[Westheim]

After Danny Margolis grounded out to Raul Claros, I have no memory of the next three days. I remember waking up in my suit that I seemed to have worn for four days, on my trusty brown couch in my office, and with a huge headache. The first thing I saw was Chad, sitting in the chair opposite of me and playing games on some huge widescreen TV I could not remember having in my office. When he noticed that I had woken up, he yelled through the open door: ‘Hey, everybody! He’s not dead yet!’

I lay motionless and didn’t say anything, because even moving my eyes hurt like being hit by truck with a load of bricks, but the spy Martinez and “Druid” Mena came in. Mena looked aghast at me sloooooowly looking over to him, while Martinez was visibly angry and cussed at him. ‘Te dije que todavía estaba vivo!’ When the Druid tried to say something – ‘Pero …‘ – Martinez only got angrier. ‘Dónde sentiste su pulso??’

All headaches go eventually, as do underqualified nurses, and by the next day I was alone in the office, except for Slappy, whom I was suspecting to secretly live in here anyway. Maud made me watch Game 5 of the World Series with Slappy, who was supposed to keep me company, but dozed off from boozing in the third inning. I blamed the extensive commercials.

It wasn’t like Justin Cramer (Justin who?) hitting that walkoff shot to dump the Baybirds didn’t lift my spirits. However, my spirits – the booze aside – were actually below freezing, and one odd longshot homer by Justin Dahmer wasn’t gonna give me back my smile. I had lost that in about 1997, a year in which Justin Flamer was in fourth grade. I find it funny, honestly, that he’s almost 30 and makes the minimum. It just shows you how baseball is. Baseball is cruel. First it was cruel to the Indians, who lost ten straight from July into August, including four to the Critters, and blew an 8-game lead that was assumed to be secure since the Raccoons played a losing July and didn’t look like they had a comeback in them.

Then it was cruel to the Raccoons, who somehow stalked over the aftermath of Wounded Knee, NY, and made it to the playoffs, won two games in San Francisco, and then came home to get razed.

Then it was cruel to the Baybirds, who looked like they couldn’t be stopped, and then found themselves down three games to one, but at least had the upper hand in a pitching duel until baseball threw a magical Justin Maimer at them and he ruined their season hard.

Seriously, WHO??

+++

The Raccoons’ 2017 budget had come in at $27M, which then had the Raccoons squarely in the middle of the league. Even the Mexican Prick had some rudimentary understanding of honor and success and given that the Raccoons somehow snuck into the playoffs felt compelled to fork over a few more coins. The 2018 budget for Portland would be $28.8M, enough to climb to 10th in the league and second in the division.

The most money in the North and in the league overall continued to be found with the Crusaders, who had a $43M budget, dwarfing everybody else. The top five would be completed by the Pacifics ($36.5M), Cyclones ($33M), Warriors ($32M), and – tied – the Rebels ($31.5M) and Bayhawks ($31.5M).

The bottom five would be composed of the Blue Sox ($20.5M), Aces ($19M), Loggers ($16.6M), Falcons ($15.6M), and Wolves ($14.8M).

In the North, the Canadiens ($27.4M) and Indians ($26M) formed a dense midfield with the Raccoons, while the Titans continued to soul-search and axed their budget down to $22.2M.

The average budget was $26.4M. The median budget was $26.9M for 2018.

+++

Now, $1.8M more sounds like something you can work with to patch a few holes, but there were two things to remember here. The first was that we had a number of escalating contracts, and the two most significant of these were those of Hugo Mendoza and Ricardo Carmona. Only accounting for those two, our budget increase was already eaten up – a paltry $100k remained.

What would not remain was pitching. As can be gained from the free agency and arbitration table below, we had a flurry of free agent pitchers, including everybody from the bullpen except for Alex Ramirez (oh joy!), Chris Mathis, Seung-mo Chun, and whatever it was we had in Ryan Nielson and Nick Lester.

Also free agents: William Waggoner (which we knew beforehand, and this is actually not too bad, because we can move Mendoza to rightfield a bit easier now), and Nick Brown. Brownie refused to accept that things were done and over and would try to squeeze another season from his body. This posed two new problems for the Raccoons, or more like me personally. One, I didn’t want him to go anyplace else, and two, keeping him aboard would perhaps cost some daft money, but more importantly would probably consign a roster spot to a 40-year old who was two years past his ‘best before’ stamp. It definitely didn’t work with butter, it probably wouldn’t work with Brownie, either…

There were of course expendables on the roster. Adam Young’s contract was actual thorns in my actual eyes, and getting rid of him was the top priority. Maybe he could be flicked for a cheap but strong reliever, which would swat two flies at once, but it’s not like trading Young has been on my mind for only five minutes. It feels like five years, really.

Whom to try and hold from the relievers? Ron Thrasher was always volatile, but he was poison to hitting nevertheless. He would also be the most expensive in the group. Jayden Reed bounced back from a horrendous 2016, and he would not be available for even close to $390k again. John Korb was decent as a long man, but you shouldn’t throw money at long men. It’s what your starting pitching prospects usually turn into.

Which is not an argument to give the spot to Damani Knight.

Also, normally, this would be a good time for a long term extension with Jonny Toner, but I fear money will be short for that.

Lots of tough choices ahead – cutting costs while at the same time field a playoff-contending team – and I don’t envy the poor sod who has to make them. Oh bother, it’s me, isn’t it? Ah…

Free agent compensation listed may not be final. I don’t trust OOTP anymore with the compensation distribution and I already see at least two renowned veteran starting pitchers that have yet to turn into sour milk and are not compensation-eligible. I need to do things manually once more here. But if you’ve made it through 41 years you probably know that I won’t cheat myself into six type A free agents.

And I still don’t actually speak Spanish and still use Google Translator.