[Westheim]

With the Winter Meetings over, the Raccoons’ pitching staff was at a point where we were happy with what we had; Rosas would have been great, but he wasn’t affordable. With four #2/#3 starter and the wild card Okrasinski we had a very solid rotation with a chance for greatness, and the bullpen was hardly changed at all. We still had Wise, Blair, Anaya from the right side; Garavito, Hennessy, Fernandez from the left; and Prieto to take the spot that would have been Nick Bates’. The 28-year-old Bates would not be ready before June, and likely July.

The infield also looked set; Zitzner, Stalker, Ramos, Zeltser around the diamond, with Marsingill and Hawkins as backups. In the outfield we had Wallace, Reichardt, Fernandez, Jennings, and new addition Salgado. The only thing we really needed and the only improvement we could easily achieve with our remaining budget (roughly $1M was left) was a backup catcher, and that was an urgent need, because right now we had nothing better than David Tinnin at hand behind Elliott Thompson.

There were in fact only eight catchers left in the system, and none of them at the AAA level. There was also no other catcher in the system with ABL experience – the only other one besides Thompson, Tinnin, and the traded Fernando Garcia had been Daniel Rocha, and he had left as minor league free agent.

To be honest, besides that direly needed backup catcher I didn’t see where we’d add another player outside of minor league additions this winter. Our main haul this winter would remain Gilberto Rendon.

Keen observers will also have noticed that we are scheduled to field five right-handed starting pitchers. It is what it is; a few years ago we had four southpaws and that didn’t do us any good either…

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December 14 – The Gold Sox sign veteran former Miner and swingman Nick Salinas (99-98, 3.31 ERA, 139 SV) to a $650k contract for 2034.
December 14 – The Raccoons ink 33-yr old ex-LVA C Philip Scheffer (.234, 22 HR, 143 RBI) to a 1-yr, $375k contract.
December 17 – The Indians sign ex-TOP SP Jose Lerma (185-158, 3.45 ERA) to a 2-year deal. The 34-year-old lefty will earn $7.84M.
December 24 – 35-year-old ex-DAL/NAS C Pat Sanford (.253, 165 HR, 726 RBI) signs a 3-yr, $3.54M contract with the Titans.
December 26 – The Buffaloes announce the addition of former Condors SP Josh Irwin (81-79, 3.89 ERA), who signs for $23.52M over six years.
December 30 – The Stars sign ex-TIJ SP Joe Perry (91-52, 3.46 ERA) to a 3-yr, $11.16M contract.
January 3 – The Warriors bolster their rotation with the addition of ex-MIL/NYC SP Francisco Colmenarez (69-72, 3.23 ERA), who will make $16M over four years.
January 4 – Former Thunder SP Andy “Dude” Jimenes (62-62, 3.97 ERA) joins the Pacifics for six years and $26.98M.

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Scheffer is far from a great batter; he did win a Gold Glove this season, but batted for a .594 OPS while doing so. The good news is that he’s a switch-hitter that has fairly even averages against lefties and righties, but finds more extra base success against southpaws, so he will mix well with Thompson in that regard. Yes, he’s a 33-year-old catcher with barely 1,200 at-bats in the major leagues. But if we play our cards right he won’t get more than 150 this year, either… We paid a lot for Garcia last season and got precious little in return (not that I am not confident in a Howden-like turnaround for him), so this time we’d go the budget route and hope that Thompson’s upwards trend in the second half can continue.

For comparison, Elliott in his age 23 season batted for a .692 OPS (95 OPS+), which was 88 points more than in his partial gig in ’32. His .368 OBP is however misleading since he was granted 17 intentional walks. Taking those out leaves him with a .337 OBP.

After the Scheffer signing we reassigned some more players to AAA that had no chance of making the Opening Day roster anymore. These included Tinnin, de la Cruz, and Gurney, and it left only 28 players on the extended roster. This included Bates, though, since the DL was inactive during the winter. The only other surplus personnel were two outfielders, Preston Pinkerton and Sean Catella, the latter of which was out of options.

And what about other Raccoons?

Matt Jamieson, who would turn 39 in April, would try another round with the Crusaders for $392k; Nate Hall joined the Wolves for $310k; Jon Gonzalez returned to Indy for $770k;

All during December, Cristiano Carmona kept asking me every day whether I had already filed my Hall of Fame ballot. He had that certain sparkle in his eye – obviously because his older brother Ricardo (or as he was known around here, “Cookie”) was on it.

I didn’t file it until after the holidays. But when I did so, his name wasn’t on it. I actually only voted for two players this time around, neither of them a Raccoon alumnus. And there was a bunch of those on the ballot; there just wasn’t anybody that screamed out to have a gold plaque with his name on it.

Cookie was the greatest thing on legs for a while… but he just couldn’t stay the **** healthy. He played 17 ABL seasons, and only six times amounted to more than 126 games, half of those seasons coming right at the start of his career. His late debut in 2012 aside, he would hit for OPS+ values of 115 or greater each year from 2013 (age 21) through 2019 (age 27). He only managed one more triple-digit season after that, a 125 in ’22 when he was 30 years old. After that he barely amounted to replacement level.

Now Jonny Toner got into the Hall thanks to an insane peak and four Pitcher of the Year awards. Cookie didn’t win such credentials. While he won a ring with the ’26 Coons and hit .300 in a sparing application of his talents at that point – Toner never won one – he didn’t exactly pile up individual accolades. He led the CL in stolen bases three times, won a batting title (the most recent one before Berto’s this year), once led the CL in hits, and twice in triples, but he won only a single Gold Glove and was an All Star only once. The latter was probably to blame on a conservative approach in the sense of moving him out of centerfield to conserve his damn body. He was ill-suited to play a power position – he hit 21 homers in his career and never more than six in a season.

It just didn’t add up for me.

But if Cristiano finds out, he’ll never talk to me again…

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2034 HALL OF FAME BALLOTING

The Hall of Fame welcomed two new members in 2034, a pitcher and a position player, both inducted for Federal League teams.

While left-hander Sam McMullen was inducted as a member of the Warriors, his best season came as a Canadien in 2016 where he won the Pitcher of the Year laurel and almost a triple crown in a year where the award, normally in Jonathan Toner’s stranglehold at that time, was vacated by an injury to the Raccoon. It was McMullen’s only major award, but he was an All Star seven times and led his league in wins twice. Throughout his career, he remained a strikeout artiste, although he allowed a lot of home runs in the second half of his ABL tenure, leading the league in that category three times in his 30s. He was remarkably consistent and durable though, posting ERA’s in the 2’s or low 3’s year after year from his debut at age 23 until his age 35 campaign, and he started 33 or more games in 13 consecutive seasons. Ultimately a journeyman that pitched for six different teams, McMullen compiled a 213-150 record and 3.51 ERA with 2,758 strikeouts in a 16-year career.

Inducted on the first ballot was Tom McWhorter, the Miners’ shortstop and superstar for more than a decade. He debuted in ’09 at age 20 with Pittsburgh and stayed with them through 2019, taking home back-to-back Player of the Year awards in 2013 and 2014. In both years he led the FL in runs scored, and in ’13 also in slugging and OPS for batting .314 with 35 homers, the most of his career. The serial All Star (12 nominations, including nine consecutively 2010 through 2018) took home seven Platinum Sticks, a Gold Glove, and MVP honors in the 2015 FLCS. Nevertheless, a World Series ring was never in the cards for him; the Miners never got over the hump, and he also didn’t find lasting success in a 5-year stint with the Capitals before finishing out his career with short-term engagements in New York, Denver, and Oklahoma City. For his career, he batted .268/.360/.449 with 346 HR and 1,400 RBI. He also stole 169 bases.

Complete results:

SFW SP Samuel McMullen – 2nd – 91.5 – INDUCTED
PIT SS Tom McWhorter – 1st – 89.3 – INDUCTED
??? SP Ernest Green – 1st – 27.4
ATL LF Gil Rockwell – 7th – 23.0
??? CL Jarrod Morrison – 2nd – 21.5
??? SP Ian Van Meter – 2nd – 17.0
LAP C Errol Spears – 2nd – 15.2
PIT SP Pedro Hernandez – 1st – 14.8
ATL SS Devin Hibbard – 1st – 13.3
OCT 2B Emilio Farias – 1st – 11.9
VAN 1B Ray Gilbert – 9th – 11.9
NAS C Pat Walston – 3rd – 10.7
POR LF Ricardo Carmona – 1st – 9.3
SAC CF Ray Meade – 1st – 8.5
??? SP Alejandro Mendez – 1st – 5.9
??? SP Bob King – 8th – 5.6
CHA C Ryan Holliman – 2nd – 4.4 – DROPPED
OCT RF Ezra Branch – 1st – 4.4 – DROPPED
??? RF Justin Dally – 4th – 4.4 – DROPPED
NAS SP Diego Mendoza jr. – 1st – 2.6 – DROPPED
LVA RF Mike Bednarski – 1st – 1.9 – DROPPED
SFB SP Joao Joo – 1st – 1.1 – DROPPED
??? SP Frank Kelly – 1st – 0.7 – DROPPED
??? CL Troy Charters – 1st – 0.4 – DROPPED
POR 2B Shane Walter – 1st – 0.0 – DROPPED