proclaimed the only player of any skill on the roster as it is currently constructed, with all the questionable personnel included.
Of course, the blame for all the misery surrounding the team has to be laid squarely with management. The Raccoons front office for years has seen players with questionable pedigree, and still signed them to multi-million dollar contracts. The total salaries mingled together on the team’s disabled list over the course of the 2013 season only just now figures to amount to more than $7,000,000 – enough money to provide all schoolchildren of low-income families in the Portland area with a healthy daily apple for two years. What did the Raccoons do with the money? Instead of investing into the future with young, hungry players, they signed Daniel Dickerson, famous for his brittleness, to a 3-year contract worth $3,200,000 annually, and he pitched all of eight innings for them in 2012 before blowing out his arm.
Right now, the team is down their top two starting pitchers and its closer, plus third baseman Jon Merritt, another player that was not known for heroics of any kind before landing a maddening contract for five years with the Raccoons front office. The closer one is investigating their transactions, the more one is horrified. For decades this ever befuddling front office has turned future Hall of Famers, like pitcher Dennis Fried, into broken hopes and dreams. The way in which they are playing with the common fan’s hard-earned wage is an utter disgrace and deserves an investigation.
The returns on investment are laughable. Any board of directors on a public company would long have been chased out of town for reckless spending and endangering the organization’s well-being, but with Mr. Westfield and his entourage of yay-sayers there is never a backlash; no outrage over all the burned money; no outrage over all the promising careers ruined; no outrage over the extravagancies – the only valid description over why Craig Bowen still holds down a roster spot. A change is long due.
Arrogance was not only the downfall of the 1997 Raccoons and also the proud old Romans, it will also be the gateway into a new era of futility in Portland. It will take years for the horrendous bad contracts, that nobody wants to take on – Bowen has reportedly been shopped 42 times in three-and-a-half years – to clear off the books. By then, the aspiring young players like Sandy Sambrano, Ricardo Carmona, and Hector Santos, and wonderful veteran Ieyoshi Nomura will have moved on since management preferred to throw the money at random rehabilitation cases. Sunday night against the Condors was the end for the semi-watchable Raccoons of the last six years. Nothing put devastation and darkness lies ahead of them.