[Westheim]

I applied the handbrake abruptly after turning into aisle 6 at my local Wlodzimierz’ Food Outlet, prompting the numerous bottles of booze in the shopping cart to clank against each other noisily. The coupon! I had almost forgotten. Mumblingly, I trudged back around the shelf I had just turned around and walked back to the booze rack I had just plundered. I clawed through all the pockets of my coat until I found the wrinkled coupon – any bottle of Washington white wine, 25 cents off! Granted, the product was hardly good enough to rinse a dirty plate with, but it was 25 cents off! I grabbed the first thing that looked like it would taste like asphalt soaked in the intestines of some roadkill and walked back to the cart.

To my dismay, in between my booze and the 50-pound sack of mixed nuts for Honeypaws, a reporter from the Agitator had taken a seat in the cart and immediately stuffed a little microphone into my pokey black nose.

What’s with the deal with Dallas? Sir, I really don’t know what you’re on about. – We’re trying to trade for Juan del Toro? Are we? Really? – Yeah, would be horrible if we traded for another injury-addled wreck. – Yes, yes, I am aware he’s missed 40-odd games in each of the last 40-odd seasons.

As I pushed the cart with the trenchcoat-wearing reporter, who noted down my every word, past a female customer and her cart, the five-year-old boy sitting in that cart gave us the most confused look.

Let me ask you a question instead, you muckraker. Don’t you think the Raccoons need a leadoff batter? – So what would we want from del Toro. He’s not batting leadoff! – Actually, hold on… (bends into the freezer and takes out five frozen pizzas, dumping them into the reporter’s crotch)

No, I also think the players need a more balanced diet. – Well as you can see I am a great role model. I got three pizzas with cheese in the crust and two without. Very balanced.

As we reached the checkout, we met the lady with the five-year-old again, who was now distracted by the annoyingly placed chocolates in front of the checkout and was trying to whine his mother into buying him some, but she tried to tell him off.

The Agitator snark, meanwhile, was about to ask some painfully valid questions about our prospect pipeline and the meh performance of our minor league teams the last few years, when he also noticed the chocolates and began to beg me for some chocolate as well. Him and the boy quickly started to out-whine each other, to the point where I turned to the mother and asked her whether she wanted to switch the two, for which I caught one in the snout, and probably for good reason.

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What do you mean, Steve from Accounting, you can’t reimburse me for this purchase at the Food Outlet?? (nestles through a file with other receipts) How is that … It’s 120 bucks of booze and foodstuffs! How’s that not tax-deductible?? – Yes. Mostly chocolate. – I had to throw a pound of chocolate into a hedge to coax the Portland Agitator reporter out of my car. – Well, next time I’ll bring him here with me, and YOU can talk to that leech!

(finds the receipt from the Honduran roofers that fixed the leak over section 52 for half the federal minimum wage, with his own confirming paw print authorizing payment in cash on it)

Actually, Steve, thinking about it, I’d prefer it if you didn’t talk to the Agitator about anything we’re doing here. Ever.

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November 10 – The Loggers’ 23-year-old 3B Nick Jackson (.262, 8 HR, 92 RBI) announces his retirement from baseball, unable to recover properly from a broken kneecap suffered in April.
November 15 – In a major trade, the Raccoons acquire LF/CF Juan del Toro (.337, 108 HR, 486 RBI) from the Stars for a package containing SP Bubba Wolinsky (58-42, 3.77 ERA), SP Juan Mercado (10-7, 3.79 ERA), and MR Willie Cruz (9-11, 3.60 ERA, 50 SV). The Stars also wire the Raccoons $750k in cash as part of the deal.
November 23 – The Rebels sign ex-LVA SP Pablo Paez (53-53, 4.27 ERA) to a 5-yr, $16.6M contract.

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Calm down, Honeypaws. It’s alright.

Well, that’s through! The Raccoons snatched one of the best players in the league to fix up their lineup once and for all (cough!), and instead blew a Kansas-sized hole into their rotation. The Stars wanted pitching, and they wanted a lot of it. Not that Cruz was much of a loss – he was certainly electric at times, but in two years we’d been through some quite spectacular blowouts with him, and even in a setup role he was tough to watch. The real losses were Wolinsky and Mercado, the latter a surprise breakout in 2051 after starting the season in AAA. So he could now have his sophomore swoon with the Stars, I guess! Hah!

Juan Mercado will definitely win a Pitcher of the Year before long, won’t he?

The Coons were left with Wheats, Salcido, and Raffy for a rotation. Add Kyle Brobeck if you feel brave today, but he walked more than he struck out over his 12 starts (70 innings) this year. He’s 23, with room for growth, but he also had the same 5.1 BB/9 mark he showed in the majors in AAA this season, so that’s that. I guess trading for del Toro means we’re officially competing again now, so we should maybe fix that hole in the rotation with a more serious effort than with the Honduran roofers. Also, all of those four pitchers mentioned here are right-handed (and so would be Seisaku Taki), so a lefty starter wouldn’t be the worst idea.

There was also the Rule 5 draft coming up and I was trying to create space on the 40-man roster to protect a number of AAA players, including Dave Blackshire, Carmen Argenziano, Prospero Tenazes, Dante Gutierrez, and Raul Medrano. Danny Hall and Steve Richardson, AAA pitchers with ABL experience, ended up on waivers, as did Jeff Raczka.

The thing was, there were a lot of players on the 40-man roster that had already seen quite some major league action, had not impressed, but were somehow still only 24, 25, or 26. You know, the Polibio O’Higgins, Rich Seymour, Tyler Philipps, Eric Reese, Matt Dixon, Oscar Rivera class of player. The ones you hate to waive to make them a future Elk.

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November 27 – The Raccoons come to terms with 24-year-old Japanese right-hander SP Seisaku Taki, who signs for 5-yr, $15M.
November 27 – The Loggers deal RF/1B Will McIntyre (.278, 27 HR, 242 RBI) to the Buffaloes for two prospects.
November 28 – The Stars acquire 3B Mike Crenshaw (.301, 84 HR, 368 RBI), a former Scorpion, for $16.56M over four years.
December 1 – Rule 5 Draft: 16 players are taken in the draft. The Raccoons are not affected.
December 1 – The Miners claim AAA SP Danny Hall (2-7, 3.52 ERA) off waivers by the Raccoons.

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Well, that’s gonna stuff the hole in the rotation! It’s now only Rhode Island-sized. Just when I was going to do something stupid to get David Barel from the Titans. Talk about selling the farm.

The WHOLE farm.

…which still had us with Brobeck provisionally pencilled into the #5 spot, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t gonna try and twangle us a new pitcher somehow. I tried to fool the Buffos out of Kennedy Adkins, a young pitcher I had tried to get from the Caps before, but they politely told me to take my business elsewhere.

What else could we need? A right-handed outfielder that’s not Matt Glodowski to provide some balance against lefty pitchers. Batting DeMarco leadoff was one of my wickeder ideas to give either del Toro or Pucks the day off against southpaws, and from our three switch-hitters (Crum, Suggs, Waters), only Waters had really lop-sided splits and was hitting right-handers much better. There’d probably be a Mitch Sivertson or something on the roster for those situations.

At this point, we carried 29 players on the extended roster, 13 pitchers and 16 position players. There was definitely room for more qualified pitching, since the pitchers included the (sometimes chronically) underdone Brobeck, Dixon, O’Higgins, and Reese as well as the rather pedestrian Snyder and Miles. Filler material among position players included Philipps, Seymour, and Glodowski’s useless pelt.

Other old Coons finding new employment: Juan Jimenez joins the Loggers for 2-yr, $924k;