Ruben "Streak" Souffront and the Denver Brewers

[BirdWatcher]

Miguel Solis finishes 2nd in the MGL Reliever-of-the-Year voting behind dominant Phoenix Speed Devils closer Pat Brooks.

[BirdWatcher]

Ryan Rodgers picks up the lone Silver Slugger award for 1968 given to a Brewers' player.

[BirdWatcher]

Joe McPhillips, the Brewers top positional player prospect, is tearing up the AFL once again in the early going.

[BirdWatcher]

The Brewers young firstbaseman Bobby Erbakan finishes 3rd in the MGL Rookie-of-the-Year voting.

[BirdWatcher]

Ryan Rodgers finished 5th in the MGL MVP voting for 1968. The Portland Wild Things Danny Sanchez won the award, with his two teammates who already own this particular hardware coming in 2nd and 3rd.

[BirdWatcher]

Well, this is interesting, though I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.
I mentioned earlier my fascination with the flame-throwing Brewers minor leaguer Harry Lyerly. Well, this latest off-season scouting report seems to indicate some interesting developments in his progress, not the least of which is a new fourth pitch- a knuckle curve that could be good enough to compliment his wicked fastball and solid sinker.
His movement still looks very poor and will likely keep him from reaching his potential, but suddenly our scouting staff is projecting him as a future number 2 guy in a major league rotation.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

[BirdWatcher]

Rumor has it that the Denver Brewers were one of the teams bidding for the services of left-handed starting pitcher Mike Sayers, considered the best lefty starter on the Free Agent market. Sayers would have provided the Brewers with the true ace they have been lacking for their entire history. However, there were some concerns that at age 34, and having suffered a few fairly significant elbow injuries to his throwing arm the past two seasons (elbow tendinitis late in the 1967 season and surgery to remove bone chips in the same elbow that kept him out of action for much of the 1968 season), that he might not be worth the risk.
In the end, it was a moot point as the Brewers were unable to come to terms with Sayers and he signed instead with the Baltimore Lords.

(There were protracted negotiations in which it became clear that I was not going to be able to find a deal that I could live with that would be agreed to. Eventually I broke off talks. And, naturally, he signed the next day to a contract less lucrative then what I was offering.)

As it turned out, the Brewers set their sights a bit lower and were able to sign a younger, though not nearly as talented, starting pitcher in Will Smart to provide some depth to the rotation (and some security knowing that Diego Ramirez is very injury prone.) Smart's, well, smarts, as well as his reputation of being a hard worker and popular with teammates, combined with his age, led management to believe that he at least is likely to be able to maintain his current level of performance for the foreseeable future and will fit in well with the team's culture. The main knock on Smart is that he is far from a workhorse and the bullpen is likely to get a lot of work in games he starts. (And, I must confess, somehow I didn't even notice his low stamina rating until after he was signed.)
The Brewers signed Smart to a 3-year contract, totaling a bit under 575K (not counting incentives.)

[BirdWatcher]

It was also announced that the team had been able to come to terms on an extension of the contract for shortstop Chad Brown.
Brown, who would have been arbitration eligible at the end of the 1969 season and potentially a Free Agent the following year, agreed to a 3-year extension that will earn him a bit over 98K per season.
He will be only 25 when this contract expires and the team would have loved to have signed him to a few more years but he was hesitant to sign to more than a 1-year extension and it took a bit of work to get him signed to this extra 3-years beyond the 1969 season.

[BirdWatcher]

The Columbus Whalers, recently crowned WPK Champs, took a big step towards solidifying their near future when they signed ace starting pitcher, Jake Harris, to a 7-year extension. Harris, who some would argue is the best starting pitcher in the WPK, could have been a free agent at the end of the 1969 season but now could conceivably play his entire career in a Whalers uniform.

[BirdWatcher]

Stepping back from the fictional reality (is that an oxymoron?) for a moment to discuss a few things regarding this thread and the save it reports on.

First of all, as I've alluded to in the past, some of my favorite threads here are shared by OOTP'ers who take great precautions not to stray outside of the reality of the universe they are reporting on, to keep the thread clean, as they might say. And I respect that greatly.
For myself I am still trying to find the right balance in this regard. Mostly I do try to remain firmly in the W.P. Kinsella League universe when I report here. But I also find myself wanting to step outside of that fictional world to comment a bit about my thought processes while playing the game and some of the methods/tools I have created around the game to add to my personal sense of immersion in the WPK.

Sometimes I make these comments- when they are brief, not detailed- in parenthetical comments within posts that are otherwise rooted in the reality of the WPK.
Other times, like this, I will share a post that lives pretty much completely outside of the reality of the WPK. I generally try to make it clear at the beginning of such a post (though probably not always very directly) that this is the case.
Now for many of you this might all seem like nonsense but I know that some of you do give these things great thought, so for that small number of you I wanted to clarify a bit.

As I am now in the middle of the WPK off-season, this is a time when I focus more on some of the supplemental processes I've built around this universe, and when I think about other elements I might want to add to the experience.

A few examples:
1) On January 1st of the WPK calendar I identify, using a process I described a bit here earlier, whether any former WPK players will pass away during this calendar year. (This includes the date of their death and the cause of their death.) Given that the WPK is still relatively new and the oldest former player is just 45 years old, and that the process is built so that players are arranged in age range categories and the likelihood of death becomes much greater as they enter the higher end age categories, thus far no deaths have been identified. So, spoiler alert, with January 1st of 1969 having passed already, no deaths for this calendar year were identified.
2) On February 1st I create any new players that have been identified through the Relative Players Creation process for the upcoming new player draft. Again, as described here previously, this is a process by which it is identified which current WPK players will have relatives (brothers, cousins, sons, grandsons) who will also become professional baseball players in the WPK universe. Of course, many of the players identified this way won't enter the WPK universe until far in the future, but with some contemporary relatives of WPK players having been identified, two such new players will enter the draft during this WPK calendar year. Likely I will report more about these players in the near future.
3) In the past few days I have gone through the lists I keep of retired WPK players to identify good candidates to become coaches/managers, etc. Although I realize that the game is already going to do this to some extent, I like to make sure that players I wish to keep active in the WPK universe, and who have the sorts of personalities (high leadership, high intelligence, in particular) to make them potentially very good coaches/managers/GM's, are added to the mix. I don't do this primarily with the goal of hiring any of these players for my own organization, but I won't deny myself the occasional pleasure of doing so, particularly any former Brewers players who it might make sense- in the reality of the WPK universe- to bring back in a management role.
4) I am also beginning to keep a list of minor league players who likely might never make it to the WPK but could make good coaches/managers, etc. after their minor league careers are over.

There are probably some processes I am forgetting about right now, but this gives you some idea of supplemental approaches I take to add an immersive quality to this project and to expand the fictional reality of the WPK.

[BirdWatcher]

The Brewers came to terms with rightfielder Ruben Souffront on a 1-year extension in order to go into the season with no question of whether Souffront would be part of the team in 1970 as he would have been arbitration eligible at the end of the 1969 season.
While it was hoped that a long-term contract could be worked out, Souffront was not ready to have this discussion yet. Souffront will have one more year of arbitration eligibility at the end of the 1970 season before he can file for free agency and likely the Brewers will try to get him signed more long-term in the off-season after the 1969 season.

[BirdWatcher]

In the first Spring Training game for the Brewers in 1969, Harry Lyerly comes in and works 3 scoreless, hit-less, innings, striking out 5.
His stock keeps rising in spite of the clear warning sign of his very poor movement.
One has to wonder when the bubble is going to burst, but at the very least Lyerly provides a nice story for the papers to follow during the exhibition season.

[BirdWatcher]

As Opening Day 1969 rapidly approaches, the reigning MGL champion Portland Wild Things club got some very bad news as they learn that they will be without the services of their superstar, and former SJL MVP, firstbaseman Frank Hernandez' services for probably at least 3 months, due to the slugger suffering from a broken hand.
The Wild Things lost last season's MVP, Danny Sanchez, to free agency in the off-season. Their remaining superstar, Andy Wilson, is 34 years old and while he is still a premium talent there are questions about his ability to remain injury free. They do have a budding superstar in rookie shortstop Chris Tobin, but otherwise their lineup looks pretty pedestrian going into the 1969 campaign.
While the starting rotation is young and solid, they really don't have a dominant ace. And the bullpen looks very suspect.
So there are big question marks about Portland's ability to capture a 3rd straight MGL pennant, and given that they just barely held on in 1968, the path may be open for someone else (perhaps our Brewers?) to unseat them this season.

[BirdWatcher]

It's Opening Day 1969 in the WPK and the annual Top Prospects Lists have been published.
Perhaps not surprisingly (though simultaneously rather shockingly, to me) Denver's Harry Lyerly is now considered the 3rd best prospect overall in the WPK and 2nd among pitchers.
Centerfielder Joe McPhillips is 11th overall and 3rd among position players.
Other Brewers on the lists include:
SP Rob Ibarra- 21st overall
SP Steve Green- 27th overall
2B Jonathan Koch- 48th overall
SP Justin Peacock- 75th overall
SP Eric Johnson- 85th overall

I'm pretty sure this is the most Denver Brewers prospects ever listed in the top 100 list at one time. And I believe that Lyerly's ranking of #3 is likely a Denver record as well.

The future is possibly bright? The number of starting pitchers in the Brewer's organization on this list also surprises me, though I expect only 1 or 2 of these will ever become significant major leaguers. (Ibarra has serious durability issues that will likely sidetrack his career. Green, I hope, is more of a sure thing.)

[BirdWatcher]

Preseason predictions have also been published and not surprisingly the reigning WPK Champion Columbus Whalers are expected to once again claim the SJL title. The perennially strong Jacksonville Wolf Pack and Washington Night Train are thought to be the teams in the best position to challenge the Whalers in the SJL.

In the MGL, the Phoenix Speed Devils are expected to finish with the best record in the WPK and take the league title over your Denver Brewers, who are expected to improve to 95 wins but fall short of taking the pennant this year. It should probably be noted that the very same finish was predicted for the Speed Devils in 1968 and they fell 10 wins short of their predicted total and tied with the Brewers for 2nd place. So we shall see if they under-achieve again this year and if the Brewers can once again over-achieve a bit and take first place.
The predictions indicate that the thought is that Phoenix and Denver are the class of the league and only 2 other teams are even expected to finish over .500, and those 2 (Baltimore and L.A.) are expected to finish well behind the top 2 clubs.

In terms of individual performances, it is expected by most that Ryan Rodgers will continue to be one of the premier hitters in the league while the thought is that Antonio Puente will regain his power stroke in 1969. It is also thought that the Brewers might have 2 dominant starting pitchers who achieve at least 20 wins in Daniel Torres and Diego Ramirez. In Ramirez case though much will depend upon his remaining healthy, which was not the case much of 1968.

Ultimately, of course, it is what happens between the lines that counts. But the Brewers are at least starting the season with a feeling of optimism and are confident they are headed in the right direction as a club and as a franchise.

[BirdWatcher]

Team owner Steve Lester's expectations for the team this year is that we make the playoffs (which, in this setting means winning the MGL and going to the WPK World Series), and that we upgrade at thirdbase (our hope is that given a full season with the club, Jared Stephenson will show the owner that he is in fact an upgrade from previous seasons).

Slightly more long-term expectations from the owner include a goal of increasing attendance to a specific level by 1970, a goal we took good strides towards during the 1968 season, and that we get a championship by 1970.

The team is in good economic condition entering the 1969 season and there is even some talk among Denver fans that management has been a bit too conservative in spending to develop a winning club. Others though accept the organization's explanation that we are building for a sustained future and focusing on developing young talent that we then hope to mostly keep intact for many years to come.

[BirdWatcher]

Just a few games into the 1969 season, veteran left-handed reliever Chris Healy announces his intention to retire at the end of the season.

(Truth be told, when I saw that there was a personal message from Healy this early in the season I was afraid it would be about his contract being up at the end of the year and a request to negotiate an extension. I had decided to renew him for 1969 because he performed well in 1968 and I thought we needed a second lefty in the bullpen- in addition to David Brown- for at least LOOGY situations. But at his age and with declining ability I would never have kept him beyond this season. Now I don't have to worry about that or about him being angry because I'm not negotiating a renewal with him. Hopefully he can have a decent final chapter to his career.)

[BirdWatcher]

In the midst of a tough start to the season for the Brewers, they see 3 pitchers get injured in a single game against arch-rival Phoenix. (A game that the Brewers lost in 11 innings.)

This after seeing all-star closer Miguel Solis have 2 disastrous outings to start the season, the second of which saw him leave the game with a sore pitching hand which landed him on the 10-day DL. Then they lost starting catcher Brett Wood for an estimated month or so to shoulder tendinitis.
Although 2 of the injuries suffered in this latest game are not terribly significant, Diego Ramirez suffered a shoulder injury and while the diagnosis is still pending, given his history it is likely this will involve a significant amount of time on the DL. It wouldn't be surprising if Ramirez is lost for the season. And just like that, the Brewers hopes for winning the pennant fade considerably.

[BirdWatcher]

Whew!
That's a pleasant surprise.
Though with Ramirez I'm always just waiting for that next injury that derails his season.

[BirdWatcher]

A quick look at what has gone wrong and what has gone right so far in the early going.
The pitching staff, by and large, has gone wrong. Diego Ramirez and Steve Alonso have been pretty good. Abel Pennington has really struggled. As mentioned earlier, Miguel Solis had 2 disastrous appearances before going on the D.L. Veteran lefty Chris Healy, in his final WPK season, has gotten off to a solid start and has really saved the team's bacon a few times with his relief work. Armando Cruz has struggled, as always, with his control and given up some very damaging homeruns.
But that is really the story of the pitching staff as a whole- too many walks, too many HR's allowed.

As for the offense, the team is hitting quite well but scoring too infrequently. A lack of HR power, as usual, is a big part of the story. But at least Antonio Puente seems to be having a bounce-back year so far and is showing some signs of his old power. Ruben Souffront and Pat Rondeau are off to great starts at the plate. Shortstop Chad Brown is off to a good start with the bat and continues to shine defensively. And Arturo Baca has sparkled with the glove and come up with some key hits and with Tanner Yurek continuing to under-perform Baca is really making a case for himself to be named the starting secondbaseman. (I would frankly love to trade Yurek, but he's a fan favorite and with his under-performance I'm not sure I could get much for him. But the time might be coming, and soon, where it is time to part ways with Yurek.)
Ryan Rodgers, after a great spring training, has an anemic batting average but continues to get on base at a great rate and play gold glove caliber defense and therefore remains valuable. Surely his batting stroke will reappear soon.
Bobby Erbakan is not off to a good start with the bat (.160/.185/.240) but is still considered a gifted hitter and it is thought that he is bound to come out of his slump soon.