[Westheim]

Okay, here’s the deal. I tried to put the last post that was swallowed by the Big Blackout of 14 back together as completely and as perfectly as possible, put perfection is not for those that are short of brain power, and so I cursed and gave up a few times, and now I will give up entirely on that and post a quick recap about the important stuff here. Any drama I had posted has gone down the drain for good. Well, pjh read it and replied or liked it, that I know for sure. Chalk this up to history.

Anyway, normal service should resume in the next days. It’s a bit busy at work at the moment. I poisoned the guard dog, climbed along the rain gutter and slid down the downpipe today to escape on time, but that may not work the next few days…

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Awards:
HOTY: TOP RF/1B Corey Patel (.313, 31 HR, 101 RBI) and IND 1B/3B Matt Brown (.299, 24 HR, 94 RBI)
POTY: NAS SP Dennis Fried (21-8, 2.83 ERA) and MIL Martin Garcia (19-9, 1.97 ERA)
ROTY: SFW 1B Iván Gutierrez (.275, 23 HR, 73 RBI) and LVA 1B Antenor Maldonado (.332, 8 HR, 65 RBI)
GG: LF Vern Kinnear (2nd)

Friggin’ Matt Brown!!!! Also, Dennis Fried was once traded away by me for Raúl Castillo, that outfielder that instantly concussed his way into free agency and early retirement. NOW I know why my parents didn’t trust me with my own set of keys until I was 23.

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Furball Trivia Time!

Which current or former Raccoon has/had the highest ratio of triples (min. 500 AB)?

You will never guess this one. Never!

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Short version of my thought process: with Salazar leaving, we MIGHT be able to muster enough dead presidents to keep Jason Turner on board. Contract negotiations were short, really, since he had some crazy $10M vision that he was promoting in the form of an 8-year (or so) deal, and that was just not in the books, Salazar here, Salazar there. So Turner was going to become a (type A) free agent – just like Salazar.

I still did not decide to go into rebuilding mode, especially with $6.2M just shelled out to O-Mo late in the season, despite lacking a starter and an outfielder.

No other to-be free agents were compensation eligible. I tried to collect some more money by signing some of the arbitration eligible players to team friendly, short term deals, which only worked with Vern Kinnear, who signed for $550k for next season, about 10% below his estimate. All the others were bitchy, especially Royce Green.

I also tried to keep Scott Strong and Juan Martinez on board, but none would want to sign a 1-year deal, so both went out of the door at the free agency filing date.

The only other contract signed was with Daniel Miller, who was extended for four years, getting paid a team friendly $1M for his prime years.

We also made one minor trade with the Falcons, to remove one of four catchers on the 40-man roster, sending Bob Armstrong to them in exchange for a young borderline pitching talent in SP Kelly Fairchild.

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Furball Trivia Time!

Which current or former Raccoon has/had the highest ratio of triples (min. 500 AB)?

Jayson Bowling (10 triples in 696 AB, 1981-1984)

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And that brought up the salary arbitration date. We offered the following monetary values:
Lopez $480k; De La Rosa $210k; Ban $270k; Ingall $300k; Weeds $380k; Kondo $150k; Green $650k

Now, we hit five out of seven, which ain’t bad. Kondo got $159k (which is possibly a hard base value, 50% over the minimum of $106k? I honestly don’t know!), while Green got a whopping $820k for healing most of next season. Well, that was a blow. Blow number one.

We also offered arbitration to Jason Turner and Jorge Salazar as part of cashing in on compensation for losing them. This is where blow number two comes from.

Salazar took us to arbitration.

He got $945,000.