The Around the Horn League (AtHoL)

[luckymann]

[luckymann]

Plenty of blood spilt again among my managerial confreres, with the following pilots now out of a job: Justin Winters (Minneapolis); Jay Claypool (Nashville); Daniel Wildman (Montgomery); Michael Goodman (Temple); Frankie Frisch (Brooklyn); Colin Matthews (Walden); Caleb Rasmussen (Richmond); and Chris Hudson (Montreal).

More news to come on a couple of these franchises.

[luckymann]

ELYSIAN MEDAL (MOST VALUABLE PLAYER)

ARCADIAN MEDAL (PITCHER OF THE YEAR)

THREE UP THREE DOWN AWARD (RELIEVER OF THE YEAR)




RISING STAR AWARD (ROOKIE OF THE YEAR)




CHADWICK PLATE (MANAGER OF THE YEAR)

LA: Travis Hampton, Buffalo
KA: Joe Cronin, New York


SWING FOR THE FENCES AWARD (SILVER SLUGGER)

Lincoln Association
C: Mike Grady, Kansas City
1B: John Jaha, St. Louis
2B: Jackie Robinson, Cincinnati
3B: Dick Allen, Columbus
SS: Willard Brown, St. Louis
LF: Juan Soto, Cincinnati
CF: Emmet Heidrick, Mobile
RF: Chuck Klein, Buffalo
DH: Josh Bell, Columbus


King Association
C: William Outen, Baltimore
1B: Lou Gehrig, Lewiston
2B: Henry Moore, Rochester
3B: Alec Bohm, Philadelphia
SS: Nomar Garciaparra, New York
LF: Brian Giles, Jersey City
CF: Frank Robinson, Newark
RF: Dom DiMaggio, Jersey City
DH: Wes Covington, Montreal


LET'S PLAY TWO AWARD (GOLD GLOVE)

Lincoln Association
P: Zach Davies, Keokuk
C: Dan Wilson, Toronto
1B: Randy Milligan, Detroit
2B: Skeeter Newsome, Detroit
3B: John Britton, Toronto
SS: Phil Tomney, Keokuk
LF: Joe Hornung, Pensacola
CF: Ender Inciarte, St. Louis
RF: Roberto Clemente, Pensacola


King Association
P: Hank O’Day, Baltimore
C: William Outen, Baltimore
1B: Mark Teixeira, Pittsburgh
2B: Bill Monroe, Jersey City
3B: Billy Shindle, Baltimore
SS: Andrelton Simmons, Lewiston
LF: Marty Cordova, Lewiston
CF: Dick Johnston, Boston
RF: Ival Goodman, Pittsburgh


Top 20s / Leaders

[luckymann]

Well, I told you I was going to get busy. In the end, I vastly undersold myself.

Firstly, we got a fairly rough hearing at arb - winning only one of the five we tendered.

Before going into the trades, here's where my head ended up at after last season:

• While still far too inconsistent for mine, our offence had performed pretty well. We led the league in runs scored, were second in BA and bWAR, 6th in HR and up the top in the various base-running metrics. Even if some of the personnel were to change, I felt we had the right mix of contact, power and speed for the way I like to play the game.
• The pitching underwhelmed greatly - more the spin than pen, but neither had wowed me. Weaver's departure was, as I mentioned, neither unexpected, nor insurmountable by any stretch. I simply saw it as the catalyst for greater change.
• However, for mine, the area that had caused us the most grief was our defence. When your pitchers' WHIPs are up in the 1.30s as our SP's were, you better have some darn fine gloves behind them. We did not. They didn't commit many errors - in fact, the least in the league - but a lot of that had to do with how few balls they were getting to, as our 11th-ranked ZR spells out in big neon letters. And so, while I didn't believe our pitchers would allow that many runners again this year, I still felt fixing our D was of the highest priority.

Through all of this, I came to the conclusion that our continued underperformance hasn't been due to a lack of talent in our group or effort being expended or anything like that, but rather that we simply haven't had the right mix of players to complement each other and work as a cohesive unit. To achieve that, I began to realise, involves trade-offs that, while they might weaken the group in certain ways at certain positions, make it much stronger overall.

And so that was my mindset as we began our squad's recalibration with this trade with our old friends at Buffalo.



OUT

• Sam kind of became the odd man out when we picked up Finley. While he has Steve covered with regard to BA, he loses the argument on power, age and D. And so I wanted to off him while the offing was there to be done. And so this trade began with him being shopped around.
• Our medical staff strongly felt Juan Pena was going to struggle with injuries throughout his career. Given he'd been on and off the field throughout his Chicago tenure, they didn't need to do much by way of convincing me.
• To be honest, I had to ask who Lee Tunnell was.

IN

• With Weaver gone and given the serious doubts I have about Ice Box Chamberlain, I was immediately on the hunt for a mid-low rotation guy and Mordecai is perfect. Not overwhelming stuff but a true innings-eater coming off a 1950 season in which he racked up nearly 8 pWAR and gave up just 8 homers in 277 IP. He is also known for his leadership, which ticked the final box for me.
• John Smiley is currently recovering from a partial UCL tear and probably won't see action until the summer. Still, he is a solid southpaw and we'll most likely use him in long relief and spot starter duties.
• Craig Stammen is one of those guys who works super hard to maximise fairly ordinary talent. He began his career as an SP but his future is definitely in the BP. He'll be in the mix for the big club but will probably find himself fairly familiar with the bus ride to Cairo as well.
• Jed Lowrie is the ace in the hole of this deal as far as I am concerned. I can see why Buffalo had lost interest in him after he hit just a buck and change as a rookie last year, but I think he's a bit of a smokey and we'll be giving him some time to find his feet at AAA before giving him another try.

With Brown on board, Chamberlain became expendable. Worst case, I knew he could operate out of the pen where he had done a decent enough job for us in between stints in the rotation. All the same, I wanted to see what offers we might get for him and so I threw him out there as trade bait. In the end, he caught a surprisingly large fish.




Harry Heilmann is a toofer. Not only is he elite at the plate, he allows me to satisfy the boss's urgings about what he sees as our deficiency at CF while retaining Cedeno. I doubt he'll win any Gold Gloves out there, but he is sure-handed with fair range. Only his arm is a weakness. He also plays RF and 1B, giving us added flexibility at those positions. But he'll be our everyday CF, with Sosa and Cedeno on either side of him and Finley as our fourth OF / defensive sub.


That kept the dominos falling. With a high contact, low power guy at our disposal I could now make the big move I knew was necessary to tie everything up nicely. Little did I know it was going to work so well in our favour when the Buckeyes came a-calling and we locked down this blockbuster.



OUT

• No lightly-made decision this, offloading one our core guys, our very first overall Draft Pick in fact, a leader in the group and fan fave. But, while Joe's offensive numbers were beyond question, his defensive liabilities had become untenable. The addition of Brown, an extreme groundballer, only made it more so. My only requirements here were to make sure we got good value in return, including a guy who might not have Joe's bat but whose glove was much better. And so this trade actually started with Vina in mind, then blossomed from there.
• Once Lefty became involved, Penny's stocks fell dramatically. When his name was one of the first they threw at us, the writing was on the wall. The Pick sealed the deal.

IN

• I have no idea what soured things for Steve at Cincy. He has been one of the league's dominant pitchers and was at his very best last season, winning his second Arcadian Medal. It can't have been his impeding Free-Agency, as we've subsequently offered him a long-term deal that looks like it will be completed with very little fuss (knock on wood...). Whatever the reason for it, he and the club seemed fairly keen to part ways. A huge get for our club.
• As I said, Fernando was the initial focus of this deal. I wanted a LHB who at least wasn't hopeless at the plate and whose D at shortstop was a big step up from Joe's. He fits the bill perfectly.
• Doug Rau was almost an afterthought. He'll most likely start down at AAA but I'm fairly sure we'll see him at Chicago at some point.

To get all of this out of the way before the Draft was key, thereby allowing me to use our picks proactively rather than reactively. I'll run through who we selected in the next post.

[luckymann]

With our squad now pretty much set, the Draft was all about picking guys on their merits. We'd traded away our 5th and 6th picks, leaving us with just six. Thankfully, the various deals we had done had cut our shopping list dramatically, leaving us chasing the following:

• another defensively-solid middle IF
• a backup C
• a power LH reliever
• some gap-fillers for Cairo

We came away having crossed all of these off.

Round 1 (34th overall) - SS Felipe Lopez

• A toolsy switch-hitter more for tomorrow than today, Felipe plays 2B / 3B / SS and should hit for decent enough power and average.

Round 2 (70th) - C Steve Nicosia

• With concerns over Dan Jansen's ability to handle the bigs, Steve will come in over the top of him and be Paul Lo Duca's backup.

Round 3 (106th) - P Carl Glass

• As long as he finds a way to walk the fine line between nibbling and grooving, Carl should be a real asset.

Round 4 (142nd) - OF Ken Wood

• One of those guys who doesn't hit it often, but when he does - it stays hit. Which might not get him a gig at the parent club, but will make him a most handy type for the Egyptians.

Round 7 (250th) P Wally Holborow

• At 31, Wally's age made him almost leprous. We thought him worth a shot. A no-brainer with the 250th pick.

Round 8 (286th) P Babe Doty

• A sidearmer with elite control but a reputed propensity for throwing it down the pipe, he'll do nicely at Cairo but is unlikely to rise above that level.

[luckymann]

[luckymann]

[luckymann]

After we get an OD shutout win behind Scherzer, our prize offseason recruit makes his debut for us one to remember by outduelling big Don D for a 2-hitter against the recently-promoted Colt .45s. The game's only run is doubled in by another newbie, Fernando Vina, in his first Chicago at-bat.

[luckymann]

Daryl looks set to continue on from his promising 29 HR rookie season, and this is his best game yet.

[luckymann]

Homers coming in bunches as Richie also knocks a trio into the seats while driving in 8.

[luckymann]

[luckymann]

After two and a bit seasons where he has been just terrible for us, and with his contract up at the end of the season, I shift Tom Henke while he still has some tradeworthiness about him. In the end we get a better return than expected, albeit for down the track.

[luckymann]

TBH, I could take or leave playing out all games in full. I don't particularly like how the human-AI interaction works a lot of the time and feel it often nerfs the game one way or the other. This is the only save in which I do so, and even here I speed things up in the early innings with the UNTIL RISP option and - aside from substitutions - let my team and player strategies drive the boat. Then, when there are runners threatening, and from the 6th or 7th inning unless it is a blowout, I take full control.

But I do love running a club and everything that goes with it, particularly roster and financial management. I don't know that I am particularly good at it, which may well be - as perverse as it might sound - why I enjoy it so much.

At 16-12, we are still struggling to get things where we want them to be. Our pitching has been OK (4th best ERA, 3rd least runs conceded). Same goes our hitting, despite a few of our main guys, in particular John Mize, not doing a heck of a lot with bat in hand apart from mashing the odd tater - which explains the slippage between our upper-tier average rankings and our poor run production (currently 10th).

But our D still stinks, with us right down the bottom in Efficiency (17th) and ZR (15th). The way I see it, if this doesn't change we will continue being a competitive team that ends up winning nothing.

And so, in the seemingly eternal quest for the right mix of players, I make another switcheroo to upgrade us at 2B.




Red also offers plus-defence at 3B and SS, but will takeover everyday duties at the keystone, with Edgardo Alfonzo moving to DH. He also adds to our ever-increasing collection of players with the same first and last initial.

This addition, however, does leave me with a big decision to make. We have been running six OF and that is one too many, especially given Figgins' utility around the park. Of those six, Finley is definitely our fourth due to his elite defensive abilities at all three slots. Which leaves us with two almost identical players: Carlos May and Al Zarilla.

I have opted to send Carlos down, despite him hitting over 300 so far as our DH v RHP. Al is a Captain while Carlos annoyingly reverted from this same designation almost immediately after we acquired to just a Leader. Same happened with Scherzer, leaving Al as our only Captain. And I just feel we need at least one, for now at least. I could have traded him in lieu of the Pick, but he is locked down fairly cheaply for a couple years and I'm still not fully convinced Zarilla is the better longer-term option, especially with him being 4 years senior and poor defensively. At any rate, he can be moved on later if needs be and should get a fairly decent return.

Gagne was expendable because he offers neither reliable productivity at the plate (he was 1-for-20 before being sent down and hit sub-200 with us and at AAA last year. I'm desperately trying to figure out a way to get Vinny Castilla up because I'd love his pop on the bench. But he is such a defensive liability this is simply not gonna fly for the time being.

So our lineups will look like this now:




Let's see how that goes.

[luckymann]

A full overview and recap in a month, but here's a quick snapshot of where things stand, both for us and the league in general.

Team Stats




Standings





Awards, news and leaders

[luckymann]

... here's a cool short article I stumbled across about the history of the Chicago Whales.

[luckymann]

Unhappy with our return at Catcher as LoDuca has been poor all season and Jansen certainly isn't the answer, we do end up offloading May to try and address this problem.




Frank will take over everyday duties from Paul, with Jansen sent back down to Cairo. He'll hit leadoff as Cedeno just isn't doing enough there. I also take this opportunity to call Castilla up as I still feel we're a bit too LHB-heavy, with Vina off to AAA.

New lineups:

[luckymann]

Teammate Joey Votto has been garnering most of the Walden headlines so far as he continues on from his dominant rookie season, and with good cause. He pops 2 more homers in this one to make it 14 for the year but for once is outshone in that department as Rhys goes 5-for-5 with 3 HR and 5 RBI.

[luckymann]

Chuck just keeps on his merry way sending pitchers to therapy on a regular basis, like this one. Still not sure there's an outfielder OOTP loves more, perhaps with the exception of Teddy Ballgame. Just crushes it without fail.

[luckymann]

It's no wonder we find ourselves consistently eating the Blues' dust (although we do currently have our noses just ahead of them in the standings) with them having so many guns. Reggie Jackson, Chuck Klein (see previous post), Dominic Smith, Bob Robertson and this guy are all capable of dismantling a pitching staff. Lord help us if they ever fix up their own, they'll be nigh on unbeatable if they do.

[luckymann]

Only just noticed this - a couple of the Mad Mets of the '80s are teamed up once again in the AtHoL. Keep your noses clean, lads...