[Westheim]

Despite getting another $2M to play with in 2030, the Raccoons dropped out of the top 5 in big-time spenders in the ABL, and into a tie for sixth with the Capitals with a new budget of $38.5M. Granted, the top 5 were only dimes away. The top 5 spenders in the ABL would be the Pacifics ($48.5M), Titans ($43M), Condors ($40.5M), and tied for fourth the Cruaders and Buffaloes with $39M each.

The bottom 5 would be the Wolves ($25.2M), Blue Sox ($23.6M), Rebels ($23.2M), Loggers ($21.6M), and Falcons ($21M).

The median budget was $34M. The average budget was $32.9M. Both those marks were up over half a million bucks. The missing CL North teams sat 8th (Elks, $36M) and t-18th (Indians, $26.6M).

I was of course glad that Nick Valdes had less inclination like his dead-but-not-yet-forgotten scrooge father, and did not slash the budget in half at the slightest hint at things going backwards. Of course he was not that dumb; the 2029 Raccoons had obviously been undone by injuries and nothing else. And even despite missing Ramos, Gutierrez, Hereford all for roughly half a season, and many other players for significant chunks, too, the Raccoons had hung in there until stumbling over the Falcons and Loggers in the middle of September, which, y’know, stunk then, still stunk, and would stink for a while longer, but there was a time in June or July where I was sure we’d have a well-protected pick in the 2030 draft…

Yet, the $2M tack-on to the budget left us with very little wiggle room due to a number of factors. This included scheduled raises to a few players like Tim Stalker, Ricky Ohl, and Elias Tovias, but also a rapidly escalating arbitration estimate for Alberto Ramos.

And with that, we come to the arbitration and free agency table [see below]. The Raccoons had nine players up for business, including three free agents, which included Matt Jamieson and Matt Nunley as two edges of the Raccoons version of the devil’s triangle on the left side of the field, the third one being Rich Hereford. Both were really only scheduled to face opposite-handed pitching, but since Hereford missed two months, and Ramos missed more time that allowed for shifting the middle infielders and open two spots on the left side for those two, they had ended up getting a total of 1,033 at-bats between them. And they had been awesome: those two old farts had combined for 27 homers and a .287 batting average, and had piled up 6.6 WAR. The main reason why nobody has bothered to offer extensions to the pair of Matts already is that I was not quite sure what sort of budget Big Nick was gonna give me for 2030… and now we had precious little wiggle room to fit both of them into next year’s budget.

The third free agent was Kyle Anderson on his second tour of duty. Anderson had been part of the pickings-up when we had dealt Rin Nomura out of raw disgust in July, and had done *okay*. He was a guy you’d like to keep around especially since there was really an open spot in the rotation for next year…

That rotation brings us to the arbitration cases. Boles and Ramos were really no-brainers. Magallanes had done decently enough in a poor man’s leadoff batter’s role whenever Ramos had been laid up with some tweak or other, and was, despite being a singles slapper with average defense, too valuable to just let walk away like that. Sean Rigg was a professional garbage disposal person who had his applications; we might want to look into options with him. Mauricio Garavito had been a waiver claim from the Bayhawks and spectacular improvement when Jeremy Moesker was not getting anybody out early in the season, and we were going to have two left-handers anyway…

And then there was the elephant in the room, Dan Delgadillo. He was arbitration eligible for the final time, and his price point in this season had already been $2.15M, for which he had pitched 127 innings with a 10-8 mark and 4.61 ERA before shoving off to the DL once more. Through six seasons, he had made only 142 starts, and last year the walks had crept up on him, too. There were A LOT of issues with Yusneldan. Of course, he was not going to get LESS money in arbitration. Cutting him free after six years of 50-43 baseball with a 3.93 ERA and a meager 5.8 K/9 was something we had seriously considered last year, and it was on the plate again this season.

It wasn’t even that he was getting paid for that one strong season he had enjoyed, the 2026 campaign when he had gone 12-7 with a 2.76 ERA in the regular season and 3-0 in the playoffs, with an 0.89 ERA there (His playoff totals were 6 G, 5 GS, 4-1, 1.53 ERA). And just go back to the 2026 World Series again; throughout the playoffs, Rico Gutierrez and Dan Delgadillo had won their assignments, while Mark Roberts and Rin Nomura decidedly hadn’t. The mantra before Game 6 had been, oh shucks, it’s Nomura, BUT … if things go pear-shaped (which Nomura made every effort to allow them to go to), we would have Dan Delgadillo in Game 7 and what could happen then at all?

No, he had signed for big bucks out of Cuba, getting a 4-yr, $6.5M contract right away and only after that had entered arbitration. After signing, he had been named the #71 prospect in the land, and he tore his UCL the same year (2024), which is all a lot of window dressing to the situation that the Raccoons were bound to pay a mediocre right-hander up to $2.5M when they could get more pitching for less.

Also, Matt Jamieson, also a second-tour Coon, was probably not willing to stay around for free, or come back for a third tour any time soon…