[ayaghmour2]

Baseball is back in the FABL! Despite winning a team best 97 games in 1932, the Cougars fell just short of the postseason and did not get a chance to defend their title. Moments after the start of the World Series, the Cougars made a deal with the Gothams to bring in CF Bobby Sprague. Chicago's GM is hoping that the addition of Sprague and hopefully a bounceback from Tommy Wilcox will be enough to return the Cougars to the playoffs.

The preseason predictions seem to like the Cougars chances, tabbing them win an impressive 98-56 record, the best in all the FABL. They expect the next best CA team (Brooklyn) to finish almost 20 games behind with just 81 wins. The Cougars are also projected to have two top hitters (Tom Taylor and Russ Combs) and three top pitchers (Tommy Wilcox, Max Wilder, and Dick Leudtke). The excellent record is of course encouraging, but the best sign is the projected #1 CA starter is Tommy Wilcox. His struggles have been well documented, but I'm really hoping for a bounce back year. And after much mulling, he'll get the Opening Day start over Dick Leudtke. I really want to ride Wilcox, and he'll be given the chance to prove himself. If all goes well, he'll strictly pitch every fifth day and if Lyons or Crawford struggle, he may see the occasional start on short rest. No pitcher has numbers close to his projected 2.44 ERA and while I don't expect him to be a 30 game winner (or make almost 50 starts), I'm excited to see what he can do. We're expected to lead the CA in runs, average, steals, runs against, ERA, and walks. The ERA, walks, steals, and runs against are league best as well. The CA is a much more pitcher friendly league then the FA (Chicago is actually the only hitter friendly stadium in the CA) so I'm not too surprised some of the FED teams are expected to out hit and score us.

Looking to the Fed, more of a race is projected. The Dynamos, reigning pennant winning Keystones, and 1931 pennant winning Gothams are all projected to finish within 3 games of first with the Dynamos listed on top. It should be an exciting race to the finish there. There are a few former Cougars on each team, with Taylor Collins on the Dynamos, Rabbit Forrest on the Keystones, and Erv Firth and Joe Johnson on the Gothams.

Now, we don't have a strong farm system at the moment, ranked 10th out of 16th teams, but I definitely am excited about the state of the system. If I remember correctly, after trading away Leonard and Johnson we fell to 15th in the league and after the draft we bounced up five spots. I think we should move to the top half by the end of the season (of course, assuming I don't trade away the farm midseason) because none of our top prospects are going to be graduating. Of our nine top 100 prospects, none have a 1933 ETA and most will be appearing in 1935 and 1936. Directly ahead of us is Brooklyn and Montreal. Brooklyn's top prospect Harry Barrell (2nd) should be up sometime this year and Montreal's 3rd best prospect Chuck Murphy (33rd) is already on the 40 and has debuted. The Sailors have #3 prospect Lou Williams on their Opening Day roster and a pair of top prospects in AA. Cleveland's top two prospects have 1933 ETA's and are waiting in AAA while Johnny Turner (47th) made the Opening Day roster. I think it is possible we could pass those teams, especially because we have a total of 16 prospects in the top 150 that (hopefully) can only move up.

Looking at the major league team, we've got a top 5 ranked player at every position except first base. Bobby Sprague was formerly the #1 ranked center fielder, and since the start of Spring, has moved up from 15th to 5th at left field. This is just because he's still not fully acclimated to left, and I feel like he can enter the top 3, behind just the Chief's Jim Hampton and the Gotham's Joe Perret. I'm kind of shocked Ashbaugh is ranked 9th, considering he hit .319/.384/.470 (124 OPS+) last season and has a career .320/.389/.505 (132 OPS+) line all while playing elite defense at first. There are a lot of top quality first basemen including Rankin Kellogg, Bud Jameson, Max Morris, and Dave Trowbridge, but I feel like Ashbaugh should rank ahead of Dan Barrell and Dick Walker at least. Of course, the pitching is also a real strength, and very few can match our 5-man depth.

Speaking of that pitching depth, it shows up in the top 20 players list. Four of our starters, Tommy Wilcox (3rd), Dick Luedtke (15th), Jim Crawford (19th), and Max Wilder (20th) rank in the top 20 for pitchers and my guess is Dick Lyons isn't too far out. No other team has more then three (the Philadelphia entries are split between the Keystones and Sailors, and New York between the Gothams and Stars). We also boast four top hitters, Mike Taylor (6th), Russ Combs (9th), John Kincaid (13th), and Tom Taylor (15th). For position players, no team has more then two. Of course, I'm biased here, but I really like our chances of finishing on top this year after a relatively disappointing season last year.

Of course, none of this "on paper" stuff truly matters, or we wouldn't have to play out the games. And I can't wait for another fun season in Chicago!

Play Ball!