[Westheim]

I was not shocked that Nick Valdes took the axe to the budget after the end of the dismal 2030 campaign. I was shocked that he brought me flowers, ten each of red and white roses, along with the message, which he delivered in person. That Chad ate the roses later the same day was a surprise, but I had seen worse and weirder things…

The new budget was $36.5M, cut by $2M from last season, and we would go into why this was a problem and at the same time was not a problem in a minute or so.

The new budget ranked the Raccoons ninth in the ABL, down from a tie for sixth last season. The Crusaders dropped out of the top 5, where they had been seemingly forever as suddenly the damn Elks decided to spend some serious dough. The top 5 now contained the Pacifics ($54M), Titans ($44.5M), Condors ($43.5M), Buffaloes ($41.5M), and damn Elks ($39M). At the very bottom of the ladder, much the same crowd as usual with the Wolves ($27.6M), Blue Sox ($24.4M), Loggers ($23.8M), Rebels ($22.6M), and Falcons ($21M).

The remaining CL North teams clocked in at $37M and a tie with the Warriors for seventh in case of the Crusaders, and the defending division champs Indians sat all the way down in 17th with $29.4M to spend.

The median budget for 2030 was $35.25M (up $1.25M), while the average budget was $33.76M (up $900k).

This brought us to salary arbitration. The Coons had five players heading for arbitration, all head scratchers one way or another that needed dissecting. They also had six free agents, including a ton of disappointments that were either over the hump or could use a change of scenery, and a single free agent that was compensation eligible. That would be Kevin Harenberg, who was rated a type A free agent.

That brought us right to the business part of the winter season. The Raccoons were without a doubt not going to contend in the very near future. They would likely suck for the next year or two, with Kevin Harenberg or without. The 2028 World Series MVP had been an import from the Wolves in ’26 after Jon Gonzalez (who would come back to become 2026 World Series MVP) had gone down with the broken elbow. Harenberg hit .325 with 14 homers in the second half and kept dealing in the CLCS before going down to injury himself. He would hit 99 regular season homers for the Coons, 11th-most in Raccoons history, right between R.J. DeWeese and Elias Tovias. His Coons OPS of .823 was the seventh-highest for the franchise amongst all players with at least a season’s worth of plate appearances (behind Ramos!).

But he had to go. He was worth two draft picks, and the Coons needed to restock the routinely depleted farm. He was also 33 years old and it was not guaranteed that he would still be around long enough for another winner to be assembled.

It was fundamentally different for Ramos, and the reason why we’d try to sign Alberto to a long-term deal this winter any way we could. The injury proneness be damned! I need my Alberto! Ramos was a .322/.414/.415 batter with 2,354 career at-bats, 758 base hits, and 269 stolen bases … and The Excitement would not turn 25 until December. He would still be around for the next competing Raccoons edition… assuming we’d get the revamp done in under ten years this time……

Gomez, Mora, and Pizzo had all been various grades of disappointing. They were all over 30. Mora was probably the least disappointing, but also the oldest at 34, and he was playing an agility position. Not that Juan Magallanes was an answer for centerfield (how had he not been demoted even once in the last two years??). The departure of the quartet of those three and Harenberg would eliminate almost $7M in salaries, so the $2M budget hit was not exactly cutting into the flesh.

Another $1.05M had been paid to a set of 31-year-old relievers in Billy Brotman and Kevin Surginer, who had been second- and third-round picks respectively, but both taken by other teams, and had arrived in Portland as prospects. Brotman had come from the Blue Sox in the same trade as Tim Stalker when we sent Tadasu Abe, Danny Margolis, Ruben Santiago, and Adam Zuhlke to Nashville in late July of ’21, notably also a season defined by crashing and diving into the cellar of the division. Meanwhile, Surginer had the unique story of having been taken by the Raccoons in the rule 5 draft… TWICE. We drafted him from the Rebels on December 1, 2021, but sent him back in January, only to find him still unprotected on December 1, 2022. That time, he stuck around. Both of these two long-time relievers were somewhere on the edge, and sometimes erratic. Both were 31. Both would probably not cost the world, and our young relief corps was … eeeeek.

Who else was up for salary arbitration? Besides Ramos and Magallanes, there were three pitchers in Sean Rigg, Jonathan Fleischer, and Josh Boles. Boles had lasted only 26 innings before heading to the DL for the year, which was unfortunate but probably didn’t doom the team on its own. Rigg had been useful mainly in a sponge role, soaking damage to the tune of a 6.84 ERA in 48.2 innings. And Fleischer had eroded completely in the second half. He had ERA’s of 3.77 and 2.78 in his first two full seasons. His WHIP jumped by .2 in ’30, and he gave up almost as many homers as in his first 2+ seasons combined. Ugly. But not necessarily a case for discarding the guy.

Given the advanced state of degradation our rotation was in, we still needed sponges.