Quote:
Originally Posted by pgjocki
That's outstanding and I'm glad after taking a long break I was able to come back and witness a Championship!
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So was your absence good luck or ...?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bub13
DYNASTY DYNASTY DYNASTY
Three wins in four years? Yeah, that counts. Congrats.
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We're totally a dynasty now!
Well, sort of... see below.
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My fur was still sticky with champagne as we arrived back home in Portland, where I ran into beloved owner Nick Valdes in the office on the day after. He grandly announced that he had already taken care of the new merch to celebrate our newest fantastic championship, and showed a green sweatshirt to me. Maud, standing behind him, tried to signal me with big arm movements to at least fake a little enthusiasm, but I could not help it.
Nick, these shirts just read “Dynasty Town”. That is not our colors. Actually, it doesn’t even read “Dynasty Town”, it reads “Dynatsy Town”. – No, I am not done with my criticizing. For example, we play baseball, remember. – Because there’s a ******* hockey stick and puck on the front of that shirt!! – What do you mean, we’re gonna wear it anyway, because you got six shipping containers of these on the cheap??
After gently discussing our disagreements – Cristiano Carmona was hit by several flying pillows, but suffered no serious injury – we moved on to the money part of the offseason, because a new budget needed to be set for 2048. Nick Valdes was terribly unhappy that we overspent his gracious allowance in 2047, however. We went $2,650 over his budget of $51M! How dare we!
Yet, Steve from Accounting then produced the invoice from Kampuchea Apparel Inc. for the Dynatsy Town shirts that was mostly Cambodian characters, but quite clearly read $69,000 at the bottom of it. Hah! So I was actually $66,350 under the budget!
So the pillow fight continued until Maud came in with blueberry muffins and everybody was friends again, at least until the mayor’s office called that there were six rusty shipping containers piled up in the street next to the ballpark, and we had to get them moved away, this instant.
The Coons, huh?
In any case, we’d have more dosh to spend in the new season, with Nick growing to like the taste of winning a pennant every year. To make sure that would continue, he packed another $5M onto our budget for 2048, increasing it to $56M. That moved the Coons from a tie for fifth to sole possession of fourth in the budget rankings.
We now trailed only the Gold Sox ($59M), Thunder ($57M), and Miners ($57M). The Stars ($55M) completed the top 5.
The bottom of the league was brought up by the Titans ($38M), Falcons ($37.5M), Aces ($37M), Wolves ($33.5M), and … the Loggers ($30M).
The remaining CL North terms sat in seventh (VAN, $52M) and a tie for 18th (NYC and IND, $39.5M each).
The average budget for a team in the league rose to $45M, up over $700k from last season. The median team budget or 2047 was $42M, down $1M from last season.
Yes, the rich got richer – 13 teams were in the bracket between $37M and $44.5M, and then there were nine teams all the way over $50M, with nothing in between. I hear $5.5M buys you a pretty decent player. (looks over to Maldonado, gobbling an ungodly pile of mac and cheese from his food bowl)
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The Raccoons had only five players headed for salary arbitration this fall, which was one of the signs that the Visigoths were banging at the gates and soon enough the Western Roman Empire and all its aqueducts and floor heating and Continental League pennants would soon collapse. The team was getting old, prospects were few and far between, and all that was left was to fling money at all the problems whenever a crack in the wall appeared.
Money usually wasn’t infinite, but cracks potentially were.
Three of the five arbitration candidates then were starting pitchers, and while Victor Merino was a first-time candidate and might have to sign up for cheap, the other two were Sadaharu Okuda and Jason Wheatley, and they were *already* making seven figures. Wheats’ arbitration estimate was *well* over $2M. It was also the last time he was eligible, and the Raccoons might want to get that long-term deal done NOW. An honorable mention goes to Jake Jackson, who had a $1.5M team option for this season and had no hopes of not seeing that picked up.
The other two players were Preston Porter and Arturo Carreno. Porter was one of the more efficient right-handers that nobody ever talked about, while Carreno was … well, he hit .327 in under 100 at-bats, and .329 in AAA in about 250 at-bats. He found his stick again, it seemed, but he was now also 28 and his position was blocked by Matt Waters.
Free agents were quite numerous, but nobody was eligible for compensation, not even ABL saves king Mike Lynn, also an important piece to re-sign. Aaron Curl was the only other pitcher on the list – losing both of them would mean our best lefty was now Jake ******* Bonnie. Panic.
Manny Fernandez failed to meet the requirements of his vesting option, which basically would have been to not spend half the year on the DL, because we worked our bums off to get him into every game at one point. Nelson Mercado was also a free agent – a weirdly plucky, efficient player that certainly saw his price go up now. Al Martell and Tony Morales completed the list. Martell remains a pinch-hitting wonder, while Morales picked the wrong year to have an abominable first half, followed by a merely decent second half. He wasn’t likely to be back, at all.