2001-02 Season Preview: Kiwi Conference
There's a lot of unknowns as we head into the inaugural season of the Russell Crowe Invitational. This whole thing is absolute bonkers, less than a year ago it wasn't even a thing and now we have 20 professional teams across Australia and New Zealand playing 168 game seasons.
Insanity.
So what can we expect from each team? Let's start with the NZ teams.
The Steamrollers have proven themselves to be the most aggressive in the buildup to this tournament in procuring talent. Two hitters and three pitchers end up in their respective top player lists. The Steamrollers have already encountered some success. Way back in January, a trial knockout tournament was held in Queenstown and won by the Steamrollers.
Their campaign will be spearheaded by Ciaran Mackay, the 34 year old Third Baseman is pulling in the biggest salary in the entire league at $22m a season.
They don't have to look far for their main competition. Just 90 minutes drive away is the Waikato River Cats, projected to pick up 102 wins.
Fans of the home run should keep an eye on the Taranaki Bulls. They're projected to hit 170 of them into the stands over a season -- the most of any team.
The Auckland Aces and Otago Thunderbolts round out our bunch of likely playoff contenders. They'll need to dig out something special if they want to bring home that prize though.