The Jacksonville Anchors

[Ruwisc]

Jacksonville Anchors Baseball

In the year 2000, as part of MLB's rapid expansion to 60 clubs, 4 final teams were added to the map, one in each of the 4 major leagues, to bring each to a total of 15. The Northeast League added the Norfolk Navigators of Norfolk, VA; the Central League added the Austin Violets in Austin, TX; the Western League added the San Bernardino 66ers of California's Inland Empire; and the Atlantic League added our Jacksonville Anchors to the First Coast. The Anchors have played 26 seasons now, and had a fair amount of success for a modern expansion franchise, but have just fired their manager and GM after a very disappointing 2025 season. So, we're taking over as GM!

About the League
This version of MLB contains all the teams from my thread in the Mods forum, with an alternate history that dates from 1903. I'll get into plenty of that as we go, but here are some of the broad strokes:

The most successful teams in World Series terms are the New York Highlanders (18), Boston Minutemen (12), Buffalo Beacons (7), and St. Louis Spirits (7). I would normally play as St. Louis, my home team, but they've been a little too successful for my taste - too easy to win there. Three other teams have won six titles. 37 of the league's 60 teams have won the World Series at some point in their history, and 23 have not (including Jacksonville).

Speaking of the Spirits, they are the top team in terms of overall historical wins, with the Brooklyn Kings, Minutemen, Chicago Blues, and Highlanders rounding out the top 5.

The most interesting thing about the league, from my perspective, is having four subleagues. This is not actually possible in OOTP natively, but I make it work with a pack of custom schedules that I wrote a few years back. I will be making some awards decisions myself (OOTP will not pick 4 MVPs, for example), and arranging the playoff bracket manually to match how it should go according to the rules I've set out.

At times I will probably mention the "Original 16". As in the real MLB, there was a long period of time where just 16 teams in two leagues contested everything. The league expanded in 1948, 1955, 1960, 1965, 1968, 1975, 1982, 1989, 1995, and finally in 2000, with between 2-8 expansion teams at each stage. The 1960 expansion marked the introduction of the 4-subleague format, as 8 historical teams from the west coast were absorbed, as if gobbling up the classic PCL.

Each league, like the AL and NL we know, has three divisions of 5 teams each, with divisions labeled North, Central, and South (though not always divided strictly on those lines). The playoff format is similar to that used by MLB in my childhood (the 90s and 2000s). Division winners qualify, as well as one wild card from each league, and division rivals cannot play one another in the first round. The division series round is also expanded to 7 games rather than 5. Once the four leagues have crowned their champions, the bracket is re-seeded with the best league champion playing the worst, regardless of which in-game subleague they play in. This does mess up the History pages in-game sometimes, but that's worth it for me.



About the Atlantic League
The AL contains teams from the eastern parts of the Midwest and the South. The division alignment and 2025 standings look like this:


In the playoffs, the top-seeded Lakers were upset by New Orleans in seven games, while Memphis beat Tampa in six. The Lions then easily took down the division rival Crescents in five games to win the AL championship for the first time in their history (since 1995). Due to upsets in every league, Memphis was the top seed in the League Champions round, and defeated the lowest seed, the Western League champs from Las Vegas, in five games. But they fell to the team of destiny, the CL champion Austin Violets, who became the first team from the 2000 expansion class to win it all.

The most historically successful clubs from the AL are Cleveland and Louisville, who are two of the aforementioned teams that have six championships, while Detroit has 5 and Pittsburgh 4. Those teams all were part of the Original 16, as was Cincinnati. The team that has won the AL championship the most times (1960-present) is New Orleans with 10, but they have only converted those 10 appearances in the "Final Four" to one World Series trophy, in 1987.

About the Anchors
As mentioned, the Anchors were established in 2000. They had a pretty typical start to a franchise, losing over 100 games in the first two years, but put together their first winning season in 2004 at 85-77, only missing the playoffs by 4 games. The first playoff appearance would have to wait until 2008, where that same 85-77 record was enough to win a weak South division. Their first playoff win would have to wait, though, as they were swept by Cincinnati. The following year, in 2009. the Anchors finally got their first playoff wins, winning the AL wild card that year and upsetting a 106-win New Orleans team in the first round, before losing again to Cincinnati in their first ALCS.

After that, Jacksonville entered another fallow period. Losing seasons followed in '10 and '11, after which the face of the franchise, catcher Joe Mauer, left in free agency to sign with San Francisco. Mauer (2002-11) and his longtime teammate, CF Justin Leone (2001-13), still hold a number of team records. Hard to fault Mauer, who let the Seals pay him $225 million over eight years. He would go on to play for five other teams in his career, but thankfully never came back to play against us in the AL. He only just announced his retirement, so it is actually today (November 7, 2025) that the team officially retired his number 7.

There is one more number hanging beyond the outfield fences at the Grounds, and it is the #22 of Mark Prior (2002-15, 17-18). Prior was the first Anchor to win a major award, capturing the 2006 Cy Young award, and accrued 220 of his 261 career wins in an Anchors uniform. Even in retirement, he is part of the lore of the current roster - with one year left on his contract, management chose to trade him to Anaheim for two young players, including the other contender for greatest player in team history, Aledmys Diaz. (I love it when the most random players you can think of become greats.)

In the mid-2010s, the Anchors started to hit big again on some of their draft picks, and it all came together starting in 2018. Their first rounders in 2013-16 were Kris Bryant, Matt Chapman, Harrison Bader, and Nicky Lopez, who were the four most important players on that 2018 team and a couple years beyond. The 2018-24 Anchors won seven straight division titles, and though five of those came with first-round exits, that run also finally, in 2024, produced Jacksonville's first Atlantic League championship with a six-game victory over Louisville. They would lose in the League Champions' round in six games to eventual champion Syracuse, but these were still new heights for the Anchors.

Unfortunately, 2024 was the end of an era in a lot of ways. Bryant and Chapman were already gone before that, and the likes of Miguel Sano, Ryan Zimmerman, Yovani Gallardo, and Robbie Grossman all departed as free agents, leaving not much behind. When the 2025 season started to go south, Bader was traded to Cleveland (where he joined Sano on a playoff team). Of course, this is the season that cost our predecessors their jobs, and what we now inherit.

No player has been inducted into the Hall of Fame in an Anchors cap, but Mauer, Prior, and Dan Haren have yet to become eligible.

There have been two no-hitters thrown in Anchors history, both in the 2023 season, and by the immortal Frank Herrmann, who I had no recollection of (though Guardians fans might). In this league he is still active at age 40, pitching for Ottawa, and is one of five pitchers tied with a career record 3 no-hitters as he also threw one with St. Louis in 2019.



The 2025-26 Offseason

Here's what needs to be done to prep for the 2026 season:

• For one, we have no manager, bench coach, pitching coach, 1B coach, or trainer. I prefer to play GM only and whine and gripe about the decisions my in-game managers make.

• We aren't losing that much in free agency, but we already barely have any pitchers to begin with. I've reached out to pending free agent SP Trey Killian about an extension - he wants about $11 million per season to start negotiation & I might go for that.

• On the hitting side, there's less to do, but it would be nice to find a half-decent center fielder. We didn't have much at that position after Bader was traded.

I'll run down the current state of the team before I do anything too crazy.

[Ruwisc]

2025 Roster Review

This is the current state of the 40-man roster, with 36 players currently on it. Italicized players are free agents in a few weeks:

Pitchers (Stu/Mov/Con/(Stamina))
#21 Hunter Greene - 75/50/50/60
#3 Trey Killian - 45/50/50/55
#47 Cal Quantrill - 45/50/65/55
#31 Bevis Simpson - 45/45/50/65
#23 Hunter York - 40/45/45/55

#5 Michael Gunn - 75/45/45
#33 B.J. Loya - 45/45/45
#1 Luis Madero - 45/45/50
#24 Nate Pearson - 80/60/55
#19 Marco Ramirez - 60/50/50
#6 Eury Ramos - 75/45/45
#26 Alejandro Requena - 45/45/45
#37 Trevor Stephan - 60/55/55
#11 Dannysmel Tavarez - 65/45/35
#10 Dylan TeBrake - 55/45/50
#7 Jose Torres - 60/50/35
#25 Josh Winckowski - 65/60/55

All of these guys except for Madero appeared with the big club this season. York and Loya were listed as our top two prospects in the most recent ranking. I guess Torres won't get a new number until the spring, now that #7 was retired out from under him.

Catchers (Con/Gap/Pow/Eye)
#40 Jim Arada - 50/45/30/40
#44 Bo Naylor - 50/60/50/50

Infielders
#9 1B Jake Cronenworth - 50/50/50/50
#12 1B Aledmys Diaz - 60/50/65/60
#32 2B Nasim Nunez - 45/35/35/45
#20 2B Jose Peraza - 55/45/40/40
#29 2B Ramon Urias - 60/45/45/45
#17 2B Shay Whitcomb - 45/50/50/45
#27 3B Coby Mayo - 50/60/50/45
#8 SS Nicky Lopez - 65/45/30/45

Outfielders
#13 Duke Ellis - 50/45/40/45
#14 Sandro Fabian - 50/50/45/35
#18 Alonso Gaitan - 45/50/40/45
#30 Max Kepler - 45/45/55/50
#77 Chris Lubanski - 50/55/50/60
#2 Kameron Misner - 40/60/45/45
#41 Tyler Nevin - 50/55/50/50
#4 Jhonkensy Noel - 45/55/55/50
#78 Jean Ramirez - 50/45/45/50

Starter Jeff Niemann and 1B Ryan Flaherty had already announced their retirements at season's end. Flaherty started 128 games at first and another 25 at DH this season, while Niemann made 28 starts on the mound. Neither was particularly critical to our success (or lack thereof), with both posting negative WAR totals.

The pre-fab CPU-chosen batting order is

SS Nicky Lopez - .276/2/49
DH Jake Cronenworth - .282/13/47
2B Ramon Urias - .307/18/79
1B Aledmys Diaz - .310/42/116
LF Chris Lubanski - .263/19/63
RF Tyler Nevin - .239/18/87
C Jim Arada - .254/1/31
CF Max Kepler - .248/7/36
3B Coby Mayo - .067/0/1 (10 G)

Of course, Nevin is a free agent. Urias got most of the time at third in actuality, and I'm in favor of that. We'll be fine on the infield, but the outfield is ugly.

[Ruwisc]

November 2025

The 2025 season all happened when I was a neutral observer, but it's still awards season.

• Aledmys Diaz won a Silver Slugger award as the top DH among NL & AL players. I don't really want to research whether any of our guys would be Gold Glovers or Silver Slugger winners if we only considered the AL players - this is one of those deficiencies when it comes to having a league this weird.

Rookies of the Year

• NL: SP Nolan Stensgaard

• AL: SS Jeffrey McCracken

• CL: 3B David Fry

• WL: SP Eli Haile

Relievers of the Year

• NL: Ronald Bolanos

• AL: Chase Cohen

• CL: Luke Chevalier

• WL: Nick Kennedy

Cy Young Awards

• NL: Nolan Stensgaard

• AL: Corbin Burnes

• CL: Spencer Strider

• WL: Triston McKenzie

MVP Awards

• NL: Bryce Harper

• AL: Nathaniel Lowe

• CL: Cody Bellinger

• WL: Marcus Semien

The main thing to do during November was get our new coaching staff in order. We hired:

- Assistant GM: Bill Grosdidier. Bill was actually the manager of our rival, the Tampa Grovers, during their most successful period. The Grovers went to the World Series four times in five years between 2000-2004, but lost all four in a Buffalo Bills-like curse state. If he wants to get into management, I'm not too petty to not give him that opportunity.
- Manager: David Agado. A former minor-league starter in the Portland organization (or the Phillies organization for us), Agado is a first-time manager but rates highly and will mesh well with our pre-existing staff and players. His only really strong preference is that he hates bunting.
- Bench coach: Myron Hunter. Myron had been the manager of the High-A Jeff City Jays (Jefferson City, MO) in the Kansas City organization from 2015-25. He was a free agent, and now gets his first opportunity in the big leagues.
- Pitching coach: Kris Franko. Franko was the pitching coach for the Crescents in the early 2010s, during which time his proteges included Chris Carpenter, Chris Bassitt, and Zack Britton. He had been coaching in the minor leagues for a while, holding jobs in the Omaha, Milwaukee, and Salt Lake organizations.
- First base coach: Yoshi Yoshinaga. A first-time coach who was a minor-league catcher in the New Orleans system in the early 90s. Naturally, he will also handle the catchers.
- Team trainer: Nate Beane. Another first-timer, but his ratings are good and lack of experience comes cheap.
- A few staff members carried over from previous management under manager Olmedo Saenz: hitting coach John Schulte, third base coach Brett Rossler, and scouting director Sandy Guerrero will stick around.

November 11: SP Trey Killian signs an extension for 4 years at an AAV of $9.4 million.

November 21: We did make one trade in this period, and it's with those rival Grovers, acquiring SP Chris Huffman from Tampa in exchange for IF Nasim Nunez, one for one. Huffman is quite a bit older than Nunez (he is 31) but was such a late bloomer that he is just entering his first year of arbitration. So, he's not too expensive (~$2 million), and will easily fit into our rotation.

November 23: Hall of Fame voting opens. The two returning players most likely to be inducted are a pair of outfielders who were teammates for 14 years in Tucson, Vernon Wells and Ryan Ludwick, though neither is a slam dunk. The three best resumes for first-time players are all, like Ludwick, real-life Cardinals: Chris Carpenter (Vancouver), Mark Mulder (Houston), and Albert Pujols (Kansas City). The game is putting together a little fan-service for me specifically, I guess.

November 24: One of the best soon-to-be-free-agents is off the market, as Western League MVP Marcus Semien resigns with Vancouver for 4 years, $34.5 million per. This covers his age 34 to 37 seasons, so we'll see.

November 26: The New York Burros trade 3B Nolan Arenado to New Mexico, bringing in 2B Travis Demeritte and seeing a pitching prospect go in each direction. Good deal for New York I would say, they save some money and my scout likes the prospect they got better.

November 30: We weren't the only ones to complete an in-division trade - Milwaukee has traded OF Randy Arozarena to the Chicago Blazers for RP Nick Vespi and outfield prospect Justin Duong.

November 30 is also the date that free agency begins, so that'll be the story for a little while.

[Ruwisc]

December 2025

Just going to cover the biggest deals here - maybe 1 trade or signing out of 15 is noteworthy enough.

December 2: Atlanta trades OF/DH Kyle Schwarber to Columbus, receiving prospects OF Charles Saunders and RHP Jason Jones. One of our division's most feared sluggers has left it. Barring injury, Schwarber will hit his 500th home run this season.

December 4: The LA Sabers trade SP Rick Porcello to Syracuse for two prospects, RHP Jeremiah Dreher and LF Jamal Griffen. Nice bit of business from the Sabers to get out of that contract.

December 5: Saguaros LF Yordan Alvarez signs a 5-year extension that will make him one of the league's 5 highest paid players, $44.4 million per year.

December 8: Kansas City acquires 1B Willson Contreras from Baltimore, for what is effectively nothing - Baltimore both retained money and included cash, allowing Contreras to play for the Mohawks for free. Contreras is best known for his time in Omaha, and now goes to probably their biggest rival.

December 8: C Sean Murphy had opted out of his deal with the Brooklyn Kings, and signs with the defending World Series champs in Austin for 7 years, $25.4 million per year.

December 10: C Kyle Higashioka, fresh off winning the World Series with Austin but now supplanted, signs with Cleveland for $27 million per year over 4 years.

December 12: We signed OF Tony Kemp to a minor league deal. Even with no guaranteed salary, he's probably our starting CF if no other moves are made.

December 15: What will probably be our biggest coup of the offseason - Jacksonville signs SP Justin Dunn to a 7-year contract. There are a few different options in there, but it will be 7 years, $154 million at most and 5 years, $113 million at the least. Dunn was the best available pitcher under the age of 30, so I'm pretty happy with that even though the news story thinks I'm paying too much. He will almost assuredly be our Opening Day starter. Dunn was a deadline acquisition by Washington from San Francisco this season, and then San Francisco made the playoffs and Washington didn't.

December 15: 1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr. signs with St. Louis for 7 years, $25.2 million per. Probably the #1 available free agent, I thought he would get more than this.

December 15: SS JP Crawford signs a 7-year extension with Nashville for $31.5 million per season. Crawford has played his whole career with the Stars.

December 17: With the Winter Meetings starting today, it's time for the draft lottery. We had the 7th-best odds this year with our 68-94 record, so I was hopeful but not expectant that anything would happen. Our expansion cousins, the Navigators, had the league's worst record and did stay at the top, but we hit gold! Er, maybe silver.

1st: Norfolk (no change)
2nd: Jacksonville (up from 7th)
3rd: San Antonio (up from 5th)
4th: Charlotte (no change)
5th: Houston (down from 2nd)
6th: LA Palms (up from 8th)

The 3rd through 6th picks are all then moved down one slot, due to Hartford failing to sign the #2 pick last year. Toronto (was 3rd) and Atlanta (6th) drop out of the lottery places and will draft 8th and 9th.

December 17: SP Johnny Cueto is still kicking around, and will be kicking around for three more years after signing with St. Louis. Cueto won a Cy Young in 2017 with Cleveland, and won 21 games with Boston in 2025.

December 29: The Rule 5 draft was today - we drafted RHP Tommy Doyle from Ottawa, and did not lose anyone. With a couple of other, more minor, signings on the board, our 40-man roster now has 38 players.

December 31: Well, most of our business is now done - although this signing is not nearly as big a name as he is in the real world, he'll still be a help to us. We have signed RF Ronald Acuña Jr., formerly of Omaha, for an AAV of $12.2 million. We did have to give him six years to do it, but I think that's fine. A clear upgrade over the departed Tyler Nevin on both sides of the ball.

[Ruwisc]

January 2026

Aside from the odd signing of a minor league free agent or two, we're pretty much done with our offseason business. The offseason center's WAR leaderboard has us at the very top in this 60-team league, with our improvement 4.5 wins better than 2nd-place St. Louis.

January 3: Well this is surprising. The top free agent starting pitcher, Gerrit Cole, has returned to our division rival Atlanta Firebirds. The F-Bombs have entirely subtracted from the roster up to this point, with Schwarber traded to Columbus, Trevor Larnach signing with Syracuse, and a whole host of other exits. Cole signs for four years at $33 million per year. He came up with Atlanta, and won a Cy Young in a Firebirds uniform in 2014. Most of this decade was spent with Toronto before a deadline trade put him in Vegas.

January 4: Aaron Judge has signed an extension to remain with the Grays, at a $35 million clip over 4 years. Judge passed the 500-homer threshold in 2025, all done in Washington colors.

January 7: An impressive 5 players were inducted into the Hall of Fame, all in their first years of eligibility:

• Mark Mulder - 99.0% - 343-187, 3772 K, 3.38 ERA, 119.6 WAR, 2 Cy Youngs, 1 World Series

• Albert Pujols - 98.7% - 3493 hits, 608 HR, career .303 avg, 2002 Rookie of the Year, 2 World Series

• Ryan Howard - 97.7% - 710 HR, 2579 hits, 2039 RBI, 1.004 OPS, 2 MVPs, 1 World Series. Howard is only the second former Anchor enshrined in Cooperstown, and the first to have played here more than one season (Howard 2014-17; Lance Berkman 2011).

• Chris Carpenter - 94.5% - 377-244, 4171 K, 3.53 ERA, 110.3 WAR

• Mark Buehrle - 88.7% - 261-139, 3.37 ERA, 2457 K, 77.2 WAR, 2 World Series, 4 Gold Gloves

The first four players will all represent their first teams in the Hall, while Buehrle will wear a Brooklyn Kings cap.

January 10: Still pitching well at age 39, David Price is still good enough to fetch a decent prospect in a trade. New Orleans has acquired Price from Washington for three prospects, most notably OF prospect Oscar Balais.

January 12: In another instance of players you wouldn't expect to still be playing at a high level, San Francisco has signed OF Jason Heyward for 3 years and $31.2 million per year. Heyward was probably the best free agent still available on the board, but definitely pretty pricey.

January 15: International free agency opens on this date. No signings right away but I've got a few players in my sights.

January 21: The official start of preseason this year, and time to load in the new schedule. We will open the season on Friday, March 27 at New Orleans, then go to the Trop to face the Grovers, before returning home to start our home slate against the Miami Waves. We will finish the season at home with matchups against Boston and Louisville. Our interleague matchups this season are against the NL Central (Boston, Hartford, and the three New York teams), CL North (St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minnesota, and the two Chicago teams), and the WL Central (San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, and the two LA teams). That's a lot of big markets!

I guess I never outlined the parameters of the schedule in my intro post. It's fairly similar to the current modern MLB schedule (although I made these a while ago - it actually predates MLB adopting their current schedule). We play our four division rivals 14 times apiece, the 10 teams in the AL North and Central 6 times apiece, and a total of 46 interleague games against 15 opponents, comprising one division from each of the other subleagues. There's one interleague team that we'll play 4 times versus 3 for the others, and that's the only difference between our schedule and those of our division opponents. This year, our extra game is against Boston - we'll play them twice, at Fenway in mid-April and down here in the final week of the season, two games each, instead of one three-game set. That's a slightly bad beat, since Boston was the league's best team last year (109-53), but 1 game doesn't make that much a difference.

January 21: The player I've gotten the most inbox messages about this offseason has been former Hartford Oaks closer Ronald Bolaños. He is actually a spectacular closer, but the numbers that these teams were bidding against each other with are pretty staggering. He finally signed today with the Salt Lake Bees, for 4 years and $32.5 million per season.

January 22: Former Anchor, RF Tyler Nevin, signs with Oakland for 3 years, $6 million per season. That's a deal that I definitely could have gone for but we've gone with Acuña instead.

[Ruwisc]

February 2026

I had three international amateurs that I originally set my sights on, but ended up signing none of them. The One That Got Away is Australian outfielder Elijah Watson-Williams - I thought I'd be able to snag him for cheap, but the bidding war got out of hand. In the end, he signed with Buffalo for more than triple what my original offer to him was. In the end, we had $8.26 million available as our spending cap, and we spent it on three players:

- corner OF Gabin Imperial (Dominican Republic) - 60 Con/75 Pow/55 Eye/50 Def - $5.04MM
- OF Leonardo Aleman (Dominican Republic) - 60 Con/65 Pow/55 Eye/60 Def - $2.8MM
- P Oriol Navarro (Panama) - 75 Stu/50 Mov/50 Ctrl/40 Stamina - $420K

I'm still pretty happy with this crew - I didn't get a big starting pitcher like I was hoping for, with Navarro probably more of a setup man, but it's still a decent haul.

Spring training began on February 20. One of my most-wanted features is an actual featured spring training with Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues - I've got it all planned out. In the in-universe canon, we share spring training facilites with the New York Highlanders at what is, to us, Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. (I'd have to look back to see who the Highlanders' most iconic owner is!)

February 20: Naturally, in the second inning of our very first spring training game, against those Highlanders, LF Chris Lubanski injured himself while trying to throw a runner out at the plate. The injury will cost him the rest of spring, and the first few weeks of the season. He was set to be our primary leadoff hitter.

February 22: It could be worse, at least. The Suns lost SP Patrick Cooper for the season in the first inning of the very first spring training game.

February 24: One of our foes has taken care of some important business, as Miami and SP Jaime Barria sign a contract extension for 4 years, $27.4 million per year. That's honestly qualifies as a hometown discount. Barria is perhaps the AL's top starting pitcher, and to me clearly Miami's best player.

February 28: I wouldn't actually celebrate an injury, but this one does affect our fortunes positively - Tampa has lost CF Michael Harris II for the year, after he somehow suffered a broken kneecap on a routine fly ball.

We finished the month of February with a 6-2-1 record in spring games, all six of the wins coming consecutively after failing to win the first three.

It feels strange to have pretty much gone through the whole offseason in a few days - I usually like to play very slowly, but I guess I'm amped up to be actually GMing a team instead of running the simulation for the first time in a while. In-season, I'll be posting usually a week at a time

[Ruwisc]

March 2026

The season starts on March 27 - let's get the rest of the way through spring without anything else going on, then make our roster cuts.

March 7: Ottawa signs SP Jose Fernandez to a contract extension that will take him through the 2031 season and make him, at least for now, the highest-paid player in baseball. He is already making $43 million per season, but from 2027-31 he will be elevated to $47.5 million.

March 8: A couple of long-term injuries in the WL North - Cascades 2B Joey Wendle will miss 4-5 months with a calf tear, while Silver Sox SP Jacob Johnson will miss nearly the entire season with a torn rotator cuff.

Not much happened between then and the end of spring training. We finished play with a record of 16-11-3, that sounds nice. 24-year-old SP Archie Webb, our 7th round pick in 2024 from Virginia, pushed really hard to make the opening day roster. But, he hasn't pitched yet in Triple-A, so with 5 starting pitchers I like, we'll have him start the year with AAA Orlando.

The final Offseason Center WAR leaderboard rates us at +6.1 WAR added, fifth highest of any team in the league and highest in the AL. We rank behind only Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago Blazers, and Syracuse in that metric. The other teams in our division were #12 Charlotte, #31 Miami, #45 Tampa, and #54 Atlanta.

Speaking of which, the preseason predictions like us, projecting us for the second-highest record in the Atlantic League, behind only Nashville and level with Cleveland. The overall predictions are here:



I'd be pretty happy if this were a playoff team - I do think we will finish above .500, but I don't think I was thinking this rosily. I've never noticed this before, but the projected win and loss totals do not properly add up? The teams are projected for a combined record of 4877-4843.

Final cuts were a bit stricter than usual - this team had so many unusable outfielders out of options. We had to waive five players: outfielders Alonso Gaitan, Max Kepler, and Sandro Fabian, and relievers Alejandro Requena and Jose Torres. Gaitan, Fabian, and Requena were sent to AAA, Torres was granted his release, and Kepler refused assignment, so we traded him to New Orleans for Mike McDade, saving around $5 million in the process. McDade was then optioned to AAA Orlando. The final composition of the roster is:

2026 Anchors Opening Day roster



Rotation
RHP Justin Dunn
RHP Cal Quantrill
RHP Trey Killian
RHP Hunter Greene
RHP Chris Huffman

Bullpen
RHP Nate Pearson - closer
RHP Josh Winckowski - 8th inning
LHP Marco Ramirez - lefty specialist
LHP Michael Gunn
LHP Hunter York - long man
RHP Tommy Doyle - no special role, but a Rule 5 pick
RHP Dannysmel Tavarez - opener on Huffman days
RHP Eury Ramos

Catchers/Infield
C Jim Arada
C Bo Naylor
1B Aledmys Diaz
1B Jake Cronenworth (primary DH)
2B/3B Ramon Urias
SS Nicky Lopez
3B Coby Mayo
IF Sergio Alcantara
IF Shay Whitcomb

Outfield
LF Duke Ellis
LF Jean Ramirez
CF Tony Kemp
RF Ronald Acuña Jr.

Injured List
#77 LF Chris Lubanski


I think that gets us ready for Opening Day! Next time out, we begin the 2026 campaign with visits to New Orleans and Tampa, before returning to Jacksonville to start our home campaign against Miami.