After that frenetic and full-on finish to last year, we have been pretty quiet in the preseason with just the one trade of note:
I'd already spoken of the short leash we had Williams on and when his Catcher ratings were decimated in the Jan 1 rerate, he became prime trade fodder in our quest to solidify our BP.
Joba's rookie season with the Oaks was as a starter, and he went well in that role, but he's made the transition to reliever now and will take our Closer role - which will be more of a Stopper role, whereby he just comes in to douse trouble at the most opportune moment rather than just stupid save ops.
All of which leaves our OD 1963 squad looking like this:
As things stand, we have one - and perhaps two - IF too many, with Bobby Bo the clear choice to be offloaded given his cost and profile. But for now I'll play him and keep Cal at AAA. Jay Bell is the other guy who we might have to look at moving on, with his salary looking to be north of $100k from next season on - too expensive for where he probably ends up being on our depth chart. As at OD, however, he's our everyday SS with Frisch on the bench and DHing against lefties.
SHOPPING LIST: Keep all receipts for potential refunds and reinvestment into new-season models.
BALLS
A decision looms about Smoltz, who is in his walk year. His demands will decree his fate. We will do all we can to keep him as our ace. Rijo is another we're keen to lock down long-term if possible. Last chance saloon for Gubicza and a couple others. With our offence obviously sorted, my focus is to now try and get this staff humming along like it should be.
SHOPPING LIST: Keep an eye out for the Closing Down sale.
GLOVES
Edmonds makes our spine ramrod-straight and I'm looking for us to return to the upper echelon, metrics-wise.
SHOPPING LIST: The eagle has landed.
WINGS
Still a fairly threadbare pantry with only Ripken and Falcone ranked and our system down toward the bottom. If improvement happens then well and good, but I'm not losing sleep over it - we're looking at today, today.
POCKETS
The two big-name gets seem to have broken the back of the Puget Resistance Force and there is a buzz about the place, with season tix up and interest high. It earns us a slight budget bump to $1.8m.
After a couple years spent struggling for relevance, I do believe we have arrived. Expectations are appropriately high - no flying under the radar for us, I'm afraid.
