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DD Martin · 09-16-2025, 01:42 PM

Pre-World Series interlude on how we got to the big series.

Now heading into the 1954 the biggest problem I felt we had was our pitching and specifically our starting rotation. We had 1 pitcher go down early in the season in 2nd year man John Moore. He had pitched solidly enough in the hitter friendly GLBL and had a 4-2 record with a better than league average ERA of 4.32 (105 ERA+). We had another pitcher, Al Pellerin in week 2 of the season (and one that I wasn't really found of although we had given him a contract extension). Pellerin had a surprisingly good season in 1953 going 11-9 with a 3.66 ERA, but our medical team wasn't excited about the injury he had (biceps strain). There was speculation it could be a problem going forward.

With two fifths of a starting rotation that appeared to be held together with duct tape, we were in scramble mode. The team had performed better than expected (pre-season predictions had us at 74-70 again and in another dog fight with several teams for the Wildcard spot in the US Division. If we were going to be a serious threat, I decided that we needed to make moves and start sooner than later.

On June 14 with a 38-27 record and in 2nd place, we first made a deal with the Duluth Sea Gulls. Duluth had beaten us out of the second playoff spot by 1 game each of the first two seasons of my career in Chicago. I was determined that it would not be 3 straight. We traded 2-mid level prospects and one in the top 50 (1B Jean Piquet #242, LF Gerardo Dominguez, P Edgardo Montoya #50) for veteran SP Bill Lutz (31). Lutz was 6-4 with Duluth with a so-so ERA (again a very hitter friendly league) of 4.73 (ERA+ of 97). This did two things, gave us another solid pitcher behind Dan Floyd and took away a solid SP from Duluth. Duluth also kicked in $2 million in cash to help us pull the deal together financially.

That same day, we struck another deal for a SP and this one at least by scouting reports was a true stud. Granted he hadn't pitched that way to start the season. He was 0-6 with an ERA of 7.57 through May 16th, but was showing signs of coming out of his funk winning his last 3 starts and shaving 2.25 points off his season ERA which now stood at 5.32. He was also a very high priced pitcher with a contract coming in at $22 million for this year with a player option for 2055 of $26 million. We were taking on a big financial risk, but I felt the upside was for a great end of season run. The pitcher was Jose Cedeno (32) who had been a veteran internation freee agent that came to the GLBL out of Venezula and was signed by the Windsor Vigilantes to a 6 year $140 million deal. After his contracted player option was completed, he was still under team contract for the 2056 season at what our number crunchers deemed was potentially a $30 million dollar deal. High cost indeed as that would be the 2nd highest salary in the league as the way things were right now in 2054. What we gave up for Cedeno could be considered a lot.

Fortunately for us we had two very good CF prospects in our system, Chris Luna (#2 overall) and Mark Easson (#4 overall). We choose to part with Easson because Luna was closer to the big leagues and arguably the better defender. With Easson we shipped off the contract of Al Pellerin (32) who besides this season salary of $9.9 million, he had 2 more years for a combined total of $20.5 million. We also had to give up LF Javier Castillo (29) $2.875 million but had arbitration years that we would struggle to afford with the acquistion of Cedeno (at least that is what we thought). Windsor also kicked in another $2 million to help balance the trade financially for us as my owner was breathing down my neck a bit on $$$$$$.

So we had brought in 2 starting pitchers to the mix and things were looking up. By the time the trade deadline approached we had a 61-43 record and we were 1 game behind Toledo for the division lead. So I thought since we are playing much better than the media thought we would in the pre-season, and we are so close.....let's go for it.

We had 2 catchers on our major league roster in Chi-Yong Lee and Joe Hunt. Hunt had started the year off as the starting catcher but Lee was playing better and had taken over. In the prior off-season we had signed Hunt to a $4 million dollar extension to avoid arbitration and saved several hundred thousand. Now that contract with the heavy load we were taking on, appeared to be a hinderance with Lee and the fast rising prospect Juan Duran. Hunt became expendable and we were looking for a RP to bolster our bullpen. Duluth's RP Ken Shannon had been with the Architects the prior season but became a FA and signed a $6.5 million dollar deal for 1954. We had a closer (Pat Wright), and we had a solid setup guy (Larry Stott), but I felt we needed another arm in the playoffs for the late innings. So we shipped Hunt off to Duluth who also agreed to retain the salary of Shannon for the year. Shannon would be a free agent in the off-season potentially, so this was a risk. But with the play of Lee and the upside of Duran, we felt comfortable even if this was a rental.

The final deal on this day was a big one, at least for what I preceived our playoff chances to be. We might had done enough to get into the post-season, but now I was thinking bigger. What about winning the division and making it to the World Series and perhaps even winning it. With that in mind we contacted Milwaukee who was looking to pick up some prospects as SP Yale Hulbert was in the last year of his deal. He was looking for $18-22 million a season and that apparently was too much for the Milwaukee brass (it would give me pause even though pitchers do pitch into their early 40's in this league). Milwaukee agreed to pay the rest of the Hulbert contract which had been $15 million, and we agreed to send 2B Alexandre Gasnier #78 prospect, and P Quentin Leaver #170 prospect. Again we had some depth in the prospects we had with several 2B guys and we liked Tobin the best who was ranked very closely but slightly higher than Gasnier.

With the weeks between June 14th and July 31st we had added 4 pitchers to our staff and felt that finally perhaps we had the staff to compete with Toledo and the power house franchises of Owen Sound and Thunder Bay in the playoffs.

09-16-2025, 01:42 PM	#3
DD Martin All Star Reserve Join Date: Feb 2014 Location: Seattle area Posts: 914	*Pre-World Series interlude on how we got to the big series.* Now heading into the 1954 the biggest problem I felt we had was our pitching and specifically our starting rotation. We had 1 pitcher go down early in the season in 2nd year man John Moore. He had pitched solidly enough in the hitter friendly GLBL and had a 4-2 record with a better than league average ERA of 4.32 (105 ERA+). We had another pitcher, Al Pellerin in week 2 of the season (and one that I wasn't really found of although we had given him a contract extension). Pellerin had a surprisingly good season in 1953 going 11-9 with a 3.66 ERA, but our medical team wasn't excited about the injury he had (biceps strain). There was speculation it could be a problem going forward. With two fifths of a starting rotation that appeared to be held together with duct tape, we were in scramble mode. The team had performed better than expected (pre-season predictions had us at 74-70 again and in another dog fight with several teams for the Wildcard spot in the US Division. If we were going to be a serious threat, I decided that we needed to make moves and start sooner than later. On June 14 with a 38-27 record and in 2nd place, we first made a deal with the Duluth Sea Gulls. Duluth had beaten us out of the second playoff spot by 1 game each of the first two seasons of my career in Chicago. I was determined that it would not be 3 straight. We traded 2-mid level prospects and one in the top 50 (1B Jean Piquet #242, LF Gerardo Dominguez, P Edgardo Montoya #50) for veteran SP Bill Lutz (31). Lutz was 6-4 with Duluth with a so-so ERA (again a very hitter friendly league) of 4.73 (ERA+ of 97). This did two things, gave us another solid pitcher behind Dan Floyd and took away a solid SP from Duluth. Duluth also kicked in $2 million in cash to help us pull the deal together financially. That same day, we struck another deal for a SP and this one at least by scouting reports was a true stud. Granted he hadn't pitched that way to start the season. He was 0-6 with an ERA of 7.57 through May 16th, but was showing signs of coming out of his funk winning his last 3 starts and shaving 2.25 points off his season ERA which now stood at 5.32. He was also a very high priced pitcher with a contract coming in at $22 million for this year with a player option for 2055 of $26 million. We were taking on a big financial risk, but I felt the upside was for a great end of season run. The pitcher was Jose Cedeno (32) who had been a veteran internation freee agent that came to the GLBL out of Venezula and was signed by the Windsor Vigilantes to a 6 year $140 million deal. After his contracted player option was completed, he was still under team contract for the 2056 season at what our number crunchers deemed was potentially a $30 million dollar deal. High cost indeed as that would be the 2nd highest salary in the league as the way things were right now in 2054. What we gave up for Cedeno could be considered a lot. Fortunately for us we had two very good CF prospects in our system, Chris Luna (#2 overall) and Mark Easson (#4 overall). We choose to part with Easson because Luna was closer to the big leagues and arguably the better defender. With Easson we shipped off the contract of Al Pellerin (32) who besides this season salary of $9.9 million, he had 2 more years for a combined total of $20.5 million. We also had to give up LF Javier Castillo (29) $2.875 million but had arbitration years that we would struggle to afford with the acquistion of Cedeno (at least that is what we thought). Windsor also kicked in another $2 million to help balance the trade financially for us as my owner was breathing down my neck a bit on $$$$$$. So we had brought in 2 starting pitchers to the mix and things were looking up. By the time the trade deadline approached we had a 61-43 record and we were 1 game behind Toledo for the division lead. So I thought since we are playing much better than the media thought we would in the pre-season, and we are so close.....let's go for it. We had 2 catchers on our major league roster in Chi-Yong Lee and Joe Hunt. Hunt had started the year off as the starting catcher but Lee was playing better and had taken over. In the prior off-season we had signed Hunt to a $4 million dollar extension to avoid arbitration and saved several hundred thousand. Now that contract with the heavy load we were taking on, appeared to be a hinderance with Lee and the fast rising prospect Juan Duran. Hunt became expendable and we were looking for a RP to bolster our bullpen. Duluth's RP Ken Shannon had been with the Architects the prior season but became a FA and signed a $6.5 million dollar deal for 1954. We had a closer (Pat Wright), and we had a solid setup guy (Larry Stott), but I felt we needed another arm in the playoffs for the late innings. So we shipped Hunt off to Duluth who also agreed to retain the salary of Shannon for the year. Shannon would be a free agent in the off-season potentially, so this was a risk. But with the play of Lee and the upside of Duran, we felt comfortable even if this was a rental. The final deal on this day was a big one, at least for what I preceived our playoff chances to be. We might had done enough to get into the post-season, but now I was thinking bigger. What about winning the division and making it to the World Series and perhaps even winning it. With that in mind we contacted Milwaukee who was looking to pick up some prospects as SP Yale Hulbert was in the last year of his deal. He was looking for $18-22 million a season and that apparently was too much for the Milwaukee brass (it would give me pause even though pitchers do pitch into their early 40's in this league). Milwaukee agreed to pay the rest of the Hulbert contract which had been $15 million, and we agreed to send 2B Alexandre Gasnier #78 prospect, and P Quentin Leaver #170 prospect. Again we had some depth in the prospects we had with several 2B guys and we liked Tobin the best who was ranked very closely but slightly higher than Gasnier. With the weeks between June 14th and July 31st we had added 4 pitchers to our staff and felt that finally perhaps we had the staff to compete with Toledo and the power house franchises of Owen Sound and Thunder Bay in the playoffs.