[Westheim]

(wears blue socks and a blue hat and snickers)

Oh, and then Steve from Accounting tip-toed in and handed in the new budget. It wasn’t actually that bad. Nick Valdes went with inflation and gave us $54M instead of $53M from the year before. I had honestly expected the axe to be taken to the budget again. We remained 12th in the league with that budget.

Top 5: Crusaders ($82M), Knights ($71M), Thunder ($70M), Scorpions ($68M), Pacifics and Miners ($66M each)
Bottom 5: Cyclones ($44.5M), Blue Sox ($43M), Condors ($41.5M), Indians ($37M), Aces ($30.5M)

The rest of the CL North competition ranked 7th (VAN, $63M), t-14th (BOS, $50M), and 19th (MIL, $45.5M).

The average budget for a team in the league rose to $54.98M, up about $440k from last season, while the median team budget was $52.5M, up half a million from last year.

Here’s the good news: we’ll have a very cheap roster in 2058!

That’s probably it for good news. I saw harder times coming, however, because the first news of the offseason cycle was Josh Abercrombie’s note that he was voiding his $2.2M player option for 2058 and was electing free agency (although he was compensation eligible and would be offered arbitration). And with that, Trent Brassfield was the last productive hitter on the roster. That offense!

The funny thing about 2057 (in hindsight at least) was that we scored the second-fewest runs in the Continental League and played the last two months without a functioning rotation, but still had a +1 run differential and a semi-respectable 79-83 record and finished third in the CL North, albeit 27 games behind the Crusaders. We also finished the year with the second-smallest payroll in the league after purging most things of value in July. The top earner left on the team was STEVE ROYER, for ***** sake.

There were four more free agents besides Abercrombie, three of them right-handed relievers Mike Lane, Alex Mancilla, and John Scott. The last guy was backup catcher Ruben Zamora. To be honest, none of them were integral to the success of the team in 2058 (there would not be such a thing as success), although we might try and keep Lane or Scott around for veteran wisdom and such.

Only five arbitration cases either. The only full-time hitter in that group was the aforementioned Brassfield, who could expect to bag seven figures, same for relievers Matt Walters and Takenori Tanizaki. Ivan Ornelas was also in that group, as well as baseball-gods-know-what-he-actually-was Kyle Brobeck.

Brobeck was wicked, but on a losing team could not do much further damage. His pitching had been gruesome and had been judged to be at replacement level for the season, but he made 2.8 WAR by batting. He also cost most of that by playing third base very badly. I just don’t think we can do without his .289/.340/.436 stick and still hope to score three runs a game……

Looking into the future, the Raccoons currently had only one meaningful catcher (Marcos Chavez), no first baseman, Paul Labonte was the flavor of the season at second base, Lonzo was etched in at short, and Brobeck… well. The outfield would probably have Brass and Pucks on the corners, or Pucks in center if we decided Elijah Johnson would keep it up with the .796 OPS (spoiler: .320 BABIP), but mind the luxury of Steve Royer, who definitely wasn’t going anywhere for another year. Around that, a scattering of ho-hum demi-youngsters or those that were hardly worth bringing up. We weren’t keen on Arturo Bribiesca, Jake Griggs, and Royer. We had seen well enough of Daniel Espinoza and Carlos Solorzano. Aaron Wade could perhaps be useful after (a lot) more seasoning, same for Tony Benitez. Todd Oley in center? This was a complete and utter mess.

The pitching was of course not any better, and let’s actually start with the bright side, the pen. Even without resigning ANY of the upcoming free agents, we’d have Walters, Sencion, Tanizaki as real assets. Herrera had been up and down, but serviceable, and even Reynaldo Bravo seemed to have found a groove. Ornelas might just stick around. Harris, Rios, and Bowen were awful, however. But, oh boy, the rotation. We finished the year with a constant fireworks show of Justin DeRose, Ryan Wade, J.J. Sensabaugh, Ramon Carreno, Craig Kniep, and Kyle Brobeck. None of them pitched more than 109.1 innings (Carreno) in the majors. None of them postedn an ERA better than 4.08 (DeRose). Only these two had more strikeouts than walks, and for DeRose it was a +1 and for Carreno the ratio was 1.166. That group SUCKED.

To be fair, they were all rookies, except for Brobeck and Kniep, the latter being a third-year (including a cup of coffee in ’55) ABL starter (and purged from the roster more than once this year). But had any of them great potential? DeRose and Sensabaugh had been brought in as big prospects, but their performance had been awful. Wade had been a ninth-rounder, released, and signed off the trash heap, and was living up to that CV. Carreno was very young (23 in April), but had been signed in the 2051 July IFA window for a warm meal and $24k.

The Raccoons had no rotation, and the Raccoons would not go anywhere in 2058.