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1974
Having gone 12-12 in Spring Training the Paris Artists have finished retooling their team for the 1974 season. Some roster moves were made with the principal moves designed to inject more offense into the line up.
Herve DeLage moves back to 3rd base where he was a perennial gold glove award winner.
Dominique Chauveau, back up SS last year, will get his opportunity at 2b. Never much of a bat he did post up an .845 OPS in pre-season. A SS by trade, he had to learn second base this spring and received the crash course from DeLage.
Laurant Mercier moves from RF, and occasionally 3b, to 1b. Lamy will probably platoon against lefties and Mercier may play some OF against lefties, or 2nd or 3rd base.
Jacque Jung, 31 y/o, long time OF for Montreal (12 seasons) was a player no one wanted at the trade deadline last year and there was little interest in the off season. The Artists signed him to a minor league deal with a contract if he was promoted before day 30 of the regular season. Jung had a 1.146 OPS in spring training and will be on the opening day roster, probably on the bench. He's the 4th OF at this point. He's swiped 248 bases in his career, has little power, but still had good D and will normally have a good OBP.
DeVries gets the back up Catcher job as long time and once promising Frederick Legendre was given his outright release with 2 years remaining on his contract. He was a huge prospect in the Le Diamant system right around the time Henri was coming along.
Bob Proust, perennial disappointment at the hot corner was floated as trade bait and Robert Bour was netted from the Le Diamant Diamonds. Bour has had several outstanding seasons for Le Diamant and is slotted in the 3 spot in the rotation. Paris has two players in the top 10 in each category.
Prognosticators have picked Paris to win the France League in spite of Nice having a top 3 in both the Batting and Pitching categories. I'm not sure they have this one right but we'll see. Henri is projected to be the pitching star of Paris.
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