[Westheim]

I must admit, I don’t remember all that much after strike three to Ricky Loya, but according to my thick head on the following morning, there was probably alcohol involved. I also found it hard to get out of bed, until I noticed that I was not in bed at all, but had slept spooning with World Series MVP Kevin Harenberg on a bench in the visitors’ clubhouse in the Buffaloes’ lovely yet still ringless place, and my right arm was pinned under Harenberg’s body.

The Day After was for shuffling our bums back to Portland and then slowly disperse for the holidays – except for some players that still had contract talks to conduct before the free agency opened, but before we could get to that, we had to wait for Nick Valdes to also fly over from Kansas, and he spent another day cleaning the clubhouse there to get it back into orderly condition.

The Raccoons’ 2029 budget would amount to $36.5M, their largest ever, and $3M more than in 2028. This was also the first budget set by Nick Valdes, who was less cheap than his deceased father (and had to spend less on … “personal protection” than Carlosito, who ultimately had turned out to not have spent *enough* on his private army), but really liked rearranging that bobblehead collection either by first name, or by last name, or by career base hits.

The $36.5M budget put the Raccoons into the top 5 in the league for the first time since the glory days of the 1990s, and into fifth place precisely. The only teams with more money to blow would be the Pacifics ($48M), Titans ($41.5M), Crusaders ($39M), and Condors ($37.5M).

The five poorest teams in the league were the Indians ($24M), Wolves ($23M), Blue Sox ($22.4M), Falcons ($21.6M), and Loggers ($21.2M). The only missing CL North team were the damn Elks, who ranked 14th with a $32.5M budget. The average budget was $32M, the median budget was $33.5M – so the Coons’ budget was less top-ish then f.e. the Indians and Loggers were bottom-ish.

Smart investments were still key. Thankfully we had an expert here for making smart investments! (pats Cristiano Carmona on the shoulders and looks at the display on the laptop on Cristiano’s thighs) No, Cristiano, we are not resigning Daniel Bullock for 10 years and 50 million.

For a nice surprise and the first time in decades, ownership did not plunder the cash register after the season. While Carlosito had usually required all the leftover money (minus a few token bucks to keep the lights on til April) to be wired back to him at the end of the season, Nick Valdes only took roughly 80% of the season profits and left the Critters with about a million in cash. A million! (flaps arms by sheer excitement)

And with that we could sharpen the pencils and start looking at where to make cuts and were to make additions…!

The Raccoons had a number of free agents and several “interesting” arbitration cases coming up. [Full table below] First to the free agents; Mark Roberts would have been on that list, but signed a 4-yr, $10.4M extension in September, so that was probably our only type A free agent off the hook. The Raccoons had two type B free agents left, Jon Correa and Tim Stalker. Now, Correa had not been a great revelation after coming over from the Bayhawks in the middle of the season and for stretches in August and September was used only as pinch-hitter. He had made $2.08M in ’28 and as 35 years old. Valdes wanted to keep him around, but I was not keen on spending millions on old farts. (Yes, Mark Roberts will be an old fart by the time his 4-year deal is over, too; bear with me here)

Tim Stalker was the other way round. Tim Stalker, a 3-time Gold Glover at short that had been forced to move because of Alberto Ramos, was the player who had blown the Raccoons a bit out of the water during contract negotiations in late summer, seeking a deal near 7-yr, $25M. Now, he was certainly an impressive player, batting near .300 with double-digit power if you let him get at-bats, had Gold Glove level defense at second base, and was stealing bases. He had surely been underpaid so far, having made $1M in his last year of team control. But he was also 30 years old and the Raccoons were wary of 7-year contracts to players 30 and beyond. (Yes, Rico Gutierrez had been given a 9-year contract just last winter, but he had been *28* - completely, totally different… somehow… Steve from Accounting, explain it to them!)

I really wanted to keep Tim Stalker around, especially with Jarod Spencer having flatlined (.595 OPS between the last two seasons) and having been worth -1.7 WAR the last two years combined after he had led the league in base hits in 2026. Well, Spencer was (and had always been!) a strictly-singles hitter who had zero patience at the plate. Never mind that he did not hit a homer until his FOURTH season in the majors; he had a walk rate of barely 4%... it was not sufficient for a guy slugging .356 for his career. So the Coons could probably not afford Stalker, had to try and sneak out of the $800k commitment to Spencer for 2029 (after which he would be a free agent), and had to find a replacement somehow if they could not get Stalker to reduce his demands. Moving Rich Hereford to the keystone was one option, especially with Matt Nunley still having maintained a firm grip on the hot corner (in terms of D) despite his season having been rudely decimated by that broken leg in April. He still managed to put up 1.0 WAR in essentially a quarter of a season. 2029 would also be the last on Nunley’s contract.

Yeah, back to this year’s free agents. Stalker aside, there was still a quintet of other players: Kyle Anderson, Jaden Booker, Jeff Kearney, Armando Leal, and Danny Morales.

Booker had been a depth minor league signing that had been promoted to the major leagues after the Nunley injury and ultimately had stunk hard enough to be sent back for a never-ending carousel of other meager AAA infielders, and had batted .181 for the season. The Raccoons had no desire to keep him around, and the same was true for Jeff Kearney, who was clearly over the hill, having lost but all the stuff between 2027 and 2028. He had rung up 9.3/9 in ’27, but managed only 5.1 K/9 in ’28. Somehow, the Coons had survived his 69 outings, but it had not been pretty and he had not been any sort of reliable. We would go on either with Jeremy Moesker or with a free agent or whatever we could grabble in a trade. Kearney had spent three years with the Raccoons.

Leal and Morales had been very solid backups throughout the season, with Morales being the best version of that right-handed backup outfielder / pinch-hitter the Coons had gotten their paws on since Eddie Jackson. There was just one problem: his rapidly deteriorating defense. His range was paltry for a 34-year-old player. He had never been a defensive wizard; but our head scout (whose name I had noted down somewhere here in these papers, but could not find right now) ranked him absolutely the worst defensively of our players, by a good margin, too. Leal was probably worth keeping around by himself, but Nick Valdes wanted us to upgrade over Elias Tovias, and Tovias was probably hard to move with another three years on that contract and given his erratic production pattern.

Then there was Kyle Anderson, who had restored order in the bickering clubhouse after having come over from the Falcons three offseasons ago. There was only the mild problem of him having been expensive, constantly injured, and having lost two of his four pitches. His 4.4 K/9 this year were a huge red flag. You might think he was a 39-year-old veteran on his very last leg, but he was in fact *29* and completely losing it already…

The Coons had to be wary here with their starting pitching. We now had Roberts and Rico locked up long time, but there were question marks in other regards. For example, we did not really have a #5 around right now, or much of a #4. The George James trials had ended in failure (4.22 ERA in 39 GS; 4.99 ERA in 19 GS this year; and he also couldn’t strike anybody out), and our default #3 Rin Nomura was scheduled for elbow surgery to have bone chips removed a few days from now and would *likely* miss the first month of the 2029 season, then would carry that yellow injury flag on his file for the rest of his career.

So our eyes turned longing to Dan Delgadillo, who was all his own horror story. Having gone from “21-year-old” rookie to Tommy John surgery, a very good 2026 campaign that netted him huge coin in super-2 arbitration to demotion to St. Petersburg this year. In five (some partial) major league seasons he had posted ERA’s of 3.80, 5.44, 2.76, 3.88, and 4.89 and you had no idea what he’d do next…! There was a HUGE problem with his contract, since he had already made $2M in arbitration for 2028 and would of course only make more in 2029. Again, his contract was a HUGE problem. Yes, he pitched an inspiring Game 3, but he had also not been able to strike out anybody for the entire season, posting a career-worst (by far) 4.4 K/9 mark and didn’t keep the ball on the ground, either, getting bombed 14 times in just 119.2 ABL innings.

HUGE problem!

So the Coons needed at least one starting pitcher from somewhere, and Anderson was not going to be it. Unless we could convince him of a major pay cut (he made $1.78M in ’28) and a move to the bullpen, Anderson was not going to come back.

When has pitching ever been our chief concern?

Well, the Raccoons knew six of their Opening Day starters as far as the lineup was concerned in Ramos, Hereford, Harenberg, Mora, and Gomez; also probably Tovias unless a catcher would fall from the sky. There was not much to add to that lineup to scare the opposition, and if we could keep Stalker around, that would be daft, too! But the pitching staff had more question marks than exclamation marks…

Like Delgadillo, Nomura would be headed for arbitration along with all the goods in the bullpen: Ohl, Surginer, and Boles. It was probably worth exploring one or two long-term extensions to the latter guys. Also, Alberto Ramos was eligible for arbitration for the first time. That was going to be expensive…