What a fantastic season for our club despite that narrow promotion miss. As I think I predicted earlier, I do not feel the slightest bit disappointed about coming up short and facing another season in the Skylobby, as I don't feel we are quite ready for those big boys just yet.
We set a winning record as the target here and achieved that easily, finishing 93-69. More importantly, we took some huge strides toward being able to compete with the best, and another season with this group and a couple key adds should have us just about primed.
Again, these are some really solid numbers and rankings in almost every regard. At the risk of singing the same old song, those strikeouts and walks by our hitters remain our main weakness. The boss has set us / me the goal of improving or HR rank as well, which I believe should happen organically at least to some degree by dint of the continued development of what is a fairly young squad. If we can find a big bat and get more men on base, we will be really tough to outscore more often than not. ZR ticked up a smidge but could do with further improvement, and it's good to see our Defensive Efficiency above 700.
BATS
An absolute breakout year for Vic Ramirez was the clear highlight for our offence, with Kmerce Kmet not far behind. He hit a LOBBY record 40 triples in the end and his astonishing ISO of 265 was clearly the league's best. Jeff LaMarr proved a key add both with the bat and through his guiding influence behind the plate, and I'm looking forward to hopefully having him for a full season in '92. We managed to pick up a few handy waiver claims late in the year, and my offseason will be figuring out which players figure in the next phase of our franchise and which need to be traded for players that will. That will be super tough - I love this squad. Locking down Clarke and Torres for a few years on not-too-outrageous deals would be a huge win for us.
SHOPPING LIST: Just a general tightening and a few upgrades as required (see GLOVES, below.
BALLS
We've been given another modest bump in budget to $88m for next year and, one of the most positive factors of what we achieved this season is that we did it on the league's lowest payroll. We should have at least $40m room and I plan to spend most of what we increase that by on some elite arms. The rotation improved over the course of the season while, as is to be expected given all the heavy lifting it did early on, the pen loosened up a bit, to the point that the final ERAs for each were only 50 points apart. Rawly Eastwick came back to earth a bit after his magnificent 1990 for us, but I still see him as an integral part of this staff. We need a couple lights out lefties and a pair of upwardly-mobile mid-rotation SP and I reckon we've got it down pat.
SHOPPING LIST: 2 x quality LH relievers; 2 or 3 plus-grade SP.
GLOVES
Yep, we've got a surplus of OF. Hill and Clough likely go to AAA as a pair of cheap call-ups, with neither on much above the min. Adams and John Wright, who were two of the waiver claims I mentioned, are younger version of those guys and under TC thru '95 with low arb projections. These guys are a form of insurance policy against the mass exodus an unexpected demotion would instigate.
It is in the IF where change seems inevitable. I still prefer DeGoti at 2B but only a top SS acquisition will enable us to move hime there, and in the end he might be the bait to get that guy anyway. We extended Vern Schmall by 2 years for less than $3m total and, while he is clearly less poppy than Al their D is on par with each other. Perhaps the biggest question of all is Kmet. I just love the guy, total (one-sided) bromance going on here. But with plenty of other options at 1B and that / DH his only option, the decision to keep or trade him with be entirely driven by the almighty dollar.
SHOPPING LIST: Enough window-shopping, it is time to go get that plus-grade middle IF.
WINGS
The other really positive aspect of this season was that we got to see a few of our pitching prospects in action. The flipside of that is that not a one of them either overly impressed or utterly disgraced themselves. Julian Morgan (2-3 / 4.78), Rick Forney (2.57 ERA in a cameo of 7 IP) and George Starrette (a handy 2-2 / 3.40 in 42 IP of both starts and relief appearances) will almost certainly get another crack next year but of equal certainty is the fact that they'll also be visiting Buffalo at some point.
Let's have a look at our pipeline as it currently stands:
Of these, I only really hold out hope for Castillo, Fekete and perhaps Venzon. We'll not be getting much help from the Draft again, with similarly low picks to last season, so this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
All in all, the club is certainly looking robust and headed in the right direction. We just need to keep that momentum going from here.