[Westheim]

The offseason began with Nick Valdes cruelly slashing the budget from $41M, which had been good enough for 12th in the league last year, to $39M this time around, barely 15th among the 24 teams. Great, Nick, don’t give me ANYTHING to work with…!

The top five in the league would be the Capitals ($54M), Blue Sox ($53M), damn Elks ($52M), Titans ($49.5M), and champions Wolves ($47.5M), making the Raccoons the paupers of the Pacific Northwest.

At the bottom end were the Thunder ($35M), Gold Sox ($33.5M), Loggers ($32M), Rebels ($29M), and Indians ($26M). The remaining CL North team, the Crusaders, ranked t-17th with a $37M budget.

The average budget was $40.45M, up a whopping $750k from 2040. The median budget amounted to $40M, half a million up from last year. Yeah, yeah only the Critters are getting choked.

Unlike most years, personnel decisions were made right at the start of the offseason. One decision was made for us, with 38-year-old Mauricio Garavito getting the hint and retiring after an 18-year career as lefty reliever. He appeared in 891 games and pitched to a 3.44 ERA with a 40-42 record and 17 saves. He struck out 559 batters in 786 innings. Most of this came with the Raccoons, who claimed him off waivers from the Bayhawks in ’29, with San Francisco having used him in 87 games across parts of seven seasons (including having him face a single batter in his age 21 season, who walked).

There were also two contract options to decide upon for the team, but the decisions had been made a long time ago. Bernie Chavez would stay for ’41. Jermaine Campbell would not, getting the $600k buyout rather than the now-outlandish $2.6M rate for ’41. The savings of $2M were coincidentally exactly what Bernie would now make in the new season. His buyout had been $300k.

Campbell thus went on the list of free agents-to-be, where he joined three other players [full unaltered table below]: Raffaello Sabre, Kyle Dominy (still injured), and Ed Hooge. The two pitchers were compensation-eligible, with Dominy (though still hurting) a type B (much to my surprise) and Sabre even a type A free agent. Both were wished the best of luck, got an arbitration offer to secure the draft picks, and other than that were told to pack their **** and go.

Hoogey was not compensation-eligible, so the question was whether he’d fit into the team going forwards as a 31-year-old casual defender (at all three outfield positions at least) with a league-average lefty stick. The lefty stick was a thing – his splits were stark, and Manny Fernandez (who may or may not be traded), Balaski, and Nettles were all lefty bats as well. And yes, common decency demands that we have to talk about Bill Balaski as a major leaguer worth considering now, given that he got over 250 PA for a 100 OPS+ last year even though he hadn’t been mentioned once since being taken #61 in the 2034 draft.

There were another nine players that were arbitration eligible. This included the already-mentioned Nettles, as well as a curious case in super utility Matt Kilgallen, who was however a righty batter, and – paradoxically perhaps – was thus of interest to us right now. The other position players included our pair of catchers, who made $1.72M between them in ’40 and wouldn’t get any cheaper. Their estimates combined for more than $2M.

Pitching-wise we had strange surprise Ian Wilson, a grab bag of relievers in Chuck Jones, David Lindstrom, and Juan Zabala, as well as colossal bust Jared Ottinger on the list. The latter walked 6.1/9 in mostly relief in AAA this year and got ravaged for 11 runs in 6 innings in two spot starts in Portland. There was no point in pretending anymore – Ottie’s career was finished and he would not get another offer.

Wilson would definitely get an offer and we’d also keep the other relievers. We would need a pitcher via the market for sure this offseason, and one would probably not cut it given that Sal Lozano, Nelson Fonseca, and Angelo Montano – in whatever order you’d rank them – would be our options 4 through 6 for starting pitchers behind Bernie, Nels, and *Ian Wilson*.

Also, we didn’t have a closer to speak of, and then the lineup was kinda good and kinda wasn’t, and to be entirely honest, I didn’t know whether to trade away more stuff for prospects or whether we could squeeze out a wannabe contender that doesn’t get laughed at or dropped 10 games out by May.

Chad, what do *you* think?

(Chad in the full costume starts a naughty dance)