[Biggp07]

My first task on this Monday, March 11th, 2024, was to terminate Bijan Rademacher’s employment as hitting coach in Omaha Stormchasers, our triple-A team. I gave it the weekend to marinate and decided it was the best course of action for me. The cost was about $260,000 to buy out his contract, but I had to make a change somewhere, regardless of the cost. We still had some cash to spare for things before opening day. I had looked at the free agent personnel over the weekend and was hoping to get the young Ben Johnson, but the Staten Island FerryHawks beat me to him. I hesitated to make a call and missed an opportunity to bring some high-caliber coaching to our triple-A club. I viewed this as my first mistake but a learning experience, so I got back on the free agent waiver wire right away and found someone who I think can do just as well. Joey Demonte was available. A living legend for hitting and developing young players. He has nearly 20 years of experience, so I made him an offer of 5 years at 190K per year. He was pushing his late fifties, so if I was to get him, I needed to hang on to him as long as I could. Unfortunately, he had no interest in working at Omaha. Wow, are the Kansas City Royals that bad? Whatever, I wasn't gonna haggle with him. I was looking for a guy who excels at teaching contact hitting since that’s the best way to get an advantage in our ballpark. That was also the common denominator being coached in our farm system, so I need someone to polish that at Omaha and the major levels. My next choice was to ask Zack Jones, an unproven 29-year-old from Park Ridge, IL. He has solid coaching skills, and he can relate well with the younger players in the minors, so I felt confident offering him 5 years at 185K per year.

My second firing of the day was Jesus Azuaje at Columbia Fireflies, our Low-A club. It cost about 310K to buy out his contract, but I wanted to get a younger manager in there that at least could provide some better development coaching support to John Hayban and Ari Adut. This was the primary minor league level where I was going to make the most changes in the next year, so I wanted to get someone in the manager position to carry over a few years as we begin to fill the rookie levels with prospects and develop our farm system. My choice as replacement was Willie Concepcion, another unproven 27-year-old with smallball experience and excellent development and defensive coaching abilities. I offered him a 5-year contract at 140k per year. I wanted to keep him around as long as I could and move him up through the system. I'm hoping he pans out as well.

My third firing of the day was the pitching coach, Chris Marte, down in the Ventura DSL. He did not exhibit any coaching prowess, and I could not justify keeping him on down there, especially with those young kids just coming into the farm system. They needed to be focused right away. It was not much to buy out his contract, and still left us in great shape for the upcoming season. My free agent look to replace him found Josh Conway from Smithsburg, MD. He was excellent at teaching pitching, and his coaching skills were solid. With his young age, I could move him up as he developed some young prospects into promising power pitchers. His relationship with the players was perceived to be very good, so I made him an offer for 5 years at 35k per year.

My fourth and final firing was pitching coach Ryan Powers at the High-A Midwest League team, the Quad City River Bandits. He lacked everything I desired from a pitching coach at that level, and would have stunted any development in the kids sent from Columbia or Rookie Ball, so change was needed there. His buyout cost was about 150K, and his firing allowed me to start moving up some of the coaches I thought could help in future seasons at higher levels and eventually make it to the big club. B.J. Roper-Hubbert became available on the free agent personnel wire, so I sent him an offer for 5 years at 130k per year. With this, I felt I had spent enough and could build on it come off-season, hoping I would last that long with the owner.

With all the firings behind me now and offers out to replacements, I was ready to call it a day and see what their responses were. I was hoping for 100% acceptance and was ready to move on to more immediate roster decisions before opening day. I needed to review the salaries, upcoming free agents, and task our scout to look at some of the draft pool prospects we think will help our team. I needed to make some decisions on who was staying up and who I was sending down. Plus, I needed to review the injury status and see who would be coming off soon to give us some depth and spark going into the first several series of games. That was the primary concern for the remainder of the week.

I wasn’t going to pay too close attention to the waiver wire since I didn’t have a good sense of how the active roster was going to pan out, and we had a few months to pick up somebody, if need be, I thought. Plus, I had made some minor league moves of players over the weekend and would continue to do so throughout the week until things looked solid. I just needed to get a feel for how this roster was going to perform under my new management and the staff I had put together the last few days. We were about to find out.