[Westheim]

Every season, no matter how sweet, must come to an end. This season had been no sweet at all, but it had still come to an end. All things, good or bad, must end.

One of those things ending was Ivan “Druid” Mena’s tenure as the Raccoons’ medical professional. For this a little “accident” was responsible when he experimented with a strange concoction of poisonous plant extracts in his ramshackle lab. Well, nobody knows what happened *exactly*, but I can say that he is physically FINE… and very, very happy. He is on long-term detox in Wyoming now, but I don’t think he’ll ever come back and practice as a physician.

Add that to our pile of problems.

Since a key goal with a evaporating budget (and since Nick Valdes had said how bad an investment the Raccoons were about a zillion times this year, I was pretty sure of further evaporation) was to skim individual dollars off the edges of the salary pile, the Raccoons made sure to divest some minimum contracts before the start of the new fiscal years for baseball teams. Placed on waivers and designated for assignment were Nick Derks, Juan Barzaga, Sean Catella, Brendan Day, saving over $800k in the initial budget.

As expected, Valdes went to work once he was rescued from the jungle by his personal SWAT team. The Coons’ budget, which had been $31M (15th in ABL) in 2032, was further slashed to $27.2M, which equaled a death spiral drop into the bottom five in the league into 20th place.

The top 5 in terms of buying power were the Pacifics ($58M!), Titans ($45.5M), Condors ($45M), Buffaloes ($41.5M), and Warriors ($39M). Below the Coons were only the Loggers ($27M), Aces ($26.6M), Rebels ($24.4M), and Falcons ($20.6M).

The remaining CL North teams ranked 7th (NYC, $36.5M), t-10th (IND, $34.5M), and 14th (VAN, $33M).

The average budget was $34.31M, up $170k from the previous season. The median budget was $33.75M, up $500k from last season.

So, there they are. The jagged shards of any hope to compete. Because after getting strafed like that by ownership (although at least Valdes didn’t loot all the contents of the cash register, which his deceased father had always done; we had some $900k in cash on top of our non-existent budget), we had to delve right into the major issues with our current salary and roster structure, and the two were indeed party intertwined.

Going back to the start of the 2032 season, the Raccoons’ rotation was comprised of Tom Shumway, Rico Gutierrez, Bernie Chavez, Raffaello Sabre, and Jason Gurney, a bunch that cost $6M despite three guys making the minimum. Bernie went on the DL in April, Gutierrez did so in July, and Sabre in August. By then it had already been six weeks that Tom Scumbag had been released on June 21. Only Gurney made it through the season, but sucked the cover off the baseballs, and would have become the Raccoons worst-ever qualifying pitcher by far if he had not fallen short of 162 innings by a single out* thanks to being benched in September; he made only two starts and pitched only 8.1 innings in September, still enough to post two losses and allow 13 runs. He had two separate 6-game losing streaks.

Sometimes pitchers should just have the common decency to get injured…

The Raccoons still had the rights to all of those pitchers, minus Shumway, who was nevertheless due another $3.3M for the 2033 season.**

Also due roughly $3.3M was Adam Braun, who had batted a dismal .226 with four homers before tearing his labrum in July, a.k.a. a typical season for a former Player of the Year in his age 33 season in Portland. The Titans had footed half the bill on him in ’32. They would not do so in ’33. This was all ours.

The other big bucks were Berto ($2.5M) as well as Rico Gutierrez ($2.1M) and Tim Stalker ($2.8M), the latter two in their final guaranteed seasons. Stalker had a player option for ’34, while Rico had two team options worth $550k each and not a dime more.

And that was IT. That was ALL our meaningful contracts, at least prior to arbitration. The next-highest contract was that of Toby Ross, $660k in ’33, and Garavito was due $450k each of the next two years. This exhausts already ALL guaranteed contracts currently on the books. Seven players (six actually employed) – done. We do however have a score of minimum contracts and a few arbitration cases.

We have seven arbitration cases [full unaltered table at the bottom of the post], one of which was already dealt with when Nick Derks was waived and DFA’ed. The others are our pair of first baseman (which will be worth separate dissection) that had mostly had beneficial platoon advantages for an entire season and somehow managed to hit .237 with 24 homers (albeit in almost 700 at-bats). The other players were Justin Perkins, who did not hit a lot (but still led the team in homers) with a .248 clip, but played some high-caliber D at least, coming second in WAR on the team behind … TIM ****ING STALKER. Stalker was another defensive specialist. Berto, who was a *fine* shortstop but not a great one and would never win a Gold Glove, AND had an offensive off year (and missed 34 games once more…) only came third.

In fact there were three more position players in part-time rolls that were next in the team WAR table in Giovanni James, Preston Pinkerton, and Nate Hall, before a pair of pitchers tied for seventh on the chart: Ignacio del Rio and Chris Wise with 1.3 WAR each. But that was just a footnote here, because WAR is a useless stat.

Besides Perkins and the pair of first base clowns, the other arbitration eligible players were Wilson Rodriguez, Chris Baldwin, and Jonathan Fleischer, all of them being in the “meh” bucket. Baldwin’s key qualification, versatility, had been taken over by Preston Pinkerton and he was largely redundant even at the cheap price of $320k for an estimate. Fleischer had completely lost it. In 80 innings between AAA and the majors he had walked 59 batters, which would have been outlandish for a left-hander, and he was a ****ing right-hander! He had always walked a lot (his *best* BB/9 in the majors was 4.8 in both ’28 and ’31). It was probably time to axe him. Rodriguez was a strong defensive outfielder, but had not hit a baseball in ages. After batting .340 with three homers in May he had posted clips of .146, .224, .170, and .111 in the months after. He was also 30 years old, and not the sort of player you’d expect to recover.

Then there were the free agents, of which there were only there, and only one of those might be compensation eligible, that being Giovanni James. He made over a million in ’32, wasn’t entirely worth it, but we’d offer him arbitration for the draft pick. The other two free agents were Nate Hall and Jared Stone. Hall was a bit of an allround talent being able to hit for extra bases, run for 14 stolen bags, and played snug defense all over the outfield. He was however also a “me first” person and staff had singled him out as one of the centers of malcontent in the clubhouse. He had to go. Jared Stone had been a damn fine setup man (not that there had been much to set up), but wanted to play for a winning team, and we’d probably not get him to resign even if we could pony up another $550k for him.

Judging the Opening Day roster from here was difficult, but we surely had no shortage of dismal starting pitchers. In the pen we would still have a solid core with Wise, Garavito, Hennessy, and Anaya and could fudge something together around those. Bates and Fernandez were solid bets for a spot in April, too, although Bates was also a right-hander that walked people left and right.

We would be left with two catchers in Thompson and Ross (they could even platoon with purpose), but the outfield was in a state of flux. Braun, Wallace, Pinkerton, and Hooge were the only players under contract after the subtraction of Hall and Rodriguez. On the infield we first had to make up our mind whether to continue with the first base platoon or not. Jarod Howden had batted .216 with 12 homers, the dumb pig.

Welcome to the land of devastation. I would offer you a seat for the ride, but I’m afraid Steve from Accounting makes me charge you $2.50 for it.

*This was at least partly intentional because I couldn’t bear the shame of having a qualified pitcher with a 6.xx ERA.

**This salary does not appear in our salary page or on Shumway’s salary page. I assume it has somehow bugged itself away?This is the only reason we are not overbudget by several million at this stage.