Flags Fly Forever v2: An OOTP24 Dynasty (Season 15)

JetsIn06 · 12-26-2023, 11:07 PM

I started a thread here, excited to share a dynasty report in OOTP24 using cool system I've stolen/adopted and then modified to taste. Real life got in the way a bit and while I wanted to pick things back up, I did want to start fresh.

So here we are. I simulated ahead to 1946 and I'm taking over one of four new expansion teams that have all popped up on the west coast: The Portland Rosebuds.

Check out the original thread for some more in-depth details on the beginning of the rules...it's fun. There's some randomness involved, and certainly some extra strategy, and has breathed a ton of life into the game for me. It's not for everyone, but I do think it lends itself well to a dynasty thread in that there's usually some interesting decisions to make, and sharing my thoughts usually gets me pretty invested. Feel free to ride along, share a thought, or just read silently.

Pulling in some housekeeping stuff from the other thread for the sake of completion:

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Some quick Settings notes:

- Scouting is set to low.
- Ratings are 2-8, and we only see potentials. No current ratings (other than defense, speed, etc)
- TCR is set to 125.
- Injuries on High.
- Trading Difficulty is set seven clicks to the right and Hard Mode is turned off.
- We started in 1912 with no history, but stats, financials, and overall feel of the game is modern despite the year. I try to keep the aesthetic (uniforms, stadiums, etc ) stuck in a perpetual 1940s/50s era time loop. Players and teams are all fictional. Modifiers are re-calced every year based on 2012 real-life totals. Such is the beauty of this game.

And now, the system/rules which I'm pulling in from the original thread with some edits for clarity:

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Without further delay, here's the gist of how I'm playing:

- At the beginning of every offseason, we roll a random number generator twice, resulting in two numbers between 0-3. The first roll is the number of Free Agents we can sign that our scout rates as 45+ Potential (we're using a 20-80 scale, increments of 5). The second roll is the number of trades we can make until the following offseason. If I roll a 1, and a 2, that's one FA acquisition of a player rated 45+, and two trades I can make for the next 365 days.

- A player acquired on waivers or added in the Rule 5 Draft (who, additionally, must be 26 or older for us to claim/draft) will remove one from my choice of those allowances.

- I can trade two-for-one to gain an extra transaction (e.g. If I have 3x free agency adds and 1x trade, I could "trade in" 2x of my free agent adds to gain an extra trade.)

- One of each allowance from Free Agent Acquisitions and Trades can be rolled over into the following season.

- Additionally, Free Agency has its own wrinkles on *when* I can make an offer; I can only make offers to Free Agents on Mondays, in-game. Additionally, to make an offer, I generate a number between 2-8. If the player is rated as a 60 POT, I need to roll a 6 or higher to make an offer. If the player is rated as a 45 POT, I need to roll a 5 or higher. If they're rated as a 80 POT, I need to roll an 8. If I don't roll the number required, I sim ahead until the following Monday and can try again. But as you can imagine, the good players often get taken while I'm waiting to roll the right number, which is precisely the point of this endeavor.

Finally, I added a few wrinkles, which I'll share here and then we will get down to business:

- Performance matters. If we make the playoffs, instead of generating two numbers between 0-3, we generate numbers between 1-3. If we have a losing record, we generate numbers between 0-2. If we finish with the worst record, we subtract one from each.

- If we finish with a negative financial balance, we subtract one FA and trade allowance. If we finish with a positive balance, we add one to each.

- As you could imagine, this allows us to have negative allowances for FA's and trades. These negative allowances roll over, so we'll have to earn them back before we can actively make transactions.

- With all of that said, I do want to allow some flexibility. If we're at a zero for either transaction allowance, we are allowed to utilize one at a 2x cost. (e.g., we have zero trades allowed, but it's the deadline and we're in the thick of a race and I decide I desperately need to make a move; I'm allowed to make the move, but will now have -2 trades allowed. I cannot do this when I'm in the negative, and will have to wait until I'm in the black to make another trade.)

Okay, that's it. It's a lot, but read along and it should become relatively clear. Going to try and keep this pretty informal and casual - maybe a post per season or so. Don't want to get caught up in posting every stat or anything, but if you have a question, feel free to ask.

Onward!

JetsIn06 · 12-26-2023, 11:23 PM

So what are we trying to build here?

To start, Rosebuds Park holds a little over 47,000 people. It suppresses homers a bit, with a .945 home run park factor for LHB and .935 for RHB. So with that in mind, we may look to build around high-stuff pitchers who can get K's, and we don't need to go crazy on movement/groundball pitchers. And in that case, outfield defense will be really important. Offensively, having some speed will be beneficial to take extra bases and steal. But as with many things in life, balance is important.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 12:15 AM

The expansion draft is here. With four teams drafting, it's a little more crowded than I'm used to.

I fiddled with the expansion draft settings a bit - this is something I'd love OOTP to expand on more in the future, but for now, every team is allowed to protect 15 players, but everyone with six years of pro service or less is automatically not eligible to be drafted. Teams will have to pick and choose from their major league roster, but most prospects and good young players will be automatically safe.

Each existing team (there's 16 existing teams) is allowed to lose four players each, which will limit this draft to 16 rounds.

It's a serpentine draft, and have the 2nd pick to start things off. The pool is pretty much exactly the way I wanted it to look - it's not an absolute dumpster fire, but most guys that have talent are older, or play 1B, or both. Lots of relievers too, of course, but with this first pick I really want to get a foundational piece that can have a shot at being with us for the first few years, at least.

Still, the bats are light and no one really jumps out at me. But looking at the pitchers, one guy stands out. Righty SP Joel Berryhill is 26, listed as "durable", and is rated as a 55 by our scout. A 5th round pick in 1937, he's currently with the Washington Wasps, starting 31 games last year with a 4.00 SIERA and 2.6 WAR. He's also still making the minimum salary with just two years of service. That'll do, for us.

With our next pick, we take the best of the aforementioned glut of young, decent 1B, right-handed Adam Escamilla. He's also 26, listed as durable, and is rated as a 50 by our scout, with a solid 6 hit tool and 5 power and eye. He'll strike out a bit, but the other nice thing about him (other than also being on min-salary) is that he's very popular locally and well-known nationally. We gotta get butts in seats, and he'll help.

Next up is LF Matt Smith, a left-handed bat who is also 26, and hasn't hit one year of service time yet. He has a 6 hit tool and won't K much at all, but overall is rated as a 45 by our scout. The defense will work in LF, but we'll definitely need to grab a legitimate CF in free agency.

With our next two picks, we grab some okay-looking relievers who I won't go into, with the thought that the next four guys in our rotation after Berryhill are going to suuckk.

And yes - they do suck. Our next pick is SP Jason Caudill, a 27-year-old RHP who's rated as a 30. With no major league experience, we're rolling the dice here (without much choice, obviously). But he does have five pitchers, three of which are actually good, and according to our scout had the highest stuff of the remaining SP's available. The personality works, and he's well known locally, somehow.

CF Mario Camarillo is next to suit up for the Rosebuds. Another career minor leaguer, he can play center decently and has enough tools to maybe be a bench piece on a bad team. He's got the "sparkplug" personality which will hopefully keep the boys going when we're in last place.

C Ignacio Panameno is next, an absolute defensive wizard who can't do shit on offense, and then IF Jose Salazar...likewise. Both have great personalities and tremendous gloves which should give them a spot on the roster.

SP Bobby Medina, a 31-year-old minor league journeyman is next up, followed by another SP Adam Furio with the same story. RP

Some more relievers go next, including one southpaw who's making ~$3M. We went so cheap throughout the rest of the draft that I bit the bullet on him. And then in the 14th round, we grab another first baseman, Antonio Tamez, who can also dabble in the corner outfield. But he's a switch-hitter and actually might have some power. Maybe a DH, or a nice pinch-hitting option at the very least.

3B Eric Lang, a LHB with a whopping 9 wRC+ (yes, 9) in 129 PA last season is our next pick, but he actually was pretty decent in prior years as a bench bat. His maximum number of PA came three seasons ago in 1943 when he got up 258 times and had a wRC+ of 81. It's better than 9!

And finally, with our final pick, we go with Glendon Rogers, a RHP who is FORTY-ONE years old and has just four years of major-league service. He was a 4th round pick in 1923, and didn't make his major-league debut until 1931. He's coming off a season where he posted a 6.26 ERA over 22 appearances.

And that's it. Our first sixteen players. Next up, free agency, where we'll have to somehow figure out where the other ten guys are going to come from with a limited ability to add players that are good.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 12:17 AM

Ha! So we generate our two numbers between 0-3. The result?

Free agent allowance: 0
Trade allowance: 1

So I can't supplement this expansion draft roster of sixteen players with ANYONE rated as 45+, so we'll need to continue to pull from the scrap heap to fill this roster.

I won't go into too much detail here as these players are not going to be good, but if anyone of interest comes up, I'll share.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 12:54 AM

Free agency doesn't offer too much excitement, but we did pick up a player in the Rule-5 draft who actually looks somewhat good.

Left-handed hitting 3B Matt Harris is 27, but hasn't been in the majors yet. The hit/power/eye tools are all there according to our scout. He's probably more of a 1B, but the 50-rated player could be a good addition to our lineup. This does, however, remove our one transaction allowance, and now we have 0 trades allowed this year. I'm okay with this, as most of our guys are young and I don't foresee them having much trade value anyway.

We offer a bunch of guys minor league deals with options, essentially a non-roster invite to spring training. We'll choose the rest of our 26-man roster from this band of misfits, but before we do that, January marks the beginning of the International FA period.

We have a little over $7.8M in our pool, with two players that our scout really loves, one hitter, a CF who can really play defense, and a LHP starting pitcher who's got everything you'd want to see. Our scout has built strong relationships with them over the winter, but we miss out on both, and then on our next target. We switch gears and go for quantity, adding ten rather awful teenagers into our international complex.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 02:03 AM

The 1946 Portland Rosebuds

As expected, we're off to a dreadful start in our inaugural campaign, heading into draft day with a last place record of 14-46, 12GB of the next-worst team, and 30GB of first.

But it's draft day, so I'm excited to get a chance at adding some real talent into our completely barren farm system. While I'm sure our season will net us a top pick next year, we opted to put expansion teams at the back of the draft, so our pick will be #18.

Note: We do have a lottery in place. 20 total teams, 5 lottery picks, 10 teams eligible for the lottery picks. We'll go over odds and stuff next year.

Very generally, going into the draft I'm looking to take the best player available. However, I do think, with this being our first draft, a focus on prep talent could be beneficial. Drafting a 22-year-old out of the college ranks would give us more talent immediately in the majors, but he'd be alone. Ideally, a high-school player spends a few years in our system and then we can supplement them with college picks a few years from now. Something to think about, at least.

When we get to our pick, there are a couple interesting names. Rafael Edwards and Jonathan Firmin are both college outfielders who look pretty good, but right up there with them is SS Rich Black, a 17-year-old RHB who has the range and arm for SS and our scout rates as a 60. He's pretty much solid all-around, but doesn't have a distinct stand-out tool. The bat and eye are both a 6, while power is a 5. But he can play all over the field and I love that.

C Jesse Brinkmann was at least a thought with our first pick, and he's still there in the second, so we take him next. He's also 17, and a switch-hitter. He's definitely a bat-first catcher, but the defense should play.

In the end, we went heavy on high school as we expected we would, and focused pretty strongly on defense and pitching.

I'll spare you the rest - we finish 39-123. The Philadelphia Brewers go on to win the 1946 World Series. We have a lot of work to do.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 10:06 AM

It was an ugly season in 1946. Not that we expected too much more, but it's clear we have a long way to go.

One benefit of our focus on young talent in the expansion draft was that we have no pending free agents, and of our eleven-player arbitration class, just two are entering their final year of control, and three have two years of control left. So I guess we have this terrible squad for a bit longer?

Before we go any further, let's generate our transaction allowances. Since we had a losing record, we generate numbers between 0-2. But because we also had the worst record in the league, we'll have to subtract one from each. Great.

Luckily, we generate a 2 in each, which leaves us with 1 free agent and trade allowed. But let's also look at the other incentives/penalties...financially, we brought in a profit of $56M, which gives us 1 back in both categories.

So in the end, we have:

45+ rated Free Agents allowed: 2
Trades allowed: 2

I'll take it.

One member of our arbitration class gets non-tendered, and we head into FA with needs all over the field. Let's take a quick look at some players who had good years:

SP Joel Berryhill (7-21, 4.40 SIERA, 2.9 WAR)

Here's what we said about him when we took him with our first pick in the expansion draft.

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Still, the bats are light and no one really jumps out at me. But looking at the pitchers, one guy stands out. Righty SP Joel Berryhill is 26, listed as "durable", and is rated as a 55 by our scout. A 5th round pick in 1937, he's currently with the Washington Wasps, starting 31 games last year with a 4.00 SIERA and 2.6 WAR. He's also still making the minimum salary with just two years of service. That'll do, for us.

He made 33 starts for us, with 167 much needed innings, the most on our team.

OF Mario Camarillo (.264/.303/.393, 92 wRC+, 2.4 WAR)

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CF Mario Camarillo is next to suit up for the Rosebuds. Another career minor leaguer, he can play center decently and has enough tools to maybe be a bench piece on a bad team. He's got the "sparkplug" personality which will hopefully keep the boys going when we're in last place.

Camarillo was our 7th pick in the expansion draft, and had an okay year for us. Like I thought, he'd be much better as a 4th OF, but he was our best player on offense.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 11:00 AM

Free agency is full of old players, none of which are really interesting to us. There is, however, a 25-year-old, 45-rated 3B named David Clemons. He's been tearing up AAA, with a 129 wRC+ and 17 HR last season, with decent ratings to back it up. He wants a major league deal, and we generate our random number between 2-8; it's a 5, which allows us to make the offer.

We sim ahead to the following Monday and make an offer to another 45-rated bat, 27-year-old OF Juan Montalvo. He makes a ton of contact, and while it's a very, very small sample size, did really well in 50 PA last season.

Both players are offered one year guarantees with a team option for a second season, and both sign by the middle of December, and that is the extent we can play in free agency. We do add a couple relievers in the Rule-5 draft to round out the roster, and I may dabble in some additional players who are rated 40 or less (as they don't cost us any of our available moves) but Clemons and Montalvo are the big additions, relatively speaking.

We'll hang on to our trades into the season, and probably plan on carrying one over into next offseason.

korme · 12-27-2023, 01:05 PM

Cool idea, following along

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by korme

Cool idea, following along

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 03:15 PM

International Free Agency is another quantity play, with eight new players brought in without any real studs.

Before we get going with spring training and the 1947 season, let's take a look at the draft lottery, which is about to be revealed. As I mentioned earlier, we have 20 total teams, 10 of which are eligible for the lottery, with 5 lottery picks. Here's how the odds shake out:

1*. 19.05%
2*. 18.10%
3*. 17.14%
4*. 16.19%
5*. 15.24%
6. 04.76%
7. 03.81%
8. 02.86%
9. 01.90%
10. 00.95%

Unfortunately, we ping pong balls don't bounce our way, and despite the worst record, we drop down to the #4 pick in the draft.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 03:51 PM

The 1947 Portland Rosebuds

We go in 8-15 in April, followed by a 12-16 month in May. When the draft rolls around, we're 21-35, a significant improvement over where we were last season.

While the offense has continued to struggle mightily, we've actually been pretty good on the run prevention side; we have the 4th fewest runs allowed in our ten-team Federal League sub-league, coming from a very strong bullpen (2nd) and ranked 1st and 2nd in zone rating and defensive efficiency, respectively.

Let's turn our attention to the future though; the draft is here, and as I mentioned the lottery luck didn't quite go our way as we dropped from #1 to #4. There's a couple good outfielders, some first-base bat only guys, and two starting pitchers that all could be an option for us.

OF Ramon Giron is a left-handed college bat who's probably the best hitter available and has 8-grade speed to go with it, while 1B Chris Scott is another lefty college bat who should be great, but I'm not super keen on taking a 1B with such a high pick. CF Ray Nunez is a high-school bat who's probably going to end up in a corner but can definitely hit; OF Jose Tapia has a similar profile but is from the college ranks. CF Mark Arterburn is a JuCo Sophmore with a great bat and is certainly the best defender of the bunch.

On the arm side, SP Pat Brohawn is a high-school RHP with sidearm delivery, electric stuff and 6-grade control, and SP Sam Jenkins is another prep arm with great stuff but needs to improve his control a bit at a 5, according to our scout. SP Robby Garcia has a similar skill set to Jenkins but comes from the college ranks, and has an elite changeup.

From a national level, CF Keith Kohnen is also named as a potential number one pick, a high-school outfielder with great contact, and CF Adam Paul is right there with him with the addition of elite speed.

Honestly, this could go so many different ways.

And it does; CF Eric Dabney goes first overall to the Washington Wasps. While our scout didn't rank him quite as high as some of the other outfielders, he looks really good, with all-around contact, power, and speed with enough defense to stick in center.

OF Ramon Giron goes next to the Montreal Canadiens, and then Vancouver goes with a pitcher who was further down our board, SP Chris Johnson.

So we're up with the #4 pick, with both pitchers we like available, as well as two potential center fielders. It does seem like there's quite a bit of depth in the outfield class, so we go with SP Sam Jenkins, a prep arm from Florida with the elite changeup and more conventional delivery.

CF Mike Gruver, a prep bat from Florida, is our next pick. He's got a solid hit tool with power and 7-grade speed and 7-grade range in center.

To round out our top three picks, OF Mike DeWeese is a 17-year-old out of Washington, DC. A line drive hitter with some power potential, he'll be a great LF but could also potentially handle center.

By the time we get to the trade deadline, we're 40-64. While we don't have a ton of assets to move, I would like to utilize one of the trades I have, but we're not able to swing anything.

We finish the season poorly, with a final record of 56-106. The defense continues to be strong but we're going to have to hope some of these draft picks develop and find some young talent in free agency to get out of the basement.

The 1947 World Series is a great one, with the Philadelphia Brewers of the Columbia League facing off against the Philadelphia Patriots of the Federal League for the fourth straight season. Going all seven games, the Patriots come out on top, reclaiming their title.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 10:11 PM

Let's see what we're working with for 1948.

We had a losing record, so we start by generating our FA/Trade allowances with a number between 0 and 2.

We can roll over one of our trades from last year that we didn't use, so that brings us to 2/2. We made $44M, which bumps us up to 3/3. However, we were narrowly the worst team in the league, which brings us back down to 2/2.

45+ rated FA Allowance: 2
Trade Allowance: 2

We have two options to decide on, both of which were our free agent adds last year. 1B/3B David Clemons started off terribly, with a 22 wRC+ in the first half. We almost cut him, but his BABIP was super low and I felt like he had to at least get a little better, which he did, finishing the year with a 56 wRC+. Our option is for $3.75M with a $380K buyout. We'll decline the option on him.

On the other hand, OF Juan Montalvo, who has an option for $2.5M, actually played pretty well for us. While an 84 wRC+ isn't good, he was our fourth-best offensive player, with a .249/.295/.371 line and 12 HR. We'll pick up that option.

Touching on some top performers real quick:

SP Joel Berryhill (7-15, 4.80 SIERA, 1.9 WAR)

Berryhill was once again our most productive arm. While he doesn't get a ton of swing and miss, he threw 171 innings.

SP Jose Alcantar (5-12, 4.22 SIERA, 1.5 WAR

Alcantar was a Rule-5 pick before our first season, and he spent the vast majority of 1946 in the bullpen. This year, he made 33 starts, throwing 149.2 innings.

OF Juan Montalvo (.249/.295/.371, 84 wRC+, 1.9 WAR

Already mentioned Montalvo above, so I'll leave it at that.

OF Matt Smith (.299/.331/.427, 110 wRC+, 1.7 WAR

We took Smith in the third round of the expansion draft and he really put things together this year offensively, with little power but just a 12.8% K rate.

43-year-old Glendon Rogets, who we took with our final pick in the expansion draft, is now finally at six years of service time. The journeyman has led the league in appearances in the last two years, contributing 100+ innings each year as a long-man out of the pen. We won't be bringing him back, but it's great to see him still looking to play in 1948.

We non-tender a few uninteresting guys and head into free agency.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 11:07 PM

Going into FA, it's no surprise that we have needs all over the place. But after taking a deeper look into the roster, we desperately need help in the infield. A 2B, 3B, or SS that can hit would be a huge benefit. Additionally, a RHB that can play in the outfield would be a great add, but not one I'd prefer to spend one of our moves on. If we can find a 40-rated, heavy split RHB for the outfield, that would be ideal.

And we also desperately need a frontline starter. Berryhill has been solid for us, but he should be a back-end guy.

Luckily, there is an impact 3B in free agency. He's 32, but that's much better than what we've been seeing in our first two trips through free agency. 3B Scott Mullally comes from Kansas City, and hit 51 HR in 1946 and 43 in 1947. He wants a ton of money, but we do have a ton of room in our budget.

29-year-old SP Seth White is also available. He's got elite stuff with an 8-grade from our scout, with a 30%+ K-rate over the last two seasons.

We need to get one of these guys.

White would come a little bit cheaper, and is obviously a little bit younger. He's a 60 POT compared to Mullally at 65, which means theoretically, we should have a better shot at being able to offer him a deal with our RNG shenanigans.

We sim ahead to the first Monday, and generate a number between 2-8, looking for a 6 or higher. It's a 3. We move ahead to the following Monday and try again. This time, we get it.

His ask is a 9-year deal worth $258M, with an opt-out after year four and two player options at the end of the deal. This is where this RNG system gets tricky...if we try to mess around with the deal and he declines it, we'll need to start from scratch, sim to the next Monday, roll another 6+, etc.

The deal starts at $23M, escalates up to $32M for the middle of the deal, and then scales back down. I think this could work for us, as we will hopefully be decent by the time the cost scales up. The one thing we do adjust is removing the no-trade clause. We'll see how important that is to him, but we bump up some bonus provisions as a compromise.

Mullally, who I was just about to go try and make an offer to, has already signed, inking a 5-year deal worth $157M with our fellow expansion brethren, San Francisco.

On Wednesday, Nov 26th, we hear from White that he's looking for more money. We can't respond yet, and move ahead to the next Monday. He's now asking for $275M over nine years. We make some adjustments, change the final year's option to a team variety, and make the offer.

On Dec 18th, he signs! It's a $248M deal over eight years, with a $27M option for 1956 without any no-trade provisions. White can opt out after the 1951 season, and has a player option for the 1955 season.

Without any bats that I really love, I look towards SP Joe Casten, who's also 29. While he's not White, he'd likely be a #2 starter for us and is looking for a one-year deal worth just over $9M. However, before we are able to make an offer he signs with Cleveland.

I think this leaves us content heading into the season just using one of our Free Agency signings. We can hang on to the other and carry it over, or use it to claim someone on waivers if necessary.

JetsIn06 · 12-27-2023, 11:09 PM

Real quick update: Draft lottery moves us down from #1 to #4 for the second year in a row. Bummer.

JetsIn06 · 12-28-2023, 12:16 AM

The 1948 Portland Rosebuds

We open the season against the champs in Philadelphia, with our $26M man Seth White on the mound.

He goes 2 and 2/3 innings, giving up 5 ER on 5 hits. Not quite the start we were looking for.

And it doesn't get a ton better, either. White starts his time with us with a 5.76 ERA through 12 starts. His K% is down a bit, and his BB% is up quite a bit. We're 18-39 when we get to the draft, worst in the league.

In better news, this draft seems very deep. There's honestly too many options to go through to come up with a board. San Francisco chooses CF Jose Ventura, who's not bad, but not one of the guys I would have taken. Brooklyn then takes SP Chris Hoppe, who looks really good and definitely would have been in the running for my pick if he was there. CF Ben Brady is next to Baltimore, and he's another guy who probably would not have been on my list.

And that brings things to our pick. We have some great choices.

3B Nick Cimino, a high-school RHB looks really good, with 7-grade contact and power. There's definitely some risk he moves off 3B which isn't ideal, and he's got zero speed.

SS Johnny Frank is another high-school bat, but a LHB. He's not got quite the hit profile that Cimino has, with 6-grade contact and power, but he has a extremely advanced approach at the plate, with an 8-grade eye. He likely moves off SS to 3B.

CF John Madore likely becomes a solid corner OF, but the bat is great, with grades of 7 in contact and power along with a 6 eye. He also has speed to go with it. CF Fernando Borrero is another option, who trades some power for eye, but will certainly stay in CF.

On the pitching side, high-school RHP SP Bobby Taddia has three great pitches, with 6's across the board in stuff, movement, and control.

Two college arms, RHP SP Will Hickman and LHP SP Chris Hurd round out my shortlist; Hickman looks like an all-around solid option, while Hurd is the more risky pick. He's got elite stuff, but the lack of command gives him some reliever risk that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with at #4.

This is a very, very hard decision, but I think OF John Madore has the highest potential to become a superstar with the power/speed combination he provides. We make him our pick at #4.

Our second round pick is gone after signing White, so SP Chris Hopkins, a high-school LHP out of Alabama is our pick in the third round. He's got great stuff and control, but will likely need to develop his changeup to really hit his potential.

After the draft, our guy Madore becomes the #3 prospect in the league.

In July, we make a trade, moving a young outfielder in AAA who is actually decent, but listed as a "selfish" attitude, for a reliever who could potentially start, RP Craig Thompson, and an 18-year-old relief prospect named Gabe Hanley.

SP Seth White really turned things around in the second half, with a 2.36 ERA in June, a 2.19 ERA in July, and a stunning 0.39 ERA through four starts in August. Unfortunately, he missed time with a sore elbow in August and we shut him down for the rest of the year to avoid any further injury.

We finish 57-105, one game better than last year, but we're NOT the worst team in the league, so between not losing some allowances for that plus carrying over one of each, we might actually have some flexibility this off-season.

In the Columbia League, the Chicago Packers have unseated the Philadelphia Brewers, but the Philadelphia Patriots of the Federal League have reigned supreme once again. The World Series goes seven games again, and Philadelphia wins, defending their championship. This is their fifth World Series win in the last six years.

JetsIn06 · 12-28-2023, 08:07 AM

We kick off the off-season by figuring out what we're allowed to do.

RNG roll for FA: 2
RNG roll for Trades: 2
Carry over from last year: +1 in each
Made $44M: +1 in each

This gives us a final total of:

45+ rated FA: 4
Trades: 4

That's a lot of flexibility that we haven't had in the past.

We have three pending free agents, none of which are really good, and we have fifteen arbitration eligible players, four of which are entering their final year. I may explore some trades of those guys just to avoid losing them for nothing, but they're also not very good, so we'll have to see what kind of value we can get in return.

SP Joel Berryhill is the only player getting a little bit expensive at $6M, and he's entering his final year of control. He's likely the guy I try to deal.

I take a look at some offers and nothing really jumps out - most are looking to unload high-priced contracts, and with the ability to sign 4 FA's, I don't want to complete eradicate our budget through trades. We'll let Berryhill get his arbitration contract and then see if we can eat some of the cost to get a prospect or something.

Let's take a quick look at some top performers from 1948:

SP Seth White (7-9, 3.44 ERA, 2.7 WAR)

White was our big acquisition last off-season, and while he started off slow, he had a great second half before a sore elbow led us to shut him down in August for the rest of the year. His K%, BB%, and SIERA all went a little bit in the wrong direction, but I'm hopeful he can turn things around in 1949.

SP Joel Berryhill (6-15, 3.88 ERA, 1.9 WAR)

Berryhill continues to be a contributor, but this is likely his last season in Portland, and that's if he doesn't get traded prior.

SP Craig Thompson (9-12, 3.54 ERA, 1.8 WAR)

Thompson came over in a trade in July, which I mentioned here:

Quote:

In July, we make a trade, moving a young outfielder in AAA who is actually decent, but listed as a "selfish" attitude, for a reliever who could potentially start, RP Craig Thompson, and an 18-year-old relief prospect named Gabe Hanley.

Thompson moved into a starting role and had some success, with a 3.73 ERA in 12 starts. He's great at generating weak contact but doesn't get a ton of swing and miss with just a 15% K-rate in his time with us.

CL John Delmer (33 SV, 2.70 ERA, 21.2 K%)

Delmer was our 4th pick in the expansion draft, and he's really bumped up his skill level over that time. I didn't even mention him in my recap at the time, but after posting a 5.26 ERA in his first season here, he followed it up with a 3.48 ERA and now a 2.70 ERA. He's 29 and has three years of control left.

2B Jose Solis (.240/.289/.351, 75 wRC+, 1.5 WAR)

Solis is nothing too special offensively, as you can see from his stats. But he does add quite a bit on defense, with an 8.8 ZR at 2B and about 100 extra innings playing an average SS.

SS Ciprian Popovici (.249/.291/.322, 67 wRC+, 1.2 WAR)

Popovici is a rookie who finished the year with 400 PA, making his debut after being selected in the 4th round of the 1947 draft. Like Solis, he's a defense-first infielder without a huge hit tool, but there's maybe some potential to be better. He started the season in AAA, posting a 102 wRC+ over 123 PA.

OF Juan Montalvo (.235/.310/.336, 81 wRC+, 1.1 WAR)

With just a 13% K-rate, Montalvo is always a threat to contribute offensively but is somewhat at the mercy of his BABIP. This year, that was just .255, about 20 points lower than his career mark.

OF Luis Gomez (.290/.339/.393, 107 wRC+, 1.0 WAR)

Gomez was a young minor-league free agent signing back in our inaugural season, a guy we added just to fill out the roster. He's grown into a slightly better than league-average bat, with double-digit home run power. There's no speed and the defense isn't good, but he's 22 and we have five years of control left.

JetsIn06 · 12-28-2023, 11:52 PM

Heading into free agency, we still have all of our allotted moves available:

45+ rated FA: 4
Trades: 4

As mentioned, SP Joel Berryhill is entering his final year under contract. He has no interest in discussing any kind of extension with us, and honestly I don't really have any interest in re-signing him to any sort of long-term/expensive deal either.

He'll make $6M in 1949, so one advantage of tendering him a contract is I can now attempt to cover some % of the deal to get a better prospect in a trade. I put the offer out there to cover the entire contract, and there's three players that come back that are very interesting, but the most intriguing player to me is OF Steve Gonzalez, who has an 8-grade eye and an 8-grade ability to avoid K's. In 57 PA with the Philadelphia Brewers last year, he walked 19.3% of the time, and struck out just 10.5% of the time. He also slashed .334/.435/.500 for a wRC+ of 139 over 520 PA in AAA. We have a bunch of OF already, but offensively this adds a true on-base threat to our lineup, and a great leadoff hitter with six years of control.

We make the deal, covering 95% of the contract.

FA: 4
Trades: 3

Compared to prior years, free agency is relatively deep. OF Carlos Zarazoga, a 30-year-old RF who had a slightly down year in 1948 but an absolutely incredible, 167 wRC+ 1947 season, is looking for almost $37M per year. 2B C.J. Washington, heading into his age-31 season, was Zarazoga's teammate, and has been consistently solid offensively with multiple 120 wRC+ or better seasons in four of his last six campaigns.

On the arms side, SP Ryan Hampton is 35 but has absolutely lights-out stuff. He's in the same mold as our guy White, with lower than desired control but insanely high strikeout potential. He's looking for $125M over five years.

SP Chris Markle is similar, but after a down year in 1948 (5.13 ERA), he's looking for a bit less and is 31. Markle may be our top target, and SP Joe Casten, who we really wanted last year as a back-end guy but missed out on, is available again after a solid one-year deal in 1948.

We have about $40M in room. Going after a guy like 2B C.J. Washington is surely our biggest need, but spending $30M or more one guy in free agency when I have the ability to sign four doesn't sound like the best strategy. But there's plenty of cheap guys who are rated 45+ that we could use (like Casten).

I also need to consider our rules; to sign Washington, I'll need my RNG to roll an 8, and while I wait for that to happen these other guys I like could get picked up.

So let's do this - I sim ahead to Monday, and let's go after Casten first. He's rated as a 50 by our scout, so he'll be easier to sign; Washington could take a bit to sign, hopefully. If his demands go crazy in that time, we'll pivot, but I don't want to miss out on a guy who will definitely help us at a much lower cost.

We get to Monday and roll a 7, allowing us to make an early offer to Casten. We offer him a two-year deal worth $10M with a $5M option for a third.

The following Monday comes. He likes our offer, but nothing official yet. We roll to see if we can consider an offer to Washington, but generate a 2 so we have to hold off. SP Chris Markle, who we liked quite a bit, signs on with the Georgia Peaches for six years and $135M before we have a chance to make an offer.

Monday comes, and we roll a 7. One short. No offer. By the way, to be clear, I have to decide on who I want to make an offer to and THEN roll. So even though I rolled a 7, I can't go offer a 70-rated guy now.

The next day, Casten signs with us! OF Carlos Zarazoga signs a seven-year, $231M deal with the New Orleans Kingfish.

FA: 3
Trades: 3

The following Monday comes. We roll a 6. No offer. And two days later, Washington signs with the Georgia Peaches, a four-year deal with an AAV of $33.5M.

So we'll need to move on. In our time chasing him, a lot of the better relievers have signed, which would be a nice addition for us. But let's regroup. An infielder is desperately needed, as well as a catcher. Any additional pitching would also be very welcome.

3B Adam Brand becomes our next target. He's spent the last five years with the St. Louis Lions, is 32, and has a career wRC+ of 118. He's rated as a 50, we roll a 6, and make an offer for $20M over two years with a third-year option.

While Brand considers our offer, we turn our attention to catcher, where we have zero players on our 40-man roster.

And before we can make an offer, Brand signs with us!

FA: 2
Trades: 3

Back to catcher; we make an offer to C Jon Hollett, a 30-year-old who never K's, and even is an above average hitter, with a 121 wRC+ across two teams in 1948. It's a two-year deal worth $7.5M each year. He signs with us a couple weeks later.

FA: 1
Trades: 3

And I think we may leave things as is, here. We'll explore the trade market and check back in to see if any prices drop dramatically, but there's a ton of OF's left and unless we move one of ours, it's not the best way to spend our last FA allowance when we can carry it over.

We DO make a somewhat big move in the international market, making a big splash on SP Julian Figueras, a 17-year-old, 65-rated Cuban RHP.

Heading into spring training, we're happy to carry the FA move over into next season, and we'll look to make some kind of moves at the trade deadline.

JetsIn06 · 12-28-2023, 11:55 PM

The draft lottery definitely has it out for us; we drop from #2 to #6. We're also 0-13 so far in Spring Training. Yikes.

JetsIn06 · 12-29-2023, 12:14 AM

Before the season begins, let's take a look at our farm system now that we have a few drafts under our belt.

We're currently ranked #16 out of 20 teams, with five players in the Top 100.

#11 CF John Madore (18yo, 80 POT)

Picked 4th overall in the 1948 Draft, Madore immediately jumped to the top of our prospect lists. Elite contact with great power to go with it.

#30 SP Julian Figeuras (17yo, 65 POT)

Mentioned recently as a big splash in the international market. Great stuff, four pitches. Needs to improve fastball.

#81 1B Bryant Hammock (19yo, 70 POT)

Huge power potential, some swing and miss. We took Hammock in the 4th round and offered him a way overslot bonus to get him to sign with us instead of going to college.

#86 SP Sam Jenkins (20yo, 50 POT)

The 4th overall pick in 1947, Jenkins has lost some of his prospect luster (Stuff has dropped from 8 to 6) but still looks like he could be a major league pitcher. Has an elite changeup.

#96 SP Chris Hopkins (19yo, 60 POT)

A third-round pick last year, Hopkins still has great-looking stuff and control, but the development of his changeup hasn't moved.

JetsIn06 · 12-29-2023, 01:08 AM

The 1949 Portland Rosebuds

April: 8-17
May: 15-14

That's likely our first winning month, ever.

We're 23-31 heading into June. We're 8th in runs scored in our sub-league, and 9th in runs allowed. While I didn't think our offense would be stellar, I did think our pitching would be better. The defense has definitely taken a step back as we tried to improve on offense, but my goal of improving our strikeout potential has been working, as we're ranked 4th in that category.

SP Seth White is struggling again. Despite a 3.94 SIERA, his ERA is 6.33 after 11 starts. The K's are up a bit at 26.5%, but he's walking 15.2% of hitters which needs to improve.

SP Joe Casten is doing okay, with a 4.43 ERA and a 3.58 SIERA.

We could certainly use some help in the bullpen, as well.

New OF Steve Gonzalez, who we added in a trade, is walking as much as he's striking out, but isn't hitting enough to get his wRC+ to league average and is at 88.

The big surprise so far is CF Adam Broussard, who we called up in May after he slugged .700 in AAA. He hasn't disappointed, hitting 7 homers in 121 PA, good for a 149 wRC+ so far.

In the draft, as I mentioned, we dropped from #2 to #6. SP seems relatively deep with college arms, while offense is headlined by 1B Pat Kite, a JuCo Freshman from Hampton, VA with an elite power/eye combination. SS John Faiella looks interesting to me, a California native with an elite contact skill, speed, and defense that should keep him on the left side of the infield, but without a ton of power I'm not sure about the overall profile if he has to move to 3B. SS Brad Walter is similar, with a little more pop but is 99% destined to end up at 2B and has no speed.

1B Pat Kite, as expected, goes #1 overall to San Francisco, and is followed by two college bats in the corner OF. SP Phill Emmer, a college southpaw with elite stuff/low control goes next, followed by another college arm, SP Jesse Chandler, who's about as opposite as it gets. Low stuff, high command, right-handed.

And that brings things to us. SS/3B Faiella and SS/2B Brad Walter are still on the board. Both are happy to sign out of high school, while two other solid OF bats are listed as "impossible" to sign, though I do have the money to persuade them; but I'd certainly want to wait and see if I could grab them in a later round.

There's a couple interesting pitchers, who I'll name here only so I can embarrass myself later when they become Pitcher of the Year Award winners; SP Alberto Bugarin, a college arm with a low work ethic that just screams bust to me, and SP Travis Miller, a side-arming high stuff guy that feels somewhat destined to be a reliever due to control/split issues.

So I end up back at those infielders, and end up taking SS John Faiella. He at least has a shot at staying at SS and would at least be a good defender at 3B. The speed is what really puts it over the top for me, as Walter just seems like he's going to end up as a horrible 2B that should be a 1B or even a DH by the time he hits 30.

While the pitchers are gone by Round 2, the outfielders I mentioned are still there, and we're going to take a shot at signing them. OF Nick Henriksen is 18, a high-schooler out of Iowa, of all places. Good contact, power, and eye, with a propensity to hit the ball in the air. No speed, and below average defense come with the bat skills.

D.J. Diaz, a high-school catcher, is our next pick. The defense will work, and he's got solid contact ability with power to go with it.

Henriksen signs a few days later.

June: 14-14
July (through 7/23): 6-11

While we were hovering around .500 for a bit, things fell apart in July. An injury to SP Joe Casten hurt, and then C Jon Hollet went down as well for a few weeks. On July 23rd, we're 43-56 and 19GB, so over this next week we'll see if there's a trade or two we can pull off to retool for next season.

And that's exactly what we do; now seems like a good a time as ever to cash in on CL John Delmer, who's tossed 52 innings with a 1.90 ERA. He's entering his expensive years in arbitration and estimated to earn over $7M next year. We package him with LF Matt Smith, who had a good year with us in 1947 but has fallen off and is struggling with a 68 wRC+ this year.

In return, we get 2B Bill Marek, a 23-year-old who was drafted last year in the second round by the Cleveland Buckeyes. He's an elite defender at 2B and can play SS well also. The bat should work as well, and it's always nice to have a left-handed bat up the middle in the infield. We also add two relievers from the minors, both left-handed arms.

Within the next week, we learn that SP Seth White will be out for the next seven weeks. Rather than use one of our trade allowances, we instead use one of those moves to claim RP Corey Morris, a 29-year-old RHP off of waivers from Detroit.

We end the season on a five game win streak, but it's only enough to save us from a 100-loss season. We finish 66-96. The World Series goes seven games again, and the Cleveland Buckeyes dethrone the Philadelphia Patriots dynasty. This is the Patriots 7th straight World Series appearance, but Cleveland comes out on top.

Before we head into the offseason, let's look at some of our top performers in 1949:

SP Joe Casten (7-8, 3.59 ERA, 3.1 WAR)

A target two offseasons ago, we managed to get Casten during free agency and he didn't disappoint. He made 26 starts, posting a 3.59 ERA with a 21.3 K% and a 6.9 BB%. The strikeouts are down a bit, and our scout definitely believes the stuff isn't as good as it was. But Casten is cheap for 1950 at $5.2M and has a team option that we can decline if he continues a downward trend.

SP Jose Alcantar (7-12, 4.11 ERA, 2.5 WAR)

Alcantar has been steady for us, but he took another step forward this year at age 32 from a WAR standpoint. He reduced his walk % from 9.2 to 6.4, but the strikeouts continue to decline as well. He's got two years of control left and won't command a huge sum in arbitration, so he's likely to stick around as a back-end rotation piece (or maybe even in the bullpen).

MR Jesus Guilfu (88.1 IP, 2.95 ERA, 26 K%)

Guilfu was a minor league signing back when we first came into the league, and has been really good since finding a permanent spot in the bullpen in 1947 with a 2.59 ERA, a 3.20 ERA in 1948, and a 2.95 ERA in 1949.

2B Bill Marek (.318/.368/.534, 155 wRC+, 1.1 WAR)

Marek was acquired at the trade deadline, and after 124 PA in AAA, we called him up. In 95 PA, he was great, although surely his .394 BABIP comes down back to Earth. Still, I'm excited about Marek in our infield in 1950.

OF Steve Gonzalez (.273/.367/.413, 121 wRC+, 3.4 WAR)

Gonzalez was the return in our trade that sent SP Joel Berryhill to Philadelphia. I think there's more here, as Gonzalez has an elite eye and ability to make contact to avoid K's. Still, he was very valuable for our offense and played in 156 games.

3B Adam Brand (.280/.343/.439, 119 wRC+, 2.3 WAR)

Brand was a great signing for us last offseason, contributing greatly on offense and finishing with 36 2B and 19 HR. While we thought he could contribute defensively at 3B, he was dreadful there, and will absolutely need to move off the position to play 1B in 1950.

JetsIn06 · 12-29-2023, 09:06 AM

FA roll (0-2): 1
Trade roll (0-2): 2
Carryover: +1 in each
Profit ($8M): No bonus/penalty

That leaves us with:

45+ rated FA: 2
Trades: 3

Our only pending FA's are our backup catcher (awful) and 2B Eric Lang, who's been around since the beginning but has turned into a bench piece and is now 33. Both will move on.

The arbitration class, however, is interesting, with a ton of decisions to make. It's 14 players deep, and full of guys who were once decent role players on our team, but as some of them start to cost a little bit more, we're moving on.

Five players will be non-tendered, which will save us about $17M next season. Financially, our fan interest (which was super high as an expansion team) is now dwindling as we've fallen to put a winning product on the field for years. While our profit this year fell largely due to a higher payroll, we're also seeing less attendance; so saving this money should help us quite a bit.

1B Adam Escamilla is one of the cuts; he's been with us since day one.

Quote:

With our next pick, we take the best of the aforementioned glut of young, decent 1B, right-handed Adam Escamilla. He's also 26, listed as durable, and is rated as a 50 by our scout, with a solid 6 hit tool and 5 power and eye. He'll strike out a bit, but the other nice thing about him (other than also being on min-salary) is that he's very popular locally and well-known nationally. We gotta get butts in seats, and he'll help.

He never had more than 400 PA, but did have a solid year in 1947 with a 118 wRC+. We're crunched at 1B, and he struggled this year to a 69 wRC+.

2B Jose Solis is another. He was a free agent signing back before our inaugural season, and was a full-time starter for three years. Last year he lost playing time and had just 355 PA, but was never great offensively to begin with. The defense has been solid, but with 2B Bill Marek in the fold we can afford to move on.

We have about $14M or so to work with budget-wise, as the Rule-5 draft approaches there's some guys in my system that are not protected, not in my plans, and probably good enough to get something in return. So we make a deal sending one of those guys, OF Jorge Rodriguez, for RP Brian Weddle, a 29-year-old in the final year of team control. He's got great stuff but struggled in 1949 with a very high BABIP and home run rate.

FA: 2
Trades: 2

There's a 35-year-old infielder, 2B Dave Cox, in free agency that looks like a good target for us. He can play 2B, 3B, and LF decently, and is a lefty bat that found power in 1949, hitting for double-digit homers for the first time and posting a 125 wRC+. He's also a captain, which our team could use. He signs a couple weeks later on a one-year, $6M deal with a 2nd year option.

FA: 1
Trades: 2

And that's how we leave things. Hoping some of the young kids start making their way to the upper end of the minors soon because we really need some cheap talent on the roster.

JetsIn06 · 12-29-2023, 01:22 PM

The lottery gods strike again, dropping us from #2 to #7. Surely our luck needs to turn around soon.

JetsIn06 · 12-29-2023, 02:57 PM

The 1950 Portland Rosebuds

April: 10-16
May: 10-19

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Another rough start as we head into July with a record of 20-35. The bright side, if there is one, is that SP Seth White has been great to start the season, with a 3.80 ERA, a 3.53 SIERA, and a 28 K%.

Our farm system bumps up a bit to #13 overall, with five players in the Top 100. Most of them are still 19/20. We'll take a deeper look at them before next season.

Since there's not much good to speak of, let's get right into the draft, which could be the deepest draft I've seen. Plenty of offensive talent, but of course some guys really seperate themselves with great defense.

CF Sid Clark is probably the best all-around player, with elite defense that should stick in center and great contact and power with speed to boot.

SP Joey Parrish looks like the pitcher that should go first; he's a college RHP with elite stuff.

As I expected, CF Sid Clark goes at 1.1 to the San Francisco Peanuts. This is the third straight year that they have picked at this spot. Maybe some of their luck could go our way for once?

At 1.2, SP Travis Lewis, a RHP college arm goes to Vancouver. He's got an elite ability to generate weak contact with lots of groundballs. The stuff is good too, with three great pitches.

Someone I was looking at, C Scott Gagliardi, goes at 1.4 to Detroit. He's an elite defensive catcher. The bat could be solid too, but his defense really stands out. He's followed by C Nick Banks, who maybe ends up as a 1B as he really doesn't have the defensive skill to stick behind the plate, but the offense is MASSIVE. He's a high-schooler out of NYC, and it will be fun to look back and see these two catchers who went in the Top 10 and how they did.

When our pick comes up, SP Joey Parrish is still available. He's 21, and coming out of Oregon State. Our scout has him as a 70, with 7 stuff, 6 movement, and 5 control, with four solid pitches. We make him the pick at 1.7.

With our 2nd pick, we go back to an arm, taking SP Blake Milner, a high-school RHP out of Florida. He's got elite stuff, rated an 8 by our scout, with a devestating fastball and changeup. The stuff is too good to pass up on.

In the 3rd, a guy we had our eye on is still around, 3B Dave Magby. He's a lower contact, higher power/eye guy who has a cannon for an arm. He's ideally a 3B, but can play anywhere on the infield and has also played in RF as well.

June: 8-20
July (through 29th): 11-11

So July has been okay, but here's the exciting thing; SP Joey Parrish is already in AAA. While I do think long-term the focus on high-school players has made sense, it's SO nice to have drafted a college arm that shoots up the minors and is ready quickly. I think we are going to give him a shot in September, and if he does well, could break camp with us in 1951.

The bullpen has also been strong, with the 4th best ERA in the Federal League, and our defense has improved a ton, with the best zone rating as a team. There's still a lot of work to do offensively. 1B/DH Adam Brand, who we signed prior to 1949 to play 3B, has just completely crumbled defensively and truly cannot play the field at all, and his offense has cratered as well. After finishing with a 100 or better wRC+ every season, he's now at 70 as he plays through his age-34 season. Luckily we have a team option for next season that we will 100% not be picking up.

We do have a trade allowance burning a hole in our pocket (we have 2, but can only carry over 1 into next season). With a few guys set to hit FA or with options that I don't plan on picking up, I take a look around and find a deal for SP Joe Casten. Casten was strong for us last year, but has struggled to a 5.44 ERA. We cover the rest of the year's contract and bring back RP Pete Barraclough, a 30-year-old RHP reliever from Chicago. He's bounced around, but still has three years of control left and the stuff and control is great. He's a flyball pitcher, which should work out decently well in our park.

September comes, and we bring up SP Joey Parrish. We have him on a light pitch count to start, and he struggles in his first outing, going three innings with 2 K's and 3 BB's. His second outing is worse, as he goes 3.2 innings with 5 BB's and no K's. The third start isn't much better, but in his fourth against a weak Vancouver team, he goes 6 innings with no walks, 3 H's, and 3 K's over 74 pitches.

With three games left to play, we're in a group of four teams that have the worst record, behind by one win. Avoiding being the worst team will prevent us from losing some transaction allowances, so I'm using all the ammo I can to win this final series.

But we lose the first game in extra innings, and then lose 16-2, sealing our fate as the worst team. God damn it.

August: 13-15
September: 10-16

We finish with a 64-98 record.

Philadelphia is finally not the pennant winner in the Federal League; my own stomping ground in New Orleans has taken the crown. Georgia heads to the World Series from the Columbia League, but the 103-win New Orleans Kingfish win the series in six games.

Some top performers:

SP Seth White (7-12, 3.96 ERA, 2.1 WAR)

White finally put together a strong full season. The walks were much more under control, dropping 16% to 11.9% this year. The K% is down though, and this contract is looking worse as he gets older, which I guess I expected.

He has an opt-out after next season and I'm kind of hoping he takes it.

SP James LaSpina (2-11, 4.26 ERA, 0.8 WAR)

Not the greatest season, but this rookie came out of nowhere to be a part of our rotation this year. He was a minor-league FA signing back before the 1949 season, which means he was rated 40 or less. Now he's a 65, with great stuff and a nasty slider. He's not there yet; but he's currently the #21 prospect in baseball, and along with Parrish could form a solid tandem behind White for the foreseeable future.

LF Steve Gonzalez (.238/.362/.490, 118 wRC+, 4 WAR)

Gonzalez is not the best player by any means, and the BABIP dipped down to .263 this year; we'll see how much of that is luck, but a guy who walks more than he strikes out that can hit 12 homers and play pretty much every single day (696 PA this year, 693 PA last year) is valuable. He's still on the minimum salary too so I can't complain at all about our leadoff man.

C John Hollett (.326/.372/.438, 132 wRC+, 1.7 WAR)

Hollett was a FA add before the 1949 season. His .362 BABIP surely helped him this year, but the production was great at the end of the day. He'll be a FA, and I don't think we'll pay what he wants. He's spent the end of both of his years here on the IL, and this year he had just 328 PA.

JetsIn06 · 12-29-2023, 03:01 PM

FA roll (0-2): 0
Trade roll (0-2): 1

Carryover: +1 in each
Profit ($-12M): -1 in each

That leaves us with:

45+ rated FA: 0
Trades: 1

Shit.

First things first; we have two team options to decide on. 1B/DH Adam Brand served us well in year one but absolutely cratered in year two both offensively and defensively, so this is an easy decline on a $10.5M deal.

1B Dave Cox is 36, but he's a captain on the team and the option is for just $6M. He had a basically league average offensive season with a 98 wRC+. Without any ability to sign FA's, we'll probably need the body. We'll accept this.

One interesting move we could make; C Jon Hollett is a free agent and is asking for $14M per year over two years. I don't want to pay that, but the thought is crossing my mind to offer him a $20M one-year deal to make him eligible to bring back a compensation pick. I'm going to have a hell of a time finding a catcher as good as him without any FA adds, so if he accepts I'll have a starting catcher, and if he declines I'll have a comp pick. The downside is $20M for us is a lot, and I need to make a profit.

We have nine arbitration eligible guys, one of which is RF Juan Montalvo. Now 31, we added him prior to the 1947 season. He stuck around a lot longer than I thought he would, and had some good years. He's due for a $3.6M deal for his second arb-year, and we have enough depth in the OF that I'm okay non-tendering him.

1B/3B Matt Harris has been around from the beginning, a Rule-5 pick from December of 1945. He hit .234/.317/.334 in his time with us, and now that he's not a great defender at the hot corner I'm happy to move on.

And screw it; we're making Hollet a qualifying offer. With Brand at $10M coming off the books and about $7M in savings from non-tendering three arbitration guys, I think we can absorb the hit if he does indeed accept it.

But it's tight. As we get closer to Spring Training, and ticket sales come into focus, our budget narrows. Right now we're projected to lose $3M.

We lower our amateur draft budget; maybe we can take some under-slot guys to save some money. We still have this trade available, as well. But I think we can wait until mid-season to pull the trigger on that.

Draft lottery comes and disappoints once again, as we drop from #1 to #3.

1951 season incoming.

JetsIn06 · 12-29-2023, 11:44 PM

The 1951 Portland Rosebuds

Before we dive in to another likely painful season, let's get our hopes up a bit with a look at our farm system, which is now ranked 7th among the 20 teams in the league.

#7 SP John Parrish (Age: 22 | 80 POT)

A bump in velocity this spring leads us to be really excited about Parrish despite a rough few outings in September last year. He's got an elite fastball with a great changeup and sinker to go along with an above-average curveball. Hitting 97 MPH, the RHP went at 1.7 last season and is ready to make an immediate impact

#21 CF John Madore (Age: 20 | 70 POT)

Was once ranked at #11, but Madore still looks like a solid hitter who will play a corner spot really well, but likely will move off CF. The contact and power is still there.

#27 3B Jose Luis (Age: 17 | 70 POT)

We've been loosely alternating out international free agent strategy, going for quantity to fill up our international complex and then following with a year of heavy spending on a couple quality players. In this case, earlier this year we made Luis our single signing. He has 8 stealing with 7 speed and baserunning, along with 8 contact. He's going to end up in a corner somewhere, and he'll have to keep the elite contact/speed profile to make it work as the power likely tops out at 10-15 HR.

#60 SS John Faiella (Age: 20 | 65 POT)

Quote:

So I end up back at those infielders, and end up taking SS John Faiella. He at least has a shot at staying at SS and would at least be a good defender at 3B. The speed is what really puts it over the top for me...

Faiella went at 1.6 in the 1949 draft. The power has really cratered, but he's still good defensively and the contact is elite.

#84 3B Dave Magby (Age: 18 | 65 POT)

Magby was drafted this year in the third round. He's got a great eye, good power, and can play all over the field.

#101 CF Mike Gruver (Age:21 | 60 POT)

Quote:

CF Mike Gruver, a prep bat from Florida, is our next pick. He's got a solid hit tool with power and 7-grade speed and 7-grade range in center.

We took Gruver in the 2nd round back in the 1947 draft, and he's finally up at the higher levels of the minors. He can still play CF and stick there, and the contact, power, and speed profile have all stayed with him. We could potentially see him debut late this year.

Onward...

April: 8-19
May: 13-16

SP Joey Parrish was NOT ready for the show, apparently, making ten starts with a 9.78 ERA and walking 16.2% of hitters. We ended up sending him down to AAA, and overall we had a much better second month.

In the draft, Vancouver has the first pick and takes 1B Matt Martin at 1.1, a great power bat from Arkansas State. I have no arguments here as he's probably the best bat in the draft, but there are three high-school bats right there as well that would provide some defensive value.

SP Jack Hall is the player I have my eyes on. He's a prep RHP out of Texas who our scout thinks the world of. But when our pick comes up, I can't help but take CF Jon Oviedo, an 18-year-old high-school bat out of Florida. With good range, decent speed, and an elite contact ability with power to go with it, he looks like a potential superstar, and is also a little bit less expensive than Hall.

We go with SP Manny Flores with our next pick. He's a sidearmer who has some definite reliever risk but is clearly the best pitcher left on the board.

And with our final pick that I'll share with you, we go with SS John Vonk, a 18-year-old LHB from NYC. The contact is great, but he doesn't have a ton of power upside. He'll be able to play everywhere on the infield.

June: 10-18
July: 10-15

The trade deadline comes and we're 41-67, and we do have the one trade available to us. SP Seth White, who has what has become an absolute albatross of a contract, is virtually untraceable. Even covering 75% of his contract yields zero interest. C John Hollet, who accepted our qualifying offer and is due to leave in FA, is injured once again, so we aren't able to move him either. We'll hang tight and carry that trade over into next year.

In August, we go 13-16, and when we get to September, we call up our #7 prospect who is ranked #87 overall, CF Mike Gruver. He has absolutely raked in AAA so far, with a 130 wRC+ in 363 PA and 11 HR.

And while we struggle to a 7-18 record in September and a 61-101 record overall, the bright spot is Gruver's performance, as he slashed .329/.356/.512 in 87 PA in September.

In the Columbia League, the Montreal Canadiens win the pennant, their first since 1921. In the Federal League, it's the New York Knights, who finished 66-96 in 1950 but have surged to a 101-61 record this year. New York wins in seven.

Some notables:

SP Joey Parrish (3-12, 6.33 ERA, 0.4 WAR)

Not what we had in mind for our top prospect. He did finish very strong, with a 2.42 ERA in September. Overall, his SIERA was 3.97 for the year, so there's definitely some bad luck happening.

CL Eric Morgan (25 SV, 1.23 ERA, 36.1 K%)

After a strong first season, Morgan really put things together this year.

LF Steve Gonzalez (.285/.382/.408, 122 wRC+, 4 WAR)

This trade we made to get Gonzalez continues to pay off. He is the model of consistency, with 706 PA this year, a 13.5% BB rate and just a 12.6% K rate.

1B Steve Cox (.300/.351/.411, 111 wRC+, 3.1 WAR)

The 37-year-old had a better than expected season last year, and did ever better this year. He'll be out of contract, and as a captain I'll be curious to know what his demands will be for his age-38 season.

JetsIn06 · 12-30-2023, 02:18 PM

As expected, SP Seth White doesn't opt out. He's now a 35-rated SP coming off a 5.08 ERA season owed $160M over the next five years. I'm VERY glad we negotiated the team option for the the final year.

Let's see what we're working with this offseason:

FA roll (0-2): 1
Trade roll (0-2): 1

Carryover: +1 trade
Profit ($-10.7M): -1 in each

That leaves us with:

45+ rated FA: 0
Trades: 1

Great. It's getting much harder to keep a profit. With SP Seth White I really was hoping he would be a foundation that would keep us decent and selling tickets. But it obviously blew up in my face. The -1's from losing money are killing our ability to do anything so we'll have to make sure we're profitable in 1952.

JetsIn06 · 12-30-2023, 02:53 PM

C John Hollet is a free agent, and while he's been great while he's on the field, the injuries have been really tough. 353 PA in 1949, 328 PA in 1950, 300 PA in 1951. This is $20M coming off the books which is a big relief.

I mentioned 1B Dave Cox, a captain on our team, above; he's a pending FA but I was curious to know how much he'd be looking for. Unfortunately, I wasn't expecting to have zero free agent signings allowed; we'll have to let him go, but he was looking for about $9M anyway.

RP Paul Brocklebank has been with us since the beginning, the penultimate pick in the expansion draft. He threw 502.1 IP with us, with a 4.05 ERA during his time. While I could re-sign him (he's a 40-rated player), the skills have declined now that he's 32 and the $2.2M he wants should be replaced cheaply.

Finally, RP Jose Alcantar is heading out; he was a starter with us for a while, and had a pretty good year after moving to the pen in 1951. He doesn't want a lot to stay, but because he's rated as a 45, we're unable to sign him.

We have an eleven-player arb class. OF Mario Camarillo isn't an obvious non-tender, but he's entering his final year of control and due $3.2M. With the callup and success of CF Mike Gruver, we're okay letting him and his 82 wRC+ walk early.

LF Steve Gonzalez, our walking machine/leadoff guy, is now in his first year. I'll mention this now, as I don't think I did in the first post; any multi-year extensions count against our choice of a FA or trade. I won't be pursuing that with him, but he is tendered an offer for 1-year/$4M.

korme · 12-30-2023, 03:39 PM

As a guy that has fallen out of the nitty gritty of baseball day to day, I'm curious - is wRC+ and SIERA now the baseline stats you look at when generally determining a player's season's quality?

JetsIn06 · 12-30-2023, 04:44 PM

I just had a thought; we have a lot of young prospects, and I'm curious if we can package one or two of them with White to offload his contract.

I'd hate to do it on one hand, but I'm severely hamstrung by this deal for the next four years. But after messing around with some offers, we come to an agreement with the New York Knights, and it's not quite as bad as I thought it would be.

We'll send SP Seth White and CL Eric Morgan (which is painful, don't get me wrong; he's been amazing for us but I'm willing to lose a reliever) along with $2.9M, plus cover 40% of the remainder of White's deal. In return, we get a much worse reliever in RP Alex Ramirez who's owed $4M for this year, and 3B Oscar Saavedra, who's owed $7.4M this coming year but is on the last year of his deal. Neither guy fits into our long-term plans and will likely be let go after the season.

For us, we lose our best reliever, by far. We lose SP Seth White, who our scout thinks has diminished into worthless (and the stats back this up). We'll obviously still pay a significant amount this year with the 40% we owe and the two new guys, but after this year, we'll save close to $18M or so a year for the next four years.

FA: 0
Trades: 0

There's not much else to cover; this year is certainly going to be a transition year. Hopefully SP Joey Parrish and CF Mike Gruver can put together strong seasons, and maybe some other young guys can make an impact.

JetsIn06 · 12-30-2023, 05:23 PM

The 1952 Portland Rosebuds

When opening day arrives, the 1952 Top Prospect report comes out, and we're still ranked as the #8 system in the league, but we're significantly deeper, with nine players ranked in the Top 100. While I won't do a deep dive now, I will highlight 3B Cortez de Santiago, who is now our highest ranking prospect after the graduation of SP Joey Parrish. de Santiago, a RHB, was an international signing out of Panama in our 1950 class and is now is ranked 16th overall.

He was a 40-rated player at the time and is now up to 60, with 6's across contact, power, and eye. This will be his first season out of the complex.

Our first game of the year is against our expansion-mates, the Vancouver Mounties. While they struggled early just like us, they had a few campaigns with win totals in the 70's, and last year went 81-81.

It's a 15-0 loss. Doesn't get much more ominous than that, does it? We lose again, but SP Joey Parrish puts a stop to things, throwing 5 innings of 2-run ball with a strikeout per inning.

I don't want to get overly excited, but we finished April with a 13-10 record. I may be mistaken, but I think this is our first winning month...ever?

May isn't quite as hot, and the month ends with devastating news. SP Joey Parrish is out for the year. 10-11 months; torn flexor tendon. Fuck. After 10 starts, he had a 3.80 ERA, and an even better 3.11 SIERA. The K% was up, the BB% was down. This sucks. We can only hope he comes back healthy without losing the elite stuff he has.

That brings me to SP Chris Hopkins, who isn't nearly as exciting as he was when he was drafted back in 1948:

Quote:

Our second round pick is gone after signing White, so SP Chris Hopkins, a high-school LHP out of Alabama is our pick in the third round. He's got great stuff and control, but will likely need to develop his changeup to really hit his potential.

Well of course he didn't develop his changeup. The stuff is still good (6) but the movement, which has always been at a 4 is still there, and the control's dropped from 7 to 5. This is likely an average starter, at best. But with Parrish's injury, he's the next man up. Our manager initially has him in the bullpen, which I'm free to over-ride if I find myself thinking differently. We'll see how he does there to start.

April: 13-10
May: 9-19

We get to Draft Day at 23-32, and I actually don't remember where our draft spot was; we dropped from #2 to #3. Not bad, but this is now the 6th straight year that we've dropped, I think?

There's some interesting pitchers but I'd say it leans way more in the offensive direction, with RF Michael Allen (5/7/7) and 3B Chase Wyatt (8/6/6) leading the way according to our scout. Both are high-school bats, but the guy that jumped out at me was a college bat, SS Josh Johnson (7/6/6), a lefty-swinger who's got good range and a good enough arm to play SS, but probably ends up moving to 3B. The speed is significantly better than the other two.

Arm-wise, SP Greg Sarrazin (6/6/6), SP Chris Rodriguez (6/6/6), and SP Nate Wallace (7/6/5) are high-school throwers who look like the best talent available.

Allen goes at 1.1 to the Washington Wasps, and then my guy Johnson goes next to St. Louis.

As much as I like Wyatt, the defense really scares me as I don't think he'll stay at 3B. Might even need to move to the OF. The high school arms are interesting; weird note...Sarrazin's hometown is town I was born in, a tiny town in NJ that no one has heard of. Bonus points! He also has an 8-grade changeup, and is a sidearmer, which is interesting; sidearm guys generally have a heavy split, but the changeup neutralizes opposite-handed hitters.

Meanwhile, Rodriguez has SIX great pitches, all grades as a 6. That's a nice profile and that's the direction we're going to go.

Wyatt goes a couple picks later, and Wallace goes at 10. Sazzarin makes it all the way to 17.

When our 2nd comes around, there's an Ohio prep bat, 3B Trevor Scott, who catches my eye. The defense is okay, but he's athletic enough defensively to play a corner spot too, I think. The bat is great though, with a very advanced eye at the plate (7) and home run power (6) with good contact ability (6).

With our 3rd-rounder, we go to the college ranks and grab SS Bobby Camacho. He's an elite defender with range (7), and not a ton of power but he should be able to hit for average and run the bases well. CF John Hollis is our fourth pick; I'm mentioning him here because he's the OF version of Camacho. Elite defense, great contact ability, and not a ton of power.

Going to wrap this up quickly, as things did not go our way in the second half.

June: 5-23
July: 7-18
August: 8-21
September: 7-20
October: 0-2

It's our worst season since our first season. 113 losses. It's incredible how invested I am in making this team good since I'm spending the time writing about it but shit, this just isn't working.

The guy who took over closer duties, CL Corey Morris, was good (2.25 ERA) but his SIERA wasn't (4.08) and he walked wayyy to many guys. Only one other pitcher cracked 1 WAR.

2B Bill Marek led the team in WAR with 3.8, which is great. He slashed .270/.327/.434 with a wRC+ of 107. LF Steve Gonzalez wasn't quite as good, with a wRC+ below 100 for the first time (99) and a slash line of .254/.340/.374. CF Mike Gruver, who we were really expecting to break out, struggled offensively with a .253/.286/.396 line.

We did get some action from our first draft class, with utility/all-around guy Rich Black, picked 1.18 in '46, getting some playing time (137 PA, 88 wRC+). Our second-round pick, C Jesse Brinkman, got called up for his debut, getting up 155 times with a 76 wRC+. And 1B Bryant Hammock, who we went way over-slot for in the 4th round of the 1948 draft, also made his debut, with a 75 wRC+ over 170 PA.

So, I mean; exciting? It's cool to see these guys who I drafted. Black looks like a GREAT bench piece who can play everywhere and hit enough to stick around. Hammock still looks solid. Brinkman is pretty average across the board but certainly would be a great backup on a good team.

We desperately need some good luck this offseason. The dice need to roll our way so we can do something. With this record, we're already going to be losing moves.

The Georgia Peaches and the New York Knights win their leagues pennant. Georgia last won the World Series back in 1938, and New York is looking to repeat.

But they won't; Georgia wins in five, and we head into 1953.

See you in the offseason.

JetsIn06 · 12-30-2023, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by korme

As a guy that has fallen out of the nitty gritty of baseball day to day, I'm curious - is wRC+ and SIERA now the baseline stats you look at when generally determining a player's season's quality?

Hey man. Not sure if you were following when wOBA was the big thing, or OPS...OPS+ is a pretty popular (probably more popular/used than wRC+) as it takes OPS and then scales it so 100 is the league average. If you have a 110 OPS+, you're OPS is 10% better than average. It's great, but the flaw in OPS (and OPS+) is that it's not weighting baseball events properly.

That's where wOBA comes in, which wRC+ is using as a part of it's calculation. wRC+ is also normalizing park factors and such as well...no idea if this is replicated in OOTP! I just like it in real life so it's the most natural thing for me to use here. But generally, the idea is: 100 wRC+ is league average, 110 is 10% better than league average, 90 is 10% worse than league average, etc etc, and it values singles, doubles, homers, walks, etc more accurately than OPS+.

On the pitching side, FIP was the first (that I know of) stat that tried to show what a pitchers ERA should have been, removing everything outside of strikeouts, walks, and home runs. The argument was that only those three things were in the pitchers control. xFIP added some flavor to this to account for the randomness of fly ball outcomes.

There's been a change in that mindset a bit, in that maybe a pitcher has some control over balls in play. If they can induce a shit-ton of pop-ups, or a shit-ton of grounders, they're usually better than guys who can't do that. Of course, there's better, smarter people out there explaining this stuff. I'd check this out if you're interested: SIERA | Sabermetrics Library.

All of that said, I think wRC+ is a great stat to see what happened and it's surely got more predictive power year to year than batting average, OBP, or SLG on their own. But in reality, what most analysts and hardcore fantasy nerds like me are looking at is Statcast data, which is pitch/batted ball level data around exit velocities, launch angles, spray angles, etc.

On the pitching side, there's pitch modeling stats like Stuff+ which is looking ONLY at pitch movement, attack angles, release points, etc. and using machine learning to determine who's got the best "stuff". Location+ builds on that to determine strength of command, and Pitching+ puts some of that together but has it's own quirks as well.

Always happy to chat about that stuff! It's super interesting.

JetsIn06 · 12-30-2023, 10:09 PM

Before we begin, we're revamping our whole organization's staff. Everyone must go (except our trainer, who's done a pretty good job preventing injury). Okay I lied, there's a couple guys in the minors I'm hanging on to. But the entire major league coaching staff is gone. I had the AI handling the minors but I'm taking that over too.

Our farm system is now up to #6, with ten guys in the Top 100, and we have to train them right.

Let's see what we're working with this offseason move-wise and then I'll begrudgingly hire an entire organization.

FA roll (0-2): 2
Trade roll (0-2): 2

Carryover: 0
Profit ($11.2M): +1 in each
Worst team penalty: -1 in each.

That leaves us with:

45+ rated FA: 2
Trades: 2

I will take this, obviously, as it's as good as we could have done. Feels good to be able to do something.

Arbitration leads to a few cuts but nothing of note. When free agents file, we have about $23M to work with, budget-wise.

It's crazy to even say this after a 113 loss season, but just looking at our roster, it's not horribly bad; I see a lot more yellow and green ratings as opposed to yellow and red.

Let's actually take a look at the starting spots, top to bottom. This will help us plan on how to leverage these moves we have available to us, especially since we're on a tight budget.

C: Jesse Brinkman, 50 POT (5/5/5)
1B: Bryant Hammock, 60 POT (7/6/5)
2B: Bill Marek, 60 POT (5/5/5)
3B: Paul Fisher, 50 POT (4/4/5)
SS: Ciprian Popovici, 45 (5/4/4)
LF: Steve Gonzalez, 55 POT (5/4/8)
CF: Mike Gruver, 60 POT (6/6/5)
RF: Adam Broussard, 50 POT (4/6/6)
DH: Luis Gomez, 45 POT (6/5/5)

UTIL: Rich Black, 55 POT (5/5/6)

SP: Joey Parrish, 80 POT (8/6/5)
SP: James LaSpina, 45 POT (6/5/4)
SP: Ben Westerhaus, 45 POT (5/6/6)
SP: Pete Barraclough, 35 POT (5/3/6)
SP: ?

CL: Corey Morris, 50 POT (6/6/4)
SU: Gabe Hanley, 50 POT (6/6/5)
SU: Ryan Barbee, 45 POT (6/5/4)

So taking a look at this as a whole, pitching is clearly a big need. Only one of our Top 10 prospects is a pitcher. 3B and SS look like the bigger needs offensively, but we have some of those guys coming.

Not that we have the budget for it anyway, but there's no true elite arms in FA. We start by getting trying to get a handful of guys in on non-roster invites; minor league contracts that become a major league deal if they make the team with an opt-out clause if they don't. All of these players are rated 40 or less, so don't count against our allowed moves.

But there is one guy who's a 45-rated SP, Mu'Adh Nelson. We had our eye on him a few years ago, but he wasn't a fan of our manager and refused to listen to our offer. With a new regime in place. we're able to make him an offer, if the RNG gods allow it.

He's not a huge stuff guy (5), but has great control (7), and also is a captain and has the "Iron Man" injury proneness designation. With a 3.98 ERA/3.81 SIERA last season and a miniscule 4.7% BB rate, he's interesting. He gave up a ton of homers; the most in the league. But in our park, he may be able to keep that down.

He's a 45, so we'll need to roll 2-8 and get 5 or higher, which we do. We make an offer for one year, $3.75M.

We also explore the trade market. Cleveland is desperate to shed payroll. While we're not in a position to take on the entirety of a big contract, we could utilize our depth to get a player and have them eat some of the money. SP Mike Meyers is a guy I've come across a few times; he's 34 now, with good stuff and movement. The ERA has gone up a bit over the years but the K% and BB% have stayed roughly the same. Last year, a rough BABIP gave him some issues. He's due $21M and has a team option for the following year. If we took the whole contract, we could get him for virtually nothing. But we don't have the room for that; so we ask them to eat 75% and send SP Julian Figueras in return. We signed him out of Cuba for $8.5M back in 1949:

Quote:

We DO make a somewhat big move in the international market, making a big splash on SP Julian Figueras, a 17-year-old, 65-rated Cuban RHP.

He's down to a 40-rated SP now, as the control never panned out, but he's only 20 years old, and Cleveland will take a shot on him. We'll owe him $5.2M this year, and almost certainly will not accept the $21M option on him next year.

Mu'ahd Nelson signs with us shortly after.

FA: 1
Trades: 1

I think at this point I'm content holding here and carrying these into next season. International FA is another quantity play, and not much else happens as we head towards spring training.

JetsIn06 · 12-30-2023, 11:43 PM

Draft lottery once again gives us a giant middle finger, as we drop from #1 to #4.

JetsIn06 · 12-31-2023, 01:23 AM

The 1953 Portland Rosebuds

SP Joey Parrish returns a bit ahead of schedule, in time to get some work in during spring ball and we expect he'll be ready for Opening Day.

The new Prospect Rankings are out, and we're now up to #3, with 10 players in the Top 100, led by the #10 overall prospect 3B Cortez de Santiago. He was a international signing back in 1950, and signed for just $320K. Our scout loves him now, and he'll start the year on our short-season squad.

Opening Day is here, and SP Joey Parrish takes the ball after a lost year in 1952; he makes it count. We have him on a pitch count to start the year, but he went 6.1 innings, giving up three hits, one walk, and striking out seven.

April: 11-13
May: 6-22

Ugh. We literally cannot string two decent months together. The SP Mu'adh Nelson project isn't working out so far, as he's got a 6.32 ERA through 10 starts. CL Corey Morris lost his closer role as he's walking 22% of batters faced. We're shuttling some of the poor performers on both sides of the ball to AAA, or just DFA in some cases. We'll see what sticks.

SP Joey Parrish, however, is dealing; 2.17 ERA, 33.2% K rate, 2.07 SIERA, 1.47 FIP.

Draft day comes in early June, and as I mentioned, we dropped from #1 to #4 in the lottery. SP Nick Warfel and SP Emilio Gallegos are the two prep arms I've got my eye on; both have elite stuff but Warfel could be on another level. There are some makeup concerns on him though, so there's some hesitation.

CF Mario Alvarez is the top bat in my mind, but fellow high-schooler SS Arvin Duval is the other guy I've got my eye on. Alvarez is a contact (7) and power (7) left-hander, while Duval is also lefty but more power (7) and eye (7) with likely a lower ability to hit for average. Duval is who I want, but let's see what the early picks bring.

San Francisco is up at 1.1, and they take someone else entirely, OF Dusty Watson, a prep bat out of Boston with tons of power (7). The defense looks good too, but there's going to be some swing and miss in his game.

SP Brook Wendland goes 1.2 to Cleveland, and he's nasty; a college arm with great movement (7). The stuff is a tick lower than the guys I mentioned (6), but I have no doubt Wendland could be really, really good.

And at 1.3, Detroit goes with CF Mario Alvarez.

So for me, the choice comes down to Duval, who I just said I wanted five minutes ago, or going for the upside arm in Warfel. I truly am a sucker for elite stuff like his. The low work ethic really does scare me off though. With that said, the lower contact (5) of Duval scares me off too. I could easily see him hitting .230 with 30 HR, but if it drops at all he could be really tough to keep in the lineup.

Fuck it. I like the stuff too much, and Warfel has gotten this far without giving a shit, so who's to say he can't keep it going. We pick him at 1.4. Duval lasts all the way to 1.12, which is interesting. Gallegos, the other pitcher I liked, makes it all the way to 1.16.

With our 2nd pick, we take another high-school arm, SP Amir Lewis, a RHP out of Washington, DC. Elite control (7) is his calling card, but he can still get a ton of swing and miss/weak contact with great stuff (6) and movement (6). He is another low work ethic guy, and both pitchers have asked for a ton of money to sign, so we'll need to stay conservative after this.

With our 3rd pick, we go with SS Shane Borja, a prep bat from Illinois. His profile (6/4/4) looks like a strong contact bat, and he doesn't strike out much at all, but he can also run and play defense well, so he's a nice solid "floor" pick after being risky early on.

June: 15-13 (!)
July: 12-13

Okay, okay. That's more like it. We explore some deadline offerings but stay put; the only thing close was a reliever who was signed through next year, but I'd rather keep the trade to carry it over and keep my options open.

And now we're sweating, as SP Joey Parrish goes down with an injury after facing just four batters in a start in August. Luckily, it's just a sprained ankle, and he'll be back in four weeks.

August: 16-13 (!)

Outside of a dreadful May, we actually haven't been that bad! Let's keep the momentum rolling into September. Two key call-ups take place:

SS John Faiella, the #52 prospect, is an all-contact guy who can field and run really well. We took him with the 6th overall pick in 1949.

CF Mike DeWeese was our third-round pick in 1947. He's 24 now, and is probably destined to be more of a role-player, but he plays decent defense and looks like he could be an average-ish hitter.

DeWeese struggles early, so with ten games left we send him back down and call up the #39 prospect, CF John Madore. He's been up and down a bit, certainly down from when we drafted him at 1.4 in 1948:

Quote:

CF John Madore likely becomes a solid corner OF, but the bat is great, with grades of 7 in contact and power along with a 6 eye. He also has speed to go with it. CF Fernando Borrero is another option, who trades some power for eye, but will certainly stay in CF...This is a very, very hard decision, but I think OF John Madore has the highest potential to become a superstar with the power/speed combination he provides. We make him our pick at #4.

He's now a 6/6/5 and definitely more of a corner OF. We'll see how he does in this short span.

We finish September with a 16-12 record. Things are looking up! It's a 76-86 record to finish the season, but imagine what that could be without the absolutely terrible 6-22 May? Overall, based on the stats rankings, our offense still has a ton of work to do but the pitching was middle of the pack pretty much across the board. We scored 3.8 R/Game, and allowed 4.6 R/G. There's work to do on both ends, but our pitching was relatively scraped together this year, and the offensive prospects are on their way.

After three seasons away from the World Series, the Philadelphia Patriots are back after a 102-win season. In the Columbia League, it's the Brooklyn Originals, a 98-win club who last won a pennant in 1940 (where they also won the World Series). Brooklyn takes the series in five games, and we head into the offseason.

On Day 1, we decline the $21M team option on SP Mike Meyers, who actually was very good for us. We can't afford him, and I don't want to forget to decline the option so I did it quickly.

Notables:

SP Mike Meyers (14-9, 3.05 ERA, 2.7 WAR)

I think this trade worked out really well for us, even though it just got us through this year. At $21M, we can't afford to pick up the option even though I'd love to.

SP Joey Parrish (10-7, 2.16 ERA, 6.6 WAR)

*sweats* Parrish was just amazingly good this year. 27 starts, 154 IP, a 30.2% K rate, and only FOUR homers allowed? I think he's going to have Super-2 status and we're gonna have to start paying this guy soon. I dabbled with an extension demand and it was ludicrous. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

CF Mike Gruver (.291/.332/.478, 20 HR, 119 wRC+, 3.3 WAR)

He heard me talking shit about his rookie year and he shut me up. He's looking like a stud. Some questions about the defense in CF, if I had to nitpick.

SS John Faiella (.313/.370/.485, 138 wRC+)

A September callup, Faiella only had 109 PA, but he was awesome. He may never hit a home run in our park, but he's already showing his great discipline, contact skills, speed, and defense.

Maybe this is the beginning of a good team?

JetsIn06 · 12-31-2023, 01:32 AM

Real quick before bed, let's see what this offseason will bring us in terms of transaction allowances:

FA roll (0-2): 0
Trade roll (0-2): 2

Carryover: +1 trade
Profit ($8M): +1 in each

That leaves us with:

45+ rated FA: 1
Trades: 3

Okay. This probably works for us. It's been helpful to get creative with trades, and we have a lot of depth to make that work. We're the #3 system in the league, with fourteen guys in the Top 115.

We're going to very tight on money if we want to make a profit this season. Looking at our budget for 1954, we're only set to bring in ~$6M or so. It's hard to say if ticket sales will be better; I'd have to assume so, but I think we need to act like they won't.

The big decision, really, is around OF Steve Gonzalez. He's entering his final year of team control and is estimated to get $7.3M. We have some good OF prospects here/coming, and as much as I've loved having this guy around, this is second year hovering around league average wRC+. A 4 WAR player in 1950, this year was just 1.4; with three trades available to us, I'm interested to see if we can get something for him.

Before we go down that path, let's look at our upcoming free agent departures. On top of the glut of below-average SP's that we signed/traded for last year (SP Mu'adh Nelson, Mike Meyers, Mat Elis), OF Luis Gomez is the one guy in his 20's that's set to leave. A minor-league FA signing way in our inaugural season, Gomez debuted at 21 in '47, and went on to have a very productive career with us. 97 HR over 3,261 PA's, for a wRC+ of 102.

Now back to OF Steve Gonzalez; no one is interested in a swap for him without adding something else. I do have a few 3B, Cortez de Santiago, Jose Luis, and Dave Magby. I wonder if we could add one of them with Gonzalez to get another SP prospect? Or maybe a more defensive-minded SS prospect at a higher level?

But Gonzalez isn't really adding any value in these deals, and I can get rid of his contract for free. We don't make a move, and we'll end up non-tendering him. OF Adam Broussard, our 11th-round pick in 1946, is also getting non-tendered. He made his fullt-ime debut in 1949, and went on to hit 36 HR with us in 1952. He fell off hard last year, and was demoted in the middle of the year.

One move we do make is a trade of SS Ciprian Popovici. Our fourth-round pick in 1947, Popovici debuted in 1948. He's never had a great bat (career 62 wRC+) but the glove has always been good enough to keep him around. He's entering his final year of control and due $3.2M. In return from New York, we get RP Gavin Carlberg, a lefty relief arm with six years of control, along with C Chris DePue, a solid defensive catcher who hasn't made his debut yet. The eye (6) could keep him afloat offensively.

FA: 1
Trades: 2

For shits and giggles, let's take a quick look at what SP Joey Parrish would want for an extension; it depends on the years offered obviously, but somewhere between $35-$40M per year is what he's looking for. We won't be doing that, and I guess we already need to be considering the thought of trading Parrish away in a year or two. We tender him a $4M contract for his first time through arbitration, and dread and that thought of what years 4 and 5 look like.

The final guy we look at is SP James LaSpina. He started off with a couple decent years, and I thought he was going to end up as a solid rotation piece for us. But in recent years he's really fallen off. Last year, he led the league in walks and home runs allowed, earning him a 6.78 ERA. He'll be non-tendered.

It's award season, and while our guys have won multi-position awards like the Gold Glove or Golden Bat (our version of the Silver Slugger), SP Joey Parrish is our first major award winner. He wins the 1953 Pitcher of the Year Award. Over 27 starts, he posted a 2.16 ERA with 181 K's in 154 IP. He only allowed four home runs, and led all pitchers in WAR with 6.6 despite missing a month of the season.

Free agency opens, and we have one player who made starts for us last year; Joey Parrish. We're going to have to piece this thing together with bubble gum and duct tape.

With the reductions we made from the trade and non-tendering Gonzalez, our budget situation has improved dramatically. Our budget shows a potential $50M surplus. The one FA add we have desperately needs to go to pitching, and we should have some money, but I don't want to make a Seth White mistake again.

SP Guillermo Cuellar looks like a good fit. He's only 28, and has the best swing and miss stuff among the pitchers available. He wants $27M a year though, and if I'm going to give out a big deal, it should just go to Parrish? Hmm.

Let's just be honest; I can't afford either of these guys. We move towards the bottom of the barrel, and in what may be a grave mistake, look to make an offer to international free ageny C Yasutaka Yamashiro. He's got the captain personality that we need, and is an elite defensive catcher (7) with a great eye (7). He's only 27, and isn't super expensive at $7M. He does want a five-year deal though, so we'll try to negotiate that down a bit.

It takes three weeks, but we finally roll the number we need to make him an offer. We make him a 3yr/$18M offer with a 4th team option year at $8M/$2M buyout.

Cuellar signs with Detroit, a 5yr/$100M deal.

We turn our attention to the trade market while we wait on Yamashiro. SP Jason Bowen of New Orleans is on the trade block. He's a LHP; a 55-rated 35-year-old on the final year of his deal. He's been solid and consistent; despite being listed as "fragile" he's made 32+ starts every year since 1947. He's got a career 3.32 ERA with great stuff, movement, and control ratings (6).

He's due $20M this year, and we could get him for a bag of baseballs if we took on the whole thing. We ask them to eat 25%, and we send them a catcher we've never mentioned here, a 15th-round pick from our 1950 class.

FA: 1
Trades: 1

It takes until Christmas Ever, but C Yasutaka Yamashiro signs with us.

FA: 0
Trades: 1

We'll hold on to this trade into the season. Maybe we'll be good and need reinforcements. Maybe we'll be horrible and be looking to trade a guy away. We'll see.

In the international amateur market, we make a big offer to Brazilian 3B Carlito Lynce, an 18-year old with elite contact (8) and power (7). The eye is great too, but he's all bat. The arm is good enough for 3B but he likely ends up moving across the field.

We get to opening day, and our system is now ranked #2 overall, with twelve players in the Top 100.

JetsIn06 · 12-31-2023, 06:09 PM

The 1954 Portland Rosebuds

This is our 9th season. Last year was our best yet, but we still have so far to go. Can we finish with a winning record for the first time? The pitching is certainly suspect but we've got arguably the best pitcher in baseball leading the charge. He starts off opening day with a gem, a seven-inning masterpiece with just 3 hits allowed, no runs, and 10 K's.

April: 9-15
May: 15-14

We get a no-hitter in May from SP Jason Bowen; he's been good but not spectacular outside of that game, but the big issue is the home runs allowed. He's on pace for 37 allowed; his career high is 21.

Amateur Draft

We pick 8th this year, moving up from 9th in the draft. It's not much, but I think this is the first time we've ever moved up in the draft. I'm hoping for a stud pitcher, and the first seven picks in the draft are bats. There's a clear pick for us at #8; SP Jimmy Letter, an 18-year-old southpaw out of New York state. He's 6'6", with a great skills profile (7/6/6). He has an elite curveball and splitter with a solid sinker and cutter to go with it. He's working on a changeup too, but it's not nearly as good as the other pitches.

In the 2nd round, we take SS Adam Hinshaw, a JuCo Freshman who's an elite defender. The 19-year-old has some decent gap power, but also has some swing and miss. This is purely a defensive play with some hope that his bat can develop a bit further than we think.

SS Joe Johnson is our third-round pick, who's another elite defender, but out of the college ranks from the University of Virginia. He has an elite ability to avoid strikeouts, but no power whatsoever.

June: 15-13
July: 10-15

Trade Deadline

Nearing the deadline, we're 47-57 and 16GB. SP Joey Parrish was out for about a month, but our rotation is actually doing decently well. We have the lowest batting average against at .240 as a staff, but giving up a lot of runs. But we do have a trade available to us, and we're going to use it:

We send SP Jason Bowen and CL Corey Morris, who are 36 and 34 respectively and in their contract year, along with SS Rich Plumb, a 24-year-old very good defender, to the Philadelphia Patriots, who are chasing 1st place, six games back. In return, they send us SP Mario Moreno, a 27-year-old with three years left on an early extension he signed. We'll owe him around $13M each year for that time.

FA: 0
Trades: 0

In August, we go 16-13, but we're really struggling to keep SS John Faiella on the field. The #45 prospect has played really well, but he's only played in 79 games as he keeps getting hurt.

Final Stretch

We call up RP Sean Russell on September 1st, an 18th-round pick from the 1951 draft. he has blossomed into an elite arm (6/7/6), with four great pitches, one of which is a devastating splitter. In AAA this year, he pitched 47 innings with a 1.90 ERA.

While a strong September could have seen us finish with a winning record, we struggle to close out strong, going 10-17 in September. We finish with a 75-87 record, one win short of last years performance. It's a 7th place spot, with the Philadelphia Patriots once again winning the pennant (9 in the last 12 seasons) in our Federal League.

Playoffs

Our expansion mates, the California Seals, have clearly done a little bit of a better job than us as they take their first Columbia League pennant with a 93-69 record; but the underdog Seals and the Philadelphia empire go back and forth, and the favorites come out on top, winning their 6th World Series championship.

With nobody notable leaving in FA, we'll take a deeper look at our roster in the next post. See you in the offseason.

JetsIn06 · 12-31-2023, 10:30 PM

1954-1955 Offseason

FA roll (0-2): 0
Trade roll (0-2): 0

Carryover: 0
Profit ($31M): +1 in each
Worst record penalty: N/A

Total:

45+ rated FA: 1
Trades: 1

Unlucky.

I'm considering doing something drastic. SP Joey Parrish has three years of control left, and I'd like to get as much value out of him as possible before he gets crazy expensive.

We go back and forth with a couple of teams, but things start to get real when we talk to the New York Knights. It's a monster of a deal, with ten players exchanging teams.

We'd send four players; SP Joey Parrish, along with 3B Cortez de Santiago (#34 prospect), 1B Oscar Zavala (#61 prospect), and RP Larry Burchfield (a 40-rated former 9th-round pick).

In return, we'd get SP Jason Fuchs (50-rated SP with two years of control left), SP Chris Benka (#43 prospect), 1B Bill Robbe (#9 prospect), LF Jim Clatt (#20 prospect), RP Gary Battist (50-rated reliever with six years of control) and RP David Baker (50-rated reliever with four years of control).

It's a pretty wild deal, and obviously I'm sending the best player. However; Parrish only has three years left, and he's about to get very expensive. This season was strong, but the walks were up, the home runs were up, and the strikeouts were down. de Santiago keeps getting positive rankings but has been struggling in the minors, and the ratings have taken a dip recently. I liek Zavala but would be getting a much better 1B back.

LF Jim Clatt hit 40 HR in AAA last year, and can play a decent defense. All in all, I think this makes my team much deeper, and gives me a stud SP prospect who should be up in the next year or two in Benka, and a current rotation piece in Fuchs.

It stings, but I think it's the right move. We do it.

FA: 1
Trades: 0

Two of our players get Rookie of the Year votes; SS John Faiella and C Yasutaka Yamashiro. Our rookie catcher struggled to a .200 average, but hit 10 HR and walked enough to get his OBP up to .308, but defensively he was great, and finished the year with 3.3 WAR.

Acquired at the trade deadling, SP Mario Moreno finished third in Pitcher of the Year voting. He made 12 starts for us with a 3.69 ERA.

Free agency begins, but before we do anything, let's take a holistic look at the roster after our big trade:

C: RHB Yasutaka Yamashiro, 28 (4/6/7)
1B: RHB Bill Robbe, 25 (7/7/6)
2B: LHB Bill Marek, 28 (5/5/5)
3B: RHB Bobby Camacho, 24 (5/4/6)
SS: RHB John Faiella, 24 (7/3/6)
LF: LHB Nick Henriksen, 24 (6/6/5)
CF: LHB Jim Clatt, 25 (5/7/6)
RF: LHB Mike Gruver, 25 (6/6/5)
DH: RHB Guillermo Rodriguez, 24 (8/7/7)

This lineup should be really good, with plenty of power, on-base ability, and contact. The outfield defense is not where I want it to be, but I do need to get all of these guys in somehow. Clatt should not be in CF, but the power upside is huge.

OF Tony Serna is a RHB who should play against LHP. He's 24 with a 5/6/7 skill profile. OF Mike DeWeese is another option, just 25 years old. OF John Hollis is a switch hitter, 24 years old with a 6/4/4 profile. LHB 1B Bryant Hammock is a power bat with a nice profile as well. There's a lot of talent here.

On the pitching side:

SP1: RHP Mario Moreno, 27 (5/7/6)
SP2: RHP Jason Fuchs, 27 (5/5/6)
SP3: ?
SP4: RHP Brian Musto, 28 (5/5/6)
SP5: LHP Yukiharu Miyamoto, 31 (5/5/5)

Obviously, we're missing the ace here. We're missing the swing and miss guy. In an ideal world, Moreno is a #2, Fuchs is a #3, and we have an ace. But I still think moving Parrish was the right decision that will pay off for us.

We have a FA move and we have a budget to do something helpful. Clearly, I don't think adding offense is the right move. Let's go find an arm.

SP Nick Moody is our target. He'll be 33 next year, but has been hugely consistent; labeled as an "Iron Man," he's made 31+ starts every year for a decade. He's also got great stuff, striking out 24% of batters. He wants a good amount of money ($25M) but doesn't want a super long-term deal (5 years).

Our first number generator roll doesn't do it for us. We need a six or higher; we try again in week 2 but we get a five. But in week 3, it works out, and we make an offer. We also offer an opt-out after year three to sweeten the pot for him. He signs with us quickly, and we pencil him in as the ace for the next few years.

FA: 0
Trades: 0

We'll leave it at that, but when the trade deadline comes, don't forget that I have the ability to go beyond these moves at a 2x penalty; we'll revisit that when we get there.

JetsIn06 · 01-01-2024, 01:06 AM

The 1955 Portland Rosebuds

In the first week, SS John Faiella ruptures his achilles tendon, and he's out for 3-4 months. Interestingly, there was a version of the Parrish/New York trade that included Faiella instead of de Santiago. I really hope Faiella can put the injury proneness behind him, at some point, but it's getting very annoying.

April: 13-12
May: 12-17

Amateur Draft

We pick 7th, and we're looking to continue to beef up our #1 ranked farm system, but we also need some results at the major league level quickly. SP Dan D'Amico goes first overall, a college arm with the best stuff in the draft. It's the type of player that would be ideal for us, and when our selection comes, SP Adam Dunshee is there, a 22-year-old senior out of Indiana State. He's got a 6/7/6 skill profile, so the stuff is there to get swing and miss and he should be on the fast track to the majors.

With our 2nd pick, we select RP Armando Maldonado, a 70-rated reliever out of Sacramento State. Again, we're thinking about fast-tracking this guy to the majors to have an elite bullpen arm as early as September.

In the 3rd, we take SS Chris Knight, a quick defender with lots of range and strong contact ability.

June: 17-11
July: 11-14

We have an incredible June, going 17-11 but follow it up with a poor July. We won't mortgage the future by making any additional moves, but we still have something to play for; if we can get to a winning record, our transaction allowance roll bumps up from 0-2 to 0-3.

Final Stretch

August: 11-17
September: 13-14

August is absolutely brutal and kills most of whatever shot we had to finish with a winning record. But as a whole, there are so many good things to say about this team. The offense is firing on all cylinders for a young team, and they're going to get better. We have nine players with a wRC+ above 90, and two more above 80. OF Jim Clatt led the league in homers with 45. DH Guillermo Rofriguez is an elite bat, slashing .297/.377/.521 with 35 HR. OF Jon Oviedo, our third-overall pick in the 1951 draft, debuted strongly, slashing .312/.353/.750 in limited action (17 PA). The pitching still needs work, but it's deeper than it's been in years. SP Chris Rodriguez is the #7 prospect in baseball and is in AA. SP Adam Dunshee is the #20 prospect and is in AA. Chris Benka is the #35 prospect and is in AAA. Their coming.

Things are looking up. I think next year is when things really click for us across the whole team.

Playoffs

The New Orleans Kingfish win the Federal League pennant with 97 wins, and will face off against the Philadelphia Brewers of the Columbia League in the World Series. They were a juggernaut when we first started this thing back in the mid-1940's, but haven't won the pennant since 1947. And they come out on top in '55, winning in six games.

We finish the year with a 77-85 record, and finish in 7th place.

JetsIn06 · 01-01-2024, 02:03 PM

The 1955-1956 Offseason

So the big deal last year was moving SP Joey Parrish and a couple of prospects for a bunch of young talent. I think it made sense, still, but it does hurt to see that Parrish went on to have the most complete season of his career, starting 32 games and striking out 274 hitters, most in the league, with a 2.96 ERA.

With the new Top Prospects report out, we stay in the #1 spot overall, and have ten players in the Top 76. Five of our top six prospects are pitchers, which is really flipping the script from what we're used to. But right now, that's perfect. The talent offensively is here, and now we need to supplement that with great arms.

2B Bill Marek is the only FA departure. He's spent all of his major-league career here after picking him up in a trade back in 1949:

Quote:

And that's exactly what we do; now seems like a good a time as ever to cash in on CL John Delmer, who's tossed 52 innings with a 1.90 ERA. He's entering his expensive years in arbitration and estimated to earn over $7M next year. We package him with LF Matt Smith, who had a good year with us in 1947 but has fallen off and is struggling with a 68 wRC+ this year.

In return, we get 2B Bill Marek, a 23-year-old who was drafted last year in the second round by the Cleveland Buckeyes. He's an elite defender at 2B and can play SS well also. The bat should work as well, and it's always nice to have a left-handed bat up the middle in the infield. We also add two relievers from the minors, both left-handed arms.

The glove was great at second, with a couple seasons of 10+ ZR. The bat was okay, finishing with slash line of .245/.311/.378 and a 89 wRC+. He averaged 3 WAR per season. This last year was rough, dropping to a career low 65 wRC+.

We have a ten-man arbitration class, with only one player entering their final season and no one due more than a projected $5M.

Let's see what we're working with:

FA roll (0-2): 2
Trade roll (0-2): 0

Carryover from last season: 0
Profit ($10.3M): +1 to both
Worst record penalty: N/A

Total:

45+ rated FA: 3
Trades: 1

This looks great, but with a few players going from minimum salary to their first year, we're projected to be over-budget by $2.5M this year. The FA allowance certainly doesn't help that. The likely outcome here is that we use our ability to do a 2-for-1 swap, and move two of the FA allowances to become one trade. We'll see.

C Jesse Brinkman is going to be the first casualty of this need to dump salary. He was a 2nd-round pick back in 1946, and is reaching arbitration for the first time. He's been a backup, and I'm going to re-allocate this $1.1M he's due. It's not much, but we're not missing out on much without him. UTIL Rich Black is another. Our first pick ever in 1946, he's set to make $2M, but he's been injured often. I loved the versatility he brought. Here's what we said when we picked these two guys almost a decade ago:

Quote:

When we get to our pick, there are a couple interesting names. Rafael Edwards and Jonathan Firmin are both college outfielders who look pretty good, but right up there with them is SS Rich Black, a 17-year-old RHB who has the range and arm for SS and our scout rates as a 60. He's pretty much solid all-around, but doesn't have a distinct stand-out tool. The bat and eye are both a 6, while power is a 5. But he can play all over the field and I love that.

C Jesse Brinkmann was at least a thought with our first pick, and he's still there in the second, so we take him next. He's also 17, and a switch-hitter. He's definitely a bat-first catcher, but the defense should play.

We cut bait on a a bunch of relievers as well; nothing too exciting there, but it should save us close to $8M. With the young talent coming, we should have plenty of spots for arms now. By the end of going through this, seven players will be getting non-tendered.

With award season arriving, we're thrilled to announce that OF Jim Clatt has won the Rookie of the Year Award unanimously. A key piece of the return in the Parrish trade, Clatt hit .296/.355/.583 with 45 homers and a 157 wRC+, contributing 5.2 WAR. He also finished 3rd in the MVP voting.

Free Agency

We're making a few changes; every now and then I'll go in and adjust some settings, sort of like a new CBA. Some quick notes:

1. We're instituting a new minimum buyout amount, raising it from 10% to 25%.
2. Super-2 status is going from the top 22% of players to the top 25% of players.
3. Minimum player salary goes from $580K to $625K.
4. At some point in the early 1960's, we're going to expand. Probably another four teams, so there will be twelve in each subleague across two divisions of six. Probably. I'm saying early 1960's because I may forget and don't want to give a hard date.

We only have about $9.5M to work with. A relief arm, specifically a high-leverage LHP would be ideal; a SP could work too, but I'm not sure that's going to come from FA. On the offensive side, 3B is where we're struggling, but we have 22-year-old 3B Jose Luis, our #53 prospect, coming soon; he played in A and AA this year and raked (.372/.393/.469 in AA). He'll start the year in AAA most likely. 3B Dave Magby is another guy who will be close soon.

So we'll hang tight on making any major trades, and I'm not super high on the pitchers available, so here's the plan; we trade two of our FA allowances to get an extra trade. That gives us:

FA: 1
Trades: 2

We'll hopefully have a need to buy another piece or two if we're doing well mid-season, and we'll most likely let the FA add roll over into next season.

JetsIn06 · 01-01-2024, 10:55 PM

The 1956 Portland Rosebuds

A few days before Opening Day, as we were in the process of cutting down our roster, we end up making a small deal, sending RP Joel Burbach, a RHP with no options left who we picked up in the Rule-5 Draft back in December, to Cleveland. In return, we get three high stuff, low control relievers back. All of them have options, so it adds some flexibility for us.

FA: 1
Trades: 1

Within the first two weeks, SS John Faiella goes down for the year with a torn PCL in his knee. So frustrating that this guy hasn't even played half a season with us in his four years in the majors.

But it doesn't matter. Our team is rolling. Well; comparatively speaking. Through May 20th, we're 26-19. I think this is the first time I've ever seen us have a winning record. And the reinforcements are coming. We start with #41 prospect SP Chris Benka, who was part of the SP Joey Parrish return. He's getting the call today.

OF Mike Gruver goes down for a couple weeks, and 3B Dave Magby, the #109 prospect in the league, is up next. He can play all over the field, and will likely stay up when Gruver comes back.

Amateur Draft

We pick 10th this year, and go with SS Jonathan Tandy, a left-handed hitter out of college. He's an elite defensive talent with a ton of offensive potential to go with it. In the 2nd round, we go with RP Jeff Woodard, who has no chance of being anything but a reliever. However, the southpaw has the most elite stuff in the draft, with great movement and control as well. In the 3rd, we go with SS/OF Kellen Almond. He's not a huge offensive threat, but he's incredibly versatile on defense and can play pretty much any position at a very high level.

On June 16th, we're 42-28, and bring up another top pitching prospect, #8 ranked SP Chris Rodriguez. We picked him up in the 1952 draft at 3rd overall.

April: 17-10
May: 16-13
June: 15-13

We get some bad news in the final week of June, with OF Jim Clatt, going down for seven weeks with a sprained thumb. But we've got a solid OF in John Hollis ready to come up. The depth right now is fantastic.

SP Chris Rodriguez is off to a great start, and while I don't see us able or even willing to do this a ton, I want to lock him up to a long-term deal early. It's a ten-year deal, the last two of which are team options. It's a $106M deal if it goes the whole ten years. This uses up our final FA allowance.

FA: 0
Trades: 1

SP Chris Benka, on the other hand, is struggling, and while I have no doubt he'll be great, we send him back to AAA and call up our other top prospect, #9 ranked SP Adam Dunshee. It's a strong debut, for him. 5 IP, 1 BB, 6 K's.

Trade Deadline

On July 28th, we're 62-43 and two games out. Detroit is in 1st, Philadelphia is a game behind them, and we're game behind Philly, with St. Louis another two games back behind us. Those are the four teams that will be fighting down the stretch unless there's some miracle. We need to make a move.

It doesn't need to be a huge one. OF Jim Clatt will be back in two weeks. There's a glut of pitching depth with more relief arms ready, waiting in AAA. Shortstop, the spot of now-and-always-injured SS John Faiella, is likely the biggest need, and there's an option out there; SS Zach DiMeo.

From a struggling New Orleans team, DiMeo is a great clubhouse presence, a great defender, and has a career 110 wRC+. He's under contract for the next four years, and is a little bit expensive after this season. We have New Orleans cover 50% of the deal, and we send them 21-year-old SP Nick Warfel, a former 4th overall pick and the #20 prospect in the game who hasn't made his debut yet, along with IF Bobby Camacho, who has filled in really well across all of the infield positions over the last few years. He's got four years left of contract, so this wasn't a slam dunk decision. But DiMeo is a better defender at SS, and stat-wise has performed a little bit better. Right now, he's a better fit for us.

FA: 0
Trades: 0

July: 14-11

Final Stretch

We lose four games in a row to finish August. I almost pulled the trigger on another trade for two elite bullpen arms, which would have pushed us into a negative trade allowance, but now 6GB I don't think it makes as much sense to mortgage the future like that on rentals.

We need a big August to gain some ground, and we take two out of three from 1st place Detroit to start the month. But when we face 2nd place Philadelphia, we lose two of three, and on August 13th we're back to 6GB.

On August 20th, OF Jim Clatt finished his rehab (quickly) and joins the team after a three-game sweep of the Vancouver Mounties. We're now in 2nd place, three games behind Detroit.

But the end of August is devastating; we lose two games against Detroit, and now we're in 3rd place and 7GB. It's going to take a miracle to come back, and we're pulling out everything we've got.

3B Jose Luis, our #43 prospect, is an elite contact hitter with blazing speed. It's the one true weakness of this club. Luis hasn't played above AA, but he's getting the call. He'll pinch run, pinch hit, and do whatever else we need of him.

We get to the final series of the season, three games against the New Orleans Kingfish. And we're three games back, along with the Philadelphia Patriots, behind Detroit, who face New York for the final series.

We win the first game, and Detroit loses, keeping us alive. And while Detroit loses the next one, we can't manage a win. We're eliminated, and it's a shame because Detroit ended the season getting swept.

We finish 92-70, tied for 2nd place.

Playoffs

It's a wild finish to the season in general, with Detroit finishing in 1st and three teams (Philadelphia, New Orleans, and ourselves) all tied for 2nd with a 92-70 record. In the Columbia League, the Brooklyn Originals win the pennant after a 95-67 season.

Detroit has been to the playoffs once, all the way back in 1938, but they have never won a World Series in their entire existence (they entered the league in the first round of expansion in 1917). Brooklyn is looking to win again after taking home the title in 1953, and are going for their 7th World Series victory in their history.

Detroit wins in five games, and bring home their first World Series trophy.

For us, it's our first winning season. It was so close we could taste it. But the vast majority of our team is coming back next year. We didn't completely mortage our future to get here, and some additions we made will be here for the new few years. We called up so many players and had so many good performances.

We're ready to go at this again. See you in the offseason.

JetsIn06 · 01-02-2024, 12:14 AM

The 1956-57 Offseason

It's time for bed, but let's get the random number rolls out of the way so we know what kind of options we have. This is our first year without a losing record, so instead of rolling 0-2, we'll roll 0-3:

FA roll (0-3): 2
Trade roll (0-3): 3

Carryover from last season: 0
Profit ($28M): +1 to both
Worst record penalty: N/A

Total:

45+ rated FA: 3
Trades: 4

I love to see it. And we're going to need it, I think, because our team is getting significantly more expensive and I'd love to at least explore the idea of locking up a bat to a long-term deal, which means we may need to explore moving an expensive piece like SP Nick Moody ($25M) or SP Mario Moreno ($13.8M). We also have a team option on C Yasutaka Yamashiro ($8M). He's a captain on our team, and is incredibly good defensively with a great eye at the plate. We accept it, and we'll do whatever we need to do otherwise to make it work, financially.

Just two relievers are pending FA, and we'll let them walk with the massive depth we have. Eight players are in our arbitration class, and the big jump is from DH Guillermo Rodriguez, who had an incredible season (.272/.355/.520, 39 HR) and is now estimated to make $11.8M this upcoming season.

Extension news: 3B Dave Magby is listed as the #80 prospect heading into the offseason. He had 146 PA last year, and he struggled a bit in his limited time, slashing .187/.228/.381. But his defensive versatility is amazing, and we like his overall offensive profile a lot (5/6/6). We offer him a deal to buy out his arbitration years and the first of his FA seasons; it's a team-friendly deal ($15M guaranteed over five years, with two ~$5M team options for another two seasons), but he'll still be able to enter FA at age 31 and guarantees himself a bunch of money.

OF Tony Serna also gets an offer; he's got two years of service, and had a great year in 1956, slashing .272/.346/.462 with 25 HR. It's a six-year offer, which will buy out two of his FA years. The last two years are team options, and if we do pick those up, the deal will total six years and $47.5M.

SP Nick Moody, who we signed prior to 1955 to a big FA deal, wins the 1956 Pitcher of the Year Award. He made 33 starts, going 225 innings with a 3.08 ERA, 235 Ks, and just 7 HR allowed, contributing 7 WAR. He has an opt-out after this upcoming season.

Magby and Serna both sign their extensions, which each use up one of our choice of allowances. I don't have any money to add new players, so we'll take both from our FA allowance and keep the flexibility that the trades allow.

45+ rated FA: 1
Trades: 4

And we're going to use one of those trade allowances now. OF Mike Gruver is in his final year of team control, and will earn around $6M this upcoming season. We're sending him to Pittsburgh along with SP Amir Lewis, a 2nd-round pick from the 1953 draft, and getting a return headlined by 3B Ruben Perez. He hasn't hit a full year of service time, so we have six years of control with him. He's got a nice bat profile (5/6/6) and plays excellent defense at the hot corner. We also take advantage of their roster crunch by bringing back three decent relievers who need to be added to the 40-man, all who have six years of control left. Pittsburgh sends $5M as well.

Gruver was great in his time here. We took him in the 2nd round back in 1947, and after making a strong debut in limited time in 1951, he struggled in '52 but had an amazing year in 1953, hitting .291 with 20 HR. In total, he slashed .268/.305/.430 in just under 3000 PA's with us.

45+ rated FA: 1
Trades: 3

Free Agency

When Free Agency begins, we're estimated to finish about $7M in the green, but due to cash received in the Gruver deal and our starting balance, our budget is technically $17M. Ticket prices are going up a bit this year, and maybe we can even pull in some extra revenue from the playoffs. I'd prefer to make money, but the $17M figure is the hard limit if we want to go beyond the $7M we're predicted to finish with.

We have two SP's, Nick Moody and Mario Moreno, who could be entering the final years of their time here. Moody has an opt-out after this year, and Moreno's contract expires, so we're going to have to think about moving at least one of them. Moody is due $25M this year, and Moreno is due $13.8M.

Well, we end up going in a different direction. SP Joey Parrish, who I was so sad to trade away, is on the trade block; he's due $30M and in the final year of his deal, and New York had a horrible year last year.

Interestingly, SP Jason Fuchs, who we received in that deal, is about to make $9M for the next two seasons; and after struggling a bit in 1956, we were already looking into moving him. We negotiate a deal with New York to send Fuchs back to New York, with two solid OF prospects, Kevin Mulhern (55 POT) and Monfre Imaginrio (50 POT, #51 prospect). Neither are elite in CF which is really what I need, and moving Fuchs contract is beneficial for this year and next and will help us absorb the $30M owed to Parrish. They'll pay for 10% of his deal, and also send RP Brian Yocum, a 55-rated former 2nd-round pick who's nothing too special.

45+ rated FA: 1
Trades: 2

We find a buyer for SP Mario Moreno, who's in his final year, and package SS John Faiella who can never stay on the field for SP Tom Brown, a 60-rated SP with two years of service. He's a RHP with an elite changeup and great stuff. We also get 3B Justin Chandler, who adds a power/speed option to our lineup. We've got some options at the corner now, but him and 3B Ruben Perez, who we picked up earlier this offseason, both have options. Chandler is definitely a better option I think, so Perez may start the year in AAA. RP Miguel Perez also joins our squad; he's 23 and in AA, but could be an elite reliever as our scout sees him as an 80.

45+ rated FA: 1
Trades: 1

We're holding here. We'll keep these moves in our back pocket to make a splash at the deadline or extend one of our young guys.

JetsIn06 · 01-02-2024, 04:03 PM

The 1957 Portland Rosebuds

We start off decently well, enough to put us in a tie for 3rd place and just 3GB at the end of May; but I was expecting to be a little bit better. SP Joey Parrish is off to a slow start, with a 4.90 ERA after 10 starts. Offensively, we're clicking; we're 2nd in runs scored, and 1st in home runs with 8, and are scoring 4.9 R/G. On the prevention side, we're doing okay, but I thought we'd be really good. We're allowing 4.3 R/G at the moment, but we have the most strikeouts in the league so hopefully that number drops a bit.

April: 16-12
May: 17-12

Amateur Draft

We pick 15th, and go with prep right-handed SP Cameron Spann out of Maryland. He's got a very interesting profile (8/3/8), with crazy high stuff and control but a tendency to give up a lot of loud contact. That could play well in our park but there's obviously a limit on what we can tolerate. The crazy high stuff is always going to interest me and the numbers he put up in high school are just bonkers (240 K over 95 IP).

We go with another prep arm in the 2nd round with right-handed SP Jerry Bridges. He's a bit more balanced (6/6/6) but has four great pitches and the makeup is second-to-none.

Canadian SP Scott Lent, another high-school right-handed is our pick in the 3rd round. He's got elite stuff but low control (8/5/4), but has a dominant changeup which should help neutralize left-handed hitters.

As June comes to a close, we call up 3B Jose Luis, who played in two games and then broke his kneecap. But we weather the storm, and on July 10th, we surge ahead after a 9-1 stretch and take 1st place from Detroit.

Trade Deadline

On July 27th, we have a one-game lead over Detroit. We have a trade available to us, and I think we're going to use it. A great bullpen piece always feels like a good option, but we also could really use some speed. We move a minor-league relief arm for OF Scott Morrissey, a contact and speed oriented RHB who's suited for a corner spot in the outfield.

FA: 1
Trades: 0

As we head into the final stretch, we're 67-43 and in 1st place.

June: 17-10
July: 17-9

Final Stretch

September 11, 12, 13. Home vs Detroit. Tied for first place. This is a huge series that will propel the winner into 1st place with twelve games remaining.

SP Joey Parrish takes the ball in the opener and hurls a masterpiece, a 4-hit, no run, 8-inning gem with 7 Ks over 92 pitches. We only muster three hits and two runs, both of which score in the 1st. But it's enough.

SP Chris Rodriguez is up next, but even with as good as he's been this year (2.88 ERA) he struggles to tame Detroit. The offense doesn't help. We lose 7-0.

SP Nick Moody pitchers in the rubber match, and it's a struggle for him too. We lose 11-3, and with twelve games to go we're now one game back.

But Detroit gets swept in their next series against St. Louis, and while we're on the verge of the same vs Vancouver, we squeak out a 6-4 win in the third game. Tied again! And then we sweep Pittsburgh and are up a game with six to go, all on the road.

We lose. Detroit wins. Tied again. But the next day sees us get back into 1st. What a ride this is. We head into the FINAL series of the season against the Philadelphia Patriots, and we're up by one game.

We both lose the first game. Still up by one. And SP Joey Parrish takes the ball for game two. He struggles, we go down 4-0 early, and then come back to tie it in the 8th inning on a pinch-hit, two-run homer by 3B Ruben Perez! And then heartbreak; in the 11th inning, Philadelphia scores, and we lose the game. But so did Detroit. With one game left to go, we're up by one. A win, and we're in.

SP Tom Brown, who just came back from injury, takes the ball for us; it's not perfect, and despite just one strikeout, he gives up no runs. The bullpen keeps it scoreless. 1B Nick Henriksen, who hit 24 HRs this season for us, launches one deep over the fence in the 6th inning, a two-run bomb. They're the only runs of the game.

August: 18-10
September: 11-13

We win the pennant with a record of 96-66. World Series next.

JetsIn06 · 01-02-2024, 09:27 PM

The 1957 World Series

While our Federal League race was close, it was actually even closer in the Columbia League, and it was the Chicago Packers who finished the year on top with a 93-70 record after going to a Game 163 vs the Baltimore Atlantics. We were so wrapped in our own race that I missed how it went down; the one-game playoff went SIXTEEN INNINGS.

Baltimore took the lead in the top of the 9th, only to see Chicago come back and tie, and then the same thing happened in the 13th. In the 16th, Chicago put across a run to win the game. What an absolutely wild finish.

To give some comparisons on our two teams, we scored 4.9 runs per game and allowed 3.9 runs per game. Chicago led their league in offense as well with 4.8, but the prevention wasn't at the same elite level, giving up 4.3, 5th in their league.

And looking at some other stats, it makes sense. Offensively, they were 1st in every major category. But their starters ERA was 4.08, and finished 8th in their league in strikeouts.

Meanwhile, here in Portland we only finished 1st in the power categories, like Slugging % and home runs. On the pitching side, we were in the middle of the pack in ERA but finished 2nd in strikeouts and 2nd in fewest HR allowed. Our defense is also considerably stronger.

A quick note: 3B Justin Chandler has been out for the majority of the year, getting hurt after just 30 games. He's due to return by Game 3. He'll be rusty, but his bat and speed could be very helpful for us.

Game 1

Joey Parrish takes the ball for us in Game 1. He started 31 games for us with a 2.98 ERA and 229 Ks. For Chicago, it's Ben Burns, a RHP who has a very low delivery that leads to a heavy, heavy split. LHB slash .256/.336/.458 against him. RHB? .196/.246/.291. We'll need to stack the deck with LHB as much as possible, but we only have two lefty bats and two switch hitters, one of which is the backup catcher.

It's a horror start for us. Parrish is wild, and a run comes in Chicago's half of the 1st after a walk and a few hits. But the 2nd inning is worse; another couple of walks, a triple, and a home run break the game wide open. We're down 5-0 before we even have a man on base. We try to get him to eat some innings but he's out after 2.2 IP as he gets some traffic on the bases. We get out of it, and it's still 5-0.

The bottom of the 5th ends with a Chicago runner getting thrown out at home, keeping the deficit to five runs. We have to wait all the way to the bottom of the 7th inning to get another runner on; but we string some things together and have 1st and 3rd with nobody out. But the next man strikes out. A sac fly brings the runner home, and that's the end of the threat.

We give up another run in the top of the 9th. We get two men in scoring position in the last frame, but no damage. We're down 1-0 now

Final line:

Code:

CHI: 6 | 12 | 0
POR: 2 | 7  | 1

Game 2

Chicago puts Matt Wood on the mound, who went 12-7 with a 3.09 ERA over 33 starts. Not a huge strikeout guy. For us, it's Nick Moody, our 35-year-old veteran who went 18-7 with a 3.85 ERA and 216 Ks over 189.1 IP.

No crazy splits with Wood, so we'll go with our normal lineup.

Unbelievably, by the 3rd inning, we're down 5-0 again. No huge homers, just a barrage of hits by Chicago. We're not taking advantage of Wood, who has four walks already through two innings.

In the 4th, Moody gives up a two-run shot, and it's 7-0. It doesn't get better We lose 10-0; what a way to start at home. We now have to go on the road for three games, and we need a miracle.

Final line:

Code:

CHI: 10 | 12 | 0
 POR: 0  | 4  | 0

Game 3

Chris Rodriguez has his work cut out for him. 13-3, 2.93 ERA, and 181 Ks over 32 starts was great, but this Chicago club is relentless.

Left-hander Blake Solitro goes for Chicago. He was a mid-season addition at the deadline, and has been dreadful. Across time in St. Louis and Chicago, he went 6-16 with a 6.62 ERA over 33 starts. We need to take advantage here. It's a big split, as he struggles heavily against right-handed hitters.

In the top of the 2nd, we load the bases to bring up arguably our best right-handed hitter, DH Guillermo Rodriguez. A wild pitch brings home a run, but Rodriguez strikes out. We're on the board though. In the top of the 5th, Rodriguez drives in a run on a deep double to center-field, and we're up 2-0.

We head into the 6th, and SP Chris Rodriguez has been great, giving up just 2 hits and has struck out 7 through 87 pitches. With the top of their order up, we go to the bullpen after he gets the #9 hitter out. The side is retired.

In the top of the 7th, DH Guillermo Rodriguez strikes again with a homer! We're up 3-0 now, but the heart of their order is up in the bottom of the inning. We try to mix and match but they battle, and they load the bases. We now have a left-handed pitcher facing a right-handed batter, and he needs to face this next better before we can take him out.

But we get the strikeout! A huge win, there. But the bases are still loaded with two outs. We bring in a RHP, our current acting closer Adam Dunshee out of the pen, and we get a flyout, keeping it 3-0.

We get to the 9th, and once again the heart of their order is up. Our closer is already in, and we'll let him keep going.

And Dunshee does it, closing out Game 3 to earn us the win. We're now down 2-1 with two more to play in Chicago.

Final line:

Code:

POR: 3 | 10 | 0
CHI: 0 | 3  | 0

Game 4

It's Tom Brown's turn. 31 starts for a record of 10-6, with an ERA of 4.00 flat. He's got good stuff, with 165 Ks over 157.1 IP. Another left-hander goes for Chicago; SP Gave Martinez. He split time between the rotation and then pen, but over 114 IP overall he had a 3.87 ERA, but just a 15.7 K%. This is another game I think we should be able to take.

We take an early lead; OF Dan Ingle drives in a run on a single in the top of the 2nd. The following inning, we have runners on 1st and 3rd with deadline acquisition and speedster Scott Morrissey up to bat, and he ropes a single into center, driving in another run. We're up 2-0! SS Zack DiMeo then hits one to the wall; it's a double, putting us up 3-0. A walk loads the bases, and then Dan Ingle gets up again, ripping a single into right. The inning ends, and it's now 5-0!

And in the 4th, the floodgates open. We score seven more runs, and now lead 12-0. The momentum is shifting!

In the 7th, we take out Brown when he's at just over 100 pitches. 6.1 IP, 9 Ks, 0 R. The rest of the game is pretty much a cakewalk. The series is now tied at 2-2.

Final line:

Code:

POR: 12 | 15 | 1
CHI: 0  | 7  | 0

Game 5

It's a rematch of Game 1, with Joey Parrish facing off against Ben Burns. It wasn't pretty for us last time, but Parrish is an elite pitcher. We struggled against the heavy split of Burns, as we don't have a ton of left-handed hitters on our team; but we'll use who we can and see if we can get this thing back to Portland with just one win needed.

Uh oh. Chicago has the bases loaded in the 1st with just one out. A sac fly scores the run, and then we get out of it, but Chicago takes a one-run lead.

And they add on in the 3rd. A three-run homer makes it 4-0.

In the 5th, Chicago loads the bases with one out, and has two left-handed hitters coming up. Parrish just isn't on right now, with 4 BBs and just 2 Ks. LHP Chris Benka comes in to limit the damage, and he gets a HUGE double play. We go into the 6th down 4-0.

3B/OF Jon Oviedo walks in the 6th with one out, and that brings Burns out of the game, thank god. We couldn't do anything against him.

In the 7th, 3B Justin Chandler, back from months away from the team, hits a home run to put us on the board. It's 4-1. But Chicago answers right back with a home run of their own. 5-1.

It stays that way. We head home with our backs against the wall.

Final line:

Code:

POR: 1 | 3 | 2
CHI: 5 | 7 | 1

Game 6

Another rematch, this time of Game 2. SP Nick Moody was horrible for us, but he's the rested arm right now and we'll have to lean on him to get this to Game 7.

Chicago hits a two-run bomb in the 2nd, and we're down 2-0 already. In the 3rd, we're able to get the first two men on at 2nd and 3rd base, with nobody out. AND DH GUILLERMO RODRIGUEZ GOES DEEP! We take the lead 3-2! OF Jim Clatt follows him up in the 4th, driving in a run, making it 4-2!

Moody walks a man to start the 6th, and with two LHB coming up we go to the bullpen for a lefty, and we get out of it without any damage. But we're right back in the thick of it in the 7th. We bring a right-handed reliever, Mark Evanow, but the first two men he faces get on, and Chicago now has the top of their lineup due up next; and Evanow get's the K! The next man up walks, which brings up 2B Willie Hernandez, their best hitter.

We bring in Blake Milner, a long-time starter for us that moved to the pen after 20 starts mid-season. He's got elite, elite stuff with a 30+ K%, but the movement and control are dwindling. We need a K here.

It's a fly ball to RF. The runner at 3rd tags, and now we're up 4-3. A grounder to 3B is next, and we're out of the inning.

But Milner's luck doesn't last long. Chicago gets men on 2nd and 3rd, and nobody's out. It's desperate times, and we bring out SP Chris Rodriguez. He's our projected starter for tomorrow, but we'll figure that out tomorrow, if there is one.

It's a strikeout.

The next batter grounds one to 1B, and our fielder throws home; but it's too late. The game is tied.

Runners on 1st and 3rd now, with one out.

It's a wild play. The batter rips a ball into the gap, scoring the runner from third. The runner on 1st tries to score, but is thrown out; then the batter tries to move to third on the throw home, and our catcher throws the ball into the outfield, allowing him to hit a little league home run and score on the error.

We're now down 6-4, and there may not be a tomorrow. Rodriguez finishes the inning with another strikeout, but it's too little to late. We go into the bottom of the 8th down by two.

Strike out. Fly out. Ground out. It's a one-two-three inning in the 8th for us, and it's followed by one for them in the top of the 9th. We head into the final half-inning down 6-4.

Justin Chandler is up first. IT'S A DOUBLE.

Dan Ingle is next. Fly out to LF. Runner stays.

Jim Clatt, a power threat, is up next. SINGLE!

We have runners on 1st and 3rd with one out.

Nick Henriksen is next. He has 24 HR on the year. One here would send Portland into an absolute frenzy...

IT'S A DOUBLE!!! BOTH RUNNERS SCORE AND THIS GAME. IS. TIED!!!

Henriksen moves up to 3rd on the throw and we're 90 feet away from forcing a Game 7.

Japanese catcher Yasutaka Yamashiro is due next. He's had a rough year, slashing .192/.294/.343 with a 30.9 K%. A strikeout is the absolute last thing we need right now. Henriksen is also slow as shit on 3rd. We go to the bench. Our trade deadline move wasn't to bring in a star, a huge offensive threat, or an elite bullpen arm. It was to bring in a guy who could run. Scott Morrissey is that guy. He takes over at 3B.

IF Joe Johnson is who we call on to take the lumber. He's got the lowest K% on our club. He's been bouncing back and forth between Portland and AAA over the last few seasons, slashing .271/.307/.349 in his short career.

Here we go.

Chicago is leaving in their reliever. He's tiring at 33 pitches.

The infield is in, and Johnson makes contact; but it's right at the second baseman. Morrissey freezes, and stays at third. There's now two outs.

The lineup turns over here, and the man we want at the plate walks up to it. DH Guillermo Rodriguez. He has two HR in this series so far, and 29 during the regular season. But they walk him.

3B Dave Magby is next. We signed him to a long-term deal because we wanted him around for moments just like this. He had a strong year with 4.8 WAR, slashing .243/.338/.491. Send us home, Dave.

But he doesn't. It's a fly out to right field, and we're going to extra innings.

We leave Chris Rodriguez out there, and he strikes out the leadoff man, but then disaster; a home run. He gets the next two guys out quickly, but we head into the bottom of the 10th down 7-6, and once again, we need some magic.

Tony Serna is first. He strikes out looking.

Now Zack DiMeo. He strikes out swinging.

We're down to our final out. It's Justin Chandler, who had just 78 AB in the regular season before going down with an injury. But he's not the hero, today. On an 0-2 count, he grounds out to shortstop.

Chicago wins the World Series. Our season is over.

Final line:

Code:

CHI: 7 | 8 | 0
CHI: 6 | 9 | 1

JetsIn06 · 01-02-2024, 11:29 PM

The 1957-58 Offseason

SP Nick Moody lets us know he's NOT opting out of his deal, and we'll owe him $25M a year for two more seasons.

We can now roll between 1-3 since we made the playoffs. Our transaction allowances for next season:

FA roll (1-3): 3
Trade roll (1-3): 2

Carryover from last season: +1 FA
Profit ($24M): +1 to both
Worst record penalty: N/A
Win World Series: N/A

Total:

45+ rated FA: 5
Trades: 3

With expected total expenses around $160M on revenues of $168, there's not much wiggle room here to make a profit and utilize those FA allowances. We'll certainly explore some trades, and our arbitration class is huge, with 15 players.

SP Joey Parrish is the lone pending free agent, as he's finally reached the requisite amount of service time. He's looking for an eight year, $337M deal, which we of course will not be able to offer. We'll tender him a qualifying offer, then re-connect in FA to see if his demands cool off at all.

Arbitration

Lots of first-year players, so most estimates are low, within the $1M-$3M range. We'll get to those. First, DH Guillermo Rodriguez is the big ticket player here, with a $19M estimate. To be fair, he deserves it. And $860K IAFA signing back in 1948, he's blossomed into one of the best and most consistent hitters in the league. He's played all but TWO games over the last four seasons, with 700+ PA in each. The 27-year-old has slashed .287/.368/.489, with a wRC+ of 134 for his career so far. Looking at OPS, his .858 mark puts him in the Top 25 players of all-time in our league. We'll come back to this.

C Yastuka Yamashiro is estimated to receive $12M. The defense is great, and he's produced 4 WAR on average despite a .211/.314/.356 triple slash in his time here. The K% is up over 30% which is concerning, for sure. But I think we're going to let him stay behind the plate again for the 1958 season and get him under contract for another season.

Everyone else is a relatively easy decision; some relievers who have been up and down between the majors and AAA who are now out of option are non-tendered to get some flexibility there, and 1B Bryant Hammock and 1B Bill Robbe are both non-tendered. Hammock is a lefty bat tha was a 4th-round pick in 1948, and he's a classic "Quad-A" guy who can hit for some power but never seems to make it click in the big leagues. Robbe is similar, just the right-handed version. He came back in the original SP Joey Parrish trade, when we sent him to New York. He was at one time the #9 prospect in baseball, so we were really hoping he would be a key piece in that return. He played decently in his first full season with us, with a 104 wRC+. But like Hammock, the power never ended up playing in the majors, and last year he got sent down and finished the year in AAA.

I take a look around the league for left-handed hitters with speed; that really seems to be where we fell apart in the playoffs. There was very little balance on our team. CF Jorge Gonzales of New Orleans is available; he stole 54 bases last year and can play a great outfield. No power, but I'd love to have this guy in my lineup. We're listening on SP Nick Moody, who at 35 with $50M left isn't exactly the greatest value for us; let's see if we can put something together.

We do. We send SP Nick Moody, the two aforementioned 1B that we were planning to non-tender, and a relief prospect. They'll send Gonzalez and cover a portion of his contract that will keep his highest contract year around $16M for us.

Moody signed with us as a free agent prior to the 1955 season. He was great overall, the model of consistency, with 97 starts over the three years he spent with us, with a league-leading 6.6 WAR and 225 IP in his 1956 campaign.

FA: 5
Trades: 2

So all of this brings us back to DH Guillermo Rodriguez. Do we get him on a one-year deal and understand he'll probably walk after 1959? Or do we trade him for young, controllable assets now, ones that can actually play the field.

With the Moody contract gone, let's actually go into free agency. I'd be okay covering part of Rodriguez's salary for a season if can get us a better return, and I won't be able to do that until we tender him a contract and officially enter the FA signing period.

Free Agency

We make a deal with Detroit, sending them DH Guillermo Rodriguez, SS prospect and defensive wizard Kellen Almond (unranked, our 55th prospect), and SP prospect Matt Shaffer (#348, our #21 prospect), and $14M to cover Rodriguez's salary.

The return is headlined by LF Jorge Zermeno, the one-time #3 prospect who just graduated off the list this season. He's a right-handed bat that can definitely play in the corner outfield, with massive power and a tremendous eye (both 7). The contact is a little iffy (5) and he has no speed or baserunning ability, but the power/eye combination could be huge. He has less than a year of service time, so he's under team control for the next six seasons.

Additionally, 2B Chris McGinnis comes over in the deal. He's the #327 prospect and #13 in Detroit's system. Our scout like him a bit more than that, and Detroit picked him with the 21st overall pick last summer. He can play 2B. 3B, and fill in at SS if needed, and the 6/5/6 bat profile works if he develops.

Finally, two relief arms who just hit arbitration come over in the deal as well. Each is a high stuff, low control arm. Neither is overly expensive, but these guys helped make the financials work and I'll have a couple spots in the bullpen open with some guys from last year moving back into the rotation.

FA: 5
Trades: 1

And we're going to take a risk here, signing newly acquired OF Jorge Zermeno to an eight-year, $50M extension. Again; great for us if he works out, but the soon-to-be 25-year-old is now set for life.

FA: 4
Trades: 1

Wheeling and dealing now. Two moves in one, here. OF John Hollis is 27, and has been back and forth between AAA and the majors, but we like him, he's durable, can play defense, and is a switch-hitter. He was our 4th round pick back in 1952 and has a 97 wRC+ over 567 PAs in the majors, spread out over a couple of seasons. He's a glue guy, as they say; or rather will be. We sign him to a very team friendly deal of $24M over six seasons; not bad for a guy who's been riding the bus in the minors.

But with a glut of OF, we then trade OF Jon Oviedo. He's been injured often, and has also been back and forth between the majors and AAA. We picked him 3rd overall back in 1951, but it has never really clicked here. He goes to the Philadelphia Patriots, who send us SP Nick Manessis in return. Manessis is 27 and has five years of control left. He's bounced back and forth between the pen, the rotation, and the minors. Our scout is in love with his changeup, and think the stuff will play.

FA: 3
Trades: 0

The best defensive catcher in the league is C Jamie Brown, a switch-hitter who spent most of his career with Cleveland as a starter, but joined Detroit as a backup last season. His wRC+ last year was -22, but was generally between 40-50 for most of his career. The guy can't hit or run. But he can really, really catch. He's the only player in the league that our scout sees as an 8 catching ability.

Before he signs, the Rule-5 draft occurs, and we get decimated. I'm praying these teams can't keep these guys on their roster all year, but we lose four players, all guys who I think can be major league talents.

C Jamie Brown signs.

FA: 2
Trades: 0

Our offseason frenzy is over, and we'll convert the 2x FA signings to 1x trade, so we can use one near the deadline.

FA: 0
Trades: 1

Spring training next.

JetsIn06 · 01-03-2024, 08:52 PM

The 1958 Portland Rosebuds

There were a ton of moves this offseason. With some young players stepping up and some of our depth pieces moving into larger roles, it could be a year of transition but I still expect to do well.

April: 11-11
May: 16-12

Not bad, but not quite where we want to be. Last year we hit .253 as a team, and that's down to .239. Our ERA is 22 points higher, from 3.82 to 4.04. However, we're leading the FL in Ks, and have the least HRs allowed. I feel like maybe we're getting a bit unlucky on balls in play, potentially? The defense is playing well, so I feel like that has to be it.

Offensively, we're in the middle of the pack in most of the important categories, but a bit lower in runs scored. We'll see what another month brings; I get the sense that things will start to click soon.

Amateur Draft

We don't have quite the same talent available to us down at the 20th pick, but with SP Joey Parrish leaving, we have a compensation pick available to us in the Supplemental Round at #25. At 1.20, we go with CF Hector Araiza, a speedy, defense-focused college bat. RP Ryne White is our pick at #25, a college relief arm out of Arkansas Tech. He's got elite stuff with and off-the-charts changeup to go with a great slider and sinker. And with our 2nd round pick, we select Dave Dorman, a high-school catcher with a great eye out of Alabama. The defense isn't great, but he has some pop and will take a ton of walks.

Trade Deadline

June: 20-9
July: 14-11

In June, we break out, going 20-9 and finish the month in 1st place. But it's crowded; at the end of July there's four teams within five games of Detroit, who are in 1st with a 62-40 record.

Our pitching results are now looking much more aligned with the underlying numbers; we're 1st in runs allowed, as remain as the top team in Ks and HRs allowed, with a total staff ERA of 3.65. On offense, we're still hovering around the middle of the pack. 5th in runs scored, 5th in wOBA.

We still have one trade allowed. Another SP is always helpful, as our fifth starter Blake Milner is probably better suited out of the pen. While offense is the bigger need, we have more internal options there, including SS Jonathan Tandy, the #27 prospect in the league who is tearing up AAA now. Which is great, because middle infield is where we need some help.

So we turn our attention towards an arm, preferably a rotation piece. SP Ben Burns is a name we came across last year; we faced him in the World Series in Game 1 and Game 5, and he destroyed us. He's got great stuff, and this year he's made 20 starts with a 3.08 ERA and a 31.0 K%.

We send Chicago our current 2B Zack DiMeo, who we owe $11M over the next two seasons. It will be good to get him off our books, and we'll bring up Tandy to replace him. DiMeo was added in a trade at the deadline in 1956 and was really strong, but it seems like the end of his 20's and our park sapped his power a bit. With an 82 wRC+ this year, it's time to move on.

Burns is under contract for two more years at $15.4M per year, and Chicago will cover 70% of his contract.

FA: 0
Trades: 0

The Final Stretch

We start off August 10-12 and find ourselves 6GB heading into the final week of the month, but then we go on an absolute tear, winning seven games in a row to finish out the month.

On September 1st, we find ourselves at 78-55, in 2nd place, and 3GB behind Detroit. They're a dominant team, with a +204 run differential compared to us at just +81. But we keep winning, and are on a nine game win streak heading into a three game series against them, still 3GB.

The first game of the series is an ugly 7-0 loss, where we scrape together just two hits, but we answer back with a 9-1 win in the second game.

In the rubber match, it's eerily similar to the first. 7-0 loss, with just three hits. Not good enough. We're now 4GB and need another win streak to catch up to the best team in baseball.

We not only do NOT go on a winning streak; we actually completely collapse in September. A final series sweep against the worst team in the league makes it look better than it is, but we finish the final month 13-16, and we finish in 3rd place with a 91-71 record. Detroit takes the pennant with a 100-62 season.

August: 17-12
September: 13-16

Playoffs

In the Columbia League, it's the California Seals who take the pennant, their second World Series appearance in their relatively short history.

It takes all seven games, but Detroit comes out on top and wins the 1958 World Series.

JetsIn06 · 01-03-2024, 11:33 PM

The 1958-59 Offseason

FA roll (0-3): 2
Trade roll (0-3): 3

Carryover from last season: N/A
Profit ($31.5M): +1 to both
Worst record penalty: N/A
Win World Series: N/A

Total:

45+ rated FA: 3
Trades: 4

We have just one pending FA, C Jamie Brown, the elite defender who can't hit his weight. He slashed .180/.218/.284 this year and STILL finished with a positive WAR. But even at just $1.5M, it's not a great value. We decline his option.

Arbitration

But that's it the only player set to leave. We're able to keep most of this core together if we want to, but if we do we're projected to lose about $13M. We have a fourteen player arbitration class, with many of them due for a raise, but just two are heading into their final year; RP Greg Ramson, a Portland draftee who's been a steady but unspectacular reliever over the last six seasons, and C Yasutaka Yamashiro, who we signed as a free agent prior to 1954. Yamashiro is defensively gifted, which makes up lower than desired offensive output. That said, he does have a strong eye, which has kept him relatively productive with an 87 wRC+ over his five seasons here. Now in his final year of team control, Yamashiro is estimated to receive around $13M, but without another catcher on the roster I don't want to be stuck using one of my FA adds on one. We'll pay the $13M for this season, but will need to start thinking about a long-term replacement.

OF Jim Clatt is the other relatively expensive player. I'm always worried about him and his 4 contact rating, but he's been great. He's due for a big raise, though, going from $5M to an estimated $10.2m in 1959. The defense is great in RF, and the power is definitely working for him with 138 HRs over the last four seasons. That said, we have quite a few outfielders and Clatt is going to get to the $18M-$20M range in free agency and we're just not likely to do that. That makes Clatt a piece we're willing to move, and we find a buyer in Boston who will send us SP Cortez Soto and RP Luis Briseno in return. Soto has four years of control left, but struggled in 1958 with a 5.41 ERA over 33 starts. I like his stuff though, and I think his flyball tendency will work in our park. Briseno spent his first full year in the majors this past season, and still has five years of control left with all three options. The stuff looks good but the 16.4 K% feels like for the skills he has. At just 23, there's room to grow.

Total:

45+ rated FA: 3
Trades: 3

Free Agency

At the start of FA, we make a move to lock up SP Adam Dunshee, our 26-year-old rotation piece to a five-year deal worth $60M. This buys out two of his free agent years at $15M a piece, with team options on them as well. After moving to the pen in 1957, he returned to the mound last year and made 31 starts with a 3.48 ERA.

Total:

45+ rated FA: 2
Trades: 3

We still need a backup catcher, so we make an offer to C Lance Premo, a 37-year-old who was once a 20 HR a year guy, but is not more of an on-base threat. The output is still above league average with a 112 wRC+, and the defense will work.

He signs in the new year, and we'll likely stand pat here going into the season with a bunch of available trades and a FA allowance that can roll over into next season.

Total:

45+ rated FA: 1
Trades: 3

JetsIn06 · 01-05-2024, 11:04 AM

The 1959 Portland Rosebuds

Opening day is here! It's the final season of the decade, and afer completely bottoming out in our rebuild in 1952 with a 49-win season, we've really turned things around since then.

1953: 76-86
1954: 75-87
1955: 77-85
1956: 92-70
1957: 96-66 (Pennant Winner)
1958: 91-71

Let's also take a quick looking at our minor league system. We're now ranked 11th out of 20 teams, and have six players in the Top 100. Obviously things aren't quite as exciting as when we were consistently getting Top 5 picks (although the lottery never truly made it easy), but we still have some solid players who we're excited to bring up soon. Some highlights:

SP Jimmy Letter, 22 years old, #13 Prospect, AAA.

We picked Letter with the 8th pick in the 1954 draft, and he's progressed nicely. Durability looks strong, with strong ratings in stuff, movement, in control; all at 6. He's now the top prospect in our system.

After a strong showing at AA last year, with a 3.85 ERA over 21 starts, we promoted him to AAA. He struggled, however, pitching to a 7.81 ERA in a short stint of 5 games. He'll start the year in AAA and likely see time in the majors this season.

1B/3B Carlito Lynce, 23 years old, #71 Prospect, AAA

Lynce is our #4 prospect after coming to us in the IAFA period in early 1954. I worry a little bit about the defense and think he might need to move to 1B, but he's got 6's in contact, power, and eye; however the power hasn't shown up at all in the minors yet. Without any speed either, he'll really need to hit to be valuable.

RP Ryne White, 22 years old, #75 Prospect, AA

White is a light-out reliever who throws as hard as he possibly can to be successful; meaning no stamina and forever a bullpen arm. Despite three amazing pitches, he'll never be able to join the rotation. But we knew that going in, and took him in the supplemental round last season. He had a decent season in A-ball to start his pro career, and will start in AA this year. The stuff is elite; if he can perform in AA I see no reason why he couldn't get a cup of coffee in the majors this season.

Back to opening day; we win 4-3, defeating the St. Louis Lions at home. SP Tom Brown didn't have a great game, with six BBs and four Ks over 5 IP. But only two runs crossed the plate, allowing OF John Hollis to drive in the eventual winning run in the 6th inning.

In the middle of May, we're 21-21. Not what we were expecting, but we have been ravaged by injuries, luckily most of them have been short-term. But the end of the month comes and we are on fire, winning ten straight games, and on June 1st we're 31-21 and just 1GB of 1st.

April: 11-13
May: 20-8

Amateur Draft

In the draft, we select SP Phil Adams, a right-handed JuCo Sophmore out of Florida. He's got an elite-level changeup to go with balanced stuff, movement, and control, all graded at six. He's got great makeup, with a strong work ethic so he should be able to move through the system relatively fast.

In the 2nd, we select C Steve Dolan, who has his heart set on attending Indiana University, but we're going to try to throw some cash at him to change his mind. He's 18, but shows elite hitting talent across the board, with power and a potentially great eye for a walk. The defense is a little suspect, but he has the bat to play 1B if he develops.

Then we select SS Tyler Graves; he's another JuCo Sophomore, and has an excellent glove, one of the best in the class. He a has a great ability to avoid striking out but doesn't have much power and won't walk too much either. He's shown an ability to play all over the field, but has the range and arm to be able to stick at short.

And holy hell. We really get hot in June, going 23-5, but cool off in July with a 13-12 record. As we had towards the end of July, we start to think about the three trade allowances we have. Ideally we use at least two. Catcher seems like the most obvious place to upgrade, with C Yasutaka Yamashiro in the last year of his deal and struggling with a 67 wRC+. Additionally, in the outfield, OF Jorge Zermano who was the big return in the Guillermo Rodriguez trade after the 1957 season, has been struggling. Injured for the first three months of the season,he's been struggling since he came back in the beginning of July, with a wOBA of .155 and even struggling during his rehab assignment in AAA. OF Dan Ingle is also struggling, with a wRC+ of 82 and much lower power than he's shown over the last few years. A bullpen additional could also be useful.

We find a trade that hits on both needs, moving RP Ben Burns, who we picked up in last year's deadline, to the Washington Wasps. Burns was a starter last year, but has been mostly relegated to bullpen duty this year. He throws sidearm which creates a pretty big split, and this is his last year of team control. In return, we add OF Mike Martinez, a a speed threat in his final year of control, and RP Chris Napoloitano, an elite-stuff arm with some walk issues who has four years of control left.

We make another deal to bring in RP Javier Vasquez. As you may have guessed, he's another high stuff right-hander in his last year of control form the Georgia Peaches who's had a solid year, with a 3.45 ERA. But I also like him because he has started some games last year and could join the rotation in an emergency. CF Bobby Olvera goes in return, a 25-year-old who has been stuck in AAA for years. He's a great defender and runner, and the bat has played well in the minors. Hopefully he gets an opportunity with Georgia to play in the big leagues.

I had considered hanging on to the third trade to carry over, but we're going for it. This is our year.

We send C Yasutaka Yamashiro and OF Dan Ingle to Cleveland, and land C Adam Flowers in return. Flowers is not the best clubhouse guy, and he's making $25M this year, but he can really hit, and moving Yamashiro opens up some budget space for us. Flowers is slashing .306/.343/.455 with 9 HR and should really help bolster our lineup.

Total:

45+ rated FA: 1
Trades: 0

June: 23-5
July: 13-12

Final Stretch

On August 1st, we're in 1st place, two games up on the St. Louis Lions and five games up on Detroit. Vancouver's at 12GB, so we're really just thinking about three teams. With four new players on the squad, I feel as good as ever about our chances of holding these two teams off.

In August, we go 20-9, and enter September up ten games over St. Louis. We call up CF Hector Araiza, our first round pick last season. He comes from AA, but our scout views him as one of just two players in the entire league with 8-graded range. Our manager instantly throws him in CF, and if he should be a great player to join us in the playoffs.

On September 19th, with our 97th win of the season, we clinch. It's not all a celebration, however, as starting 1B Nick Henriksen breaks his kneecap; he'll be out for seven months. Over 154 games, he hit .251 with 23 HR and a 124 wRC+.

We finish the year with a 104-58 record, and we're heading to the World Series to meet the Cleveland Buckeyes.

JetsIn06 · 01-06-2024, 11:10 PM

LOL. So I basically had written up every game of this World Series. It went seven games, and I just kept editing the post to add to it.

I just made the edit to add Game 7, and when I hit save, the entire post was gone.

I hate to be anti-climactic now...It was a crazy series, with a ton of ups and downs. I'll see if I can copy in the game-generated recaps.

I do remember how the post ended though...

WE WIN THE 1959 WORLD SERIES!!!

JetsIn06 · 01-09-2024, 01:17 PM

Game 1

Quote:

Home Field Advantage: Hollis, Portland Open World Series with Win

The Portland Rosebuds started the World Series in style today, downing the visiting Cleveland Buckeyes at Rosebuds Park by a score of 9-3 to grab an early 1-0 lead in the best-of-7 series. Rosebuds designated hitter John Hollis went 4 for 5 with 4 singles.

Jorge Gonzales dealt the Buckeyes a blow in the bottom of the second. Batting with runners on 1st and 2nd and Portland leading 1-0, Gonzales, who won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1953, hit a 0-1 cutter for a run-scoring double.

"Before the game, I told the guys that what happened today would set the tone for the rest of the series," Buckeyes manager David Atchison said after the loss. "I'm really hoping I was wrong about that."

The next game is set to be played tomorrow at Rosebuds Park in Portland.

Game 2

Quote:

Cleveland Win to Pull Even With Portland

In a crucial game, the Cleveland Buckeyes put on their best show, beating the Portland Rosebuds by a final score of 6-3 today. Tom Brown threw 6.2 innings of 4-hit ball. Cleveland and Portland are now tied at 1 wins apiece in the best-of-7 affair.

Cleveland used the clutch hitting of Adam Paul to capture the win. The right fielder drilled a 2-run double in the top of the ninth inning to give the Buckeyes the lead, 5-3. For the game, Paul had 1 single and 2 doubles in 5 at-bats.

"I'm just looking for a good pitch that I can hit well," said Paul. "And not try to do too much."

The next game is set to be played for Wednesday, October 7th , 1959 at Buckeyes Field in Columbus.

Game 3

Quote:

Road Win Lifts Portland to 2-1 Lead in WS

Starter Adam Dunshee was sensational for the Portland Rosebuds in his team's 4-1 triumph over the [Cleveland Buckeyes in Game 3 of the World Series today. Dunshee pitched well, but Portland picked up the win to take a 2-1 lead in the series.

Dunshee was in the zone all game. He frustrated Cleveland hitters while giving the Rosebuds 7.1 innings of quality work. Dunshee threw 108 pitches, allowing 1 hit and getting 6 punchouts.

Dunshee called the win "a collective effort."

The next game is set to be played tomorrow at Buckeyes Field in Columbus.

Game 4

Quote:

Buckeyes Clip Rosebuds 1-0 in WS Contest

At 36, Ron Teague knows he may not have many playoff appearances left, so he was determined to make it memorable. Mission accomplished.

The Cleveland Buckeyes starting pitcher threw 5.0 innings of shutout ball to help his club get past the Portland Rosebuds, 1-0, in Game 4 of the World Series at Buckeyes Field today. With the win, Cleveland moves into a 2-2 tie in the best-of-7 series.

Alex Contreras aided the Cleveland cause with a run-scoring ground out in the bottom of the second. For the game, the second baseman was 1 for 3 with a double.

"Getting ahead of the hitters was the key," said Teague.

The next game is set to be played tomorrow at Buckeyes Field in Columbus.

Game 5

Quote:

Chandler Blasts Buckeyes, Rosebuds Take Game 5, 11-8

Portland Rosebuds first baseman Justin Chandler was the difference-maker at Buckeyes Field today, as he led his club to victory in a pivotal Game 5 of the World Series. The Rosebuds took the 11-8 win over the Cleveland Buckeyes to seize a 3-2 lead in the best-of-7 series.

Portland relied on the bat of Tony Serna to get the win. The right fielder ripped a run-scoring triple in the top of the third inning to put the Rosebuds ahead, 4-2. For the game, Serna had 2 doubles and 1 triple in 4 at-bats.

"We maximized our offense today," said Portland skipper Armando Lopez. "That makes everyone's life easier."

The next game is set to be played for Sunday, October 11th , 1959 at Rosebuds Park in Portland.

Game 6

Quote:

Buckeyes Clip Rosebuds 1-0 in WS Contest

The Cleveland Buckeyes and the Portland Rosebuds will take the World Series to a decisive 7th game. Facing a must-win situation today, the Buckeyes shut out the Rosebuds 1-0 at Rosebuds Park to force the series into what will essentially be a one-game playoff. Cleveland right-hander Brook Wendland did his part. He threw 7.0 innings of shutout ball.

Wendland, the Cleveland right-hander, went 7 innings, allowing no runs on 5 hits. He collected 5 strikeouts.

"Getting ahead of the hitters was the key," said Wendland.

The next game is set to be played tomorrow at Rosebuds Park in Portland.

Game 7

Quote:

Portland Rosebuds Win World Series

The Portland Rosebuds pulled out all the stops tonight, winning the World Series in a hard-fought series with the Cleveland Buckeyes.

It was a seesaw affair, but with a 5-1 victory at Rosebuds Park, Portland lay claim to the franchise's 1st championship.

"There's no denying we faced a tough opponent," said Justin Chandler. "But as the old saying goes, 'when the going gets tough, the tough get going,' and that's what we did today."

The champs finished the regular season 104-58 and claimed first place in the Federal League.

A victory parade is set to be scheduled in Portland in the days to come.

12-27-2023, 03:51 PM	#12
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1947 Portland Rosebuds We go in 8-15 in April, followed by a 12-16 month in May. When the draft rolls around, we're 21-35, a significant improvement over where we were last season. While the offense has continued to struggle mightily, we've actually been pretty good on the run prevention side; we have the 4th fewest runs allowed in our ten-team Federal League sub-league, coming from a very strong bullpen (2nd) and ranked 1st and 2nd in zone rating and defensive efficiency, respectively. Let's turn our attention to the future though; the draft is here, and as I mentioned the lottery luck didn't quite go our way as we dropped from #1 to #4. There's a couple good outfielders, some first-base bat only guys, and two starting pitchers that all could be an option for us. OF Ramon Giron is a left-handed college bat who's probably the best hitter available and has 8-grade speed to go with it, while 1B Chris Scott is another lefty college bat who should be great, but I'm not super keen on taking a 1B with such a high pick. CF Ray Nunez is a high-school bat who's probably going to end up in a corner but can definitely hit; OF Jose Tapia has a similar profile but is from the college ranks. CF Mark Arterburn is a JuCo Sophmore with a great bat and is certainly the best defender of the bunch. On the arm side, SP Pat Brohawn is a high-school RHP with sidearm delivery, electric stuff and 6-grade control, and SP Sam Jenkins is another prep arm with great stuff but needs to improve his control a bit at a 5, according to our scout. SP Robby Garcia has a similar skill set to Jenkins but comes from the college ranks, and has an elite changeup. From a national level, CF Keith Kohnen is also named as a potential number one pick, a high-school outfielder with great contact, and CF Adam Paul is right there with him with the addition of elite speed. Honestly, this could go so many different ways. And it does; CF Eric Dabney goes first overall to the Washington Wasps. While our scout didn't rank him quite as high as some of the other outfielders, he looks really good, with all-around contact, power, and speed with enough defense to stick in center. OF Ramon Giron goes next to the Montreal Canadiens, and then Vancouver goes with a pitcher who was further down our board, SP Chris Johnson. So we're up with the #4 pick, with both pitchers we like available, as well as two potential center fielders. It does seem like there's quite a bit of depth in the outfield class, so we go with SP Sam Jenkins, a prep arm from Florida with the elite changeup and more conventional delivery. CF Mike Gruver, a prep bat from Florida, is our next pick. He's got a solid hit tool with power and 7-grade speed and 7-grade range in center. To round out our top three picks, OF Mike DeWeese is a 17-year-old out of Washington, DC. A line drive hitter with some power potential, he'll be a great LF but could also potentially handle center. By the time we get to the trade deadline, we're 40-64. While we don't have a ton of assets to move, I would like to utilize one of the trades I have, but we're not able to swing anything. We finish the season poorly, with a final record of 56-106. The defense continues to be strong but we're going to have to hope some of these draft picks develop and find some young talent in free agency to get out of the basement. The 1947 World Series is a great one, with the Philadelphia Brewers of the Columbia League facing off against the Philadelphia Patriots of the Federal League for the fourth straight season. Going all seven games, the Patriots come out on top, reclaiming their title. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-27-2023 at 08:52 PM.

12-28-2023, 11:55 PM	#19
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The draft lottery definitely has it out for us; we drop from #2 to #6. We're also 0-13 so far in Spring Training. Yikes. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-28-2023 at 11:55 PM.

12-29-2023, 02:57 PM	#24
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1950 Portland Rosebuds April: 10-16 May: 10-19 Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Another rough start as we head into July with a record of 20-35. The bright side, if there is one, is that SP Seth White has been great to start the season, with a 3.80 ERA, a 3.53 SIERA, and a 28 K%. Our farm system bumps up a bit to #13 overall, with five players in the Top 100. Most of them are still 19/20. We'll take a deeper look at them before next season. Since there's not much good to speak of, let's get right into the draft, which could be the deepest draft I've seen. Plenty of offensive talent, but of course some guys really seperate themselves with great defense. CF Sid Clark is probably the best all-around player, with elite defense that should stick in center and great contact and power with speed to boot. SP Joey Parrish looks like the pitcher that should go first; he's a college RHP with elite stuff. As I expected, CF Sid Clark goes at 1.1 to the San Francisco Peanuts. This is the third straight year that they have picked at this spot. Maybe some of their luck could go our way for once? At 1.2, SP Travis Lewis, a RHP college arm goes to Vancouver. He's got an elite ability to generate weak contact with lots of groundballs. The stuff is good too, with three great pitches. Someone I was looking at, C Scott Gagliardi, goes at 1.4 to Detroit. He's an elite defensive catcher. The bat could be solid too, but his defense really stands out. He's followed by C Nick Banks, who maybe ends up as a 1B as he really doesn't have the defensive skill to stick behind the plate, but the offense is MASSIVE. He's a high-schooler out of NYC, and it will be fun to look back and see these two catchers who went in the Top 10 and how they did. When our pick comes up, SP Joey Parrish is still available. He's 21, and coming out of Oregon State. Our scout has him as a 70, with 7 stuff, 6 movement, and 5 control, with four solid pitches. We make him the pick at 1.7. With our 2nd pick, we go back to an arm, taking SP Blake Milner, a high-school RHP out of Florida. He's got elite stuff, rated an 8 by our scout, with a devestating fastball and changeup. The stuff is too good to pass up on. In the 3rd, a guy we had our eye on is still around, 3B Dave Magby. He's a lower contact, higher power/eye guy who has a cannon for an arm. He's ideally a 3B, but can play anywhere on the infield and has also played in RF as well. June: 8-20 July (through 29th): 11-11 So July has been okay, but here's the exciting thing; SP Joey Parrish is already in AAA. While I do think long-term the focus on high-school players has made sense, it's SO nice to have drafted a college arm that shoots up the minors and is ready quickly. I think we are going to give him a shot in September, and if he does well, could break camp with us in 1951. The bullpen has also been strong, with the 4th best ERA in the Federal League, and our defense has improved a ton, with the best zone rating as a team. There's still a lot of work to do offensively. 1B/DH Adam Brand, who we signed prior to 1949 to play 3B, has just completely crumbled defensively and truly cannot play the field at all, and his offense has cratered as well. After finishing with a 100 or better wRC+ every season, he's now at 70 as he plays through his age-34 season. Luckily we have a team option for next season that we will 100% not be picking up. We do have a trade allowance burning a hole in our pocket (we have 2, but can only carry over 1 into next season). With a few guys set to hit FA or with options that I don't plan on picking up, I take a look around and find a deal for SP Joe Casten. Casten was strong for us last year, but has struggled to a 5.44 ERA. We cover the rest of the year's contract and bring back RP Pete Barraclough, a 30-year-old RHP reliever from Chicago. He's bounced around, but still has three years of control left and the stuff and control is great. He's a flyball pitcher, which should work out decently well in our park. September comes, and we bring up SP Joey Parrish. We have him on a light pitch count to start, and he struggles in his first outing, going three innings with 2 K's and 3 BB's. His second outing is worse, as he goes 3.2 innings with 5 BB's and no K's. The third start isn't much better, but in his fourth against a weak Vancouver team, he goes 6 innings with no walks, 3 H's, and 3 K's over 74 pitches. With three games left to play, we're in a group of four teams that have the worst record, behind by one win. Avoiding being the worst team will prevent us from losing some transaction allowances, so I'm using all the ammo I can to win this final series. But we lose the first game in extra innings, and then lose 16-2, sealing our fate as the worst team. God damn it. August: 13-15 September: 10-16 We finish with a 64-98 record. Philadelphia is finally not the pennant winner in the Federal League; my own stomping ground in New Orleans has taken the crown. Georgia heads to the World Series from the Columbia League, but the 103-win New Orleans Kingfish win the series in six games. Some top performers: SP Seth White (7-12, 3.96 ERA, 2.1 WAR) White finally put together a strong full season. The walks were much more under control, dropping 16% to 11.9% this year. The K% is down though, and this contract is looking worse as he gets older, which I guess I expected. He has an opt-out after next season and I'm kind of hoping he takes it. SP James LaSpina (2-11, 4.26 ERA, 0.8 WAR) Not the greatest season, but this rookie came out of nowhere to be a part of our rotation this year. He was a minor-league FA signing back before the 1949 season, which means he was rated 40 or less. Now he's a 65, with great stuff and a nasty slider. He's not there yet; but he's currently the #21 prospect in baseball, and along with Parrish could form a solid tandem behind White for the foreseeable future. LF Steve Gonzalez (.238/.362/.490, 118 wRC+, 4 WAR) Gonzalez is not the best player by any means, and the BABIP dipped down to .263 this year; we'll see how much of that is luck, but a guy who walks more than he strikes out that can hit 12 homers and play pretty much every single day (696 PA this year, 693 PA last year) is valuable. He's still on the minimum salary too so I can't complain at all about our leadoff man. C John Hollett (.326/.372/.438, 132 wRC+, 1.7 WAR) Hollett was a FA add before the 1949 season. His .362 BABIP surely helped him this year, but the production was great at the end of the day. He'll be a FA, and I don't think we'll pay what he wants. He's spent the end of both of his years here on the IL, and this year he had just 328 PA. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-29-2023 at 02:59 PM.

12-30-2023, 02:53 PM	#28
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	C John Hollet is a free agent, and while he's been great while he's on the field, the injuries have been really tough. 353 PA in 1949, 328 PA in 1950, 300 PA in 1951. This is $20M coming off the books which is a big relief. I mentioned 1B Dave Cox, a captain on our team, above; he's a pending FA but I was curious to know how much he'd be looking for. Unfortunately, I wasn't expecting to have zero free agent signings allowed; we'll have to let him go, but he was looking for about $9M anyway. RP Paul Brocklebank has been with us since the beginning, the penultimate pick in the expansion draft. He threw 502.1 IP with us, with a 4.05 ERA during his time. While I could re-sign him (he's a 40-rated player), the skills have declined now that he's 32 and the $2.2M he wants should be replaced cheaply. Finally, RP Jose Alcantar is heading out; he was a starter with us for a while, and had a pretty good year after moving to the pen in 1951. He doesn't want a lot to stay, but because he's rated as a 45, we're unable to sign him. We have an eleven-player arb class. OF Mario Camarillo isn't an obvious non-tender, but he's entering his final year of control and due $3.2M. With the callup and success of CF Mike Gruver, we're okay letting him and his 82 wRC+ walk early. LF Steve Gonzalez, our walking machine/leadoff guy, is now in his first year. I'll mention this now, as I don't think I did in the first post; any multi-year extensions count against our choice of a FA or trade. I won't be pursuing that with him, but he is tendered an offer for 1-year/$4M. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-30-2023 at 03:14 PM.

12-31-2023, 01:32 AM	#36
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Real quick before bed, let's see what this offseason will bring us in terms of transaction allowances: FA roll (0-2): 0 Trade roll (0-2): 2 Carryover: +1 trade Profit ($8M): +1 in each That leaves us with: 45+ rated FA: 1 Trades: 3 Okay. This probably works for us. It's been helpful to get creative with trades, and we have a lot of depth to make that work. We're the #3 system in the league, with fourteen guys in the Top 115. We're going to very tight on money if we want to make a profit this season. Looking at our budget for 1954, we're only set to bring in ~$6M or so. It's hard to say if ticket sales will be better; I'd have to assume so, but I think we need to act like they won't. The big decision, really, is around OF Steve Gonzalez. He's entering his final year of team control and is estimated to get $7.3M. We have some good OF prospects here/coming, and as much as I've loved having this guy around, this is second year hovering around league average wRC+. A 4 WAR player in 1950, this year was just 1.4; with three trades available to us, I'm interested to see if we can get something for him. Before we go down that path, let's look at our upcoming free agent departures. On top of the glut of below-average SP's that we signed/traded for last year (SP Mu'adh Nelson, Mike Meyers, Mat Elis), OF Luis Gomez is the one guy in his 20's that's set to leave. A minor-league FA signing way in our inaugural season, Gomez debuted at 21 in '47, and went on to have a very productive career with us. 97 HR over 3,261 PA's, for a wRC+ of 102. Now back to OF Steve Gonzalez; no one is interested in a swap for him without adding something else. I do have a few 3B, Cortez de Santiago, Jose Luis, and Dave Magby. I wonder if we could add one of them with Gonzalez to get another SP prospect? Or maybe a more defensive-minded SS prospect at a higher level? But Gonzalez isn't really adding any value in these deals, and I can get rid of his contract for free. We don't make a move, and we'll end up non-tendering him. OF Adam Broussard, our 11th-round pick in 1946, is also getting non-tendered. He made his fullt-ime debut in 1949, and went on to hit 36 HR with us in 1952. He fell off hard last year, and was demoted in the middle of the year. One move we do make is a trade of SS Ciprian Popovici. Our fourth-round pick in 1947, Popovici debuted in 1948. He's never had a great bat (career 62 wRC+) but the glove has always been good enough to keep him around. He's entering his final year of control and due $3.2M. In return from New York, we get RP Gavin Carlberg, a lefty relief arm with six years of control, along with C Chris DePue, a solid defensive catcher who hasn't made his debut yet. The eye (6) could keep him afloat offensively. FA: 1 Trades: 2 For shits and giggles, let's take a quick look at what SP Joey Parrish would want for an extension; it depends on the years offered obviously, but somewhere between $35-$40M per year is what he's looking for. We won't be doing that, and I guess we already need to be considering the thought of trading Parrish away in a year or two. We tender him a $4M contract for his first time through arbitration, and dread and that thought of what years 4 and 5 look like. The final guy we look at is SP James LaSpina. He started off with a couple decent years, and I thought he was going to end up as a solid rotation piece for us. But in recent years he's really fallen off. Last year, he led the league in walks and home runs allowed, earning him a 6.78 ERA. He'll be non-tendered. It's award season, and while our guys have won multi-position awards like the Gold Glove or Golden Bat (our version of the Silver Slugger), SP Joey Parrish is our first major award winner. He wins the 1953 Pitcher of the Year Award. Over 27 starts, he posted a 2.16 ERA with 181 K's in 154 IP. He only allowed four home runs, and led all pitchers in WAR with 6.6 despite missing a month of the season. Free agency opens, and we have one player who made starts for us last year; Joey Parrish. We're going to have to piece this thing together with bubble gum and duct tape. With the reductions we made from the trade and non-tendering Gonzalez, our budget situation has improved dramatically. Our budget shows a potential $50M surplus. The one FA add we have desperately needs to go to pitching, and we should have some money, but I don't want to make a Seth White mistake again. SP Guillermo Cuellar looks like a good fit. He's only 28, and has the best swing and miss stuff among the pitchers available. He wants $27M a year though, and if I'm going to give out a big deal, it should just go to Parrish? Hmm. Let's just be honest; I can't afford either of these guys. We move towards the bottom of the barrel, and in what may be a grave mistake, look to make an offer to international free ageny C Yasutaka Yamashiro. He's got the captain personality that we need, and is an elite defensive catcher (7) with a great eye (7). He's only 27, and isn't super expensive at $7M. He does want a five-year deal though, so we'll try to negotiate that down a bit. It takes three weeks, but we finally roll the number we need to make him an offer. We make him a 3yr/$18M offer with a 4th team option year at $8M/$2M buyout. Cuellar signs with Detroit, a 5yr/$100M deal. We turn our attention to the trade market while we wait on Yamashiro. SP Jason Bowen of New Orleans is on the trade block. He's a LHP; a 55-rated 35-year-old on the final year of his deal. He's been solid and consistent; despite being listed as "fragile" he's made 32+ starts every year since 1947. He's got a career 3.32 ERA with great stuff, movement, and control ratings (6). He's due $20M this year, and we could get him for a bag of baseballs if we took on the whole thing. We ask them to eat 25%, and we send them a catcher we've never mentioned here, a 15th-round pick from our 1950 class. FA: 1 Trades: 1 It takes until Christmas Ever, but C Yasutaka Yamashiro signs with us. FA: 0 Trades: 1 We'll hold on to this trade into the season. Maybe we'll be good and need reinforcements. Maybe we'll be horrible and be looking to trade a guy away. We'll see. In the international amateur market, we make a big offer to Brazilian 3B Carlito Lynce, an 18-year old with elite contact (8) and power (7). The eye is great too, but he's all bat. The arm is good enough for 3B but he likely ends up moving across the field. We get to opening day, and our system is now ranked #2 overall, with twelve players in the Top 100. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-31-2023 at 12:05 PM.

12-26-2023, 11:23 PM	#2
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	So what are we trying to build here? To start, Rosebuds Park holds a little over 47,000 people. It suppresses homers a bit, with a .945 home run park factor for LHB and .935 for RHB. So with that in mind, we may look to build around high-stuff pitchers who can get K's, and we don't need to go crazy on movement/groundball pitchers. And in that case, outfield defense will be really important. Offensively, having some speed will be beneficial to take extra bases and steal. But as with many things in life, balance is important.

12-27-2023, 12:15 AM	#3
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The expansion draft is here. With four teams drafting, it's a little more crowded than I'm used to. I fiddled with the expansion draft settings a bit - this is something I'd love OOTP to expand on more in the future, but for now, every team is allowed to protect 15 players, but everyone with six years of pro service or less is automatically not eligible to be drafted. Teams will have to pick and choose from their major league roster, but most prospects and good young players will be automatically safe. Each existing team (there's 16 existing teams) is allowed to lose four players each, which will limit this draft to 16 rounds. It's a serpentine draft, and have the 2nd pick to start things off. The pool is pretty much exactly the way I wanted it to look - it's not an absolute dumpster fire, but most guys that have talent are older, or play 1B, or both. Lots of relievers too, of course, but with this first pick I really want to get a foundational piece that can have a shot at being with us for the first few years, at least. Still, the bats are light and no one really jumps out at me. But looking at the pitchers, one guy stands out. Righty SP Joel Berryhill is 26, listed as "durable", and is rated as a 55 by our scout. A 5th round pick in 1937, he's currently with the Washington Wasps, starting 31 games last year with a 4.00 SIERA and 2.6 WAR. He's also still making the minimum salary with just two years of service. That'll do, for us. With our next pick, we take the best of the aforementioned glut of young, decent 1B, right-handed Adam Escamilla. He's also 26, listed as durable, and is rated as a 50 by our scout, with a solid 6 hit tool and 5 power and eye. He'll strike out a bit, but the other nice thing about him (other than also being on min-salary) is that he's very popular locally and well-known nationally. We gotta get butts in seats, and he'll help. Next up is LF Matt Smith, a left-handed bat who is also 26, and hasn't hit one year of service time yet. He has a 6 hit tool and won't K much at all, but overall is rated as a 45 by our scout. The defense will work in LF, but we'll definitely need to grab a legitimate CF in free agency. With our next two picks, we grab some okay-looking relievers who I won't go into, with the thought that the next four guys in our rotation after Berryhill are going to suuckk. And yes - they do suck. Our next pick is SP Jason Caudill, a 27-year-old RHP who's rated as a 30. With no major league experience, we're rolling the dice here (without much choice, obviously). But he does have five pitchers, three of which are actually good, and according to our scout had the highest stuff of the remaining SP's available. The personality works, and he's well known locally, somehow. CF Mario Camarillo is next to suit up for the Rosebuds. Another career minor leaguer, he can play center decently and has enough tools to maybe be a bench piece on a bad team. He's got the "sparkplug" personality which will hopefully keep the boys going when we're in last place. C Ignacio Panameno is next, an absolute defensive wizard who can't do shit on offense, and then IF Jose Salazar...likewise. Both have great personalities and tremendous gloves which should give them a spot on the roster. SP Bobby Medina, a 31-year-old minor league journeyman is next up, followed by another SP Adam Furio with the same story. RP Some more relievers go next, including one southpaw who's making ~$3M. We went so cheap throughout the rest of the draft that I bit the bullet on him. And then in the 14th round, we grab another first baseman, Antonio Tamez, who can also dabble in the corner outfield. But he's a switch-hitter and actually might have some power. Maybe a DH, or a nice pinch-hitting option at the very least. 3B Eric Lang, a LHB with a whopping 9 wRC+ (yes, 9) in 129 PA last season is our next pick, but he actually was pretty decent in prior years as a bench bat. His maximum number of PA came three seasons ago in 1943 when he got up 258 times and had a wRC+ of 81. It's better than 9! And finally, with our final pick, we go with Glendon Rogers, a RHP who is FORTY-ONE years old and has just four years of major-league service. He was a 4th round pick in 1923, and didn't make his major-league debut until 1931. He's coming off a season where he posted a 6.26 ERA over 22 appearances. And that's it. Our first sixteen players. Next up, free agency, where we'll have to somehow figure out where the other ten guys are going to come from with a limited ability to add players that are good. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 01-02-2024 at 04:18 PM.

12-27-2023, 12:17 AM	#4
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Ha! So we generate our two numbers between 0-3. The result? Free agent allowance: 0 Trade allowance: 1 So I can't supplement this expansion draft roster of sixteen players with ANYONE rated as 45+, so we'll need to continue to pull from the scrap heap to fill this roster. I won't go into too much detail here as these players are not going to be good, but if anyone of interest comes up, I'll share. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-27-2023 at 12:18 AM.

12-27-2023, 12:54 AM	#5
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Free agency doesn't offer too much excitement, but we did pick up a player in the Rule-5 draft who actually looks somewhat good. Left-handed hitting 3B Matt Harris is 27, but hasn't been in the majors yet. The hit/power/eye tools are all there according to our scout. He's probably more of a 1B, but the 50-rated player could be a good addition to our lineup. This does, however, remove our one transaction allowance, and now we have 0 trades allowed this year. I'm okay with this, as most of our guys are young and I don't foresee them having much trade value anyway. We offer a bunch of guys minor league deals with options, essentially a non-roster invite to spring training. We'll choose the rest of our 26-man roster from this band of misfits, but before we do that, January marks the beginning of the International FA period. We have a little over $7.8M in our pool, with two players that our scout really loves, one hitter, a CF who can really play defense, and a LHP starting pitcher who's got everything you'd want to see. Our scout has built strong relationships with them over the winter, but we miss out on both, and then on our next target. We switch gears and go for quantity, adding ten rather awful teenagers into our international complex.

12-27-2023, 02:03 AM	#6
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1946 Portland Rosebuds As expected, we're off to a dreadful start in our inaugural campaign, heading into draft day with a last place record of 14-46, 12GB of the next-worst team, and 30GB of first. But it's draft day, so I'm excited to get a chance at adding some real talent into our completely barren farm system. While I'm sure our season will net us a top pick next year, we opted to put expansion teams at the back of the draft, so our pick will be #18. Note: We do have a lottery in place. 20 total teams, 5 lottery picks, 10 teams eligible for the lottery picks. We'll go over odds and stuff next year. Very generally, going into the draft I'm looking to take the best player available. However, I do think, with this being our first draft, a focus on prep talent could be beneficial. Drafting a 22-year-old out of the college ranks would give us more talent immediately in the majors, but he'd be alone. Ideally, a high-school player spends a few years in our system and then we can supplement them with college picks a few years from now. Something to think about, at least. When we get to our pick, there are a couple interesting names. Rafael Edwards and Jonathan Firmin are both college outfielders who look pretty good, but right up there with them is SS Rich Black, a 17-year-old RHB who has the range and arm for SS and our scout rates as a 60. He's pretty much solid all-around, but doesn't have a distinct stand-out tool. The bat and eye are both a 6, while power is a 5. But he can play all over the field and I love that. C Jesse Brinkmann was at least a thought with our first pick, and he's still there in the second, so we take him next. He's also 17, and a switch-hitter. He's definitely a bat-first catcher, but the defense should play. In the end, we went heavy on high school as we expected we would, and focused pretty strongly on defense and pitching. I'll spare you the rest - we finish 39-123. The Philadelphia Brewers go on to win the 1946 World Series. We have a lot of work to do.

12-27-2023, 11:00 AM	#8
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Free agency is full of old players, none of which are really interesting to us. There is, however, a 25-year-old, 45-rated 3B named David Clemons. He's been tearing up AAA, with a 129 wRC+ and 17 HR last season, with decent ratings to back it up. He wants a major league deal, and we generate our random number between 2-8; it's a 5, which allows us to make the offer. We sim ahead to the following Monday and make an offer to another 45-rated bat, 27-year-old OF Juan Montalvo. He makes a ton of contact, and while it's a very, very small sample size, did really well in 50 PA last season. Both players are offered one year guarantees with a team option for a second season, and both sign by the middle of December, and that is the extent we can play in free agency. We do add a couple relievers in the Rule-5 draft to round out the roster, and I may dabble in some additional players who are rated 40 or less (as they don't cost us any of our available moves) but Clemons and Montalvo are the big additions, relatively speaking. We'll hang on to our trades into the season, and probably plan on carrying one over into next offseason. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-27-2023 at 11:03 AM.

12-27-2023, 01:05 PM	#9
korme Go Reds Join Date: May 2001 Location: Bloodbuzz Ohio	Cool idea, following along

12-27-2023, 03:15 PM	#11
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	International Free Agency is another quantity play, with eight new players brought in without any real studs. Before we get going with spring training and the 1947 season, let's take a look at the draft lottery, which is about to be revealed. As I mentioned earlier, we have 20 total teams, 10 of which are eligible for the lottery, with 5 lottery picks. Here's how the odds shake out: 1. 19.05% 2. 18.10% 3. 17.14% 4. 16.19% 5*. 15.24% 6. 04.76% 7. 03.81% 8. 02.86% 9. 01.90% 10. 00.95% Unfortunately, we ping pong balls don't bounce our way, and despite the worst record, we drop down to the #4 pick in the draft.

12-27-2023, 10:11 PM	#13
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Let's see what we're working with for 1948. We had a losing record, so we start by generating our FA/Trade allowances with a number between 0 and 2. We can roll over one of our trades from last year that we didn't use, so that brings us to 2/2. We made $44M, which bumps us up to 3/3. However, we were narrowly the worst team in the league, which brings us back down to 2/2. 45+ rated FA Allowance: 2 Trade Allowance: 2 We have two options to decide on, both of which were our free agent adds last year. 1B/3B David Clemons started off terribly, with a 22 wRC+ in the first half. We almost cut him, but his BABIP was super low and I felt like he had to at least get a little better, which he did, finishing the year with a 56 wRC+. Our option is for $3.75M with a $380K buyout. We'll decline the option on him. On the other hand, OF Juan Montalvo, who has an option for $2.5M, actually played pretty well for us. While an 84 wRC+ isn't good, he was our fourth-best offensive player, with a .249/.295/.371 line and 12 HR. We'll pick up that option. Touching on some top performers real quick: SP Joel Berryhill (7-15, 4.80 SIERA, 1.9 WAR) Berryhill was once again our most productive arm. While he doesn't get a ton of swing and miss, he threw 171 innings. SP Jose Alcantar (5-12, 4.22 SIERA, 1.5 WAR Alcantar was a Rule-5 pick before our first season, and he spent the vast majority of 1946 in the bullpen. This year, he made 33 starts, throwing 149.2 innings. OF Juan Montalvo (.249/.295/.371, 84 wRC+, 1.9 WAR Already mentioned Montalvo above, so I'll leave it at that. OF Matt Smith (.299/.331/.427, 110 wRC+, 1.7 WAR We took Smith in the third round of the expansion draft and he really put things together this year offensively, with little power but just a 12.8% K rate. 43-year-old Glendon Rogets, who we took with our final pick in the expansion draft, is now finally at six years of service time. The journeyman has led the league in appearances in the last two years, contributing 100+ innings each year as a long-man out of the pen. We won't be bringing him back, but it's great to see him still looking to play in 1948. We non-tender a few uninteresting guys and head into free agency.

12-27-2023, 11:07 PM	#14
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Going into FA, it's no surprise that we have needs all over the place. But after taking a deeper look into the roster, we desperately need help in the infield. A 2B, 3B, or SS that can hit would be a huge benefit. Additionally, a RHB that can play in the outfield would be a great add, but not one I'd prefer to spend one of our moves on. If we can find a 40-rated, heavy split RHB for the outfield, that would be ideal. And we also desperately need a frontline starter. Berryhill has been solid for us, but he should be a back-end guy. Luckily, there is an impact 3B in free agency. He's 32, but that's much better than what we've been seeing in our first two trips through free agency. 3B Scott Mullally comes from Kansas City, and hit 51 HR in 1946 and 43 in 1947. He wants a ton of money, but we do have a ton of room in our budget. 29-year-old SP Seth White is also available. He's got elite stuff with an 8-grade from our scout, with a 30%+ K-rate over the last two seasons. We need to get one of these guys. White would come a little bit cheaper, and is obviously a little bit younger. He's a 60 POT compared to Mullally at 65, which means theoretically, we should have a better shot at being able to offer him a deal with our RNG shenanigans. We sim ahead to the first Monday, and generate a number between 2-8, looking for a 6 or higher. It's a 3. We move ahead to the following Monday and try again. This time, we get it. His ask is a 9-year deal worth $258M, with an opt-out after year four and two player options at the end of the deal. This is where this RNG system gets tricky...if we try to mess around with the deal and he declines it, we'll need to start from scratch, sim to the next Monday, roll another 6+, etc. The deal starts at $23M, escalates up to $32M for the middle of the deal, and then scales back down. I think this could work for us, as we will hopefully be decent by the time the cost scales up. The one thing we do adjust is removing the no-trade clause. We'll see how important that is to him, but we bump up some bonus provisions as a compromise. Mullally, who I was just about to go try and make an offer to, has already signed, inking a 5-year deal worth $157M with our fellow expansion brethren, San Francisco. On Wednesday, Nov 26th, we hear from White that he's looking for more money. We can't respond yet, and move ahead to the next Monday. He's now asking for $275M over nine years. We make some adjustments, change the final year's option to a team variety, and make the offer. On Dec 18th, he signs! It's a $248M deal over eight years, with a $27M option for 1956 without any no-trade provisions. White can opt out after the 1951 season, and has a player option for the 1955 season. Without any bats that I really love, I look towards SP Joe Casten, who's also 29. While he's not White, he'd likely be a #2 starter for us and is looking for a one-year deal worth just over $9M. However, before we are able to make an offer he signs with Cleveland. I think this leaves us content heading into the season just using one of our Free Agency signings. We can hang on to the other and carry it over, or use it to claim someone on waivers if necessary.

12-27-2023, 11:09 PM	#15
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Real quick update: Draft lottery moves us down from #1 to #4 for the second year in a row. Bummer.

12-28-2023, 12:16 AM	#16
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1948 Portland Rosebuds We open the season against the champs in Philadelphia, with our $26M man Seth White on the mound. He goes 2 and 2/3 innings, giving up 5 ER on 5 hits. Not quite the start we were looking for. And it doesn't get a ton better, either. White starts his time with us with a 5.76 ERA through 12 starts. His K% is down a bit, and his BB% is up quite a bit. We're 18-39 when we get to the draft, worst in the league. In better news, this draft seems very deep. There's honestly too many options to go through to come up with a board. San Francisco chooses CF Jose Ventura, who's not bad, but not one of the guys I would have taken. Brooklyn then takes SP Chris Hoppe, who looks really good and definitely would have been in the running for my pick if he was there. CF Ben Brady is next to Baltimore, and he's another guy who probably would not have been on my list. And that brings things to our pick. We have some great choices. 3B Nick Cimino, a high-school RHB looks really good, with 7-grade contact and power. There's definitely some risk he moves off 3B which isn't ideal, and he's got zero speed. SS Johnny Frank is another high-school bat, but a LHB. He's not got quite the hit profile that Cimino has, with 6-grade contact and power, but he has a extremely advanced approach at the plate, with an 8-grade eye. He likely moves off SS to 3B. CF John Madore likely becomes a solid corner OF, but the bat is great, with grades of 7 in contact and power along with a 6 eye. He also has speed to go with it. CF Fernando Borrero is another option, who trades some power for eye, but will certainly stay in CF. On the pitching side, high-school RHP SP Bobby Taddia has three great pitches, with 6's across the board in stuff, movement, and control. Two college arms, RHP SP Will Hickman and LHP SP Chris Hurd round out my shortlist; Hickman looks like an all-around solid option, while Hurd is the more risky pick. He's got elite stuff, but the lack of command gives him some reliever risk that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with at #4. This is a very, very hard decision, but I think OF John Madore has the highest potential to become a superstar with the power/speed combination he provides. We make him our pick at #4. Our second round pick is gone after signing White, so SP Chris Hopkins, a high-school LHP out of Alabama is our pick in the third round. He's got great stuff and control, but will likely need to develop his changeup to really hit his potential. After the draft, our guy Madore becomes the #3 prospect in the league. In July, we make a trade, moving a young outfielder in AAA who is actually decent, but listed as a "selfish" attitude, for a reliever who could potentially start, RP Craig Thompson, and an 18-year-old relief prospect named Gabe Hanley. SP Seth White really turned things around in the second half, with a 2.36 ERA in June, a 2.19 ERA in July, and a stunning 0.39 ERA through four starts in August. Unfortunately, he missed time with a sore elbow in August and we shut him down for the rest of the year to avoid any further injury. We finish 57-105, one game better than last year, but we're NOT the worst team in the league, so between not losing some allowances for that plus carrying over one of each, we might actually have some flexibility this off-season. In the Columbia League, the Chicago Packers have unseated the Philadelphia Brewers, but the Philadelphia Patriots of the Federal League have reigned supreme once again. The World Series goes seven games again, and Philadelphia wins, defending their championship. This is their fifth World Series win in the last six years. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-28-2023 at 12:17 AM.

12-28-2023, 11:52 PM	#18
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Heading into free agency, we still have all of our allotted moves available: 45+ rated FA: 4 Trades: 4 As mentioned, SP Joel Berryhill is entering his final year under contract. He has no interest in discussing any kind of extension with us, and honestly I don't really have any interest in re-signing him to any sort of long-term/expensive deal either. He'll make $6M in 1949, so one advantage of tendering him a contract is I can now attempt to cover some % of the deal to get a better prospect in a trade. I put the offer out there to cover the entire contract, and there's three players that come back that are very interesting, but the most intriguing player to me is OF Steve Gonzalez, who has an 8-grade eye and an 8-grade ability to avoid K's. In 57 PA with the Philadelphia Brewers last year, he walked 19.3% of the time, and struck out just 10.5% of the time. He also slashed .334/.435/.500 for a wRC+ of 139 over 520 PA in AAA. We have a bunch of OF already, but offensively this adds a true on-base threat to our lineup, and a great leadoff hitter with six years of control. We make the deal, covering 95% of the contract. FA: 4 Trades: 3 Compared to prior years, free agency is relatively deep. OF Carlos Zarazoga, a 30-year-old RF who had a slightly down year in 1948 but an absolutely incredible, 167 wRC+ 1947 season, is looking for almost $37M per year. 2B C.J. Washington, heading into his age-31 season, was Zarazoga's teammate, and has been consistently solid offensively with multiple 120 wRC+ or better seasons in four of his last six campaigns. On the arms side, SP Ryan Hampton is 35 but has absolutely lights-out stuff. He's in the same mold as our guy White, with lower than desired control but insanely high strikeout potential. He's looking for $125M over five years. SP Chris Markle is similar, but after a down year in 1948 (5.13 ERA), he's looking for a bit less and is 31. Markle may be our top target, and SP Joe Casten, who we really wanted last year as a back-end guy but missed out on, is available again after a solid one-year deal in 1948. We have about $40M in room. Going after a guy like 2B C.J. Washington is surely our biggest need, but spending $30M or more one guy in free agency when I have the ability to sign four doesn't sound like the best strategy. But there's plenty of cheap guys who are rated 45+ that we could use (like Casten). I also need to consider our rules; to sign Washington, I'll need my RNG to roll an 8, and while I wait for that to happen these other guys I like could get picked up. So let's do this - I sim ahead to Monday, and let's go after Casten first. He's rated as a 50 by our scout, so he'll be easier to sign; Washington could take a bit to sign, hopefully. If his demands go crazy in that time, we'll pivot, but I don't want to miss out on a guy who will definitely help us at a much lower cost. We get to Monday and roll a 7, allowing us to make an early offer to Casten. We offer him a two-year deal worth $10M with a $5M option for a third. The following Monday comes. He likes our offer, but nothing official yet. We roll to see if we can consider an offer to Washington, but generate a 2 so we have to hold off. SP Chris Markle, who we liked quite a bit, signs on with the Georgia Peaches for six years and $135M before we have a chance to make an offer. Monday comes, and we roll a 7. One short. No offer. By the way, to be clear, I have to decide on who I want to make an offer to and THEN roll. So even though I rolled a 7, I can't go offer a 70-rated guy now. The next day, Casten signs with us! OF Carlos Zarazoga signs a seven-year, $231M deal with the New Orleans Kingfish. FA: 3 Trades: 3 The following Monday comes. We roll a 6. No offer. And two days later, Washington signs with the Georgia Peaches, a four-year deal with an AAV of $33.5M. So we'll need to move on. In our time chasing him, a lot of the better relievers have signed, which would be a nice addition for us. But let's regroup. An infielder is desperately needed, as well as a catcher. Any additional pitching would also be very welcome. 3B Adam Brand becomes our next target. He's spent the last five years with the St. Louis Lions, is 32, and has a career wRC+ of 118. He's rated as a 50, we roll a 6, and make an offer for $20M over two years with a third-year option. While Brand considers our offer, we turn our attention to catcher, where we have zero players on our 40-man roster. And before we can make an offer, Brand signs with us! FA: 2 Trades: 3 Back to catcher; we make an offer to C Jon Hollett, a 30-year-old who never K's, and even is an above average hitter, with a 121 wRC+ across two teams in 1948. It's a two-year deal worth $7.5M each year. He signs with us a couple weeks later. FA: 1 Trades: 3 And I think we may leave things as is, here. We'll explore the trade market and check back in to see if any prices drop dramatically, but there's a ton of OF's left and unless we move one of ours, it's not the best way to spend our last FA allowance when we can carry it over. We DO make a somewhat big move in the international market, making a big splash on SP Julian Figueras, a 17-year-old, 65-rated Cuban RHP. Heading into spring training, we're happy to carry the FA move over into next season, and we'll look to make some kind of moves at the trade deadline.

12-29-2023, 12:14 AM	#20
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Before the season begins, let's take a look at our farm system now that we have a few drafts under our belt. We're currently ranked #16 out of 20 teams, with five players in the Top 100. #11 CF John Madore (18yo, 80 POT) Picked 4th overall in the 1948 Draft, Madore immediately jumped to the top of our prospect lists. Elite contact with great power to go with it. #30 SP Julian Figeuras (17yo, 65 POT) Mentioned recently as a big splash in the international market. Great stuff, four pitches. Needs to improve fastball. #81 1B Bryant Hammock (19yo, 70 POT) Huge power potential, some swing and miss. We took Hammock in the 4th round and offered him a way overslot bonus to get him to sign with us instead of going to college. #86 SP Sam Jenkins (20yo, 50 POT) The 4th overall pick in 1947, Jenkins has lost some of his prospect luster (Stuff has dropped from 8 to 6) but still looks like he could be a major league pitcher. Has an elite changeup. #96 SP Chris Hopkins (19yo, 60 POT) A third-round pick last year, Hopkins still has great-looking stuff and control, but the development of his changeup hasn't moved. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-29-2023 at 12:15 AM.

12-29-2023, 01:08 AM	#21
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1949 Portland Rosebuds April: 8-17 May: 15-14 That's likely our first winning month, ever. We're 23-31 heading into June. We're 8th in runs scored in our sub-league, and 9th in runs allowed. While I didn't think our offense would be stellar, I did think our pitching would be better. The defense has definitely taken a step back as we tried to improve on offense, but my goal of improving our strikeout potential has been working, as we're ranked 4th in that category. SP Seth White is struggling again. Despite a 3.94 SIERA, his ERA is 6.33 after 11 starts. The K's are up a bit at 26.5%, but he's walking 15.2% of hitters which needs to improve. SP Joe Casten is doing okay, with a 4.43 ERA and a 3.58 SIERA. We could certainly use some help in the bullpen, as well. New OF Steve Gonzalez, who we added in a trade, is walking as much as he's striking out, but isn't hitting enough to get his wRC+ to league average and is at 88. The big surprise so far is CF Adam Broussard, who we called up in May after he slugged .700 in AAA. He hasn't disappointed, hitting 7 homers in 121 PA, good for a 149 wRC+ so far. In the draft, as I mentioned, we dropped from #2 to #6. SP seems relatively deep with college arms, while offense is headlined by 1B Pat Kite, a JuCo Freshman from Hampton, VA with an elite power/eye combination. SS John Faiella looks interesting to me, a California native with an elite contact skill, speed, and defense that should keep him on the left side of the infield, but without a ton of power I'm not sure about the overall profile if he has to move to 3B. SS Brad Walter is similar, with a little more pop but is 99% destined to end up at 2B and has no speed. 1B Pat Kite, as expected, goes #1 overall to San Francisco, and is followed by two college bats in the corner OF. SP Phill Emmer, a college southpaw with elite stuff/low control goes next, followed by another college arm, SP Jesse Chandler, who's about as opposite as it gets. Low stuff, high command, right-handed. And that brings things to us. SS/3B Faiella and SS/2B Brad Walter are still on the board. Both are happy to sign out of high school, while two other solid OF bats are listed as "impossible" to sign, though I do have the money to persuade them; but I'd certainly want to wait and see if I could grab them in a later round. There's a couple interesting pitchers, who I'll name here only so I can embarrass myself later when they become Pitcher of the Year Award winners; SP Alberto Bugarin, a college arm with a low work ethic that just screams bust to me, and SP Travis Miller, a side-arming high stuff guy that feels somewhat destined to be a reliever due to control/split issues. So I end up back at those infielders, and end up taking SS John Faiella. He at least has a shot at staying at SS and would at least be a good defender at 3B. The speed is what really puts it over the top for me, as Walter just seems like he's going to end up as a horrible 2B that should be a 1B or even a DH by the time he hits 30. While the pitchers are gone by Round 2, the outfielders I mentioned are still there, and we're going to take a shot at signing them. OF Nick Henriksen is 18, a high-schooler out of Iowa, of all places. Good contact, power, and eye, with a propensity to hit the ball in the air. No speed, and below average defense come with the bat skills. D.J. Diaz, a high-school catcher, is our next pick. The defense will work, and he's got solid contact ability with power to go with it. Henriksen signs a few days later. June: 14-14 July (through 7/23): 6-11 While we were hovering around .500 for a bit, things fell apart in July. An injury to SP Joe Casten hurt, and then C Jon Hollet went down as well for a few weeks. On July 23rd, we're 43-56 and 19GB, so over this next week we'll see if there's a trade or two we can pull off to retool for next season. And that's exactly what we do; now seems like a good a time as ever to cash in on CL John Delmer, who's tossed 52 innings with a 1.90 ERA. He's entering his expensive years in arbitration and estimated to earn over $7M next year. We package him with LF Matt Smith, who had a good year with us in 1947 but has fallen off and is struggling with a 68 wRC+ this year. In return, we get 2B Bill Marek, a 23-year-old who was drafted last year in the second round by the Cleveland Buckeyes. He's an elite defender at 2B and can play SS well also. The bat should work as well, and it's always nice to have a left-handed bat up the middle in the infield. We also add two relievers from the minors, both left-handed arms. Within the next week, we learn that SP Seth White will be out for the next seven weeks. Rather than use one of our trade allowances, we instead use one of those moves to claim RP Corey Morris, a 29-year-old RHP off of waivers from Detroit. We end the season on a five game win streak, but it's only enough to save us from a 100-loss season. We finish 66-96. The World Series goes seven games again, and the Cleveland Buckeyes dethrone the Philadelphia Patriots dynasty. This is the Patriots 7th straight World Series appearance, but Cleveland comes out on top. Before we head into the offseason, let's look at some of our top performers in 1949: SP Joe Casten (7-8, 3.59 ERA, 3.1 WAR) A target two offseasons ago, we managed to get Casten during free agency and he didn't disappoint. He made 26 starts, posting a 3.59 ERA with a 21.3 K% and a 6.9 BB%. The strikeouts are down a bit, and our scout definitely believes the stuff isn't as good as it was. But Casten is cheap for 1950 at $5.2M and has a team option that we can decline if he continues a downward trend. SP Jose Alcantar (7-12, 4.11 ERA, 2.5 WAR) Alcantar has been steady for us, but he took another step forward this year at age 32 from a WAR standpoint. He reduced his walk % from 9.2 to 6.4, but the strikeouts continue to decline as well. He's got two years of control left and won't command a huge sum in arbitration, so he's likely to stick around as a back-end rotation piece (or maybe even in the bullpen). MR Jesus Guilfu (88.1 IP, 2.95 ERA, 26 K%) Guilfu was a minor league signing back when we first came into the league, and has been really good since finding a permanent spot in the bullpen in 1947 with a 2.59 ERA, a 3.20 ERA in 1948, and a 2.95 ERA in 1949. 2B Bill Marek (.318/.368/.534, 155 wRC+, 1.1 WAR) Marek was acquired at the trade deadline, and after 124 PA in AAA, we called him up. In 95 PA, he was great, although surely his .394 BABIP comes down back to Earth. Still, I'm excited about Marek in our infield in 1950. OF Steve Gonzalez (.273/.367/.413, 121 wRC+, 3.4 WAR) Gonzalez was the return in our trade that sent SP Joel Berryhill to Philadelphia. I think there's more here, as Gonzalez has an elite eye and ability to make contact to avoid K's. Still, he was very valuable for our offense and played in 156 games. 3B Adam Brand (.280/.343/.439, 119 wRC+, 2.3 WAR) Brand was a great signing for us last offseason, contributing greatly on offense and finishing with 36 2B and 19 HR. While we thought he could contribute defensively at 3B, he was dreadful there, and will absolutely need to move off the position to play 1B in 1950. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-29-2023 at 08:28 AM.

12-29-2023, 01:22 PM	#23
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The lottery gods strike again, dropping us from #2 to #7. Surely our luck needs to turn around soon.

12-29-2023, 03:01 PM	#25
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	FA roll (0-2): 0 Trade roll (0-2): 1 Carryover: +1 in each Profit ($-12M): -1 in each That leaves us with: 45+ rated FA: 0 Trades: 1 Shit. First things first; we have two team options to decide on. 1B/DH Adam Brand served us well in year one but absolutely cratered in year two both offensively and defensively, so this is an easy decline on a $10.5M deal. 1B Dave Cox is 36, but he's a captain on the team and the option is for just $6M. He had a basically league average offensive season with a 98 wRC+. Without any ability to sign FA's, we'll probably need the body. We'll accept this. One interesting move we could make; C Jon Hollett is a free agent and is asking for $14M per year over two years. I don't want to pay that, but the thought is crossing my mind to offer him a $20M one-year deal to make him eligible to bring back a compensation pick. I'm going to have a hell of a time finding a catcher as good as him without any FA adds, so if he accepts I'll have a starting catcher, and if he declines I'll have a comp pick. The downside is $20M for us is a lot, and I need to make a profit. We have nine arbitration eligible guys, one of which is RF Juan Montalvo. Now 31, we added him prior to the 1947 season. He stuck around a lot longer than I thought he would, and had some good years. He's due for a $3.6M deal for his second arb-year, and we have enough depth in the OF that I'm okay non-tendering him. 1B/3B Matt Harris has been around from the beginning, a Rule-5 pick from December of 1945. He hit .234/.317/.334 in his time with us, and now that he's not a great defender at the hot corner I'm happy to move on. And screw it; we're making Hollet a qualifying offer. With Brand at $10M coming off the books and about $7M in savings from non-tendering three arbitration guys, I think we can absorb the hit if he does indeed accept it. But it's tight. As we get closer to Spring Training, and ticket sales come into focus, our budget narrows. Right now we're projected to lose $3M. We lower our amateur draft budget; maybe we can take some under-slot guys to save some money. We still have this trade available, as well. But I think we can wait until mid-season to pull the trigger on that. Draft lottery comes and disappoints once again, as we drop from #1 to #3. 1951 season incoming. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-29-2023 at 10:47 PM.

12-30-2023, 02:18 PM	#27
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	As expected, SP Seth White doesn't opt out. He's now a 35-rated SP coming off a 5.08 ERA season owed $160M over the next five years. I'm VERY glad we negotiated the team option for the the final year. Let's see what we're working with this offseason: FA roll (0-2): 1 Trade roll (0-2): 1 Carryover: +1 trade Profit ($-10.7M): -1 in each That leaves us with: 45+ rated FA: 0 Trades: 1 Great. It's getting much harder to keep a profit. With SP Seth White I really was hoping he would be a foundation that would keep us decent and selling tickets. But it obviously blew up in my face. The -1's from losing money are killing our ability to do anything so we'll have to make sure we're profitable in 1952. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-30-2023 at 02:19 PM.

12-30-2023, 03:39 PM	#29
korme Go Reds Join Date: May 2001 Location: Bloodbuzz Ohio	As a guy that has fallen out of the nitty gritty of baseball day to day, I'm curious - is wRC+ and SIERA now the baseline stats you look at when generally determining a player's season's quality?

12-30-2023, 04:44 PM	#30
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	I just had a thought; we have a lot of young prospects, and I'm curious if we can package one or two of them with White to offload his contract. I'd hate to do it on one hand, but I'm severely hamstrung by this deal for the next four years. But after messing around with some offers, we come to an agreement with the New York Knights, and it's not quite as bad as I thought it would be. We'll send SP Seth White and CL Eric Morgan (which is painful, don't get me wrong; he's been amazing for us but I'm willing to lose a reliever) along with $2.9M, plus cover 40% of the remainder of White's deal. In return, we get a much worse reliever in RP Alex Ramirez who's owed $4M for this year, and 3B Oscar Saavedra, who's owed $7.4M this coming year but is on the last year of his deal. Neither guy fits into our long-term plans and will likely be let go after the season. For us, we lose our best reliever, by far. We lose SP Seth White, who our scout thinks has diminished into worthless (and the stats back this up). We'll obviously still pay a significant amount this year with the 40% we owe and the two new guys, but after this year, we'll save close to $18M or so a year for the next four years. FA: 0 Trades: 0 There's not much else to cover; this year is certainly going to be a transition year. Hopefully SP Joey Parrish and CF Mike Gruver can put together strong seasons, and maybe some other young guys can make an impact.

12-30-2023, 11:43 PM	#34
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	Draft lottery once again gives us a giant middle finger, as we drop from #1 to #4.

12-31-2023, 06:09 PM	#37
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1954 Portland Rosebuds This is our 9th season. Last year was our best yet, but we still have so far to go. Can we finish with a winning record for the first time? The pitching is certainly suspect but we've got arguably the best pitcher in baseball leading the charge. He starts off opening day with a gem, a seven-inning masterpiece with just 3 hits allowed, no runs, and 10 K's. April: 9-15 May: 15-14 We get a no-hitter in May from SP Jason Bowen; he's been good but not spectacular outside of that game, but the big issue is the home runs allowed. He's on pace for 37 allowed; his career high is 21. Amateur Draft We pick 8th this year, moving up from 9th in the draft. It's not much, but I think this is the first time we've ever moved up in the draft. I'm hoping for a stud pitcher, and the first seven picks in the draft are bats. There's a clear pick for us at #8; SP Jimmy Letter, an 18-year-old southpaw out of New York state. He's 6'6", with a great skills profile (7/6/6). He has an elite curveball and splitter with a solid sinker and cutter to go with it. He's working on a changeup too, but it's not nearly as good as the other pitches. In the 2nd round, we take SS Adam Hinshaw, a JuCo Freshman who's an elite defender. The 19-year-old has some decent gap power, but also has some swing and miss. This is purely a defensive play with some hope that his bat can develop a bit further than we think. SS Joe Johnson is our third-round pick, who's another elite defender, but out of the college ranks from the University of Virginia. He has an elite ability to avoid strikeouts, but no power whatsoever. June: 15-13 July: 10-15 Trade Deadline Nearing the deadline, we're 47-57 and 16GB. SP Joey Parrish was out for about a month, but our rotation is actually doing decently well. We have the lowest batting average against at .240 as a staff, but giving up a lot of runs. But we do have a trade available to us, and we're going to use it: We send SP Jason Bowen and CL Corey Morris, who are 36 and 34 respectively and in their contract year, along with SS Rich Plumb, a 24-year-old very good defender, to the Philadelphia Patriots, who are chasing 1st place, six games back. In return, they send us SP Mario Moreno, a 27-year-old with three years left on an early extension he signed. We'll owe him around $13M each year for that time. FA: 0 Trades: 0 In August, we go 16-13, but we're really struggling to keep SS John Faiella on the field. The #45 prospect has played really well, but he's only played in 79 games as he keeps getting hurt. Final Stretch We call up RP Sean Russell on September 1st, an 18th-round pick from the 1951 draft. he has blossomed into an elite arm (6/7/6), with four great pitches, one of which is a devastating splitter. In AAA this year, he pitched 47 innings with a 1.90 ERA. While a strong September could have seen us finish with a winning record, we struggle to close out strong, going 10-17 in September. We finish with a 75-87 record, one win short of last years performance. It's a 7th place spot, with the Philadelphia Patriots once again winning the pennant (9 in the last 12 seasons) in our Federal League. Playoffs Our expansion mates, the California Seals, have clearly done a little bit of a better job than us as they take their first Columbia League pennant with a 93-69 record; but the underdog Seals and the Philadelphia empire go back and forth, and the favorites come out on top, winning their 6th World Series championship. With nobody notable leaving in FA, we'll take a deeper look at our roster in the next post. See you in the offseason. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 12-31-2023 at 10:05 PM.

12-31-2023, 10:30 PM	#38
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	1954-1955 Offseason FA roll (0-2): 0 Trade roll (0-2): 0 Carryover: 0 Profit ($31M): +1 in each Worst record penalty: N/A Total: 45+ rated FA: 1 Trades: 1 Unlucky. I'm considering doing something drastic. SP Joey Parrish has three years of control left, and I'd like to get as much value out of him as possible before he gets crazy expensive. We go back and forth with a couple of teams, but things start to get real when we talk to the New York Knights. It's a monster of a deal, with ten players exchanging teams. We'd send four players; SP Joey Parrish, along with 3B Cortez de Santiago (#34 prospect), 1B Oscar Zavala (#61 prospect), and RP Larry Burchfield (a 40-rated former 9th-round pick). In return, we'd get SP Jason Fuchs (50-rated SP with two years of control left), SP Chris Benka (#43 prospect), 1B Bill Robbe (#9 prospect), LF Jim Clatt (#20 prospect), RP Gary Battist (50-rated reliever with six years of control) and RP David Baker (50-rated reliever with four years of control). It's a pretty wild deal, and obviously I'm sending the best player. However; Parrish only has three years left, and he's about to get very expensive. This season was strong, but the walks were up, the home runs were up, and the strikeouts were down. de Santiago keeps getting positive rankings but has been struggling in the minors, and the ratings have taken a dip recently. I liek Zavala but would be getting a much better 1B back. LF Jim Clatt hit 40 HR in AAA last year, and can play a decent defense. All in all, I think this makes my team much deeper, and gives me a stud SP prospect who should be up in the next year or two in Benka, and a current rotation piece in Fuchs. It stings, but I think it's the right move. We do it. FA: 1 Trades: 0 Two of our players get Rookie of the Year votes; SS John Faiella and C Yasutaka Yamashiro. Our rookie catcher struggled to a .200 average, but hit 10 HR and walked enough to get his OBP up to .308, but defensively he was great, and finished the year with 3.3 WAR. Acquired at the trade deadling, SP Mario Moreno finished third in Pitcher of the Year voting. He made 12 starts for us with a 3.69 ERA. Free agency begins, but before we do anything, let's take a holistic look at the roster after our big trade: C: RHB Yasutaka Yamashiro, 28 (4/6/7) 1B: RHB Bill Robbe, 25 (7/7/6) 2B: LHB Bill Marek, 28 (5/5/5) 3B: RHB Bobby Camacho, 24 (5/4/6) SS: RHB John Faiella, 24 (7/3/6) LF: LHB Nick Henriksen, 24 (6/6/5) CF: LHB Jim Clatt, 25 (5/7/6) RF: LHB Mike Gruver, 25 (6/6/5) DH: RHB Guillermo Rodriguez, 24 (8/7/7) This lineup should be really good, with plenty of power, on-base ability, and contact. The outfield defense is not where I want it to be, but I do need to get all of these guys in somehow. Clatt should not be in CF, but the power upside is huge. OF Tony Serna is a RHB who should play against LHP. He's 24 with a 5/6/7 skill profile. OF Mike DeWeese is another option, just 25 years old. OF John Hollis is a switch hitter, 24 years old with a 6/4/4 profile. LHB 1B Bryant Hammock is a power bat with a nice profile as well. There's a lot of talent here. On the pitching side: SP1: RHP Mario Moreno, 27 (5/7/6) SP2: RHP Jason Fuchs, 27 (5/5/6) SP3: ? SP4: RHP Brian Musto, 28 (5/5/6) SP5: LHP Yukiharu Miyamoto, 31 (5/5/5) Obviously, we're missing the ace here. We're missing the swing and miss guy. In an ideal world, Moreno is a #2, Fuchs is a #3, and we have an ace. But I still think moving Parrish was the right decision that will pay off for us. We have a FA move and we have a budget to do something helpful. Clearly, I don't think adding offense is the right move. Let's go find an arm. SP Nick Moody is our target. He'll be 33 next year, but has been hugely consistent; labeled as an "Iron Man," he's made 31+ starts every year for a decade. He's also got great stuff, striking out 24% of batters. He wants a good amount of money ($25M) but doesn't want a super long-term deal (5 years). Our first number generator roll doesn't do it for us. We need a six or higher; we try again in week 2 but we get a five. But in week 3, it works out, and we make an offer. We also offer an opt-out after year three to sweeten the pot for him. He signs with us quickly, and we pencil him in as the ace for the next few years. FA: 0 Trades: 0 We'll leave it at that, but when the trade deadline comes, don't forget that I have the ability to go beyond these moves at a 2x penalty; we'll revisit that when we get there. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 01-01-2024 at 12:43 AM.

01-01-2024, 01:06 AM	#39
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1955 Portland Rosebuds In the first week, SS John Faiella ruptures his achilles tendon, and he's out for 3-4 months. Interestingly, there was a version of the Parrish/New York trade that included Faiella instead of de Santiago. I really hope Faiella can put the injury proneness behind him, at some point, but it's getting very annoying. April: 13-12 May: 12-17 Amateur Draft We pick 7th, and we're looking to continue to beef up our #1 ranked farm system, but we also need some results at the major league level quickly. SP Dan D'Amico goes first overall, a college arm with the best stuff in the draft. It's the type of player that would be ideal for us, and when our selection comes, SP Adam Dunshee is there, a 22-year-old senior out of Indiana State. He's got a 6/7/6 skill profile, so the stuff is there to get swing and miss and he should be on the fast track to the majors. With our 2nd pick, we select RP Armando Maldonado, a 70-rated reliever out of Sacramento State. Again, we're thinking about fast-tracking this guy to the majors to have an elite bullpen arm as early as September. In the 3rd, we take SS Chris Knight, a quick defender with lots of range and strong contact ability. June: 17-11 July: 11-14 We have an incredible June, going 17-11 but follow it up with a poor July. We won't mortgage the future by making any additional moves, but we still have something to play for; if we can get to a winning record, our transaction allowance roll bumps up from 0-2 to 0-3. Final Stretch August: 11-17 September: 13-14 August is absolutely brutal and kills most of whatever shot we had to finish with a winning record. But as a whole, there are so many good things to say about this team. The offense is firing on all cylinders for a young team, and they're going to get better. We have nine players with a wRC+ above 90, and two more above 80. OF Jim Clatt led the league in homers with 45. DH Guillermo Rofriguez is an elite bat, slashing .297/.377/.521 with 35 HR. OF Jon Oviedo, our third-overall pick in the 1951 draft, debuted strongly, slashing .312/.353/.750 in limited action (17 PA). The pitching still needs work, but it's deeper than it's been in years. SP Chris Rodriguez is the #7 prospect in baseball and is in AA. SP Adam Dunshee is the #20 prospect and is in AA. Chris Benka is the #35 prospect and is in AAA. Their coming. Things are looking up. I think next year is when things really click for us across the whole team. Playoffs The New Orleans Kingfish win the Federal League pennant with 97 wins, and will face off against the Philadelphia Brewers of the Columbia League in the World Series. They were a juggernaut when we first started this thing back in the mid-1940's, but haven't won the pennant since 1947. And they come out on top in '55, winning in six games. We finish the year with a 77-85 record, and finish in 7th place. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 01-01-2024 at 01:28 PM.

01-01-2024, 10:55 PM	#41
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1956 Portland Rosebuds A few days before Opening Day, as we were in the process of cutting down our roster, we end up making a small deal, sending RP Joel Burbach, a RHP with no options left who we picked up in the Rule-5 Draft back in December, to Cleveland. In return, we get three high stuff, low control relievers back. All of them have options, so it adds some flexibility for us. FA: 1 Trades: 1 Within the first two weeks, SS John Faiella goes down for the year with a torn PCL in his knee. So frustrating that this guy hasn't even played half a season with us in his four years in the majors. But it doesn't matter. Our team is rolling. Well; comparatively speaking. Through May 20th, we're 26-19. I think this is the first time I've ever seen us have a winning record. And the reinforcements are coming. We start with #41 prospect SP Chris Benka, who was part of the SP Joey Parrish return. He's getting the call today. OF Mike Gruver goes down for a couple weeks, and 3B Dave Magby, the #109 prospect in the league, is up next. He can play all over the field, and will likely stay up when Gruver comes back. Amateur Draft We pick 10th this year, and go with SS Jonathan Tandy, a left-handed hitter out of college. He's an elite defensive talent with a ton of offensive potential to go with it. In the 2nd round, we go with RP Jeff Woodard, who has no chance of being anything but a reliever. However, the southpaw has the most elite stuff in the draft, with great movement and control as well. In the 3rd, we go with SS/OF Kellen Almond. He's not a huge offensive threat, but he's incredibly versatile on defense and can play pretty much any position at a very high level. On June 16th, we're 42-28, and bring up another top pitching prospect, #8 ranked SP Chris Rodriguez. We picked him up in the 1952 draft at 3rd overall. April: 17-10 May: 16-13 June: 15-13 We get some bad news in the final week of June, with OF Jim Clatt, going down for seven weeks with a sprained thumb. But we've got a solid OF in John Hollis ready to come up. The depth right now is fantastic. SP Chris Rodriguez is off to a great start, and while I don't see us able or even willing to do this a ton, I want to lock him up to a long-term deal early. It's a ten-year deal, the last two of which are team options. It's a $106M deal if it goes the whole ten years. This uses up our final FA allowance. FA: 0 Trades: 1 SP Chris Benka, on the other hand, is struggling, and while I have no doubt he'll be great, we send him back to AAA and call up our other top prospect, #9 ranked SP Adam Dunshee. It's a strong debut, for him. 5 IP, 1 BB, 6 K's. Trade Deadline On July 28th, we're 62-43 and two games out. Detroit is in 1st, Philadelphia is a game behind them, and we're game behind Philly, with St. Louis another two games back behind us. Those are the four teams that will be fighting down the stretch unless there's some miracle. We need to make a move. It doesn't need to be a huge one. OF Jim Clatt will be back in two weeks. There's a glut of pitching depth with more relief arms ready, waiting in AAA. Shortstop, the spot of now-and-always-injured SS John Faiella, is likely the biggest need, and there's an option out there; SS Zach DiMeo. From a struggling New Orleans team, DiMeo is a great clubhouse presence, a great defender, and has a career 110 wRC+. He's under contract for the next four years, and is a little bit expensive after this season. We have New Orleans cover 50% of the deal, and we send them 21-year-old SP Nick Warfel, a former 4th overall pick and the #20 prospect in the game who hasn't made his debut yet, along with IF Bobby Camacho, who has filled in really well across all of the infield positions over the last few years. He's got four years left of contract, so this wasn't a slam dunk decision. But DiMeo is a better defender at SS, and stat-wise has performed a little bit better. Right now, he's a better fit for us. FA: 0 Trades: 0 July: 14-11 Final Stretch We lose four games in a row to finish August. I almost pulled the trigger on another trade for two elite bullpen arms, which would have pushed us into a negative trade allowance, but now 6GB I don't think it makes as much sense to mortgage the future like that on rentals. We need a big August to gain some ground, and we take two out of three from 1st place Detroit to start the month. But when we face 2nd place Philadelphia, we lose two of three, and on August 13th we're back to 6GB. On August 20th, OF Jim Clatt finished his rehab (quickly) and joins the team after a three-game sweep of the Vancouver Mounties. We're now in 2nd place, three games behind Detroit. But the end of August is devastating; we lose two games against Detroit, and now we're in 3rd place and 7GB. It's going to take a miracle to come back, and we're pulling out everything we've got. 3B Jose Luis, our #43 prospect, is an elite contact hitter with blazing speed. It's the one true weakness of this club. Luis hasn't played above AA, but he's getting the call. He'll pinch run, pinch hit, and do whatever else we need of him. We get to the final series of the season, three games against the New Orleans Kingfish. And we're three games back, along with the Philadelphia Patriots, behind Detroit, who face New York for the final series. We win the first game, and Detroit loses, keeping us alive. And while Detroit loses the next one, we can't manage a win. We're eliminated, and it's a shame because Detroit ended the season getting swept. We finish 92-70, tied for 2nd place. Playoffs It's a wild finish to the season in general, with Detroit finishing in 1st and three teams (Philadelphia, New Orleans, and ourselves) all tied for 2nd with a 92-70 record. In the Columbia League, the Brooklyn Originals win the pennant after a 95-67 season. Detroit has been to the playoffs once, all the way back in 1938, but they have never won a World Series in their entire existence (they entered the league in the first round of expansion in 1917). Brooklyn is looking to win again after taking home the title in 1953, and are going for their 7th World Series victory in their history. Detroit wins in five games, and bring home their first World Series trophy. For us, it's our first winning season. It was so close we could taste it. But the vast majority of our team is coming back next year. We didn't completely mortage our future to get here, and some additions we made will be here for the new few years. We called up so many players and had so many good performances. We're ready to go at this again. See you in the offseason. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 01-02-2024 at 12:15 AM.

01-02-2024, 12:14 AM	#42
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1956-57 Offseason It's time for bed, but let's get the random number rolls out of the way so we know what kind of options we have. This is our first year without a losing record, so instead of rolling 0-2, we'll roll 0-3: FA roll (0-3): 2 Trade roll (0-3): 3 Carryover from last season: 0 Profit ($28M): +1 to both Worst record penalty: N/A Total: 45+ rated FA: 3 Trades: 4 I love to see it. And we're going to need it, I think, because our team is getting significantly more expensive and I'd love to at least explore the idea of locking up a bat to a long-term deal, which means we may need to explore moving an expensive piece like SP Nick Moody ($25M) or SP Mario Moreno ($13.8M). We also have a team option on C Yasutaka Yamashiro ($8M). He's a captain on our team, and is incredibly good defensively with a great eye at the plate. We accept it, and we'll do whatever we need to do otherwise to make it work, financially. Just two relievers are pending FA, and we'll let them walk with the massive depth we have. Eight players are in our arbitration class, and the big jump is from DH Guillermo Rodriguez, who had an incredible season (.272/.355/.520, 39 HR) and is now estimated to make $11.8M this upcoming season. Extension news: 3B Dave Magby is listed as the #80 prospect heading into the offseason. He had 146 PA last year, and he struggled a bit in his limited time, slashing .187/.228/.381. But his defensive versatility is amazing, and we like his overall offensive profile a lot (5/6/6). We offer him a deal to buy out his arbitration years and the first of his FA seasons; it's a team-friendly deal ($15M guaranteed over five years, with two ~$5M team options for another two seasons), but he'll still be able to enter FA at age 31 and guarantees himself a bunch of money. OF Tony Serna also gets an offer; he's got two years of service, and had a great year in 1956, slashing .272/.346/.462 with 25 HR. It's a six-year offer, which will buy out two of his FA years. The last two years are team options, and if we do pick those up, the deal will total six years and $47.5M. SP Nick Moody, who we signed prior to 1955 to a big FA deal, wins the 1956 Pitcher of the Year Award. He made 33 starts, going 225 innings with a 3.08 ERA, 235 Ks, and just 7 HR allowed, contributing 7 WAR. He has an opt-out after this upcoming season. Magby and Serna both sign their extensions, which each use up one of our choice of allowances. I don't have any money to add new players, so we'll take both from our FA allowance and keep the flexibility that the trades allow. 45+ rated FA: 1 Trades: 4 And we're going to use one of those trade allowances now. OF Mike Gruver is in his final year of team control, and will earn around $6M this upcoming season. We're sending him to Pittsburgh along with SP Amir Lewis, a 2nd-round pick from the 1953 draft, and getting a return headlined by 3B Ruben Perez. He hasn't hit a full year of service time, so we have six years of control with him. He's got a nice bat profile (5/6/6) and plays excellent defense at the hot corner. We also take advantage of their roster crunch by bringing back three decent relievers who need to be added to the 40-man, all who have six years of control left. Pittsburgh sends $5M as well. Gruver was great in his time here. We took him in the 2nd round back in 1947, and after making a strong debut in limited time in 1951, he struggled in '52 but had an amazing year in 1953, hitting .291 with 20 HR. In total, he slashed .268/.305/.430 in just under 3000 PA's with us. 45+ rated FA: 1 Trades: 3 Free Agency When Free Agency begins, we're estimated to finish about $7M in the green, but due to cash received in the Gruver deal and our starting balance, our budget is technically $17M. Ticket prices are going up a bit this year, and maybe we can even pull in some extra revenue from the playoffs. I'd prefer to make money, but the $17M figure is the hard limit if we want to go beyond the $7M we're predicted to finish with. We have two SP's, Nick Moody and Mario Moreno, who could be entering the final years of their time here. Moody has an opt-out after this year, and Moreno's contract expires, so we're going to have to think about moving at least one of them. Moody is due $25M this year, and Moreno is due $13.8M. Well, we end up going in a different direction. SP Joey Parrish, who I was so sad to trade away, is on the trade block; he's due $30M and in the final year of his deal, and New York had a horrible year last year. Interestingly, SP Jason Fuchs, who we received in that deal, is about to make $9M for the next two seasons; and after struggling a bit in 1956, we were already looking into moving him. We negotiate a deal with New York to send Fuchs back to New York, with two solid OF prospects, Kevin Mulhern (55 POT) and Monfre Imaginrio (50 POT, #51 prospect). Neither are elite in CF which is really what I need, and moving Fuchs contract is beneficial for this year and next and will help us absorb the $30M owed to Parrish. They'll pay for 10% of his deal, and also send RP Brian Yocum, a 55-rated former 2nd-round pick who's nothing too special. 45+ rated FA: 1 Trades: 2 We find a buyer for SP Mario Moreno, who's in his final year, and package SS John Faiella who can never stay on the field for SP Tom Brown, a 60-rated SP with two years of service. He's a RHP with an elite changeup and great stuff. We also get 3B Justin Chandler, who adds a power/speed option to our lineup. We've got some options at the corner now, but him and 3B Ruben Perez, who we picked up earlier this offseason, both have options. Chandler is definitely a better option I think, so Perez may start the year in AAA. RP Miguel Perez also joins our squad; he's 23 and in AA, but could be an elite reliever as our scout sees him as an 80. 45+ rated FA: 1 Trades: 1 We're holding here. We'll keep these moves in our back pocket to make a splash at the deadline or extend one of our young guys. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 01-02-2024 at 02:10 PM.

01-02-2024, 04:03 PM	#43
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1957 Portland Rosebuds We start off decently well, enough to put us in a tie for 3rd place and just 3GB at the end of May; but I was expecting to be a little bit better. SP Joey Parrish is off to a slow start, with a 4.90 ERA after 10 starts. Offensively, we're clicking; we're 2nd in runs scored, and 1st in home runs with 8, and are scoring 4.9 R/G. On the prevention side, we're doing okay, but I thought we'd be really good. We're allowing 4.3 R/G at the moment, but we have the most strikeouts in the league so hopefully that number drops a bit. April: 16-12 May: 17-12 Amateur Draft We pick 15th, and go with prep right-handed SP Cameron Spann out of Maryland. He's got a very interesting profile (8/3/8), with crazy high stuff and control but a tendency to give up a lot of loud contact. That could play well in our park but there's obviously a limit on what we can tolerate. The crazy high stuff is always going to interest me and the numbers he put up in high school are just bonkers (240 K over 95 IP). We go with another prep arm in the 2nd round with right-handed SP Jerry Bridges. He's a bit more balanced (6/6/6) but has four great pitches and the makeup is second-to-none. Canadian SP Scott Lent, another high-school right-handed is our pick in the 3rd round. He's got elite stuff but low control (8/5/4), but has a dominant changeup which should help neutralize left-handed hitters. As June comes to a close, we call up 3B Jose Luis, who played in two games and then broke his kneecap. But we weather the storm, and on July 10th, we surge ahead after a 9-1 stretch and take 1st place from Detroit. Trade Deadline On July 27th, we have a one-game lead over Detroit. We have a trade available to us, and I think we're going to use it. A great bullpen piece always feels like a good option, but we also could really use some speed. We move a minor-league relief arm for OF Scott Morrissey, a contact and speed oriented RHB who's suited for a corner spot in the outfield. FA: 1 Trades: 0 As we head into the final stretch, we're 67-43 and in 1st place. June: 17-10 July: 17-9 Final Stretch September 11, 12, 13. Home vs Detroit. Tied for first place. This is a huge series that will propel the winner into 1st place with twelve games remaining. SP Joey Parrish takes the ball in the opener and hurls a masterpiece, a 4-hit, no run, 8-inning gem with 7 Ks over 92 pitches. We only muster three hits and two runs, both of which score in the 1st. But it's enough. SP Chris Rodriguez is up next, but even with as good as he's been this year (2.88 ERA) he struggles to tame Detroit. The offense doesn't help. We lose 7-0. SP Nick Moody pitchers in the rubber match, and it's a struggle for him too. We lose 11-3, and with twelve games to go we're now one game back. But Detroit gets swept in their next series against St. Louis, and while we're on the verge of the same vs Vancouver, we squeak out a 6-4 win in the third game. Tied again! And then we sweep Pittsburgh and are up a game with six to go, all on the road. We lose. Detroit wins. Tied again. But the next day sees us get back into 1st. What a ride this is. We head into the FINAL series of the season against the Philadelphia Patriots, and we're up by one game. We both lose the first game. Still up by one. And SP Joey Parrish takes the ball for game two. He struggles, we go down 4-0 early, and then come back to tie it in the 8th inning on a pinch-hit, two-run homer by 3B Ruben Perez! And then heartbreak; in the 11th inning, Philadelphia scores, and we lose the game. But so did Detroit. With one game left to go, we're up by one. A win, and we're in. SP Tom Brown, who just came back from injury, takes the ball for us; it's not perfect, and despite just one strikeout, he gives up no runs. The bullpen keeps it scoreless. 1B Nick Henriksen, who hit 24 HRs this season for us, launches one deep over the fence in the 6th inning, a two-run bomb. They're the only runs of the game. August: 18-10 September: 11-13 We win the pennant with a record of 96-66. World Series next. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 01-02-2024 at 04:06 PM.

01-02-2024, 09:27 PM	#44
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1957 World Series While our Federal League race was close, it was actually even closer in the Columbia League, and it was the Chicago Packers who finished the year on top with a 93-70 record after going to a Game 163 vs the Baltimore Atlantics. We were so wrapped in our own race that I missed how it went down; the one-game playoff went SIXTEEN INNINGS. Baltimore took the lead in the top of the 9th, only to see Chicago come back and tie, and then the same thing happened in the 13th. In the 16th, Chicago put across a run to win the game. What an absolutely wild finish. To give some comparisons on our two teams, we scored 4.9 runs per game and allowed 3.9 runs per game. Chicago led their league in offense as well with 4.8, but the prevention wasn't at the same elite level, giving up 4.3, 5th in their league. And looking at some other stats, it makes sense. Offensively, they were 1st in every major category. But their starters ERA was 4.08, and finished 8th in their league in strikeouts. Meanwhile, here in Portland we only finished 1st in the power categories, like Slugging % and home runs. On the pitching side, we were in the middle of the pack in ERA but finished 2nd in strikeouts and 2nd in fewest HR allowed. Our defense is also considerably stronger. A quick note: 3B Justin Chandler has been out for the majority of the year, getting hurt after just 30 games. He's due to return by Game 3. He'll be rusty, but his bat and speed could be very helpful for us. Game 1 Joey Parrish takes the ball for us in Game 1. He started 31 games for us with a 2.98 ERA and 229 Ks. For Chicago, it's Ben Burns, a RHP who has a very low delivery that leads to a heavy, heavy split. LHB slash .256/.336/.458 against him. RHB? .196/.246/.291. We'll need to stack the deck with LHB as much as possible, but we only have two lefty bats and two switch hitters, one of which is the backup catcher. It's a horror start for us. Parrish is wild, and a run comes in Chicago's half of the 1st after a walk and a few hits. But the 2nd inning is worse; another couple of walks, a triple, and a home run break the game wide open. We're down 5-0 before we even have a man on base. We try to get him to eat some innings but he's out after 2.2 IP as he gets some traffic on the bases. We get out of it, and it's still 5-0. The bottom of the 5th ends with a Chicago runner getting thrown out at home, keeping the deficit to five runs. We have to wait all the way to the bottom of the 7th inning to get another runner on; but we string some things together and have 1st and 3rd with nobody out. But the next man strikes out. A sac fly brings the runner home, and that's the end of the threat. We give up another run in the top of the 9th. We get two men in scoring position in the last frame, but no damage. We're down 1-0 now Final line: Code: CHI: 6 \| 12 \| 0 POR: 2 \| 7 \| 1 Game 2 Chicago puts Matt Wood on the mound, who went 12-7 with a 3.09 ERA over 33 starts. Not a huge strikeout guy. For us, it's Nick Moody, our 35-year-old veteran who went 18-7 with a 3.85 ERA and 216 Ks over 189.1 IP. No crazy splits with Wood, so we'll go with our normal lineup. Unbelievably, by the 3rd inning, we're down 5-0 again. No huge homers, just a barrage of hits by Chicago. We're not taking advantage of Wood, who has four walks already through two innings. In the 4th, Moody gives up a two-run shot, and it's 7-0. It doesn't get better We lose 10-0; what a way to start at home. We now have to go on the road for three games, and we need a miracle. Final line: Code: CHI: 10 \| 12 \| 0 POR: 0 \| 4 \| 0 Game 3 Chris Rodriguez has his work cut out for him. 13-3, 2.93 ERA, and 181 Ks over 32 starts was great, but this Chicago club is relentless. Left-hander Blake Solitro goes for Chicago. He was a mid-season addition at the deadline, and has been dreadful. Across time in St. Louis and Chicago, he went 6-16 with a 6.62 ERA over 33 starts. We need to take advantage here. It's a big split, as he struggles heavily against right-handed hitters. In the top of the 2nd, we load the bases to bring up arguably our best right-handed hitter, DH Guillermo Rodriguez. A wild pitch brings home a run, but Rodriguez strikes out. We're on the board though. In the top of the 5th, Rodriguez drives in a run on a deep double to center-field, and we're up 2-0. We head into the 6th, and SP Chris Rodriguez has been great, giving up just 2 hits and has struck out 7 through 87 pitches. With the top of their order up, we go to the bullpen after he gets the #9 hitter out. The side is retired. In the top of the 7th, DH Guillermo Rodriguez strikes again with a homer! We're up 3-0 now, but the heart of their order is up in the bottom of the inning. We try to mix and match but they battle, and they load the bases. We now have a left-handed pitcher facing a right-handed batter, and he needs to face this next better before we can take him out. But we get the strikeout! A huge win, there. But the bases are still loaded with two outs. We bring in a RHP, our current acting closer Adam Dunshee out of the pen, and we get a flyout, keeping it 3-0. We get to the 9th, and once again the heart of their order is up. Our closer is already in, and we'll let him keep going. And Dunshee does it, closing out Game 3 to earn us the win. We're now down 2-1 with two more to play in Chicago. Final line: Code: POR: 3 \| 10 \| 0 CHI: 0 \| 3 \| 0 Game 4 It's Tom Brown's turn. 31 starts for a record of 10-6, with an ERA of 4.00 flat. He's got good stuff, with 165 Ks over 157.1 IP. Another left-hander goes for Chicago; SP Gave Martinez. He split time between the rotation and then pen, but over 114 IP overall he had a 3.87 ERA, but just a 15.7 K%. This is another game I think we should be able to take. We take an early lead; OF Dan Ingle drives in a run on a single in the top of the 2nd. The following inning, we have runners on 1st and 3rd with deadline acquisition and speedster Scott Morrissey up to bat, and he ropes a single into center, driving in another run. We're up 2-0! SS Zack DiMeo then hits one to the wall; it's a double, putting us up 3-0. A walk loads the bases, and then Dan Ingle gets up again, ripping a single into right. The inning ends, and it's now 5-0! And in the 4th, the floodgates open. We score seven more runs, and now lead 12-0. The momentum is shifting! In the 7th, we take out Brown when he's at just over 100 pitches. 6.1 IP, 9 Ks, 0 R. The rest of the game is pretty much a cakewalk. The series is now tied at 2-2. Final line: Code: POR: 12 \| 15 \| 1 CHI: 0 \| 7 \| 0 Game 5 It's a rematch of Game 1, with Joey Parrish facing off against Ben Burns. It wasn't pretty for us last time, but Parrish is an elite pitcher. We struggled against the heavy split of Burns, as we don't have a ton of left-handed hitters on our team; but we'll use who we can and see if we can get this thing back to Portland with just one win needed. Uh oh. Chicago has the bases loaded in the 1st with just one out. A sac fly scores the run, and then we get out of it, but Chicago takes a one-run lead. And they add on in the 3rd. A three-run homer makes it 4-0. In the 5th, Chicago loads the bases with one out, and has two left-handed hitters coming up. Parrish just isn't on right now, with 4 BBs and just 2 Ks. LHP Chris Benka comes in to limit the damage, and he gets a HUGE double play. We go into the 6th down 4-0. 3B/OF Jon Oviedo walks in the 6th with one out, and that brings Burns out of the game, thank god. We couldn't do anything against him. In the 7th, 3B Justin Chandler, back from months away from the team, hits a home run to put us on the board. It's 4-1. But Chicago answers right back with a home run of their own. 5-1. It stays that way. We head home with our backs against the wall. Final line: Code: POR: 1 \| 3 \| 2 CHI: 5 \| 7 \| 1 Game 6 Another rematch, this time of Game 2. SP Nick Moody was horrible for us, but he's the rested arm right now and we'll have to lean on him to get this to Game 7. Chicago hits a two-run bomb in the 2nd, and we're down 2-0 already. In the 3rd, we're able to get the first two men on at 2nd and 3rd base, with nobody out. AND DH GUILLERMO RODRIGUEZ GOES DEEP! We take the lead 3-2! OF Jim Clatt follows him up in the 4th, driving in a run, making it 4-2! Moody walks a man to start the 6th, and with two LHB coming up we go to the bullpen for a lefty, and we get out of it without any damage. But we're right back in the thick of it in the 7th. We bring a right-handed reliever, Mark Evanow, but the first two men he faces get on, and Chicago now has the top of their lineup due up next; and Evanow get's the K! The next man up walks, which brings up 2B Willie Hernandez, their best hitter. We bring in Blake Milner, a long-time starter for us that moved to the pen after 20 starts mid-season. He's got elite, elite stuff with a 30+ K%, but the movement and control are dwindling. We need a K here. It's a fly ball to RF. The runner at 3rd tags, and now we're up 4-3. A grounder to 3B is next, and we're out of the inning. But Milner's luck doesn't last long. Chicago gets men on 2nd and 3rd, and nobody's out. It's desperate times, and we bring out SP Chris Rodriguez. He's our projected starter for tomorrow, but we'll figure that out tomorrow, if there is one. It's a strikeout. The next batter grounds one to 1B, and our fielder throws home; but it's too late. The game is tied. Runners on 1st and 3rd now, with one out. It's a wild play. The batter rips a ball into the gap, scoring the runner from third. The runner on 1st tries to score, but is thrown out; then the batter tries to move to third on the throw home, and our catcher throws the ball into the outfield, allowing him to hit a little league home run and score on the error. We're now down 6-4, and there may not be a tomorrow. Rodriguez finishes the inning with another strikeout, but it's too little to late. We go into the bottom of the 8th down by two. Strike out. Fly out. Ground out. It's a one-two-three inning in the 8th for us, and it's followed by one for them in the top of the 9th. We head into the final half-inning down 6-4. Justin Chandler is up first. IT'S A DOUBLE. Dan Ingle is next. Fly out to LF. Runner stays. Jim Clatt, a power threat, is up next. SINGLE! We have runners on 1st and 3rd with one out. Nick Henriksen is next. He has 24 HR on the year. One here would send Portland into an absolute frenzy... IT'S A DOUBLE!!! BOTH RUNNERS SCORE AND THIS GAME. IS. TIED!!! Henriksen moves up to 3rd on the throw and we're 90 feet away from forcing a Game 7. Japanese catcher Yasutaka Yamashiro is due next. He's had a rough year, slashing .192/.294/.343 with a 30.9 K%. A strikeout is the absolute last thing we need right now. Henriksen is also slow as shit on 3rd. We go to the bench. Our trade deadline move wasn't to bring in a star, a huge offensive threat, or an elite bullpen arm. It was to bring in a guy who could run. Scott Morrissey is that guy. He takes over at 3B. IF Joe Johnson is who we call on to take the lumber. He's got the lowest K% on our club. He's been bouncing back and forth between Portland and AAA over the last few seasons, slashing .271/.307/.349 in his short career. Here we go. Chicago is leaving in their reliever. He's tiring at 33 pitches. The infield is in, and Johnson makes contact; but it's right at the second baseman. Morrissey freezes, and stays at third. There's now two outs. The lineup turns over here, and the man we want at the plate walks up to it. DH Guillermo Rodriguez. He has two HR in this series so far, and 29 during the regular season. But they walk him. 3B Dave Magby is next. We signed him to a long-term deal because we wanted him around for moments just like this. He had a strong year with 4.8 WAR, slashing .243/.338/.491. Send us home, Dave. But he doesn't. It's a fly out to right field, and we're going to extra innings. We leave Chris Rodriguez out there, and he strikes out the leadoff man, but then disaster; a home run. He gets the next two guys out quickly, but we head into the bottom of the 10th down 7-6, and once again, we need some magic. Tony Serna is first. He strikes out looking. Now Zack DiMeo. He strikes out swinging. We're down to our final out. It's Justin Chandler, who had just 78 AB in the regular season before going down with an injury. But he's not the hero, today. On an 0-2 count, he grounds out to shortstop. Chicago wins the World Series. Our season is over. Final line: Code: CHI: 7 \| 8 \| 0 CHI: 6 \| 9 \| 1 Last edited by JetsIn06 : 01-02-2024 at 11:21 PM.

01-02-2024, 11:29 PM	#45
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1957-58 Offseason SP Nick Moody lets us know he's NOT opting out of his deal, and we'll owe him $25M a year for two more seasons. We can now roll between 1-3 since we made the playoffs. Our transaction allowances for next season: FA roll (1-3): 3 Trade roll (1-3): 2 Carryover from last season: +1 FA Profit ($24M): +1 to both Worst record penalty: N/A Win World Series: N/A Total: 45+ rated FA: 5 Trades: 3 With expected total expenses around $160M on revenues of $168, there's not much wiggle room here to make a profit and utilize those FA allowances. We'll certainly explore some trades, and our arbitration class is huge, with 15 players. SP Joey Parrish is the lone pending free agent, as he's finally reached the requisite amount of service time. He's looking for an eight year, $337M deal, which we of course will not be able to offer. We'll tender him a qualifying offer, then re-connect in FA to see if his demands cool off at all. Arbitration Lots of first-year players, so most estimates are low, within the $1M-$3M range. We'll get to those. First, DH Guillermo Rodriguez is the big ticket player here, with a $19M estimate. To be fair, he deserves it. And $860K IAFA signing back in 1948, he's blossomed into one of the best and most consistent hitters in the league. He's played all but TWO games over the last four seasons, with 700+ PA in each. The 27-year-old has slashed .287/.368/.489, with a wRC+ of 134 for his career so far. Looking at OPS, his .858 mark puts him in the Top 25 players of all-time in our league. We'll come back to this. C Yastuka Yamashiro is estimated to receive $12M. The defense is great, and he's produced 4 WAR on average despite a .211/.314/.356 triple slash in his time here. The K% is up over 30% which is concerning, for sure. But I think we're going to let him stay behind the plate again for the 1958 season and get him under contract for another season. Everyone else is a relatively easy decision; some relievers who have been up and down between the majors and AAA who are now out of option are non-tendered to get some flexibility there, and 1B Bryant Hammock and 1B Bill Robbe are both non-tendered. Hammock is a lefty bat tha was a 4th-round pick in 1948, and he's a classic "Quad-A" guy who can hit for some power but never seems to make it click in the big leagues. Robbe is similar, just the right-handed version. He came back in the original SP Joey Parrish trade, when we sent him to New York. He was at one time the #9 prospect in baseball, so we were really hoping he would be a key piece in that return. He played decently in his first full season with us, with a 104 wRC+. But like Hammock, the power never ended up playing in the majors, and last year he got sent down and finished the year in AAA. I take a look around the league for left-handed hitters with speed; that really seems to be where we fell apart in the playoffs. There was very little balance on our team. CF Jorge Gonzales of New Orleans is available; he stole 54 bases last year and can play a great outfield. No power, but I'd love to have this guy in my lineup. We're listening on SP Nick Moody, who at 35 with $50M left isn't exactly the greatest value for us; let's see if we can put something together. We do. We send SP Nick Moody, the two aforementioned 1B that we were planning to non-tender, and a relief prospect. They'll send Gonzalez and cover a portion of his contract that will keep his highest contract year around $16M for us. Moody signed with us as a free agent prior to the 1955 season. He was great overall, the model of consistency, with 97 starts over the three years he spent with us, with a league-leading 6.6 WAR and 225 IP in his 1956 campaign. FA: 5 Trades: 2 So all of this brings us back to DH Guillermo Rodriguez. Do we get him on a one-year deal and understand he'll probably walk after 1959? Or do we trade him for young, controllable assets now, ones that can actually play the field. With the Moody contract gone, let's actually go into free agency. I'd be okay covering part of Rodriguez's salary for a season if can get us a better return, and I won't be able to do that until we tender him a contract and officially enter the FA signing period. Free Agency We make a deal with Detroit, sending them DH Guillermo Rodriguez, SS prospect and defensive wizard Kellen Almond (unranked, our 55th prospect), and SP prospect Matt Shaffer (#348, our #21 prospect), and $14M to cover Rodriguez's salary. The return is headlined by LF Jorge Zermeno, the one-time #3 prospect who just graduated off the list this season. He's a right-handed bat that can definitely play in the corner outfield, with massive power and a tremendous eye (both 7). The contact is a little iffy (5) and he has no speed or baserunning ability, but the power/eye combination could be huge. He has less than a year of service time, so he's under team control for the next six seasons. Additionally, 2B Chris McGinnis comes over in the deal. He's the #327 prospect and #13 in Detroit's system. Our scout like him a bit more than that, and Detroit picked him with the 21st overall pick last summer. He can play 2B. 3B, and fill in at SS if needed, and the 6/5/6 bat profile works if he develops. Finally, two relief arms who just hit arbitration come over in the deal as well. Each is a high stuff, low control arm. Neither is overly expensive, but these guys helped make the financials work and I'll have a couple spots in the bullpen open with some guys from last year moving back into the rotation. FA: 5 Trades: 1 And we're going to take a risk here, signing newly acquired OF Jorge Zermeno to an eight-year, $50M extension. Again; great for us if he works out, but the soon-to-be 25-year-old is now set for life. FA: 4 Trades: 1 Wheeling and dealing now. Two moves in one, here. OF John Hollis is 27, and has been back and forth between AAA and the majors, but we like him, he's durable, can play defense, and is a switch-hitter. He was our 4th round pick back in 1952 and has a 97 wRC+ over 567 PAs in the majors, spread out over a couple of seasons. He's a glue guy, as they say; or rather will be. We sign him to a very team friendly deal of $24M over six seasons; not bad for a guy who's been riding the bus in the minors. But with a glut of OF, we then trade OF Jon Oviedo. He's been injured often, and has also been back and forth between the majors and AAA. We picked him 3rd overall back in 1951, but it has never really clicked here. He goes to the Philadelphia Patriots, who send us SP Nick Manessis in return. Manessis is 27 and has five years of control left. He's bounced back and forth between the pen, the rotation, and the minors. Our scout is in love with his changeup, and think the stuff will play. FA: 3 Trades: 0 The best defensive catcher in the league is C Jamie Brown, a switch-hitter who spent most of his career with Cleveland as a starter, but joined Detroit as a backup last season. His wRC+ last year was -22, but was generally between 40-50 for most of his career. The guy can't hit or run. But he can really, really catch. He's the only player in the league that our scout sees as an 8 catching ability. Before he signs, the Rule-5 draft occurs, and we get decimated. I'm praying these teams can't keep these guys on their roster all year, but we lose four players, all guys who I think can be major league talents. C Jamie Brown signs. FA: 2 Trades: 0 Our offseason frenzy is over, and we'll convert the 2x FA signings to 1x trade, so we can use one near the deadline. FA: 0 Trades: 1 Spring training next. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 01-03-2024 at 03:31 PM.

01-03-2024, 08:52 PM	#46
JetsIn06 Pro Rookie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Rahway, NJ	The 1958 Portland Rosebuds There were a ton of moves this offseason. With some young players stepping up and some of our depth pieces moving into larger roles, it could be a year of transition but I still expect to do well. April: 11-11 May: 16-12 Not bad, but not quite where we want to be. Last year we hit .253 as a team, and that's down to .239. Our ERA is 22 points higher, from 3.82 to 4.04. However, we're leading the FL in Ks, and have the least HRs allowed. I feel like maybe we're getting a bit unlucky on balls in play, potentially? The defense is playing well, so I feel like that has to be it. Offensively, we're in the middle of the pack in most of the important categories, but a bit lower in runs scored. We'll see what another month brings; I get the sense that things will start to click soon. Amateur Draft We don't have quite the same talent available to us down at the 20th pick, but with SP Joey Parrish leaving, we have a compensation pick available to us in the Supplemental Round at #25. At 1.20, we go with CF Hector Araiza, a speedy, defense-focused college bat. RP Ryne White is our pick at #25, a college relief arm out of Arkansas Tech. He's got elite stuff with and off-the-charts changeup to go with a great slider and sinker. And with our 2nd round pick, we select Dave Dorman, a high-school catcher with a great eye out of Alabama. The defense isn't great, but he has some pop and will take a ton of walks. Trade Deadline June: 20-9 July: 14-11 In June, we break out, going 20-9 and finish the month in 1st place. But it's crowded; at the end of July there's four teams within five games of Detroit, who are in 1st with a 62-40 record. Our pitching results are now looking much more aligned with the underlying numbers; we're 1st in runs allowed, as remain as the top team in Ks and HRs allowed, with a total staff ERA of 3.65. On offense, we're still hovering around the middle of the pack. 5th in runs scored, 5th in wOBA. We still have one trade allowed. Another SP is always helpful, as our fifth starter Blake Milner is probably better suited out of the pen. While offense is the bigger need, we have more internal options there, including SS Jonathan Tandy, the #27 prospect in the league who is tearing up AAA now. Which is great, because middle infield is where we need some help. So we turn our attention towards an arm, preferably a rotation piece. SP Ben Burns is a name we came across last year; we faced him in the World Series in Game 1 and Game 5, and he destroyed us. He's got great stuff, and this year he's made 20 starts with a 3.08 ERA and a 31.0 K%. We send Chicago our current 2B Zack DiMeo, who we owe $11M over the next two seasons. It will be good to get him off our books, and we'll bring up Tandy to replace him. DiMeo was added in a trade at the deadline in 1956 and was really strong, but it seems like the end of his 20's and our park sapped his power a bit. With an 82 wRC+ this year, it's time to move on. Burns is under contract for two more years at $15.4M per year, and Chicago will cover 70% of his contract. FA: 0 Trades: 0 The Final Stretch We start off August 10-12 and find ourselves 6GB heading into the final week of the month, but then we go on an absolute tear, winning seven games in a row to finish out the month. On September 1st, we find ourselves at 78-55, in 2nd place, and 3GB behind Detroit. They're a dominant team, with a +204 run differential compared to us at just +81. But we keep winning, and are on a nine game win streak heading into a three game series against them, still 3GB. The first game of the series is an ugly 7-0 loss, where we scrape together just two hits, but we answer back with a 9-1 win in the second game. In the rubber match, it's eerily similar to the first. 7-0 loss, with just three hits. Not good enough. We're now 4GB and need another win streak to catch up to the best team in baseball. We not only do NOT go on a winning streak; we actually completely collapse in September. A final series sweep against the worst team in the league makes it look better than it is, but we finish the final month 13-16, and we finish in 3rd place with a 91-71 record. Detroit takes the pennant with a 100-62 season. August: 17-12 September: 13-16 Playoffs In the Columbia League, it's the California Seals who take the pennant, their second World Series appearance in their relatively short history. It takes all seven games, but Detroit comes out on top and wins the 1958 World Series. Last edited by JetsIn06 : 01-03-2024 at 11:15 PM.