[Westheim]

The original plan was to flush Victor Merino down the airplane’s toilet somewhere over Utah, but after emptying a whole cart full of complimentary alcohols and braying nonsense for half an hour, the chief steward put me to sleep with a tranquilizer gun, and no Raccoons players ended up physically harmed until the team landed in Portland after losing Game 7 in Dallas in a landslide.

Thus, the offseason was upon us. I drew a snoot for a couple of days afterwards, but eventually sighed, changed into a clean shirt, got back to the ballpark, and threw myself into the pile of work that had to be done with the roster. And it was a pile indeed, although some things happened by themselves.

Two players with options for the final year split themselves halfway down the middle. Pat Gurney picked up his $1.85M option for 2049, while Joy-shan Kuo voided his 2049 option and chose to become a free agency, also showing little interest in signing a new contract with the Raccoons.

Kuo however was not the first subtraction from the expanded roster – because the first one was Manny Fernandez. The Raccoons’ #5 pick in the 2031 draft would be 39 years old by Opening Day, and had played less and less owing to mounting injuries in the last three years (he last reached 500+ PA in ’45), and after missing the final four months of the 2049 season decided to call it a day. Manny went home with a career .280/.335/.421 clip, as well as 2,122 hits, 198 homers, 1,110 RBI, and 189 stolen bases. He won a regular season MVP (2036), a playoff series MVP (2037 CLCS), a Gold Glove, four All Star nominations, three Platinum Sticks, and three World Series rings with the Raccoons, becoming one of their most prominent all-timers. Maybe not as peak as a Nick Brown – but certainly up there. He probably was not quite Hall of Fame material – except for the Hall of Fame of our hearts!

There will be more looking back at Manny during the new season for sure, but for now, the longest-serving Raccoons player had left the team. That honor devolved to Jesus Maldonado now, who had debuted in 2035, and was in fact the only player on the team now that had been with the Raccoons in the 2030s. Next up was Nelson Moreno, who had come up during the 2040 season.

(wipes a little tear away)

Well. Offseason business.

The good news was that Nick Valdes had taken a real liking to all the pennants we were piling up and wanted more and more of those. He increased our budget from $56M to $61M, another hefty $5M increase after one of the same size the previous year. Last year that made us fifth in the ABL, and now we’re tied for third place with the Gold Sox, and would trail only the two division winners from the Federal League. In order, the top 5 ranked:

Miners ($64M), Stars ($62M), Raccoons ($61M), Gold Sox ($61M), Bayhawks ($59M). Add the Thunder for a top-heavy six-strong lead group; they had a $57M budget.

The bottom of the league was brought up by the Aces ($37.5M), Blue Sox ($36.5M), Wolves ($33M), Falcons ($32.5M), and Loggers ($28.2M).

The remaining CL North terms sat tied for seventh (VAN, $51M), 13th (IND, $43.5M), tied for 16th (NYC, $41.5M), and in a tie for 18th (BOS, $41M).

The average budget for a team in the league rose to $46.3M, up roughly $1.3M from last season. The median team budget or 2047 was $43.75M, up $1.75M from last season.

So no matter how you spun it – money would not be an issue, but opportunity might yet be, and the question whether we wanted to blow the entire 2049 draft by gobbling up every type A free agent we could. Holes we would have for sure, because there was quite the list of free agents; we actually had more free agents than arbitration cases, which was also a subtle sign that your team is old, and you better have a good and steady supply of pain relief cream on paw.

For arbitration, we had three pitchers and three position players. The latter were Ruben Gonzalez, Matt Watt, and Gene Pellicano. The first two were obvious keepers. Pellicano had plunged into a hole of the most utter blackness last year, hitting .141 for the Coons, and then about .242 with a late rally for the Alley Cats after being dumped down there midseason. Since money was not an issue, we’d keep him around as a reserve (he had no options left now, but conveniently was already in AAA, not having gotten a call-up in September, which was just one step short of the death penalty in this franchise).

On the pitching side we had Merino (clenches his fuzzy butt cheeks briefly before relaxing again), Preston Porter, and Bob Ibold. Keeps, all of them, but Ibold we found out these days had a stretched elbow ligament, needed reconstructive surgery, and would miss most, maybe even all of 2049. So, he’d get his half a million or so of salary – but it was money flushed straight down the toilet, hoping that things would be better in 2050. Thankfully, we could afford such extravaganzas these days.

On the free agent side, we had seven players of which only one (Jake Jackson) was even a type B free agent. He was joined by Jake Bonnie, who had mostly pitched well in ’49, but who I had decided would be kicked to the curb last year already, so he’d be gone, catchers Wilson and Prow, midseason acquisition Chris Robinson, versatile infielder Al Martell, and leftfielder Derek Baskins.

The last two were probably the difficult ones. Robinson was pretty much washed up and a defensive liability and I was not inclined to keep him around. Baskins had never had much of an arm, mostly limiting him to leftfield duties, and had not hit a whole lot in ’48, either, while being pretty expensive. Martell had clipped .320 marks for the last two seasons and had been a flexible backup infielder with the team for four years now, usually getting into 100+ games and collecting 300+ plate appearances, except for ’47 when he missed some time on the DL and only had 76 games and 207 PA. Martell was probably the one I would want to keep around the most, and he should also continue to be rather cheap, having barely earned more in four years ($2.4M) than what Baskins had made of the Coons in only ’48 ($2.1M).