Change of plans. Rather than do a year by year account of the first 15 years of the NBL, I'm going to jump into this the exact same way as I did my league - year 16. I am having as little interest in reporting the first 15 years as I did while it was being simmed. Though I'll occasionally refer to the early history, I want to get right into the meat and potatoes of this. So here we go.
It's now October 2004, and I've paused the long-term sim to check and make sure league stats are in line. I've got five more years to sim after this. just after the Denver Crush won a rematch of last year's World Series against the Phoenix Rattlers. That's Denver's second championship in four years and their fourth Continental League championship in the last six. We've got ourselves a bit of a dynasty on our hands.
I've become a huge fan of Denver's ridiculously hard-throwing, and even harder to hit, 26-year old phenom named Dan Taylor. This guy just finished the year with 424 strikeouts while going 22-7 with a 3.11 ERA. He won his second straight Outstanding Pitcher Award. Last year, Taylor went 27-4 with a 2.28 ERA and 394 strikeouts. And all this was done pitching at Coors Field, mind you.
While Taylor popped out at me right away, I had to do a double take at what I saw next. I stopped the auto sim right away, forgoing the next five years, and took the helm of the Pittsburgh Arsenal. Here's why:
