Portland Raccoons (ABL)

[Westheim]

Raccoons (58-72) @ Bayhawks (54-75) – August 29-31, 2022

Two terrible teams were to square off for the final three times in 2022, with the Baybirds being 4-2 ahead in the season series. They were eighth in runs scored with mostly decent output, but their pitching was absolutely horrendous, conceding the most runs in the league at close to 4.9 per game. Their rotation was the worst by ERA, and their bullpen ranked 11th.

Projected matchups:
Ryan Nielson (5-6, 3.40 ERA) vs. Graham Wasserman (11-11, 3.62 ERA)
Matt Huf (1-6, 5.24 ERA) vs. Joao Joo (8-9, 3.95 ERA)
Rico Gutierrez (7-6, 2.62 ERA) vs. Mark Roberts (6-11, 3.64 ERA)

After the right-handed former Coons farmhand Wasserman, we will get the Bayhawks’ two left-handed starters. Roberts looked like the next big thing in the league a while ago, but repeated injuries left him extremely vulnerable at only age 27. He was making a serious run to allow the most home runs in the league, currently sitting at 18. And remember that the Bayhawks play in a real pitchers’ park.

Game 1
POR: LF Carmona – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – C Rice – 1B Greenwald – SS Stalker – RF Graves – CF Romero – P Nielson
SFB: RF R. Gomez – C W. Jones – 3B D. Garcia – 1B J. Gonzalez – LF Allen – SS Sanks – CF Duarte – 2B Light – P Wasserman

A special kind of sadness could be felt whenever Alex Duarte drove in the go-ahead run against the Raccoons, because he sure as heck hadn’t done that ever FOR the Raccoons. He plated Jon Gonzalez with a 2-out single in the bottom 2nd, the first run of the game. The Raccoons would have a chance to immediately match the Bayhawks when Cookie hit a 1-out double up the rightfield line in the third inning, but Spencer K’ed and Nunley popped out on the left side, leaving that chance unexploited. It also was Cookie’s final base hit of the season. Trying to make a headlong catch in shallow left in the fourth inning he managed to hit the ground face first and then used said face to decelerate and remained on the ground. The Druid hustled out to see whether a stretcher was needed or merely a mop – Cookie was eventually carted off with a bloodied face and was soon announced to have broken his cheekbone, rendering him inoperable for the remainder of the season.

Sam Armetta entered the game in the #1 slot. His spot was up in the fifth inning with the Critters still down 1-0, and with runners in scoring position after an infield single by Romero and then Wasserman’s throwing error on the bunt. It was the shadiest of opportunities and clearly beneath us to exploit such a thing. Armetta struck out, Spencer popped out to right. The Coons would strand runners on the corners in the sixth, then got a Nunley triple in the eighth. This rare occasion would surely allow them to score a run or two…! Or maybe not. In fact, Jarod Spencer had been caught stealing prior to Nunley’s triple, and he was stranded thanks to Rice striking out and Greenwald flying out gingerly to Rafael Gomez in rightfield. Nominally, the 1-0 game was close, but in fact the Raccoons had lost the game in the second inning. Too inept, too fat, too lazy. Nielson finally collapsed in the eighth inning, with the Bayhawks scoring three runs on three hits, lastly a William Jones double counting for two runs. The third run came off Cory Dew, was unearned, and Jones scored only on Nunley’s wild throw to first base. The ninth began with a Stalker single and a Graves double, which was not a bad start for a 4-0 deficit. At that point, the Baybirds brought in closer Mike Stank, who in a full count lost Romero to a walk that brought up Gil Rockwell, pinch-hitting for Dew, as the tying run. The Bayhawks sure weren’t expecting it, and neither did I, but Rockwell hit a ball a ton – GRAAAAAAAAAAAAND SLAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMM!!!!! Unfortunately, the slam still couldn’t stave off a bitter defeat. Quinn MacCarthy would retire basically nobody in the bottom of the inning, and Duarte delivered the ultimate shame to us, singling past Armetta for a walkoff single, moving Gerardo Gonzalez across home plate. 5-4 Bayhawks. Spencer 2-5; Nunley 2-5, 3B; Graves 2-4, 2B; Rockwell (PH) 1-1, HR, 4 RBI;

Cookie’s disablement had the Raccoons send for Omar Alfaro to rejoin from AAA even before the rosters expanded. Oh that can only end badly…

Game 2
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Rice – RF Alfaro – LF Santos – CF Romero – P Huf
SFB: RF R. Gomez – C W. Jones – CF D. Garcia – 1B J. Gonzalez – SS Sanks – 2B G. Gonzalez – LF Contreras – 3B Light – P Joo

The Raccoons started like a fire engine that howls off into the distance with a Stalker triple, a Spencer double, a Nunley single, and then it got stickier than old gum. Rice’s sac fly at least gave them a second run, but Nunley was stranded. That was not even their only leadoff triple in the game. After Nunley struck out to leave the bases loaded in the second inning, Rockwell opened the third with a triple into left center. Rice hit another sac fly, and Frank Santos hit a home run in the same inning to extend the lead to 4-0 which was extremely necessary given that Huf was outright terrible. He bled four runners in the first two innings, two on walks, and only avoided damage because Rice threw out Rafael Gomez trying to steal second base and because Sean Light hit a ball really hard right at Nunley for a double play in the second. After two clean innings, Huf would begin the fifth with two walks to Gerardo Gonzalez and Victor Contreras, which was certainly nothing I enjoyed to see. Well, those were left-handed batters… you know, maybe… maybe he can get Light, who’s a right-hander. Nah, walked him with impunity. That made three on, no outs, and and the tying run at the plate in Joao Joo, a dangerous .115 batter … in this case. Except, the Bayhawks could up the terror one more… Alex Duarte batted for Joo. He struck out, and so did Gomez. Then Huf issued four terrible balls to Jones, pushing in the Bayhawks’ first run. Dave Garcia (not injured!) grounded out to Nunley, but Huf was done after five miserable innings and six free passes.

After a Spencer single, stolen base, Nunley’s single, and a walk to Rockwell, the bases were loaded with nobody out against left-hander Mike Homa in the seventh inning. This was the chance to put the game, which was still scored 4-1, away right here and now. Rice did his thing, meaning he hit a sac fly. Homa walked Alfaro after a wild pitch, refilling the bags, but Santos flew out easily. Romero drew a 4-pitch walk to force in a run, and Graves plated two with a single up the midle. Kyle Gershman struck out Stalker to end the inning with the score upped to 8-1. That was a pretty sizable advantage, but, eh, it’s the Coons… indeed the Baybirds weren’t done scoring. Bottom 8th, Stalker’s error put Jones on base leading off. Joe Moore couldn’t cope and got bombed by Jon Gonzalez for a 2-piece, half unearned, and a general lack of relievers with ready arms brought Brett Lillis in to a 5-run game in the ninth inning, and that also almost went wrong. But eh, even if… - you win some, you smear some… the Coons won this one. 8-3 Critters. Nunley 2-5; Greenwald (PH) 1-1; Romero 2-4, BB, RBI; Bullock (PH) 1-1; Graves (PH) 1-1, 2 RBI;

Game 3
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Rice – RF Alfaro – LF Santos – CF Romero – P Gutierrez
SFB: RF R. Gomez – C W. Jones – CF D. Garcia – 1B J. Gonzalez – LF Allen – SS Sanks – 2B Light – 3B Booker – P M. Roberts

Like Huf, Gutierrez suffered from serious crowding on the bases for this start. He issued walks to Gomez and Garcia in the first, but Jon Gonzalez hit into a double play, and in the third he started a double play himself with runners on the corners and one out to keep runs if not danger away. Meanwhile someone had told Roberts that I had talked him down before the series had started and he was very motivated to murder the Critters outright. Through five innings, he struck out eight and yielded but a single to Danny Rice.

But Gutierrez allowed only two base hits while being occasionally wild, which led to a scoreless game through six innings, and thus it was major news when Jarod Spencer opened the seventh inning with a liner over Jaden Booker, past Roger Allen, and into the leftfield corner for a triple. Nunley singled sharply to left, collecting his 69th RBI of the season with a single. Roberts struck out Rice, #10 for him in the game #196 for the seasons, and then was sawing on Alfaro when he hung a breaking ball and Alfaro didn’t miss it. Hard to left, high to left, and deep to left, this was a 3-0 game and Alfaro’s first career homer in 70 at-bats. THE AGE OF OMAR – THERE IT IS!!

Two runs were pulled right back by the Bayhawks, but were unearned. Gutierrez opened the bottom 7th with strikeouts to Garcia and Jon Gonzalez, but Rice wouldn’t come up with the latter and the batter legged out the 90 feet to reach base on the uncaught third strike. Shane Sanks’ double and Sean Light’s grounder each scored a run, but Jaden Booker grounded out to Nunley to keep the Critters ahead by a single counter. The Coons got the eighth pieced together between Sugano and Dew, then got an unearned run in the ninth inning. Alfaro had singled with two outs, plating Gil Rockwell, who had also hit a 2-out single before PH Sam Armetta had reached on Gerardo Gonzalez’ error. The run remained mere window dressing in the end, as Brett Lillis struck out the side to claim the series. 4-2 Critters. Alfaro 2-4, HR, 3 RBI; Gutierrez 7.0 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 5 K, L (8-6);

Gutierrez was now tying Garrett for the team lead in wins – yay. We still don’t have anybody with double digits, and August is ****ing over.

Raccoons (60-73) vs. Indians (70-63) – September 2-4, 2022

In second place, yet 20 games out, the Indians were done for practical purposes, and had been for a while. Their package of the third-most runs scored, but sixth-most runs conceded had not worked out, and they were looking towards the offseason. They also held a 6-5 edge in the season series.

Projected matchups:
Jesus Chavez (1-4, 4.11 ERA) vs. Tom Shumway (12-10, 3.62 ERA)
Bobby Guerrero (5-13, 4.31 ERA) vs. Mario Alva (6-10, 4.08 ERA)
Ryan Nielson (5-6, 3.41 ERA) vs. Miguel Morales (4-4, 3.22 ERA)

Shumway would be the third southpaw in a row for this team to face, but we wouldn’t get their other left-hander, Tristan Broun (9-10, 3.57 ERA), who had pitched on Wednesday.

The Raccoons recalled a number of relievers – Will West, David Kipple, Billy Brotman – to bolster the lines in the pen, and also added a few other bats. Brian Perakis returned to the team as well, and the big move was the addition of 22-year old Elias Tovias. The young switch-hitting catcher had been batting .283 with eight homers in his first AAA season. He was said to be excellent defensively, and I couldn’t wait to see him do good things.

Game 1
IND: CF D. Morales – 3B J. Jackson – 1B M. Rucker – RF C. Martinez – LF Genge – C J. White – 2B Rolland – SS Matias – P Shumway
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – RF Alfaro – C Tovias – CF Romero – LF Perakis – P Chavez

Between their first three batters, the Raccoons had three extra-base hits, with doubles for Stalker and Nunley and a triple for Spencer in between. Ignore for a second that Nunley was never moved across, this was an impressive hitting display. Also ignore for a moment that Jamal White’s 20th home run of the season brought the Indians back to 2-1 in the top 2nd right away, because the Coons found another run in the bottom 3rd on Elias Tovias’ first career hit and RBI, a 2-out RBI double to center. The Critters were wasteful though; through five innings they had ten hits but only the three runs thanks to stranding runners in scoring position and also hitting into a double play twice. While the Indians were also hitting the occasional hard ball off Chavez, he only allowed four hits and struck out seven over five innings.

While Chavez struck out two more in the sixth inning, he also allowed singles to Danny Morales leading off, Cesar Martinez with two outs, and then an infield single to Lowell Genge that allowed Morales to score and the Indians to again creep to within a run of the Furballs, who nevertheless found another triple at the bottom of their food bowls, a 1-out run-scoring three-baser by Brian Perakis in the bottom of the same inning, restoring a 2-run gap, 4-2. The tying run was in the box however in the seventh and eighth innings for Indy. Morales hit another leadoff single in the top 8th. Chavez hung around to strike out Justin Jackson, then yielded for MacCarthy with two left-handers in the 3-4-5 batters, Mike Rucker and Lowell Genge. The move didn’t exactly pay off, with MacCarthy yielding a single and a walk to load the bases, then a sac fly, 4-3. Cory Dew came on, but walked White, reloading the bases with two outs. Nick Gilmor pinch-hit for Jaylen Rolland, prompting a move to Manobu Sugano, who ran a ****ing full count before Gilmor struck out swinging for Sugano’s 50th K of the year and what a big one it was!

Bottom 8th, time to employ that bench. Facing righty Rafael Urbano, Bullock batted for Perakis and struck out. Graves batted for Sugano and grounded out. Greenwald batted for Stalker and singled to right. Spencer singled for himself, bringing up Nunley, who had stranded a pair before in the game and fell behind 0-2 to Urbano before knocking a ball to center. Oh, jolly, what a mighty drive! And – OUTTA HERE!!! Lillis remained in the stall with the 3-run blast padding the Critters’ lead, and Joe Moore struck out two in a perfect ninth to put the Indians away. 7-3 Coons! Stalker 2-3, BB, 2B; Greenwald (PH) 1-1; Spencer 3-5, 3B, 2B, RBI; Nunley 3-5, HR, 2B, 4 RBI; Tovias 2-4, 2B, RBI; Romero 2-4; Chavez 7.1 IP, 8 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 11 K, W (2-4) and 2-3;

Game 2
IND: CF D. Morales – 3B J. Jackson – 1B M. Rucker – RF C. Martinez – LF Genge – C J. White – 2B Rolland – SS Ventura – P Alva
POR: 2B Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – C Rice – 1B Greenwald – RF Alfaro – SS Bullock – CF Santos – P Guerrero

Winless since before the All Star Game, Bobby Guerrero got himself picked apart right in the first inning. Issuing three walks to the first five batters was one thing, but he would also bleed RBI singles to Jamal White and Jaylen Rolland with two outs. Overall, the Indians scored three (Martinez had hit a sac fly), putting the Raccoons and Guerrero – who had lost his last eight decisions – into an early hole. The Coons would not make a move until the third inning, which saw Bullock doubling as the first Furball up after ending the top 3rd with a 6-3 double play. Alva struck out Santos and Guerrero, but moved Bullock to third base anyway with a wild pitch, which cost him the run on Tim Stalker’s infield single. Stalker himself was caught stealing, however.

Guerrero never ceased being in trouble in his five innings of work, allowing another run in the fifth. Frank Santos hit a 2-out triple in the bottom 5th that brought his spot up and Zach Graves hit for him, singling to right to scratch out another run, with the Coons then trailing 4-2. The following inning saw Rice hit with two outs, and as Alva was losing control and cohesion he then also walked Greenwald. Batting as the tying run, Omar Alfaro drove a ball to left, but instead of something to engage the fans and liven up his dead-horse .205 batting average, Lowell Genge made a good sprint to retire him on the warning track, ending the inning. The Indians went on to not exploit errors by Greenwald in the seventh and Brotman in the eighth. The southpaw Brotman was lifted for Dew after bobbling Jamal White’s grounder, with a single pitch by Dew counting for two outs on Rolland’s sharp grounder right at Bullock, ending the frame. The Indians would run out Tony Lino in the 4-2 game in the bottom 9th. The closer had an ERA over five at this point, but would not be harmed by Greenwald, Alfaro, and Bullock, who made three quick outs in just seven pitches. 4-2 Indians. Graves (PH) 1-1, RBI; Tovias (PH) 1-1; Cowen 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K; Dew 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K;

Game 3
IND: 2B Rolland – 3B J. Jackson – C J. White – RF C. Martinez – CF D. Morales – LF Georges – 1B Carbajal – SS Matias – P M. Morales
POR: SS Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – RF Graves – C Tovias – 2B Armetta – CF Romero – P Nielson

The only left-hander that Nielson would face in his Sunday rubber game start was Miguel Morales, the opposing pitcher, and it would be the other Morales, Danny in centerfield, to drive in the first run of the game with a leadoff jack in the second inning. Morales would be batting again in the third inning, which Jaylen Rolland had opened with a single. Nielson was also singled upon by Jamal White; the two runners were on first and second with two outs for Morales to bat. His floater dropped in front of Spencer near the line with the runners on the move. Spencer initially fired home, but there was no chance for an out there. Tim Stalker cut off the throw at the mound and fired a beam to Nunley instead, with White tagged out at third base to end the inning – but the run had scored already, putting Portland down 2-0. Miguel Morales bunted into an inning-ending double play the following inning, but at least he was still facing the minimum through three innings. Ricardo Romero had hit a single in the bottom 3rd, but then had been caught stealing.

Runners were on base in the bottom 4th, with Stalker drawing a leadoff walk. Spencer forced him with a grounder to Justin Jackson, who then dropped Nunley’s grounder for an error to present Rockwell with the tying runs aboard. However, neither Rockwell nor Graves would manage to get wood on bat, with Rockwell K’ing and Graves popping out in foul ground. In response, the Arrowheads hit their second leadoff jack in the game, this one by Rolland, to get to a 3-0 lead in the fifth. Nielson was batted for in the bottom of the inning with Alfaro, who made the last out to drop to a sub-.200 average. The sixth saw Rockwell being retired on a deep drive to center to strand a runner, but Elias Tovias announced himself in the bottom 7th, hitting a solo homer to rightfield, obviously his first in the majors. It was also the Critters’ first run in the game, now trailing 3-1. Rockwell would find the tying runs aboard in the bottom 8th, batting with Spencer and Nunley on base and two outs. He faced Jerry Counts, who walked as many as he struck out and had a 5.08 ERA, but managed to retire Rockwell on an 0-2 grounder to short. There was one more chance to bat with the tying run in the box when Greenwald doubled off Tony Lino with two outs in the ninth inning. Rice batted for Romero … and struck out. 3-1 Indians. Spencer 2-4; Greenwald (PH) 1-1, 2B; Romero 1-2, BB; West 2.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K;

In other news

August 30 – The Crusaders’ Bryce Neal (0-1, 2.12 ERA, 1 SV) has a few feathers plucked by the Knights in the bottom of the 15th inning. The Crusaders had scored the go-ahead run in the top of the inning, but Neal gets roughed up for four hits and two runs to take the 10-9 loss. Atlanta teammates Brody Folk (.277, 5 HR, 57 RBI) and Tony Jimenez (.296, 15 HR, 67 RBI) have four hits apiece in the game, with Folk driving home three to Jimenez’ two.
September 2 – CIN 3B/1B Eddie Moreno (.311, 18 HR, 77 RBI) left the Cyclones’ game against the Capitals after an on-base collision and has been diagnosed with a tight back. He will be out for up to two weeks.
September 2 – The Bayhawks score a 2-1 walkoff win over the Thunder on Oklahoma’s Chris Rountree (1-5, 5.89 ERA) missing his pitcher completely for a wild pitch, allowing Victor Contreras to score from third base.
September 2 – The Warriors out-hit the Gold Sox 11-5, but still take a 4-1 loss. Everybody in the Warriors’ lineup collects at least one hit, but they only have one extra-base hit, while the Gold Sox hit three doubles to aid them in scoring. DEN LF/RF Mario Rocha (.295, 10 HR, 73 RBI) hits two doubles and drives in a run in the effort.
September 4 – A wild and wicked game sees the Blue Sox tie the Miners in the ninth, then walk off in the tenth, 13-12. Both teams put up two 4-spots, and the Blue Sox slug six home runs to the Miners’ two. NAS LF/1B/CF Gil Gross (.288, 17 HR, 76 RBI) lifts the ball out of the park twice and draws three walks while also driving in three runs.

Complaints and stuff

The scene was surreal on Tuesday night. Frank Santos hit a home run in the third inning, extending our lead to 4-0 over the Bayhawks. I was watching on a huge TV in a room to the side rather than one of the lounges on offer because I didn’t want to be around people. Then there’s the overlay at the bottom of the screen.

POR 4 /// 30 – FRANK SANTOS
SFB 0 /// 1st HOME RUN THIS SEASON

And then you think to yourself… what the **** is that sucker doing on my ****ing team? He washed out from the Wolves, and now he’s here for some bizarre reason? How could that ever happen?

Despite winning that Santos home run effort, 8-3, we were eliminated from theoretical playoff contention on the same day as Chris Klein 4-hit the Thunder in a 4-0 shutout, winning his 14th game of the season and the Titans’ 90th, which didn’t mingle well with our 73 losses at that point. We were the second team in the league to be sent packing, after the Elks.

The Elks cleaned house as early as this week, kicking out both their manager and their GM. Nope, my job is still not in trouble. I still have the photos, although at the rate society is developing towards more and more retardation, maybe a Mexican guy dressed in a pink banana will not be embarrassing for very much longer…

Funny how the FL East is again a 5-team race, but the Buffaloes, who got trampled last year, are actually in the mix this time, while the Cyclones are the odd ones out.

Fun fact: Matt Nunley misfiled two balls this week and thus reached 20 errors on the season, which are heights almost unheard of for him. In fact, 20 errors are his career high, put up in 2018.

Even with 20 errors, Nunley is still worth close to a full win in the field (and 3.6 WAR overall at this point).

Oh well, still not as bad as some other third basemen we had over the years. Anybody remember Ricardo Martinez, whom we sacrificed Sharpie for in 2008? Yeah, Martinez made *33* errors in 142 games at third base that season. His fielding was atrocious enough to be worth almost negative two wins. He was worth 3.2 WAR offensively, and that (at age 22) was BY FAR his best-ever offensive season in the majors. In fact, his major league career overall was worth 4.1 WAR offensively. Let’s not get into the defense…

Since that dreadful 2008 season (Brownie still has nightmares about Martinez falling on his face at random intervals to his right!), the Raccoons had a 20+ error third baseman just four times. Nunley (2018, 2022) and Jon Merritt (2011, 2012) split the honors there. There were even a few seasons, where all third baseman combined didn’t get close to 20 errors, f.e. 2013, Nunley’s debut season (Cup of coffee; he was a rookie still in ’14 and then took home the Rookie of the Year belt), during which Merritt was largely hurt and third base was mostly occupied by long-forgotten Ken Rodgers, who actually appeared in only three major league games (for the 2014 Titans) after batting .213 with seven homers for the Critters that year and rightfully retired at age 34. All Portland hot corner guardians combined that year made only 11 errors; this includes 635.1 innings by Rodgers, 356.1 by Walt Canning, 267.1 innings by Merritt, 202 by Nunley, and ONE inning by Sandy Sambrano.

Also true: Martinez, 36, is still around! Playing for the Thunder-aligned AAA Anaheim Nautilus, he is blocking a roster spot for a potentially deserving kid, and he still can’t either hit nor field. What is the point where resiliency and overcoming-the-odds becomes just stubbornness?

[Westheim]

Raccoons (61-75) vs. Titans (91-47) – September 5-7, 2022

On one hand the Coons were 29 games behind the Titans, on the other hand they had lost four straight games before coming to Portland. Not that the Critters were on a hot streak of any kind… Second in runs scored and first in runs allowed with a meaty +144 run differential, the Titans were basically ready for the playoffs and just hoped not to gobble up injuries down the stretch. Against the Raccoons in 2022 they had already sealed the season series with two 3-game sets to spare, leading them with a rope through a nose ring at 10-2.

Projected matchups:
Matt Huf (2-5, 4.95 ERA) vs. Julio San Pedro (6-2, 2.94 ERA)
Rico Gutierrez (8-6, 2.44 ERA) vs. Brian Cope (17-2, 2.62 ERA)
Jesus Chavez (2-4, 4.05 ERA) vs. Alan Farrell (10-15, 3.46 ERA)

Three right-handers from the Titans here; awaiting you in the middle game on Tuesday is a pretty stark illustration of how these two games have fared in general, with Cope having a slightly worse ERA than Rico Gutierrez, but being 13 additional games over .500 anyway…

Game 1
BOS: CF Reichardt – 2B Casillas – 1B Cornejo – SS Kane – RF Braun – C McPherson – LF W. Ramos – 3B Corder – P San Pedro
POR: 2B Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – RF Graves – C Tovias – SS Bullock – CF Romero – P Huf

The top of the order was a spot of bother for Huf right from the start. Adrian Reichardt hit leadoff singles in the first and third innings, the Titans would add a second guy in both frames, but Huf would strike out Adam Braun twice to avoid being scored upon early. In the fourth, Huf spilled two walks to the bottom of the order, putting Willie Ramos and Adam Corder on base, but with them in scoring position Reichardt ended the inning grounding out to Bullock at short. Bullock had the Critters’ only base hit in the first three innings, but had been caught stealing after his leadoff single in the bottom 3rd.

Reichardt was up again with two outs and two on in a scoreless game in the sixth inning. Corder had singled again, but San Pedro had reached on an error by Gil Rockwell to extend the inning. Unnerved, Huf lost Reichardt on straight balls, yet with the bases loaded struck out Tony Casillas to keep the Titans off the board. Through six, Huf had eight strikeouts against five hits and three walks, then struck out Gil Cornejo to begin the seventh. Mike Kane grounded out, and the Titans sent Roberto Amador to bat for Adam Braun, who was a K away from a golden sombrero. Amador hit an 0-1 to Stalker for the third out in the inning and the last for Huf in this game as he reached 104 pitches in the course of the seventh inning and was bum-patted for a job well done in the dugout. A win was not in the cards, sadly, because the Raccoons just couldn’t bother to score him a run. They had TWO hits through seven innings, and the second hit came about only in the bottom 7th. Jarod Spencer singled, stole second (#15), but was left on base anyway. Top 8th, Joe Moore issued walks to Ramos and San Pedro (…!!) before yielding to Brett Lillis against Reichardt, who was up with two on and two outs for the third time, and again couldn’t get through, grounding out to Nunley to strand another pair. The Titans would break through in the ninth inning, which began with a Nunley throwing error over the head of Russ Greenwald at first base. Casillas reached second base, then scored on Chris Almanza’s pinch-hit single right away. That lone run the Titans judged good enough to get them over the hump, but Greenwald dropped a single into shallow left leading off the bottom 9th, which led to San Pedro’s removal. Ron Thrasher inherited the tying run, allowed a single to Spencer, and with two outs a pinch-hit RBI double to Danny Rice. Unfortunately, Graves grounded out, sending the game to extra innings with the winning run (Spencer) stranded at third base.

Starting in the tenth, the Coons would get scoreless innings from Brotman, then Sloan, then even Adam Cowen against a Titans team that had removed a lot of regulars for right-handed pinch-hitters without breaking Lillis completely in the ninth inning and was now slightly weakened. The Coons, genetically weak, hoped for the Titans to hit one of them and then commit two errors to get a chance to walk off, which didn’t really happen. Reichardt was still around for the Titans, hit a 1-out double off Cowen in the 13th, but Sugano came to the rescue and retired Ryan Burgbacher (who’s she?) and Jonathan Stephens in the 2-3 spots. The Titans finally broke through in the 14th. Will West allowed singles to Javy Cisneros and Tristen Baptiste, balked, and finally fell to a Willie Ramos homer; three runs scored. The Coons failed to answer. 4-1 Titans. Spencer 2-6; Rice (PH) 1-1, 2B, RBI; Armetta (PH) 1-1; Greenwald 1-2, BB; Huf 7.0 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 9 K;

King of the Rut in this case was Tim Stalker, batting 0-for-6 from the leadoff spot. His OBP is .279. Maybe I can find a better leadoff hitter? Somewhere? Please?

Game 2
BOS: 3B Corder – CF Reichardt – LF Almanza – RF Braun – 1B Cisneros – C Leonard – 2B Baptiste – SS Kane – P Cope
POR: 1B Greenwald – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – C Rice – LF Graves – RF Alfaro – SS Bullock – CF Romero – P Gutierrez

There were reasons why a general Ricomania hadn’t broken out in Portland or even in my office so far, because there was always the suspicion that he was basically just lucky that he didn’t get set alight as soon as he entered the ballpark. That however sure happened on Tuesday, as the Titans rapped him for 11 total bases right in the first inning. Adam Corder tripled and scored on Reichardt’s sac fly, and then Almanza and Braun hit back-to-back bombs for a quick 3-0 deficit that the Raccoons would never overcome. New leadoff man Russ Greenwald (oh if you had told me of this in March…) hit a single in the bottom 1st, but got doubled up on Nunley’s grounder to Baptiste, who singled, stole, and scored on Kane’s single in the second inning to run the score to 4-0 in a hurry.

Three double plays helped to pull Gutierrez’ body through six innings in the game without the Titans piling any more runs on him despite tacking him with nine base hits, most of them hard-hit. During Gutierrez’ lifetime, the Raccoons failed to reach base again. Perakis hit for him with two outs in the bottom 6th and flew out to center, meaning Cope was still facing the minimum through six innings and had retired 17 in a row for 18 outs. Meanwhile the Titans would exploit the soft end of the Critters’ pen in the seventh inning. David Kipple walked Corder, and Adam Cowen allowed 2-out base hits to Reichardt, an RBI triple, and Almanza, an RBI single. Boo you, Titans, for running up the score here! Down 6-0, the Coons would actually find another base runner somewhere. Zach Graves followed Greenwald’s first-inning single with an EIGHTH-inning single. Then the Age of Omar struck … a ball into a double play, Baptiste starting it again. There was one more base hit in the bag for the Critters, a pinch-hit double for Tovias in the ninth, but overall they went under against Cope, who pitched a 3-hit shutout for his 18th win of the season. 6-0 Titans. Tovias (PH) 1-1, 2B;

We are … we have scored four runs in the last four games. Across 41 innings. Wheee….!!

Game 3
BOS: CF Reichardt – C Leonard – LF Amador – 1B Cornejo – SS Kane – RF Braun – 2B Casillas – 3B Corder – P Farrell
POR: 1B Greenwald – 2B Spencer – SS Stalker – C Rice – LF Graves – RF Alfaro – 3B Bullock – CF Santos – P Chavez

Greenwald hit a leadoff double in the first inning this time around, but still wouldn’t score. Spencer grounded out to third, Stalker popped out, and Rice struck out. When two singles and a walk loaded the bases in the bottom 2nd, Chavez struck out for the second out, and Greenwald grounded out to Gil Cornejo. Nobody scored, still. Chavez would be taken apart in the third inning, starting with an encounter with the opposing hurler; Alan Farrell singled to left, and so did Reichardt. After Keith Leonard flew out, Roberto Amador flew one out of the park for a 3-run homer. After entering the “scored run” column, Farrell almost made it into the RBI column his next time up. Finding runners on the corners and two outs, he lined hard to left, but Zach Graves somehow got in the way of that blistered ball and logged the third out of the fourth inning.

Adam Braun’s 3-piece in the sixth inning knocked out Chavez after bleeding ten hits in 5+ innings, while the Critters were still being shut out and didn’t look like much of a threat even to the varsity team of the Willamette Institute for the Limbless and the Blind. The bottom fell out of the bullpen the following inning, with David Kipple and Joe Moore being battered for four runs in the seventh inning. The double-digit deficit didn’t last, though. Rejoice, as Daniel Bullock hit a leadoff single in the bottom 7th, moved to third, and then scored on a passed ball! With two outs, Greenwald walked, then came in on Spencer’s triple to center, where Reichardt was too greedy and conceded three bases rather than one. Farrell fell apart by the eighth inning and conceded four base hits to the Coons, including an RBI single to Bullock and a pinch-hit 3-run homer by Gil Rockwell. Oh if only we hadn’t trailed by ten! 10-6 Titans. Graves 2-4, 2B; Bullock 2-3, BB, RBI; Santos 2-4; Rockwell (PH) 1-1, HR, 3 RBI;

After this rush of failure, the Coons had Thursday off and activated Noah Bricker from the DL for the weekend.

Raccoons (61-78) @ Loggers (68-71) – September 9-11, 2022

Nothing left to play for here, really. The Loggers were 6-9 versus the Raccoons in 2022, so maybe we could at least grab that season series, if nothing else, please? They had ceased being defending champions a few days ago after being eliminated from playoff contention the mathematical way. They had been eliminated from actual contention roughly around Opening Day. Seventh in runs scored, but 11th in runs allowed, the mix had tasted like poison for their fans all year long, who cynically were improving their lifestyle so they could still witness the next Loggers playoff team in 30 to 40 years from now.

Projected matchups:
Bobby Guerrero (5-14, 4.41 ERA) vs. Michael Foreman (12-8, 3.86 ERA)
Ryan Nielson (5-7, 3.50 ERA) vs. Morgan Shepherd (3-10, 4.85 ERA)
Matt Huf (2-5, 4.43 ERA) vs. TBD

Two right-handers from them. Victor Arevalo (10-12, 4.85 ERA) was also a right-hander and up after that potentially, but had left his Tuesday start with an injury and there were still no news on him.

Game 1
POR: 1B Greenwald – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – C Rice – LF Graves – RF Alfaro – SS Armetta – CF Romero – P Guerrero
MIL: 2B March – C Wool – RF Gore – 1B Gasso – LF Munn – 3B A. Velez – CF Berntson – SS Prince – P Foreman

The Loggers were on the board before Bobby Guerrero could retire anybody, with Dan March and Brad Gore hitting singles, while Josh Wool got hit by Guerrero. Gore’s base knock was an RBI single, and the Loggers would add a second run in the bottom 1st on Danny Munn’s sac fly. While the Raccoons could not do anything with a Zach Graves double in the second inning, while errors by Nunley and Rice eroded Bobby Guerrero in the bottom 2nd. Allowing three hard hits didn’t help either, and the Loggers added three unearned runs for an early 5-0 lead that could probably last them the entire weekend. Greenwald caught a line drive by Josh Wool to end the third inning with the bases loaded with Alberto Velez (double), horrendous ex-Coon Tim Prince (single), and Dan March (walk), as this game rapidly spiraled out of control.

An hour-long rain delay released Bobby Guerrero from his pains after four innings, with the Critters down 5-1 at that point; Danny Rice had hit an RBI single in the third inning in an otherwise traumatizing game. Weren’t all our games traumatizing at this point? Between Cowen and Brotman, the Coons allowed two hits, a walk, and a run in the bottom 5th, but token offense at least continued for the visiting team as well. Rice hit a leadoff single in the sixth inning and scored on Sam Armetta’s double that escaped under a diving Velez’ glove, though that run was surrendered again by Brotman allowing a single to Brad Gore and a walk to Velez, then Jon Berntson’s 2-out RBI single off Joe Moore in the bottom of the inning. In what was now a 7-2 charade, Moore put on the leadoff man Kevin Jaeger in the bottom 7th. Sugano replaced him, but got bombed by left-hander Josh Wool to stretch the tally for the Loggers to nine, their lead to seven, and the Coons would not challenge them in the last few innings… 9-2 Loggers. Spencer 2-4; Rice 2-4, RBI; Prieto (PH) 1-1;

Oh well, at some point another 5-game losing streak doesn’t exactly matter…

22 more games until this ordeal is over! That’s something to keep in mind. 22 more games.

Give or take three or six or nine years.

Game 2
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Tovias – RF Alfaro – CF Romero – LF Perakis – P Nielson
MIL: 2B March – SS Prince – 1B Gasso – RF Gore – LF Berntson – 3B A. Velez – C Denny – CF W. Trevino – P Shepherd

Tim Stalker drew a leadoff walk, which I considered progress in so many ways, but was nevertheless stranded on first base on two strikeouts and Rockwell rolling one over to Prince at short, which was not so much progress as more of the same, more of the same. The Raccoons would get another chance in the second inning, which saw Omar Alfaro double with one out in an attempt to revive his .172 batting average. Shepherd lost Romero to a walk, and then Jon Berntson lost Brian Perakis’ (batting .100!) easy fly to left for an error. That loaded the bases for … errr…. Nielson. Fear the Niels, though, because Ryan dropped a floater near the leftfield line, plating two with a single, and another run scored on Tim Stalker’s groundout for an early 3-0 advantage. On the mound, Nielson faced the minimum for three innings, allowing a single to Berntson, who got double-played off the bases again by Velez. The Loggers got a leadoff single in the bottom 4th that Dan March dropped into shallow center, but Gus Gasso would hit into a double play.

Elias Tovias netted his first mantelpiece trophy in the fifth inning, throwing out Brad Gore in a steal attempt after another leadoff single, thus entitling him to keep Gore’s head in a jar. However, Nielson would issue a 2-out walk to Velez, then got doubled off by Mike Denny. The former Raccoon hit a ball into the corner in leftfield, and with Velez on the run to begin with, he easily scored the Loggers’ first run in the game, cutting the Coons’ lead to 3-1. Nielson’s day came rapidly to an end in the following inning. Prince doubled, Gasso hit an RBI single and moved up on the throw to home plate. A wild pitch moved Gasso, the tying run, to third base before Gore grounded back to the mound and was out at first for the second out. Cory Dew replaced Nielson to face Berntson, whom he got to ground out to short to maintain a 3-2 lead. With the Raccoons’ offense wholly inept and unable to even occasionally reach the vicinity of scoring position at this point, it was all down to the pen locking down the bases for the Loggers. Dew got four outs in total, and MacCarthy retired Dan March to begin the eighth on a grounder to second. He then handed the ball to Noah Bricker, who got a pop from Prince and whiffed Gasso to set up Lillis. Top 9th, the Coons sent three left-handed pinch-hitters against righty Justin Guerin. Greenwald and Graves failed, but Rice would hit a double in the #9 spot. Tim Stalker grounded out to March on the very next pitch, so no insurance run, and Brett Lillis drilled leadoff man Brad Gore to put the tying run on base in the bottom of the ninth. BRILLANT! More of that, please! Not right now, though. The Coons got the lead runner on Berntson’s grounder, and then Velez hit into a double play outright. 3-2 Furballs! Rice (PH) 1-1, 2B; Dew 1.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K;

A WIN! A WIN! A WIN!

I must cry now. Tears of joy.

Game 3
POR: 2B Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Tovias – RF Graves – SS Bullock – CF Santos – P Huf
MIL: SS Tadlock – LF Berntson – RF Gore – C Wool – 3B A. Velez – 1B Jaeger – 2B Prince – CF W. Trevino – P Prevost

Opposing Ian Prevost (11-10, 3.35 ERA), the Coons had one hit the first time through, a Santos single, and also got Spencer on base on an error by Ron Tadlock in the first inning, but Spencer was caught stealing. Santos was stranded by Stalker after Huf’s bunt, and nobody scored. Except for the one the Loggers scored in the bottom 3rd. Willie Trevino hit a leadoff single and advanced on Huf’s wild pitch to Prevost (…). Berntson drove in the run with two outs.

Prevost whiffed six in the first four innings, including Graves with two men on base to end the top 4th. Nunley had singled, while Tovias had reached on an error by Velez. That made two Coons hits, two Loggers errors, and still nothing countable on the board. These things mattered less and less as Huf proceeded to pitch to fat contact while missing completely intermittently. Wool singled, Velez walked, and Prince hit an RBI single with one out in the bottom 4th. Trevino’s infield single loaded the bases for the opposing pitcher, whom Huf could not remove either, but at least Nunley leapt and caught his line drive. Velez was too smart to get doubled off third base, bringing up Tadlock and his .284 clip and 48 RBI. Also six homers, and he did come reasonably close to #7, but Spencer made the catch on the warning track in leftfield.

Somehow Huf made it through 5.2 innings without allowing more runs. He left two men on in the sixth that Moore inherited. Tadlock flew out easily to Graves in rightfield to keep those aboard and the deficit at 2-0. They had not gotten anything cooked in the middle innings, but the seventh inning saw a pair of 1-out singles by Tovias and Graves, thus putting the tying runs on board for Bullock, a feared .291 slugger. Oh well, we have what we have. He grounded to Jaeger, who elected the out at second base, meaning they were on the corners for Greenwald, who batted for Santos with two outs… or at least tried to. Bullock was picked off first base and the inning ended before Greenwald could get the at-bat to any conclusion. The score would still be 2-0 in the ninth, and Prevost was still in the game, entering the inning with a 4-hit shutout on just 85 pitches. He faced the 2-3-4 batters. Spencer opened with an infield single that Prince had to put in his pocket, after which Nunley grounded out. That was the end for Prevost, who was replaced by Guerin. Rockwell grounded out to third base, as did Tovias. Ballgame, sadly. 2-0 Loggers.

In other news

September 5 – The Gold Sox relentlessly pound the Wolves in an 18-0 massacre, including a 6-run second inning. The Sox dish out five homers, including two by RF/LF Mario Rocha (.300, 12 HR, 78 RBI), who drives in four runs, as does INF/LF/RF Rich Hereford (.273, 11 HR, 37 RBI), who has one homer and a double among his three base hits.
September 6 – Oklahoma’s Bryan Hanson (14-11, 3.39 ERA) and Jeff Kearney combine for a 1-hit shutout in the Thunder’s 8-0 win over the Falcons, who are spared a combined no-hitter thanks to a single by C Tim Robinson (.258, 27 HR, 68 RBI).
September 7 – SAC SP Hwa-pyung Choe (12-8, 2.63 ERA) is slated for Tommy John surgery after tearing his UCL. The Scorpions picked him up from the Crusaders mid-season. The 32-year old went 4-2 with a 3.65 ERA for Sacramento.
September 7 – DAL SS Manny Ferrer (.232, 7 HR, 33 RBI) looks done for the year with a sprained ankle.
September 9 – Also out for the season: LAP SP Vincent Alfaro (6-12, 4.74 ERA). The 26-year old has suffered a torn meniscus.
September 9 – Washington’s Dave Menth (.255, 10 HR, 46 RBI) hits a home run for the only tally in the Capitals’ 1-0 win over the Buffaloes.
September 10 – The Bayhawks knock 12 hits, but fail to score in their 4-0 loss to the Knights, who have just six hits, but get three RBI doubles.
September 11 – The Pacifics lose another starter in C Matt Dehne (.232, 18 HR, 56 RBI), who has a herniated disc and will not be able to play again in 2022.

Complaints and stuff

In assorted ex-Coon news, Tadasu Abe (14-12, 3.18 ERA) pitched a 3-hit shutout on Sunday for the Capitals. Oh well, we might have just kept him and – … meanwhile, Brian Cope made it to 19-2 on the weekend and was Player of the Week in the CL. The FL’s Player of the Week was Dave Menth, who hit the sole-tally homer on Friday.

Jonny Toner started a rehab assignment with the (division-leading) Alley Cats at the end of the week! This is the kind of news that goes into the + column this week.

It’s not much of a column. We are now 2-13 against the Titans this season, which is mind-boggling in its own right.

Fun fact: The Raccoons have never lost 16 games in a season to a division opponent.

They did lose 15, once. To the Crusaders, in 1978.

We do not want to remember the 1978 team, generally. When you say anything about the Coons that they most recently did in 1978, you are already up to the neck in quagmire. There is no winning from there. Ever.

Nine more losing seasons by my estimate.

I can’t even look at Honeypaws anymore…!

[UltimateAverageGuy]

There are two pretty tight races, one in the FL North, and the other for the #1 pick!

Sent from my SM-J727T using Tapatalk

[edtheguy]

and I couldn’t wait to see him do good things

....then shouldn't you trade him immediately? I mean, I'm just going by historical data here...

At least I'm really looking forward to a high draft pick here... we all know what good those have been...

Seriously though, this is sill an amazing dynasty here, thank you for all the work (and suffering) you put in for it!

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by UltimateAverageGuy

There are two pretty tight races, one in the FL North, and the other for the #1 pick!

Well. At least it's a race of some kind.

Yay.

Originally Posted by edtheguy

....then shouldn't you trade him immediately? I mean, I'm just going by historical data here...

Well played, Sir, well played! You have obviously - ... just wait, I don't... there, like that. (inserts end of tie into shredder and gigglingly presses the SHRED IT button)

[Westheim]

Raccoons (62-80) @ Indians (77-66) – September 12-15, 2022

The Raccoons hadn’t played well against the Indians in a number of years, and hadn’t played well against anybody, noticeably, in 2022, so this upcoming 4-game set was probably not going to end well, either. Coming off a 1-5 week, and stuck in a 2-7 month, the Coons would face the #2 team in terms of runs scored in the Continental League. The Indians had been held back by their pitching, which was average enough, but average wasn’t going to beat those steaming Titans, and in fact the Indians’ magic number was 1 coming into this series, so even if they swept the Critters, they were likely still doomed. The difference in runs scored was stark; the Coons, who ranked last in pushing their own runners across in all of the ABL, had scored 127 runs less than the Indians… The season series stood at 8-6 in Indy’s favor.

Projected matchups:
Rico Gutierrez (8-7, 2.63 ERA) vs. Tom Shumway (13-11, 3.55 ERA)
Jesus Chavez (2-5, 4.63 ERA) vs. Mario Alva (7-10, 4.02 ERA)
Bobby Guerrero (5-15, 4.41 ERA) vs. Miguel Morales (5-4, 3.08 ERA)
Ryan Nielson (6-7, 3.49 ERA) vs. Alvin Smith (4-7, 4.16 ERA)

Starting with a left-hander, the Indians would then send up their three right-handed starters. We’d miss Tristan Broun (10-10, 3.48 ERA), their other southpaw.

Game 1
POR: SS Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Tovias – RF Alfaro – 2B Armetta – CF Santos – P Gutierrez
IND: LF Faulk – 3B J. Jackson – C J. White – RF C. Martinez – CF D. Morales – 1B Carbajal – 2B Rolland – SS Matias – P Shumway

With the unhelpful exception of Shumway, the Indians’ lineup was entirely right-handed, and Rico Gutierrez struggled from the start. A.J. Faulk hit a single to right center, and Justin Jackson scored him with a double past Frank Santos right away. Danny Morales plated the third baseman with a 2-out single to give the Indians a 2-0 lead in the first. Faulk would hit a leadoff jack in the bottom 3rd, negating the run the Raccoons had scrabbled together from their six base hits in the first three frames against Shumway; Tim Stalker had hit a leadoff double in the top of the third, and had been singled in by Spencer, who then got doubled up by Matt Nunley, because this was how things were going for us. Nunley would recover from that shame two innings later, singling home Spencer from second base to again inch the Coons to within a run of the Indians’ tally at 3-2. In between, Gil Rockwell had also found some shame to bath in; singling with two outs after the Nunley double play in the third inning, Rockwell immediately got picked off – Elias Tovias would lead off the fourth with a double later, and who knows what …

Gutierrez was lifted for a pinch-hitter, Ricardo Romero, in the seventh inning, to no good effect, and left the game still on a 3-2 hook. The only threat in the lineup came from the top two batters on this windy Monday, with Tim Stalker following up Romero’s flyout with a double up the rightfield line, giving the shortstop a 3-hit day. Spencer flew to center, sending Nick Coffman back, back, back, but to a place where he could catch the ball, ending the inning. After the seventh inning stretch, Will West was not beneath walking Shumway on four pitches to give the Arrowheads a 1-out runner. MacCarthy replaced him to face left-handed pinch-hitter Mike Rucker, conceding a single, and Cory Dew surrendered another single to PH Lowell Genge, and finally a run on Jamal White’s groundout, although you could build a case that West deserved to have that one on his ledger… The Critters would total 11 base hits in the game, yet still managed to lose listlessly in the end. 4-2 Indians. Stalker 3-5, 2 2B; Spencer 2-4, RBI; Armetta 2-4;

Well, that’s it – that’s 81 losses! No winning season this year. Boo!

Josh Stevenson started a rehab assignment by Tuesday, and we expected both him and Jonny Toner to join the team at the conclusion of the AAA season on Friday.

Game 2
POR: 2B Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – C Rice – 1B Greenwald – RF Graves – SS Bullock – CF Romero – P Chavez
IND: CF D. Morales – 3B J. Jackson – LF Genge – RF C. Martinez – 1B M. Rucker – C J. White – 2B Rolland – SS Correia – P Alva

The Critters would load the bases – in unearned fashion – in the first inning, but neither Greenwald (K) nor Graves (4-3) would manage to get a run across. A Spencer single, Nunley taking advantage of a Rucker error, and Rice walking had filled the bases for Portland. The bases were loaded again in similarly odd circumstances in the second inning; Romero knocked a 1-out double, and then Chavez got knocked with a 2-2 pitch. Stalker floated a ball to center, where Danny Morales dropped it to put three on for Spencer. Jarod hit a soft pop to shallow left at 0-2, with Lowell Genge and Josh Correia converging, but neither got their in time. The ball dropped for an RBI single, but Nunley then hit into a double play… The Indians also left the bases loaded in the bottom 2nd, with Alva flying out to Graves in rightfield. Mike Rucker and Jaylen Rolland had both singled, and the Coons had walked Correia intentionally to get the pitcher up with two outs.

Lots of ineptitude so far, but at least the Coons were on top, 1-0. For the moment. Moments pass, which is their nature, and Lowell Genge’s RBI double in the bottom 3rd levelled the score at one. He plated Morales, who had drawn a 4-pitch walk, and had taken second base on Jesus Chavez’ balk. I hid my face in my hands at this point. The Coons reclaimed the lead in the fourth inning, though. Bullock dropped a leadoff single in front of the rushing Cesar Martinez, then scored when Morales was very confused on a Romero fly and let it escape for a triple. Amazingly, the Coons failed to score Romero from third base with nobody out; Chavez grounded out, Stalker was walked intentionally (gasp!!!) only to be caught stealing (facepalm!!), and Spencer grounded out to Jaylen Rolland.

Top 5th, again Alva wobbled the bases full, and this time with nobody out. Nunley singled, Rice doubled, and Greenwald drew a walk. This put the total speed potential on the bases at zero, so we needed a good, fat, deep hit from Zach Graves. And he struck out… [mad laughter] When a run scored, it did so on Mario Alva’s wild pitch to Bullock, who ended up walking to restock the bases. Romero hit a sac fly, pushing the score to 4-1, before Chavez singled with two down. Oh sure, the ****ing pitcher gets it done! Actually, he didn’t, because Russ Greenwald was too slow to score from second base on a home run. Stalker struck out, stranding another three runners. A Cesar Martinez triple would allow the Indians to claim back a run in the sixth, and Chavez wasn’t heard from afterwards. Billy Brotman pitched in the bottom 7th, putting the tying runs on the corners with two outs. Noah Bricker got Martinez to fly out to end the inning. Bricker also did the eighth, spilling a walk, and Lillis was in for the ninth, also spilling a walk, putting Jesus Carbajal on base with one out. Morales then flew out to center, and Justin Jackson flew to right. Plenty deep right. Back, Zach, go back, GO THE **** BACK!! At the fence, Graves made the catch to end the game. 4-2 Coons. Spencer 3-5, RBI; Rice 2-4, BB, 2B; Romero 2-3, BB, 3B, 2B, 2 RBI; Chavez 6.0 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, W (3-5) and 1-2;

Whee! It is STILL not an official losing season!

The Indians, however, were eliminated with this loss. The Titans claimed their ninth division title and their first since 2005.

Game 3
POR: 2B Spencer – 1B Greenwald – 3B Nunley – C Rice – LF Graves – SS Bullock – RF Alfaro – CF Romero – P Guerrero
IND: CF D. Morales – 2B Rolland – LF Genge – RF C. Martinez – C J. White – 3B Georges – 1B Gilmor – SS Matias – P M. Morales

Early signs were that Bobby Guerrero’s losing streak would continue – forever – with the Indians knocking him around for four base hits and two runs right in the first inning. The first three batters all drove the ball hard, with Danny Morales hitting a single, and Lowell Genge an RBI double, with things getting gradually worse from there, although the Indians would then not score again until the fourth, raising the score to 3-0 with a Nick GIlmor triple and Raul Matias’ sharp RBI single to center. Cesar Martinez was thrown out at home by Graves on Jamal White’s 2-out double in the bottom of the fifth inning, sparing Guerrero yet another run. At that point, Miguel Morales was still nursing a 1-hit shutout (spilling a Danny Rice double along the way) and didn’t look like much could faze him in this game.

Guerrero lasted six, striking out Miguel Morales to strand Gilmor on third base in the sixth inning. It was not exactly a job well done with eight hits and a walk against him, but any semi-decent team would at least given him a chance to stave off defeat for once. The Coons didn’t bloody quite, striking out twice in the sixth, and made three more or less non-threatening outs in the seventh inning as well. Between Greenwald, Nunley, and Rice, only Nunley got the ball even out of the infield in the seventh, and those were three left-handers. The Critters actually would find a base runner in the eighth inning! Daniel Bullock grounded up to second base and Raul Matias couldn’t quite get a throw off in time after knocking the ball down in a dive, giving Bullock an infield single. Omar Alfaro – batting all of .165 at this point – smacked a ball at Jeremie Ventura at second base for an inning-ending double play. [crazed laughter] THE AGE OF OMAR IS HERE, everybody gather round for THE AGE OF OMAR!! While Moore and Cowen held the Indians at bay following Guerrero’s departure, the Raccoons couldn’t break (or even scratch… or sniff) Morales through eight innings. They faced Tony Lino in the ninth. The 5+ ERA closer had already saved Monday’s game, but drilled Romero to begin the ninth inning. When Tim Stalker batted for Adam Cowen, he hit another grounder to Ventura. The Indians by now took the double play to a form of art, with Ventura throwing to first, before A.J. Faulk fired to the shortstop Matias anyway to kill off a bumbling Romero. [giggles] Elias Tovias batted for Spencer as the last Coon alive, walked, Lino balked, and then Greenwald struck out anyway. 3-0 Indians.

Words don’t do this justice…

Game 4
POR: SS Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Tovias – RF Graves – 2B Armetta – CF Romero – P Nielson
IND: LF Faulk – 3B J. Jackson – RF C. Martinez – CF D. Morales – 1B Carbajal – 2B Rolland – C Calhoun – SS Correia – P A. Smith

Although the Raccoons scored two runs in the top of the third inning, admittedly aided by Alvin Smith’s wild pitch once Nielson and Stalker had singled, allowing the two runs to come in on consecutive groundouts, the Indians wouldn’t take long to sit on Ryan Nielson’s face. Nielson had issued two walks early on, but in the bottom 3rd was taken apart with base hits. The Indians knocked four of those between their first five batters in the inning, scoring the tying runs, and at that point Nielson confided to the trainer that it felt like someone had stuck a steak knife in his back. Thusly, a bullpen day was declared. Cory Dew replaced Nielson and prevented him from going on the hook, striking out Jaylen Rolland and Justin Calhoun to strand runners on the corners in a 2-2 game.

Since Logan Sloan had already pitched 73 innings this season, he was not sent out right away for long relief, although he hadn’t even yet appeared in this series. Will West got the ball, because losses didn’t matter at this point. West would walk the first batter he saw in the bottom of the fourth, Correia, and got pretty close to being tagged for a run, but the inning ended on Ricardo Romero’s flying catch of Justin Jackson’s drive in the right-center gap. Unfortunately, Romero couldn’t land it well and fell on his shoulder, and he became the second casualty of the game, having to be replaced by Frank Santos, who now somehow was the last centerfielder alive on the roster.

Will West somehow walked four batters in 2.1 innings without getting levelled, with Joe Moore digging him out of a hole in the sixth inning, at the end of which the score was still level at two. Tim Stalker was consecutive base runners for the Coons, but was stranded in both the fifth and seventh innings. Logan Sloan got into the game after all in the seventh inning, and pitched just long enough to apply for the loss. The inning started with Manobu Sugano K’ing PH Mike Rucker, after which Sloan replaced him and whiffed Martinez. Lowell Genge pinch-hit then to counter Sloan and doubled, after which Brotman came out for the next left-handed pinch-hitter, Nick Gilmor, who turned an 0-2 pitch into an RBI single to left, finally breaking the tie in the wrong team’s favor. Sloan was spared the loss, though, because Matt Nunley hit a leadoff triple in the eighth inning, and then scored on … Alvin Smith’s wild pitch.

Raul Matias dropped Frank Santos’ sorry pop to begin the ninth inning. It put the go-ahead run on base for the Coons, who had Noah Bricker in the #9 hole and he popped up a bunt, decidedly not advancing the runner. The runner advanced on a wild pitch, while Stalker made a poor out. Spencer however lined a ball up the leftfield line for an RBI triple, and the Critters were now in business! Briefly. Nunley grounded out to first, sending the game to the bottom of the ninth and entering Brett Lillis. Matias came uncomfortably close to a leadoff jack, with Brian Perakis making a good catch on the warning track in leftfield, and Lillis walked Ryan Georges afterwards, but would retire the next two batters, C.J. Tanner and Nick Gilmor, without much fuss. 4-3 Coons. Stalker 3-4, BB; Romero 1-2;

We used nine pitchers in this game, with “Bloody” Bricker clinching his seventh win of the season. He still has a shot at the team lead – I’m just saying…

Ryan Nielson was not found to be seriously injured, and nobody had actually stuck a knife into him. Well, so far.

Raccoons (64-82) @ Condors (80-66) – September 16-18, 2022

The Condors were even with the Falcons in the South, the only two teams that still had a realistic shot at the playoffs, with the third-place Aces nine games out. Tijuana ranked 11th in runs scored in the Continental League, and the gap between them and the brown-clad runts of the litter had now grown to 32 runs. While there was absolutely no offense to be had from their lineup (which was also diminished right now with 1B Andy McNeal on the DL), their pitching was top 3 solid throughout, and everybody knew that the Falcons had their problems, so the playoffs were still well in reach for them, but even if they made it, they were likely to be eaten alive by the Titans in the CLCS. The Coons were running a 2-4 deficit against them in ’22 and were unlikely to turn this into a season series win.

Projected matchups:
Matt Huf (2-6, 4.33 ERA) vs. Rafael Cuenca (9-9, 3.70 ERA)
Rico Gutierrez (8-8, 2.73 ERA) vs. Jose Menendez (10-14, 3.81 ERA)
Jesus Chavez (3-5, 4.48 ERA) vs. Kevin Clayton (11-10, 3.74 ERA)

Three right-hander are on offer in this series.

The Coons made some roster changes. Ricardo Romero went to the DL, and Josh Stevenson was recalled from AAA even before the Alley Cats’ regular season finale. Romero was unlikely to return on the final weekend of the season.

Game 1
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Rice – CF Stevenson – RF Alfaro – LF Perakis – P Huf
TIJ: SS B. Rojas – RF Boggs – LF Larios – C Sanford – CF Jamieson – 1B J. Estrada – 2B B. Torres – 3B Feery – P Cuenca

Stalker doubled, Spencer walked, and Nunley and Rockwell drove in a runner each for a quick 2-spot on Cuenca. Turned out though that the Condors did not like being treated that way, and would swiftly retaliate. Bob Rojas, who had 44 stolen bases, led off the bottom 1st with a single, and Matt Huf would gradually melt. Omar Larios walked, Pat Sanford hit an RBI single, and the bases gradually filled until Juan Estrada’s 2-out, 2-run double to left gave the Condors a 3-2 lead. Bob Rojas would leave the game with an injury by the following inning, being replaced by Gabriel Sauceda, who hit a 1-out single in the bottom 2nd, but the Condors would not build on their lead.

Stalker doubled in the third, and with Matt Nunley singled to center with one out. Stalker was sent around, but thrown out at home plate by Matt Jamieson, which was too bad, since it ultimately cost the Coons the chance to take the lead in the inning. Nunley scored after back-to-back 2-out singles by Rockwell and Rice, after which Stevenson grounded to third base. Aaron Feery’s throw missed Sauceda at second base, and the error filled the bases for Alfaro, batting all of .160 by now and tied into a whacking 1-for-35 knot. There was obviously no better place for him to break out of it than right here and there, because baseball is weird that way. Alfaro knocked the 0-1 pitch to left center, Jamieson couldn’t get over, and the ball made it into the gap for a double that emptied the bases and gave the Critters a 6-3 lead! An intentional walk to Perakis and Huf grounding out ended the inning, but Feery would make another 2-out throwing error in the fourth inning, although then Rice grounded out to Juan Estrada to end the inning without any more damage occurred.

Jeff Little struck out six Critters in three innings of long relief for the Condors after Cuenca was batted for in the bottom of the fourth inning, while Huf, who had been tagged for four hits in the first inning, only allowed two more hits in the following six innings, getting through seven on 99 pitches and with the 6-3 lead still in shape. Bricker did the eighth, while ex-Coon Joel Davis pitched the eighth and ninth against the Raccoons, drilling Danny Rice in the process, but wasn’t really in danger in either inning. Lillis faced the 5-6-7 batters in the bottom of the ninth inning. Jamieson hit a leadoff single to right center, but was then doubled off on Estrada’s grounder to short. Bullock to Stalker to Armetta the coons went, and Rice retired Bobby Torres on a 2-3 play to end the game. 6-3 Raccoons. Stalker 3-5, 2B; Rockwell 2-5, RBI; Huf 7.0 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, W (3-6);

Jonny Toner pitched eight innings, struck out a dozen, yet still took the loss in the Alley Cats’ season finale. Doesn’t matter, bring him back. He’d get a few more starts in the majors before the year was over, although there was not much value to rebuild in the final two weeks…

Game 2
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – CF Stevenson – C Tovias – RF Alfaro – LF Perakis – P Gutierrez
TIJ: RF Boggs – LF Larios – C Sanford – CF Jamieson – 2B B. Torres – SS J. Estrada – 1B T. Delgado – 3B Umpierre – P Menendez

The Critters scored first in the Saturday game when Elias Tovias hit a solo homer in the second inning, and just like the day before, the pitcher on duty would not be able to hold on to the lead for even a single inning. Gutierrez’ struggles continued unabated, with the Condors putting Jamieson on with a leadoff single in the bottom 2nd, and Gutierrez went on to walk Bobby Torres, then delivered a wild pitch. The runs scored on consecutive groundouts by Estrada and Tony Delgado. The rush of 2-out singles by Stalker and Spencer in the third was mooted when Nunley popped out, but the Condors would put another pair on Gutierrez in the bottom of the fourth inning. Torres doubled, Estrada tripled, and since Gutierrez basically couldn’t whiff anybody, Delgado came up with another run-scoring groundout, running the score to 4-1.

Stalker and Spencer would revisit the bases in the sixth inning, although the former reached only on Rey Umpierre’s throwing error beginning the sixth inning. Spencer singled, putting them on the corners for the unassuming middle of the order. Nunley knocked an RBI single to left, cutting the gap to 4-2, before the next three batters rapidly struck out, struck out, and grounded back to the mound to strand the tying runs on first and second. There was no saving Gutierrez from his own follies anyway; Torres singled and Estrada doubled to lead off the bottom of the sixth inning, knocking the left-hander from the game after five-plus with eight hits conceded. His line would close at six runs for the day, with Tony Delgado hitting an RBI single this time around, and Estrada scored on the double play Umpierre hit into – all of this happened against Cory Dew.

Top 7th, Nunley batted with two outs, and with Stalker and Spencer on base AGAIN. The Coons had started the inning only with Sam Armetta drawing a 2-out walk in the #9 hole, but the 1-2 batters delivered a pair of singles to plate Armetta and bring Nunley up as the tying run. But Nunley’s muddled record in the game wouldn’t markedly improve in this situation, with him grounding out easily to Bobby Torres. This was the Coons’ final, abortive charge. The Condors would add a run on Estrada’s homer off Adam Cowen in the eighth inning, and won comfortably. 7-3 Condors. Spencer 3-5, RBI;

Torres and Estrada had three hits each, and Estrada and Delgado had three RBI each. Kinda easy to make out the part of the order where it all unraveled for Gutierrez and the pen.

Game 3
POR: 2B Stalker – 1B Greenwald – 3B Nunley – LF Graves – C Tovias – CF Stevenson – RF Alfaro – SS Bullock – P Chavez
TIJ: RF Boggs – 1B Sauceda – LF Larios – C Sanford – CF Jamieson – SS J. Estrada – 2B J. Gonzales – 3B Feery – P Clayton

If there had ever been a white flag, it was Zach Graves (.228, 2 HR, 26 RBI) batting cleanup, but the Raccoons had run out of talent a long time ago. They could have scored a run in the third inning, in which Stalker hit a 1-out single, but got picked off before Russ Greenwald doubled and Kevin Clayton balked. The net result was Nunley striking out to strand Greenwald on third base and nobody scoring. In the newest sign of the apocalypse, Clayton hit a leadoff single in the bottom 3rd, and only an explosive dash and great catch by Omar Alfaro in rightfield on Robby Boggs’ mighty drive kept the Condors from scoring in the inning.

Between the two sides of a scoreless game through five innings, Clayton struck out eight over those five frames, while Chavez whiffed only a pair and was reliant on charitable donations from his defense. Bullock had already made a sprawling catch in the first inning, and Stevenson took a double away from Aaron Feery in the fifth. Clayton continued to dominate, striking out the left-handed 2-3-4 batters to reach 11 Kills for the day. An inning later, he was at 0-2 on Stevenson and aiming for the full dozen when he erroneously sent a fastball down the middle – Stevenson tatered it. The solo home run was the first countable thing on the scoreboard and sent the Condors reeling. Chavez got around a Juan Gonzales double in the bottom of the seventh and maintained a 5-hit shutout, whiffing three, through seven, expending only 78 pitches, but the tying run would be on again in the bottom 8th after Robby Boggs’ leadoff single. Sauceda grounded out, after which the Coons sent Sugano to see after Omar Larios – but the Condors would not let him face the left-handed batter. Tony Delgado was sent to pinch-hit, but grounded out. Boggs moved to third base. Bricker replaced Sugano then as the Furballs guessed correctly that the Condors would not send a left-hander for Pat Sanford, who with his 16 homers this year could still turn the score around in an instant, but Bricker struck him out. Jayden Reed retired the 4-5-6 batters in order in the ninth, leaving the 1-0 lead to Lillis, who would start off the ninth against Jamieson, who struck out. Bobby Torres pinch-hit for the left-handed Estrada, grounded out to Bullock, and Gonzales was down 1-2 when he popped a ball to the right side, Stalker taking it to squeeze out a game and series win. 1-0 Blighters. Stevenson 1-3, BB, HR, RBI; Chavez 7.1 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 3 K, W (4-5);

In other news

September 12 – At 40 years old, NAS 1B Alberto Rodriguez (.298, 10 HR, 74 RBI) joins the 3,000 hits club at last, becoming its 13th member with two base knocks in a 6-5 win over the Miners. Rodriguez reaches the magical threshold with an eighth-inning single off PIT MR Ruben Ortega (7-3, 2.84 ERA) and goes on to score the go-ahead run in the inning (although the game will eventually last 12 innings). Rodriguez, who was the #8 pick in the 2003 draft, taken by the Wolves, spent his entire major league career of 17 years for five different Federal League teams, including the Wolves, Capitals, Rebels, Scorpions, and Blue Sox. He won rings with the 2017 Rebels and 2020 Scorpions, and was the 2017 FLCS MVP. Stunningly, the .293/.375/.435 batter with 184 HR and 1,400 RBI, who was the 2006 Rookie of the Year, and took home a Platinum Stick three times, was never an All Star!
September 12 – The Thunder maul the Bayhawks, 15-1. OCT 1B Cory Starmand (.333, 1 HR, 6 RBI) has two hits, two walks, and drives in four runs with a grand slam off Mike Homa.
September 14 – VAN INF/LF John Calfee (.263, 13 HR, 53 RBI) shines with six RBI in the Elks’ 17-2 thrashing of the Loggers. His barrage includes two home runs, while Canadiens rookie Dave O’Rourke (.412, 0 HR, 5 RBI) knocks out four hits, including two doubles, and gets 2 RBI in only his third time in the starting lineup.
September 14 – WAS 3B/SS Guillermo Obando (.239, 0 HR, 21 RBI) is done for the season with an elbow sprain.
September 15 – A home run and two doubles are included in the 5-hit package that WAS RF/LF Jason Stone (.296, 16 HR, 53 RBI) puts on the Cyclones in a 13-8 scorefest. Stone drives in only one run though, himself on the home run.

Complaints and stuff

Words don’t do this team justice anymore, which is why I hired an expressionist dancer to really get the message across. Francois, your turn!

(a male 20-something with a very French moustache, wearing flesh-colored skin-tights enters through the door and begins to dramatically waive with all four limbs while clamoring towards the sky; this performance continues for the rest of the Complaints section)

In terms of ex-Coons doing good things, I have two items this week, with the first of those being Shane Walter being named FL Player of the Week batting 12-for-23 with 1 HR and 4 RBI. He is a .334 batter overall for the Capitals, but has not been a regular starter and has only gobbled up 414 plate appearances this season, starting 82 games and coming on as replacement a whopping 53 times. Oh, well, it’s their decision – when they want to put a $2.68M top-of-the-line contact bat on the bench, I will not interfere… The second item will be in the Fun Fact section.

We are still not actually sure we can get anybody to 10 wins this season. With 13 games left and the Coons going to a 6-man rotation down the stretch with Jonny Toner back, it’s actually quite unlikely that we will have even a 10-game winner, because the only serious candidate is going to be Gutierrez with eight wins, and Rico has lost three straight and allowed plenty of runs recently…

Or maybe Bricker can win three more in relief, although at this point I am not sure that the team can win another three in total… so yeah, Rich Hood’s dismal record as worst-best starting pitcher with 10 wins is most likely to fall in this year from hell.

Omar Alfaro’s BABIP is now hovering just under the .200 mark – that is right, less than one in five of his batted balls find any kind of hole. Which is probably about the amount where you have to start wondering whether his soul’s previous incarnation made a living raping kittens, because this is an impressive amount of bad luck that can hardly be reasonably explained.

Down in the minors, the AA Panthers finished 79-61, three games out in their division, while A Beagles came up 22 games short in fifth place at 63-77. The AAA Alley Cats were the best minor league team again, winning their division with a 86-58 campaign, four games ahead of the Cumming Rainstorm, the Dallas Stars’ affiliate. They would now face the Newark Whitewings in the first round of the playoffs, just like the year before. The other subleague had different playoff teams this year, though; the Loganville Bombardiers (LAP) faced off against the Bakersfield Sirens (TOP).

Fun fact: Danny Margolis knocked a leadoff double for the Gold Sox on Friday, beating the Cyclones 2-1. Margolis’ career has reverted to being an unloved backup shortstop after his trade from the Raccoons, as the Gold Sox have only given him 159 at-bats this season.

Margolis was worth 7.1 WAR between 2020 and 2021, the only seasons in his 9-year career in which he was the primary catcher for his team(s), the Coons and Blue Sox. Well, yeah, he never showed even as much as glimpses of competence after six years of backing up various other catchers we employed, but I still would have hoped that the Gold Sox would give him more than a token amount of exposure to the elements.

He hasn’t even batted badly, .263/.325/.423, which is certainly better than what most Coons starters are delivering.

This is all very much Al Martin again. While his Coons stint was spent entirely in their previous Dark Ages, between 1999 and 2005, he usually delivered offense without having to be asked for very long. He hit 20+ homers four straight seasons, and 30+ in back-to-back seasons in 2002 and 2003. After somebody in the front office however got the wicked idea that Adrian Quebell was the first baseman of the future, Martin was let go, tingling from team to team – literally. After seven years in the brown shirt, he made nine stops over the next nine seasons, which included three stints with the Titans, who still only gave them 57 at-bats *combined*. After gobbling up 490+ at-bats every year with the Coons, he only logged 200 at-bats twice for the rest of his career, which was ruined by universal indifference, and he ended up with a .281/.340/.450 clip with 165 HR and 637 RBI on less than 4,200 at-bats.

This is almost as bad a sin as trading Dennis Fried for three games of Raúl Castillo.

(sighs)

Francois, you can stop dancing now.

[Westheim]

Two more weeks of this. Come on, you can do it. You can do it. Come on. Come forth from behind the couch. You can do it.

Just two more weeks.

Raccoons (66-83) vs. Aces (72-77) – September 19-21, 2022

Joining the Raccoons in the group of not-long-ago playoff teams that had gone absolutely nowhere except into the ditch in 2022 where the Aces, who sat ten games out in the South and in third place. While not technically eliminated, they had been erased from contention somewhere between Christmas and Opening Day and had festered in their own filth since then. While they did lead the CL in terms of runs scored, their pitching had been of the utmost ineptitude with very few exceptions to that rule, and they were in the bottom four in all categories between runs allowed and starters’ and bullpen ERA. The season series was level at three, with the Aces having prevailed in ’21, 6-3.

Projected matchups:
Bobby Guerrero (5-16, 4.41 ERA) vs. Chris Wickham (16-7, 2.87 ERA)
Ryan Nielson (6-7, 3.57 ERA) vs. Colin Peay (8-10, 5.03 ERA)
Jonathan Toner (7-4, 3.93 ERA) vs. Jason Clements (6-9, 3.38 ERA)

There was no helping Guerrero anymore – his soul was in hell. He faced the Aces’ lone strong starter, and also their only left-handed starter, in sophomore Chris Wickham. Jonny Toner would make his comeback, raised from the dead, on Wednesday.

Game 1
LVA: SS A. Medina – LF J. Baker – CF A. Martinez – RF D. Brown – 1B A. Young – C T. Perez – 3B Navarro – 2B Ingraham – P Wickham
POR: 2B Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Tovias – CF Stevenson – SS Bullock – RF Alfaro – P Guerrero

True to form, the Coons’ first inning looked like a team that had given up entirely and could only win by accident: Tim Stalker got nicked by Wickham to begin the bottom 1st, and Spencer immediately hit into a double play. Nunley walked after getting nothing to hit, but Rockwell got nothing to hit, tried anyway, and struck out, badly. Talking about accidents, the Coons had Stevenson on base in the second after hitting a single, and Bullock reached on Jose Navarro’s error at the hot corner. That brought up the .155 batter that was the Raccoons’ future, and he popped up gracefully over the infield for a donated second out. Guerrero went down on strikes, and how was he to blame?

Forsaken Bobby lined up four shutout innings while pitching to weak contact – the best way for him to survive was to get groundballs – while the rest of the team did absolutely zero of value. When Guerrero issued a walk to Adam Young at the top of the fifth inning, things looked bleak already, and when Tony Perez and Jose Navarro legged out consecutive infield singles to load the bases with nobody out, he knew he was doomed unless Zach Ingraham would hit one right into his pocket – and that actually happened. Guerrero started a 1-2-3 double play on the bouncer, and Wickham grounded out to Rockwell to end the inning. When Omar Alfaro led off the bottom of the inning with a single to center, the crowd – if you could call the seven people sprinkled over the park that much – burst into cheers. Guerrero bunted him to second base, Stalker popped out. Oh dear. Jarod Spencer’s grounder to left eluded Navarro for a single and Alfaro scored with the first run of the game. More cheers. Maybe jeers. Nobody knew at this point. The Coons would unwind Wickham with a nasty collection of 2-out base hits at this point, lining up five of those buggers before the inning ended: Nunley singled, Rockwell doubled off the wall in centerfield, where Armando Martinez collapsed against the fence after failing to make a catch, and scored two, Tovias hit an RBI double, and Stevenson singled before Bullock grounded out.

Dan Brown’s 2-run inside-the-park home run in the sixth inning clearly indicated to the Coons that nothing mattered and even if they led 4-0 in any game, they would never stop sucking. Well, not like the Aces didn’t have issues. A throwing error by Navarro in the bottom 6th put Stalker on second base with two outs. Jarod Spencer plated him with a single to left center, extending the lead to 5-2 again. Gil Rockwell bombed Wickham into removal from the game in the seventh inning, 6-2, and Zach Graves would get a pinch-hit, 2-out RBI double squeezed into the box score in the eighth, plating Omar Alfaro – who had TWO hits in ONE game!! – from second base. While this was going on, Bobby Guerrero was merrily chugging along and retiring Ace after Ace. With a sizeable lead and Guerrero nowhere near his pitch limit due to the Aces making quick, poor contact for the entire game, nobody bothered with the bullpen and Guerrero – after the Brown homer – retired the final ten batters in order, breaking an almost quarter-long losing spell when Zach Graves caught Young’s soft fly in shallow left for the final out. Guerrero, a 32-year-old veteran who had seen his share of struggling teams in his career, visibly fought his emotions when the win was in the books. 7-2 Coons. Spencer 2-4, 2 RBI; Graves (PH) 1-1, 2B, RBI; Rockwell 2-4, HR, 2B, 3 RBI; Stevenson 1-2, 2 BB; Alfaro 2-4; Guerrero 9.0 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, W (6-16);

Guerrero finished off the Aces – his team in 2021 – on just 98 pitches in this game. It was his 17th complete game and the second this season. His previous complete game lasted only five innings, a rain-shortened 3-2 loss to the Condors on July 25.

Bobby had five complete games in ’21, and six complete games with the 2019 Coons, for whom he also pitched two shutouts. He has three shutouts in his career – all with the Furballs.

Game 2
LVA: LF Serrano – 1B A. Young – CF A. Martinez – RF D. Brown – C T. Perez – SS A. Medina – 3B Iannuzzi – 2B Ingraham – P Peay
POR: 2B Spencer – 1B Greenwald – 3B Nunley – C Rice – SS Stalker – LF Graves – CF Stevenson – RF Alfaro – P Nielson

Dan Brown remained dangerous, batting barely above .220 or not. He doubled home Armando Martinez in the first inning, giving the Aces’ Peay a 1-0 lead, and in the third inning came up with Martinez on base and two outs again. This time he singled to left, but before Nielson could unravel, Brown got himself caught stealing to end the inning. Peay was retiring the first ten Raccoons before issuing a full-count walk to Russ Greenwald. Nunley swiftly hit a 1-out double, and the Coons were in business, flipping the score to 2-1 in their favor on Rice’s run-scoring groundout and Tim Stalker’s RBI double to right before Graves flew out to Brown.

Top 5th, the Aces had just hit a pair of 1-out singles via Peay and Danny Serrano when Adam Young ran a 3-1 count with Nielson. Always the fool you wanted to shoot in the face with your blunderbuss, Young popped out, much to the dismay of his manager. YEAH, BOB – BEEN THERE, SEEN THAT!! Martinez would foul out to end the inning, maintaining the Coons’ flimsy 2-1 lead for the moment. For the moment, because it was going to get bigger in a second. The Coons flushed Peay down the toilet in the bottom 5th, unfolding another big inning that started innocently enough on Josh Stevenson’s leadoff single and him stealing second base. Omar Alfaro’s hard RBI single to right center was the first sign of the apocalypse for the Aces. If ALFARO can get a ball to fall in when it counts, you better check whether your will is up to date. After Nielson bunted, the top of the order churned out three straight base hits. Rice flew out, but Stalker hit an RBI single to run the score to 6-1 and knock Peay from the game. Arturo Lopez replaced the starting pitcher, and nicked Graves with his first pitch, loading the bases for Stevenson, who popped out on the first pitch.

In contrast to Guerrero the day before, Nielson lasted only six-plus innings and departed with runners on the corners in the seventh inning. Cory Dew inherited the no-outs situation, and got PH Allen Retzer to fly out to Graves in shallow left, with Matt Iannuzzi holding at third base. Danny Serrano hit an RBI single, but that brought up Young, who cluelessly popped out over the infield once more. Martinez struck out, keeping the Critters ahead by four. Cowen and Sugano would collect the remaining outs in the eighth and ninth innings without spilling a base runner. 6-2 Coons. Nunley 2-4, 2B; Stalker 2-4, 2 2B, 2 RBI;

Game 3
LVA: 3B J. Navarro – LF J. Baker – CF A. Martinez – 1B A. Young – SS Iannuzzi – RF Curro – C Murry – 2B Moroyoqui – P Clements
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Rice – CF Stevenson – RF Alfaro – LF Perakis – P Toner

In a confusing first inning, Jonny Toner in his return spilled two base runners, but the Aces got themselves out with Josh Baker’s double play grounder and Armando Martinez being caught stealing by Rice, while in contrast in the bottom of the first the Coons took a 1-0 lead when Nunley hit into a double play with runners on the corners. Tim Stalker crossed home plate, and had only made it to third base because he DID steal the base he was aiming for earlier. It was his 15th bag of the season, third on the team.

The only exciting bits of Coons offense saw the Aces do good in the following innings, with Corey Curro picking an Alfaro drive off the top of the fence in the second, and when Toner and Stalker were on base in the third inning, Navarro made a marvelous play on Jarod Spencer’s grounder for a 5-4 double play, removing the two lead runners, with Spencer eventually rotting on first base in disgrace. Toner struck out four in the bottom of the order the first time through the Aces’ lineup, but struck out nobody the second time through. The Aces stranded runners on third base in the fourth and fifth innings regardless. While Toner was closely watched, Navarro’s leadoff single in the sixth inning at least got the pen to stretch the paws, but Toner recovered with K’s to Josh Baker and Armando Martinez, and Adam Young’s fly to center was a piece of cake for Stevenson. Toner got two more outs in the seventh before bumping against 100 pitches, and considering that he was still not in shape and would not get into shape this year anymore, and would not HAVE to get in shape for anything, he was removed after Curro’s pop. MacCarthy got out of the inning against Vince Murry. In the bottom of the seventh the Coons continued an unnerving trend of hitting into a double play as soon as two men were aboard; Stevenson was to blame this time after leadoff singles by Rockwell and Rice. Alfaro flew out to left, stranding Rockwell on third base. The Critters’ 1-0 lead was in another pickle in the eighth inning, with Jesus Moroyoqui’s leadoff single off Joe Moore. The runner made it to third base on two productive outs, with a left-hander looming in Josh Baker. The Coons sent Billy Brotman, well knowing that he would not face Baker. Danny Serrano, a switch-hitter, came out to bat instead. Brotman walked him, and Bricker replaced him against Martinez, who was not hit for and grounded out to short, stranding the runners. Not even Brett Lillis and his leadoff walk to unheraled Allen Retzer could blow the game in the ninth – the Aces would never get their tying run off first base and thus got swept. 1-0 Critters. Stalker 1-2, 2 BB; Toner 6.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 6 K, W (8-4) and 1-2, 2B;

The sweep also eliminated the Aces from playoff contention.

Raccoons (69-83) vs. Crusaders (77-75) – September 23-25, 2022

Last in batting average, but at least not last in runs scored (cough), the Crusaders knew very well what their issues had been. They had the best rotation in the league and had surrendered the second-fewest runs, and just imagine what a great team you could build between select departments of the two teams the Coons played this week. Or what horrendous creatures from the abyss could roam the world if you combined the Crusaders’ offense and the Aces’ pitching… The Crusaders had already wrapped up the season series against the Raccoons, having won 10 of the 15 games played so far this season.

Projected matchups:
Matt Huf (3-6, 4.29 ERA) vs. Mike Rutkowski (16-6, 2.73 ERA)
Rico Gutierrez (8-9, 3.07 ERA) vs. Jeremy Waite (10-5, 2.85 ERA)
Jesus Chavez (4-5, 4.02 ERA) vs. Tim Dunn (9-10, 3.77 ERA)

Southpaw on Sunday from New York, and two strong right-handers in the meantime to keep us entertained.

This is not our final home series of the year, despite us tramping up to Elkland by Monday. It may however be well be the last chance for a home win this season, given that we will host the Titans on the final weekend.

Game 1
NYC: CF Loya – SS Hebberd – 2B S. Valdez – 1B Perkins – 3B Schmit – LF J. Williams – RF Skinner – C Asay – P Rutkowski
POR: SS Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Rice – CF Stevenson – RF Graves – 2B Armetta – P Huf

While Huf had a loooong first inning, walked two and whiffed three in mostly full counts, the Raccoons snipped three singles off Rutkowski to plate a 2-out run on Rice’s floater over Sergio Valdez in the bottom 1st. Huf would take 48 pitches to get through the lineup ONCE, issuing a leadoff walk to Rutkowski in the third inning, so the second round of pizza for the bullpen was cancelled and the long men got stretching early. After Ricky Loya and Bill Hebberd struck out, Valdez hit a double to left, and the Crusaders sent Rutkowski for home in a risky move. He got thrown out, Spencer to Stalker for a deadly relay.

Once the Crusaders started to make actual contact, Huf was doomed. They tagged him for four base hits and two runs in the fourth inning. This included an RBI single by Rutkowski with two outs for good measure, that one sending New York 2-1 ahead. The loss wouldn’t stick, though. Graves hit a double in the bottom 4th, Greenwald hit for Huf and managed to get the run home, and the score was level at two after four innings, with the Coons into their pen, which held the purple team scoreless for a while until the Crusaders piled up the runners in the seventh inning. Dew walked Loya with two outs, then made way for MacCarthy, who drilled PH Angel Diaz and allowed a single to Valdez. With another pinch-hitter in Blake Doering approaching, the Raccoons sent’ Noah Bricker. This out was important. Too bad that Bricker didn’t get it, instead serving up Doering’s first home run of the season, a grand slam that broke the score wide open in the Crusasders’ favor, 6-2. The Coons, who had already struggled against Rutkowski, who went seven innings, would not as much as twitch against Adonis Foster in the last two frames – their last 11 batters were retired in order. 6-2 Crusaders. Nunley 2-3, BB, 2B; Rice 2-2, BB, RBI; Brotman 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K;

Game 2
NYC: CF Loya – C Travis – 2B S. Valdez – 3B Schmit – LF J. Williams – RF Abraham – 1B A. Diaz – SS Doering – P Waite
POR: 2B Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Tovias – SS Bullock – CF Santos – RF Alfaro – P Gutierrez

The Critters’ only chance at a 10-game winner allowed a leadoff double on an 0-2 pitch to Ricky Loya, then walked Jason Travis. A grounder to first by Sergio Valdez was thrown to second base by Rockwell for an out on the catcher, and then Andy Schmit grounded sharply to short for a double play. Rockwell would also give the Critters the lead in the bottom of the inning, plating Spencer from second base with a single to center. Jarod however had only made it there by getting hit, then a wild pitch… The Coons would score another run in like manner in the following inning. This time Waite – the ugliest creature ever born – almost crippled Frank Santos for life with a pitch neck-high, with Tim Stalker landing a 2-out RBI single, and Waite would go on to drill Gutierrez with a pitch in the fourth inning.

Statement time! After Blake Doering reached on a Nunley error to begin the top of the fifth, Gutierrez aimed unmistakably at Waite’s hideous face before unleashing a fastball that hit off his non-throwing shoulder as Waite was ducking. We were PRETTY close to a brawl now, with both teams barking at another from the dugouts and the field. Next, the 2-0 game saw the Crusaders load the bases when Gutierrez walked Loya, and there were no outs in the inning. Jason Travis’ double emptied the bases and put the Crusaders 3-2 ahead, even though he was left on base by the middle of the order. While Rockwell’s sac fly in the bottom of the inning cashed in Spencer to level the score again, the team would not be able to get the lead back before Gutierrez was removed after six innings and 107 pitches, and thus the dream of having any 10-game winner at all became impossible by standard means.

In the top of the seventh the Crusaders unraveled the rookie brigade in the Portland pen, with Kipple and Moore retiring precious little. Jason Travis drove in the go-ahead run. Sugano entered, the Crusaders threw right-handers at him, and another run scored, putting the Raccoons down 5-3. The Coons didn’t threaten until the bottom of the eighth and then they only had the tying runs aboard because Doering fumbled Rockwell’s double play grounder into an error. Nothing came of that. Steve Casey was in the game in the ninth, with Greenwald pinch-hitting for Adam Cowen in the #8 spot, whiffing. Graves and Stalker both hit hard drives to the deep outfield … and both ended up being caught by defenders. 5-3 Crusaders. Tovias 2-4;

The Crusaders changed pitchers for the Sunday game, but we still got a left-handed opponent in Dave Butler (10-5, 3.57 ERA).

Game 3
NYC: CF Loya – SS Hebberd – 2B S. Valdez – 1B Perkins – 3B Schmit – LF J. Williams – RF Peters – C Asay – P D. Butler
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – CF Stevenson – 1B Rockwell – C Tovias – 3B Bullock – RF Alfaro – LF Perakis – P Chavez

Following a first inning where Andy Schmit’s throwing error put Spencer on second base, but the Raccoons would fail to plate the sucker, the second inning featured Elias Tovias with a leadoff ho- dou- … what was it? Turns out, the ball that hit off the top of the fence was narrowly not a home run, but a double, and even then the Coons proved again that they could be mightily stubborn when it came to plating runners. Bullock grounded out to short, which didn’t advance the runner, and Alfaro grounded out as well, advancing the runner, but that left the Crusaders to pick between a .130 batter and a .125 batter with two outs, and the pitcher Chavez was not the worst one in that selection. They picked Perakis, and they picked wrong. Somehow the routine failure Perakis identified a 69 mph curveball as hittable and belched it 390 feet over the leftfield fence for his first career dinger. Chavez, now up 2-0, struck out. He faced the minimum the first time through the order, but even then Ricky Loya had hit a single, only to be doubled off by Hebberd. Loya had another base hit leading off the fourth, this one a triple into left center. Chavez struck out Hebberd, but the run scored on Sergio Valdez’ grounder to Spencer, leaving the Coons only up by a run, and that only for one more inning. Chavez spilled singles to Jake Williams and Jason Asay in the fifth inning, then faced Butler, who knocked a 2-0 pitch for an RBI double with two outs. Oh Jesus, really?

Loya’s groundout kept the game tied at two, but the Coons were ill inclined to make much fuss to score more runs. They had only two base hits through five innings, and when Stalker singled in the sixth, he also was caught stealing by Asay pretty quickly. The Crusasers would get singles from Schmit and Chris Peters in the seventh inning, and Asay’s groundout again brought up Butler with two on and two outs. This time he flew out to centerfield. Bottom 7th, the Coons got Tovias (walk) and Bullock (single) on base. Alfaro flew out to center for the second out, leaving things to Perakis again, but the no-good rookie knocked another Butler curve into leftfield for an RBI single, reclaiming the lead for his team. As Matt Nunley stepped in the box to bat for Chavez with two outs, Dave Butler on the mound was visibly questioning all his life choices in the last 15 years. Nunley flew out to center, stranding a pair. Between Dew (walked Loya), Sugano (walked Angel Diaz), and Bricker (allowed an RBI single to Brian Skinner), the good bits in the bullpen managed to blow the lead right in the eighth inning, before Tim Stalker’s leadoff bomb off Butler in the bottom 8th put Bricker in line for his eighth win of the season, and he’d get it despite Brett Lillis drilling the leadoff batter in the ninth inning and Jason Asay’s deep drive to left that Perakis caught. 4-3 Blighters. Stalker 2-4, HR, RBI; Tovias 1-2, BB, 2B; Perakis 2-3, HR, 3 RBI; Chavez 7.0 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K;

In other news

September 20 – Falcons and Indians play 17 innings before the Falcons score the first run in hours on Ryozo Tanaka’s (.238, 2 HR, 24 RBI) single in the top of the 17th inning. Charlotte’s Matt Good (.323, 11 HR, 81 RBI) goes a whopping 0-for-8, and his teammate Matt Owen (.281, 7 HR, 31 RBI) goes 0-for-7.
September 21 – WAS SS Tom McWhorter (.245, 21 HR, 96 RBI) is out for the year with a broken foot, and that with his team trying to hold on to a half-game lead.
September 22 – Elbow ligament damage is expected to cost RIC SP Todd Wood (7-7, 3.94 ERA) the entire 2023 season.
September 23 – More bad news for Federal League teams, as SAL SP Jesse Bowsher (12-13, 4.43 ERA) could miss all of 2023 with him having to undergo Tommy John surgery.
September 25 – It gets even worse for the Wolves, with SP Kyle Eilrich (8-3, 2.87 ERA) announcing his retirement following two months of rehab attempts and a failed surgery for a torn triceps suffered in July. The 27-year-old left-hander went 25-27 with a 3.37 ERA in his career, appearing in 121 games (81 starts) for the Condors and Wolves.

Complaints and stuff

If the Coons had lost on Sunday, they would have tied for their worst-ever season against the Crusaders since *1980*, but Tim Stalker’s shot stopped them at 6-12. Their single 5-13 against New York year since the days nobody even vaguely wants to remember occurred in 2013.

During the week I threw in a claim for IND SP Tom Shumway, who was on waivers for mysterious reasons. I don’t know why the Indians would want to trade a healthy 25-year old left-hander in September. Maybe that is my problem. Lack of imagination – that is what was holding back the Critters for the last few decades. Anyway, when we claimed him, the Indians removed him from conditional waivers, so we did not magically wind up with a turbo booster towards our rebuild.

I must say I *do* like Shumway’s profile. He would be a welcome addition to the roster. Not that it’s gonna happen in my lifetime… just sayin’.

Jonny T struck out six in his return, putting him even with Antonio Donis for 50th place all time. He made it back from the DL just in time before Ian Rutter could close back up to him. Toner and Rutter had moved up through the positions together two years ago before Jonny had gradually dumped the Scorpion behind.

Looking forward to 2023, we expect a harsh budget cut – it’s the Prick after all – and there might be value in resigning Bobby Guerrero. There would be even more value in wholesale shooting the rotten prospects I gobbled up the last 15 months and start from scratch.

The Scorpions locked up their division on Sunday, beating the direction competition from Denver, 11-7. Sacramento will be in the playoffs for the fourth straight season, and five of the last six. They are one of four teams tied for third place with three championships, trailing only the Crusaders (7) and Titans (4). One of the four teams that have never won a championship can still make the playoffs in the CL South, where the Condors trail the Falcons by three. The Miners and Buffaloes’ chances in the FL East are of very theoretical nature, but we said that about the Blue Sox as well a year ago.

Fun Fact: The 1980 Raccoons improved by 14 games compared to the previous year, but still managed to lose 93 games and finished last. Daniel Hall hit 57 extra-base hits with 20 home runs to lead the team with a .485 slugging percentage.

The funny thing is that no other qualifying player was even remotely near him. Pedro Sánz batted .288/.337/.406, and Stephano Bocci came up with a .282/.357/.389 line – those three were that team’s entire offense.

On THIS team I can’t even name three players that are not completely hopeless. The 1980 Raccoons scored 571 runs, which was good enough for last place even in a low-offense era. The 2022 Raccoons are not even on that mark yet, and their .249 team batting average is their worst in 17 years. And they still managed to drink away a top pick in the 2023 draft.

Maud, we gotta talk about promotional material for the 2023 season.

What do you mean you got nothing …!?

End times, end times.

[Westheim]

Raccoons (70-85) @ Canadiens (64-91) – September 26-29, 2022

Even one win would be enough for the Raccoons to stick last place on the Elks for good, which sounded like a low bar, but there had been plenty of low bars under which this team had already made it through. Both teams ranked in the bottom three in runs scored in the Continental League, and the Elks were also in the bottom three in runs allowed, and the same was also true for both their starters’ ERA and their relievers’ ERA. The Coons were also one game away from taking the season series, leading it so far at 9-5.

Projected matchups:
Bobby Guerrero (6-16, 4.28 ERA) vs. Kevin Woodworth (13-14, 4.15 ERA)
Ryan Nielson (7-7, 3.54 ERA) vs. Andy Purdy (3-8, 5.04 ERA)
Jonathan Toner (8-4, 3.66 ERA) vs. Matt Rosenthal (9-13, 3.91 ERA)
Matt Huf (3-6, 4.30 ERA) vs. Greg Becker (9-15, 5.82 ERA)

Three right-handers and a southpaw on getaway day on the menu here. Unusually for the final week of the season, the Elks had no injuries to their extended roster.

Game 1
POR: 2B Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – C Rice – CF Stevenson – 1B Greenwald – SS Bullock – RF Alfaro – P Guerrero
VAN: LF A. Torres – 3B Jon. Morales – C Holliman – SS Calfee – 1B Saenz – CF Coca – RF Houghtaling – 2B Wise – P Woodworth

Guerrero struggled badly to keep runners off the bases, with the Elks loading them up entirely with two outs in the bottom of the second inning, as Guerrero walked Jeremy Houghtaling and Ehren Wise after Tony Coca’s single. Woodworth struck out, but the Elks still got to Guerrero in the third, with Alex Torres knocking a leadoff single to center and later scoring on John Calfee’s double into right center. In between, Torres stole his 61st base of the season. The Coons’ offense was keen on hitting a single in every inning, which would not look completely pathetic in the box score, but sure did in the line score. Through five innings, Guerrero still trailed 1-0, although the Critters had out-hit the Elks, 5-3. There was some actual mild excitement in the ballpark in the top of the sixth inning when Josh Stevenson actually managed to give a ball a ride. He still fell short of the fence, and far so, and didn’t even get a hit, robbed off an extra-base effort by Tony Coca in the gap. Through seven innings, the Raccoons had seven hits, but had gambled away their most recent efforts with a Bullock double play and then Omar Alfaro hitting a 2-out single and getting caught stealing. So technically, those were two singles in one inning off Woodworth, who faced three batter nonetheless. Through seven innings off Guerrero and one inning handed to Adam Cowen, the Elks would not progress past the lone run that Alex Torres had sped onto the scoreboard, and Woodworth continued in the ninth inning despite already having allowed eight base knocks. Danny Rice grounded out to Omar Saenz, but Stevenson knocked a single into leftfield, and that was the end for Woodworth, with Jeff Boynton, the former Raccoon, entering the obvious save situation. A strikeout to Greenwald and Gil Rockwell’s easy fly to Coca ended the game. 1-0 Canadiens. Spencer 2-4; Greenwald 2-4; Alfaro 2-3; Guerrero 7.0 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, L (6-17);

May the demons of hell have mercy with Bobby’s soul, because we all know it’s down there, propped on some infernal pike and wailing…

Game 2
POR: SS Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – CF Stevenson – C Tovias – 2B Armetta – RF Alfaro – P Nielson
VAN: 3B Jon. Morales – RF Houghtaling – LF A. Torres – C Holliman – SS Calfee – CF Coca – 1B M. Rivera – 2B Roundtree – P Purdy

A threat in more ways than one, Alex Torres hit a 2-run home run in the first inning, cashing in Nielson’s leadoff walk to Jonathan Morales, and technically, surely, winning the game for his team. It’s 2-0 Elks, dear listeners, and surely will stay so forever – good night!

Well, actually the Raccoons would claim the lead by the third inning, 3-2, and all their runs would be unearned on Gil Rockwell’s 3-piece in the same frame. That one came with two outs. While Stevenson’s following pop to Steve Roundtree ended the inning, it had started with Roundtree’s throwing error on Nielson’s poor grounder. The very free base runner generated there cost the Elks mightily four batters later. While the Elks were very confused by the sudden resistance offered by the visiting pushover team, the Raccoons added a run on Tim Stalker’s sixth homer of the season in the fifth inning. Nielson made it through five, but not through six; after losing Jonathan Morales to a leadoff single in the bottom 6th, he went on to walk Torres with one out, putting the tying runs on base in the 4-2 game. The Raccoons went to Cory Dew, who walked the bases loaded with four errant pitches to Ryan Holliman. Calfee hit a sac fly, 4-3, but Coca grounded out in 1-3 fashion, Tovias showing off his defensive skills.

When the Raccoons were in the outrageous situation of having not one, but even two runners randomly appearing on base, five innings had already passed since the previous instance of this event that occurred roughly at intervals of Halley’s Comet swooshing past the planet. The last time around, Gil Rockwell (or was it Wyatt Johnston?) had homered. This time Josh Stevenson lined into a 3-unassisted double play with the guilty Rockwell having moved at contact and never reversing. In the bottom of that eighth inning, Morales led off with a drag bunt single and Logan Sloan nicked Holliman, but somehow the skies didn’t crash down immediately, and Stalker handled Calfee’s grounder for the final out. When Brett Lillis got the ball in the bottom of the ninth, another pronounced 2-out panic ensued after consecutive walks to Steve Roundtree and Dave Rojas. Morales’ sharp single up the middle eluded Stalker and scored the tying run with the Elks down to their final out. Oh, Lillis – YOU ****ING ****!! And when Nunley made a nifty play on Jeremy Houghtaling’s sharp bouncer to end the inning after all, we even got to enjoy more morbid baseball in overtime, where a 2-base throwing error by Roundtree and a Jeff Boynton wild pitch were not enough for the Coons to score a ****ing run in the 11th inning. By contrast, the Coons’ relievers walked the leadoff men in the 10th (Moore) and 11th (West) innings. The first time it was Torres, who never stole that 62nd base. The second time it was PH Chris Tanzillo on four pitches, who was immediately run for by Alex Onelas, who immediately then took off and was caught stealing by the rookie behind the dish for the Critters. Bottom 12th, Adam Cowen pitching. Following Calfee’s 1-out single, Man-su Kim and Bobby Rickard both hit infield singles to load the bases, because that was the kind of stuff that kept happening. Onelas’ grounder to short was fired home by Daniel Bullock for the out there, and a groundout by debutee Francisco Rodriguez ended the inning with the bases still full. Another infield single by Morales opened the bottom of the 13th inning. The runner advanced on groundouts before Cowen walked Holliman. With runners on the corners, John Calfee’s grounder to left eluded Bullock, and the Elks walked off, totally unexpectedly. 5-4 Canadiens. Stalker 3-6, HR, RBI; Rockwell 2-4, HR, 3 RBI; Sloan 1.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K;

(groaning noises)

Game 3
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Rice – LF Graves – RF Alfaro – CF Santos – P Toner
VAN: LF A. Torres – 3B Jon. Morales – SS Calfee – 1B Saenz – CF Coca – C D. Rojas – RF Kim – 2B Wise – P Rosenthal

Omar Alfaro drew a 1-out walk to load the bases, then tried to slide through Ehren Wise’s face to break up the double play on Frank Santos’ pathetic grounder to short in the second inning. That worked, scoring the first run of the game, but the Elks were none too happy about Alfaro sliding approximately four feet above the ground. The Elks would get the run back soon enough, with Tony Coca hitting a leadoff single, stealing his 17th base, and eventually scoring on Man-su Kim’s sac fly to left in the bottom of the same inning. Toner had already allowed a few hard knocks in the first inning, and looked nothing like the old Toner that everybody had loved or at least respected.

The Coons’ offense remained dead in the water, and Toner was trying to stay at least in a tie and hope for a lucky shot or a 4-base error by the Elks, but nothing like that came along. Instead, Toner walked Rosenthal in the fifth inning, Torres singled up the middle, and with two outs Calfee sunk a ball behind the leftfield fence for a tie-breaking 3-run homer. Toner whiffed eight batters, mostly from the bottom of the order, in six innings, but his overall performance was quite meh. After he was done with his final outing of the year, Will West did his act for two innings, which meant more stunning defensive displays all over the field. It was, largely, all in vain. The Raccoons, who trailed 4-1 after the Calfee homer, never managed to put the tying run on home plate even once in the final four innings, with Matt Rosenthal lasting eight innings on four hits, and J.R. Hreha allowing a weak Rockwell single in the ninth inning, but the following batters ended the game in blitz fashion with poor outs. 4-1 Canadiens. Rice 2-4; Alfaro 0-1, 2 BB; West 2.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K;

By the end of this game I was seriously considering manual removal of my eyeballs and filling my ears with molten wax just to remove myself from the boundless misery.

Oh it’s just one more game in Elkland and three nights of raping by the Boston Banshees, what’s the worst that can (still) happen?

Game 4
POR: SS Stalker – LF Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Tovias – CF Stevenson – 2B Armetta – RF Alfaro – P Huf
VAN: LF A. Torres – 3B Jon. Morales – C Holliman – SS Calfee – 1B Saenz – CF Coca – RF Houghtaling – 2B Wise – P Becker

One of Huf’s clueless leadoff walks put Alex Torres on base unnecessarily to begin the bottom of the first inning. The Coons had stranded runners on the corners when Tovias had grounded out in the top of the inning andthere was no doubt that trouble was on the horizon. Torres stole second base, #62, and when Morales singled to right turned third base to score, except that Alfaro got in a timely throw and Tovias tagged him out while Torres raked his legs out from under him. The umpire still called Torres out, but Tovias had to leave the game with a messed up ankle and was replaced by Edwin Prieto. Huf went on to walk Calfee, but got out of the inning unharmed; in the bottom of the second, he allowed another single and two walks, and the Elks still didn’t get to him, Morales striking out with the bases loaded.

Ironically it would be Huf to be the first guy to cross home plate, snipping a leadoff single in the third inning before coming around on Stalker’s single and two groundouts by Spencer and Nunley. Outside the realm of irony and Coonley’s Believe It Or Not, Huf issued another walk to Calfee in the bottom 3rd, and the Elks pushed the tying run across on consecutive singles by Omar Saenz and Tony Coca. Josh Stevenson put gobble up RBI’s in his next two plate appearances, breaking the tie with a solo homer in the fourth inning, and adding a run with an RBI single scoring Rockwell in the sixth. Huf had somehow lived through five innings, but had needed almost 100 pitches and was pinch-hit for in the top of the sixth with Armetta reaching on an error and Alfaro walking. Zach Graves batted for Huf and flew out to right, lamely.

The 3-1 lead survived an encounter with Joe Moore in the sixth inning, but not Logan Sloan in the seventh. He walked Torres, the leadoff man … and then Calfee hit another bomb, that one tying the game with two outs. Bottom 8th, Billy Brotman pitching to Mike Rivera – leadoff walk! GODDAMNIT!! Next ****er to walk somebody gets shot as he comes off the ****ing airplane!! No walks were issued henceforth, with Noah Bricker cleaning up Brotman’s mess, and the innings progressing into double digits once again as two hopeless teams took fake swings against another. The Coons went through MacCarthy and Dew (who left with an injury) before arriving at Lillis in the 11th inning. The top of the 12th saw Dan Moon – a former Coons draft pick – hurl for the Elks, and the Critters loaded the bases on two walks and a Man-su Kim error. Rockwell was next to bat with one out, and Moon was more or less off the rolls now and lost the big guy to a walk as well, pushing home Stalker, before Edwin Prieto, who had replaced Tovias 11 innings before, hit an RBI single to left. Stevenson and Lillis (…) made the last two outs, but Lillis also collected three groundouts in the bottom of the inning to stave off last place terrors for once and for all. 5-3 Coons. Stalker 2-4, 2 BB; Prieto 2-5, RBI; Stevenson 3-6, HR, 2 RBI; Bricker 1.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K;

Elias Tovias’ season was over with a sprained and well-swollen ankle and he was on crutches as the team arrived back home in Portland on Thursday night. The Raccoons called up Isaiah Jones from AAA to maintain a body count, while Ricardo Romero also came off the DL in time for the Titans series.

Cory Dew was not diagnosed before the team returned home.

Raccoons (71-88) vs. Titans (103-56) – September 30-October 2, 2022

The Critters had played no small part in the Titans’ runaway campaign in 2022, getting flushed down the toilet at a 13-2 pace by the Bostonians, who were fourth in runs scored, but first in runs conceded in the Continental League, and would not take **** from the worst offensive team at any time. In fact, the Coons had scored only 31 runs against the Titans across the 15 previous games…

Projected matchups:
Rico Gutierrez (8-9, 3.06 ERA) vs. Alan Farrell (13-16, 3.46 ERA)
Jesus Chavez (4-5, 3.89 ERA) vs. Chris Klein (15-8, 2.36 ERA)
Bobby Guerrero (6-17, 4.16 ERA) vs. Julio San Pedro (7-3, 2.87 ERA)

What else is there to say? Remember, boys. The Raccoons have never lost 16 games to a division rival in a single season … AND THEY NEVER WILL!!

Game 1
BOS: SS Baptiste – CF Reichardt – LF Almanza – RF Braun – 1B A. Esquivel – C Leonard – 2B Casillas – 3B Corder – P Klein
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Rice – LF Graves – RF Alfaro – CF Santos – P Gutierrez

In the little things that made you really comfortable about going forward, Rico Gutierrez followed up two innings of facing the minimum with a leadoff walk to Tony Casillas in the third. That in itself was not the fatal flaw in his pitching; that moniker had to go to the two wild pitches he issued to Adam Corder, who got to hit a run-scoring groundout to Spencer, and then having the guts to walk the opposing pitcher AND throwing another wild pitch. Klein remained on the bases because Tristen Baptiste popped out and Adrian Reichardt whiffed, but boy, was the Queen not amused…! The Titans would go in order at this point and still had not found a base hit, but on the other hand Rico Gutierrez needed a whopping 76 pitches and a flashlight just to find his way through five innings. On the other side of the linescore, the Coons had collected singles by Graves and Spencer, but had not exactly routed the Titans off the field.

The bottom of the sixth actually saw a Critter in scoring position and the mere sight of a nominal scoring opportunity was still able to coax signs of life from a sparse crowd that had gone through a lot in the last six months – except for runs scored by their home team. Stalker had singled and stolen second base, advancing to third on Keith Leonard’s throwing error, but that was already with two outs and Gil Rockwell struck out to deny the diehards to see a tying run.

The ABL had never seen a no-hitter in a losing effort, and the league certainly wouldn’t start that bollocks for the soon-to-be 71-89 Critters. Gutierrez ineptly loaded the bases on walks and a hit batter alone in the seventh inning, but remained in the game as long as the bid was alive. It was beaten to death, thoroughly, by Javy Cisneros’ 2-out, 2-run single on Gutierrez’ 112th pitch, and the left-hander removed instantly. Moore struck out Klein to end the inning. In the bottom 8th the Coons had the tying run at the plate with two outs, Rockwell batting after singles by Stalker and Nunley. He grounded out shamefully to Antonio Esquivel – those two together had about 26,000 major league games of experience, by the way. The Raccoons in general and Gutierrez in particular would suffer another sad loss here, with their only success being to knock Klein out of the game in the ninth inning, on Ricardo Romero’s pinch-hit 2-out single, following which Frank Santos grounded out to second base. 3-0 Titans. Stalker 3-4; Romero (PH) 1-1;

Game 2
BOS: CF Reichardt – C Leonard – 1B Cornejo – SS Jam. Wilson – RF Braun – 2B Casillas – LF W. Ramos – 3B Corder – P Farrell
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – C Rice – CF Stevenson – LF Graves – RF Alfaro – P
Chavez

The Titans batted through the order and scored three in the first inning before Chavez found some poor fool worse at batting than he was at pitching, with Farrell striking out with the bases loaded. The inning had begun with a Reichardt single, had quickly accelerated with a Gil Cornejo RBI double, and the Titans had rapped Chavez for four hits and two walks in total. Farrell retired the first seven Coons before spilling consecutive doubels to Alfaro and Chavez, which reinforced my belief that we should more often try to have “batters” pitch and “pitchers” bat. The results could hardly be much more tragical. Jarod Spencer found a 2-out RBI single somewhere in his bag, and Nunley hit an infield single in the first time he had made himself noticeable in the entire week, while playing every single inning. And that as #3 batter! Still better than the #4 batter, though, with Gil Rockwell softly grounding out to strand the tying and go-ahead runs aboard. When the Coons placed Stevenson on second base in the fourth inning after his double to left center, Graves popped out for the second out and the Titans even bypassed Alfaro with four wide ones to bring up the pitcher. What was the chance that Chavez let another one rip? Zero. He struck out, stranding another pair.

The tying and go-ahead runs were on base again in the bottom of the fifth after leadoff singles by Stalker and Spencer. This brought up the hapless middle of the order (like they were any more or less hapless than the hapless top of the order or the hapless bottom of the order…), but the Coons did now get to take advantage of a rapidly decomposing Alan Farrell who got in line for his 17th loss of the season – Guerrero territory – when he conceded an RBI double to Matt Nunley and a sac fly to Rockwell, though Rice, Stevenson, and Graves would not get Nunley in from scoring position… On the other hand, a 4-3 lead did not belong into Chavez’ paws, either. Tony Casillas hit a leadoff double in the sixth inning and was easily brought around by his team, tying the game at four; neither starting pitcher received a decision. The Coons went through Kipple, Cowen, MacCarthy, and Bricker in the next three innings while drilling their claws into the 4-4 tie, and remarkably even sending the completely overwhelmed Kipple into a 4-4 tie didn’t lead to real disaster. Maybe they were destined to scratch out a whole three wins against the Titans in a full season anyway? The baseball gods’ magic #8 ball would not be coerced into anything but an “ask again later” this easily, with Romero, Stalker, and Spencer making three really poor outs against Mike Tharp in the bottom of the ninth, giving the team their third extra-inning affair of the week.

Gil Rockwell and Isaiah Jones (who?) hit singles in the bottom of the 10th inning, but Stevenson somehow found his way into a double play to extend the game to an 11th, in which 24-year old rookie Ryan Burgbacher hit his first home run, a leadoff jack, off Billy Brotman. Ron Thrasher would saw off the Coons in the bottom 11th, but not before Brotman struck Adrian Reichardt in the neck with a pitch, forcing the Titans’ centerfielder to be stretchered off, with blind panic in the faces of his teammates. Oh well, they still won, and where this game would once rank in terms of Pyrrhic victories, was yet to be seen. 5-4 Titans. Spencer 2-4, BB, RBI; Nunley 2-5, 2B, RBI; Jones 1-1;

REMEMBER BOYS. WE WILL NEVER LOSE SIXTEEN!!

Game 3
BOS: CF Reichardt – C Leonard – LF Amador – 1B Cornejo – SS Jam. Wilson – RF Braun – 2B Casillas – 3B Corder – P San Pedro
POR: SS Stalker – 2B Spencer – 3B Nunley – 1B Rockwell – RF Graves – CF Romero – C Prieto – LF Perakis – P Guerrero

Oh they were gonna lose sixteen. Adrian Reichardt was none too pleased about his treatment the previous day and played ferociously, singling hard to left, but then was caught stealing in a blind-rage attempt to take an extra base, just before Robero Amador hit a home run off Guerrero. Cornejo’s double, four helpless balls to Jamie Wilson, a wild pitch, and then Adam Braun’s single to center plated two more runs against Guerrero, who also walked Tony Casillas before Adam Corder flew out to Romero. Reichardt singled again in the second inning, this time took his base, the 33rd of the season for him, and Guerrero lost Leonard to a walk. Then Amador blasted another shot. It was 6-0 at that point.

Bobby G was done after three innings, surrendering the six runs on eight hits and three walks. A Graves double and Romero RBI single pulled one run back in the bottom 2nd, and after singles by Stalker and Spencer, and Nunley’s groundout, the Coons had runners in scoring position for Rockwell in the bottom 3rd. Rockwell, in a 3-1 count, fouled out. But Zach Graves came through, nailing a ball through Corder for a 2-run double, then scored on Casillas’ throwing error on Romero’s grounder. This suddenly closed the gap to a much less hopeless 6-4 score and – oh ****, we’re still watching the Coons? ****, it’s still over.

Adam Cowen was pitching by the fifth inning, following Sugano in a surely long line of merry relievers, relieved that it was all over soon. Cowen walked Jamie Wilson to start the inning, and then Graves dropped Adam Braun’s fly to right for an error. A wild pitch advanced the runners, and – oh – there was still nobody out in the inning. That soon changed with Nunley leaping high to snag Casillas’ liner and come down on the base with a hind paw, doubling up Wilson on a 5-unassisted double play. Corder was walked intentionally to get to San Pedro, who struck out. Bottom 6th, San Pedro issued a leadoff walk to Romero, but then struck out the next two batters. Greenwald doubled to left to score Romero, 6-5, and Stalker singled, but the tardy Greenwald was not able to score. Guerrero remained on the hook when Spencer flew out to Reichardt, and Gil Cornejo’s homer off David Kipple to begin the top of the seventh restored a 2-run gap at 7-5. Jamie Wilson singled to bring on the next reliever, with Sloan spilling a single to Corder and then a 2-out, 2-run double into the leftfield corner to pinch-hitter Willie Ramos. Reichardt completed his personal vendetta with the team with an RBI single to left, which brought the Titans into double digits, 10-5.

At this point, the Critters had their fur bright ablaze. The top of the eighth inning was the worst one yet. Quinn MacCarthy was pitching in a Custer’s Last Stand scenario, and he wasn’t gonna keep that scalp of his. The inning began with him mishandling Wilson’s grounder for an error, after which Adam Braun sacrificed, because, you know, up by five you really need another insurance run. Tony Casillas’ double plated Wilson, 11-5, for an unearned run. MacCarthy then wrestled with the sub-.200 Corder for seven pitches before he grounded out, but Casillas moved to third base. Kurt Evans pinch-hit in the #9 spot and grounded to first for the third out of – no, **** it, Rockwell overran the ball, the run was in, 12-5, and Evans at first after the error. Enter Reichardt, still mad at anything brown in sight and knocking the first pitch he saw hard at Nunley, who went the short way to second base for the third … ERROR of the inning! At which point we really deserved a pat on the back for that not littering the field with cups, wrappers, and ripped-out seats to force an abandonment of the wonky contest. Noah Bricker replaced the luckless MacCarthy and allowed a deep drive to center to Eric McPherson, but Romero somehow caught that to FINALLY end the inning. But the Titans, who were surely also cursed, lost Jamie Wilson to injury in the bottom 8th, so maybe we were even after all? Well, maybe in spirit, but surely not in score. Brett Lillis had to pitch in a 7-run blowout in the ninth inning, because arms had become scarce all of a sudden, but somehow avoided another seventeen runs to find their way onto the board in the season-ending creaming. 12-5 Titans. Stalker 2-4, BB; Graves 2-4, 2 2B, 2 RBI; Greenwald 2-2, 2B, RBI;

In other news

September 26 – Boston’s Adam Braun (.292, 6 HR, 40 RBI) hits a 10th-inning pinch-hit home run for the only score in the Titans’ 1-0 win over the Indians.
September 29 – The Falcons’ 10-5 win over the Knights locks up the CL South for good and allows the Charlotte team to fight the Titans in the upcoming CLCS. This will be the Falcons’ eighth playoff appearance and their first since 2008.
October 2 – WAS INF Shane Walter (.335, 3 HR, 53 RBI) rips the Miners with five hits in the Capitals’ division-clinching 9-3 victory. Walter’s line includes two doubles and two RBI. The Capitals will make the playoffs for the ninth time overall and for the second time in three years.

Complaints and stuff

#4 pick clinched! Now to the collateral damage…

By the weekend we casually found out that Cory Dew had suffered a torn rotator cuff pitching in the umpteenth inning of a meaningless game between two teams in the gutter. He was probably going to miss nine months, maybe a bit more – the Druid was not very committal on that one, and I wasn’t sure whether the blunderbuss I held had anything to do with it.

Assuming we don’t resign Noah Bricker and I can find a way to turn Brett Lillis into prospects full in the juice of youth, Cory Dew would have been our closer in 2023. Yeah, well, **** me, that won’t happen.

This week we learned that Matt Huf had been diagnosed with ADHD as a teen and had recently stopped taking his meds, and also had trouble remembering what to do when on the mound in the first place. Gee, I really wonder what he has to remember after walking the bases loaded every other inning!!

There are solutions to this, thankfully, and some don’t even involve dismembering him and dumping chunks of him in seven different rivers. The Druid has taken it on himself to brew him a rememberance tea, and it smells like rats – dead or alive.

ABL CAREER STRIKEOUT LEADERS
45th – Ricardo Torres – 2,273
46th – Jason O’Halloran – 2,266 – HOF
47th – Salvador Fierro – 2,242
48th – Harry Griggs – 2,234
49th – Ramón Ortíz – 2,188
50th – Jonathan Toner – 2,172 – active
51st – Antonio Donis – 2,164 – HOF
t-52nd – Manuel Paredes – 2,144
t-52nd – Jorge Gine – 2,144 – active, on DL

Jason O’Halloran is remembered as key part of the Titans’ late-90s, early-2000s dynasty, you know, the teams that went to the playoffs eight out of nine seasons while the Raccoons chose to spend the seasons hanging upside down from some bird feeder contraption. The 2003 Pitcher of the Year, O’Halloran twice led the league in wins, but never led it in strikeouts, and never struck out 200. The left-hander from Queens’ best ever season in terms of strikeouts was 2000, when he whiffed 185. His career record was 248-150, and he had a 3.39 ERA to make it into the Hall of Fame.

Ricardo Torres was a Mexican right-hander that pitched in the 1980s and 1990s, spent his entire career in the Federal League, and was never really on the right team… His balanced career record (213-211) hint at mixed team success already, although his career ERA of 3.95 also was not that great. He spent his 20s exclusively with the Miners, who clearly got the best of his arm, although he would hang on for nine more years with the Cyclones and Warriors after that.

Fun Fact: Bobby Guerrero’s 18 losses tie the highwater mark for defeats by a Raccoons pitcher in the 21st century, first put up in the 2000’s by Ralph Ford in ’04. Only one Furball has ever lost more games in a single season: wholly overwhelmed Gary Simmons went a blinding 3-21 with a 4.60 ERA in 1981.

’81 was also the last season that Simmons started games in the majors at all. He vanished in the depths of minor league baseball in ’82, but then would hang on a job for 11 more years, being a decent reliever for the Blue Sox, Knights, and Elks. He ended up 52-64 with a 3.44 ERA and 28 SV overall. He still dreams of wild raccoons trying to eat his soul.

The only other pitchers to get stuck with 18 losses besides 2022 Bobby Guerrero and 2004 Ralph Ford? Juan Berrios (1977) and “Old Chris” Powell (1978)!

Ah, good times. Good times.

What? – Slappy, what is it? I am reminiscing the olden days! – What do you mean we’re out of Capt’n Coma!?

H-NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

[Westheim]

2022 ABL PLAYOFFS

Four happy teams entered October, but three of them would have their sand castle washed away by the sea before the end of the month, leaving only one team with the ABL championship in 2022.

For the second year in a row, the FL East had been a neck-and-neck race between several teams right to the final weekend of the season, and the 88-74 Capitals in fact only clinched their ninth playoff appearance on Closing Day. The 1990, 1991, and 1997 champions appeared ruffled however as they were to face the Scorpions, having piled up injuries to a number of important players, including SP Jose “Butch” Diaz (4-4, 3.05 ERA) and infielders Tom McWhorter (.245, 21 HR, 96 RBI) and Guillermo Obando. McWhorter had led the team in RBI and had tied for the lead in home runs with Terry Kopp and Matt Hamilton. In fact, the Capitals were pretty reliant on home runs to get anywhere, given that they had posted the third-lowest batting average of all Federal League teams. They had ranked second in home runs with 136 dingers overall. With Obando and McWhorter out, most of their lineup was now left-handed. On the pitching side, the team had four 14-game winners, but no hurler had made it to a sub-3 ERA, with lefty Eric Williams (15-9, 3.16 ERA) leading the team in both categories. It was a solid rotation, but not a great one, but their bullpen had been the best in the Federal League, and southpaw Ben Marx (4-7, 2.20 ERA, 43 SV) had been a force to reckon with in the ninth inning. Like their lineup, most of their pitching was left-handed, including three starters (with Tom McGuire moved to the bullpen) and three relievers throwing from the south side.

The Capitals’ left-handedness could give them a slight advantage against the 102-60 Scorpions, who clinched the West for the fourth straight year and 11th time overall, and had won championships in 1980, 1995, and 2020 previously, but had entered the 2021 FLCS with a similarly lop-sided win total over the Blue Sox and had been badly embarrassed by the underdogs. The Scorpions were the best team in the league in terms of offense, plating a blinding 945 runs this year. They would have four .300+ batters, although only three of those had put up a qualifying number of plate appearances, led by Doug Stross (.328, 8 HR, 93 RBI). Last year’s .400 wonder Pablo Sanchez had shed 86 points off his batting average, but had still been a nightmare on opposing pitching, piling up a .323 clip with 11 homers and 93 RBI. Ray Meade led the team with 114 RBI, while Ricky Luna had homered 22 times to lead the club, but was still batting routinely at the bottom of the order. Like the Capitals, the Scorpions’ rotation was solid, but not great. They would line up four starters with ERA’s better than 3.50 though, and also entered Ozzie Pereira with his 3.21 ERA, who had gone a whopping 19-2 during the season. If they had a weak spot, it was probably their bullpen, which lacked great shutdown potential and they had recycled closers a few times during the year. Overall, they had been average with their staff, allowing the sixth-most runs in the FL.

The 106-56 Titans had clinched home field advantage throughout the playoffs while allowing the fewest runs in the league (552) and plating the third-most in the Continental League. This was their ninth playoff appearance, with the previous eight all having come in a narrow 9-year window from 1997 through 2005, during which they had been the preeminent team in the sport and had won the championship four times. In the meantime they had won more than 90 games just twice, but had finished last in the CL North four times, including as recently as 2019. While the credentials of their pitching were undeniable and they fielded two potential Pitchers of the Year in Chris Klein (16-8, 2.28 ERA) and Brian Cope (20-3, 2.67 ERA), and their bullpen was not short of horrors for opposing batters, including a wealth of left-handed relievers led by Ron Thrasher (5-5, 2.79 ERA, 47 SV), they had a few issues with their lineup heading into the CLCS against the Falcons. While they had pulled off the stunning feat of winning 100+ games while hitting the fewest home runs in the league, two of their key players – Jamie Wilson and Adrian Reichardt – had suffered injuries at the end of the season and entered the playoffs ailing, though not disabled. While they had shown no power whatsoever and had not produced a single batter with double-digit home runs, and their team leader in both home runs and batting average, Tony Casillas, had hit only .273 with nine dingers, they had been tops of the game with a mind-numbing .343 team on-base percentage. The 2022 Titans were a team like a boa constrictor, slowly enveloping other teams before crushing them to death.

Left on the list of teams to crush for the Titans were the 91-71 Falcons, who had freakishly emerged winners in a CL South that had seen only two winning teams, and the Falcons meager run differential of +29 indicated a certain amount of luck in getting to 20 games over .500; while they had been second in runs scored, they had also been sixth in runs allowed, with a rotation that might frankly be in trouble against the Titans, since it had also been in trouble against mediocre teams in the league. Sophomore Kyle Anderson (11-9, 3.32 ERA) was their only starting hurler with an ERA better than four, and they would end up with either Greg Gannon (9-6, 5.60 ERA) or J.J. Rodd (4-2, 5.23 ERA) by Game 4. Their lineup sported quite a few dangers in ex-Titan Tim Robinson (.264, 31 HR, 85 RBI), who had been second in the CL in home runs, and they had banged out the second-most homers in the CL overall. However, most of their batters were left-handed except for Robinson, Pat Fowlkes (.319, 19 HR, 88 RBI) and Ryan Czachor, which could make them very vulnerable and inefficient in late innings against the Titans’ multitude of left-handed relievers. This was the eighth playoff appearance for Charlotte, with their lone title coming in 2005. Five of their playoff appearances had come between 2003 and 2008, so they were no strangers to facing the Titans in the CLCS, but it had not always ended well for them…

The pundits are mostly united in their belief that both LCS should be clear affairs, and many also express that this could be the first pair of LCS to both result in sweeps since the 1996 playoffs, when the Scorpions and Aces got swept by the Rebels and Raccoons, respectively.

+++

2022 LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES

Falcons @ Titans … 1-3 … (Titans lead 1-0) … BOS Jonathan Stephens 2-4, 2B, 2 RBI; BOS Chris Klein 8.0 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 7 K, W (1-0);

The Titans got bad news after their initial Game 1 success, with Jamie Wilson having to be shut down with elbow inflammation, rendering him inoperable for the playoffs.

Capitals @ Scorpions … 8-4 … (Capitals lead 1-0) … WAS Matt Hamilton 3-4, BB; WAS Dave Menth 3-5; WAS Matt Barber 2-5, HR, 3 RBI; SAC Pablo Sanchez 3-5;
Falcons @ Titans … 8-5 … (series tied 1-1) … CHA Matt Good 3-5, 3B, 4 RBI; BOS Keith Leonard 3-4, BB, 2B;

In Sacramento, 19-game winner Ozzie Pereira is lit up for seven runs in 3.2 innings as the Scorpions fans are sent into nightmares again, fearing a repeat of the 2021 CLCS that saw their team enter in a dominant scenario only to get wiped out. To make things worse, SAC SS Trey Rock (.291, 0 HR, 35 RBI) sprained his ankle in the game and would miss the remainder of the playoffs.

Capitals @ Scorpions … 4-5 … (series tied 1-1) … SAC Doug Stross 3-3, BB, 2B, RBI; SAC Mike Gershkovich (PH) 1-1, RBI; SAC Josh Fields (PH) 1-1, 3B, 2 RBI;

Two rain delays in the first five innings wipe out starters Tadasu Abe and Sam McMullen before either team can break through. The Capitals hold a lead in the eighth inning, but Josh Fields’ triple off Danny Arguello turns the game in the Scorpions’ favor, who level the series before heading to the Potomac.

Titans @ Falcons … 8-2 … (Titans lead 2-1) … BOS Willie Ramos 3-5, 2B, RBI; BOS Adrian Reichardt 3-5, 2B, RBI; BOS Mike Kane 3-5, RBI;

Scorpions @ Capitals … 9-3 … (Scorpions lead 2-1) … SAC Pablo Sanchez 3-5, 2 3B, 3 RBI;
Titans @ Falcons … 3-6 … (series tied 2-2) … BOS Keith Leonard 3-4, 2 2B, RBI; CHA Travis Benson 1-4, HR, 4 RBI;

While Travis Benson’s sixth-inning slam off Chris Klein proves to be the game winner with which the Falcons level the series again, Scorpions and Capitals are tied at three after eight innings until the Scorpions fully and completely rout Capitals closer Ben Marx for five runs in a 6-run ninth.

Scorpions @ Capitals … 5-4 … (Scorpions lead 3-1) … SAC Ricky Luna 2-4, BB, RBI; WAS Shane Walter 3-5, 2B; WAS Dave Menth 2-4, 2 RBI;
Titans @ Falcons … 8-3 … (Titans lead 3-2) … BOS Alan Farrell 8.0 IP, 8 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 5 K, W (1-1);

Ben Marx is dismembered for the second consecutive game, blowing a 4-1 lead with six hits and four runs charged to him in the ninth inning.

Scorpions @ Capitals … 2-6 … (Scorpions lead 3-2) … SAC Pablo Sanchez 2-4, BB, HR, RBI; WAS Matt Barber 3-4, 2 2B, 2 RBI; WAS Eric Williams 6.0 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, W (2-0);

Falcons @ Titans … 4-3 … (series tied 3-3) … CHA Matt Good 2-3, BB, 3B, 2 RBI; BOS Tony Casillas 2-5, HR, 2 RBI;

Falcons closer Gregg Bell allows a 1-out single to Keith Leonard, a 2-out single to Mike Kane, then walks Kurt Evans and Adam Flack to close a 4-2 score to 4-3, with the tying run at third base, and the World Series-clinching run at second base. Tony Casillas runs a full count before swinging over ball four.

Capitals @ Scorpions … 6-3 … (series tied 3-3) … WAS Jason Stone 3-5, HR, 3 RBI; WAS Matt Barber 2-5, HR, 3 RBI; WAS Rob Howell 3-5, 2B; SAC Doug Stross 2-4, HR, 2 RBI;
Falcons @ Titans … 1-2 (10) … (Titans win 4-3) … CHA Joseph McClenon 2-3, 2B, RBI; BOS Eric McPherson (PH) 1-1, 2B, RBI;

McPherson’s double off Gregg Bell walks off the Titans in the tenth inning. The Titans had already made up a 1-0 deficit in the ninth inning against Bell thanks to doubles by Keith Leonard and Mike Kane.

Capitals @ Scorpions … 4-3 … (Capitals win 4-3) … WAS Jason Stone 2-5, 2 RBI; WAS Matt Wittner 3-5, 2B; WAS Rob Howell 2-4, 2 2B, 2 RBI; SAC Mike Gershkovich 2-2, BB;

It happened again! 37-year-old journeyman shortstop Rob Howell shoots the Capitals into the World Series and the Scorpions into another winter of lamenting destiny with a 2-out, 2-run double off Rich Hewitt in the seventh inning. Killian Savoie and the harshly-treated Ben Marx hold on to the slim lead in the final three innings despite Stan Murphy’s leadoff single in the bottom of the ninth inning.

+++

2022 WORLD SERIES

The best team in the playoffs would face off against the worst team in the playoffs in the 46th World Series, although at this point people wondered whether the Capitals would not have at least a momentum advantage. But while both teams had scored a comparable number of runs during the season, the Titans still possessed vastly superior pitching and had to he considered the favorites even after losing veteran Jamie Wilson to injury. While the raw numbers pointed to the Titans at least in pitching, quirky things like handedness of pitchers and batters was unlikely to be a factor given that both lineups trended to left-handed batters, but both teams also possessed numerous left-handed options in the bullpen.

The pundits refuse to comment on their beliefs at this point.

Capitals @ Titans … 2-3 … (Titans lead 1-0) … BOS Adrian Reichardt 3-3, BB, 2B; BOS Adam Braun 3-4, 2B, 2 RBI; BOS Alan Farrell 8.0 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 6 K, W (2-1);

Capitals @ Titans … 4-5 … (Titans lead 2-0) … WAS Matt Hamilton 2-4, HR, RBI; WAS Matt Barber 2-4, RBI; BOS Willie Ramos 4-4, 2 2B, RBI;

Titans @ Capitals … 9-7 (10) … (Titans lead 3-0) … BOS Keith Leonard 3-4, 2 BB; BOS Mike Kane 4-6, 3 RBI; BOS Adam Braun 2-5, HR, 4 RBI; WAS Terry Kopp 1-3, HR, 5 RBI;

Terry Kopp’s first-inning slam against Brian Cope does not hold up; aided by Adam Braun’s grand slam off Tadasu Abe, the Titans will tie the game by the fifth inning, before Ben Marx has another meltdown in the tenth inning, conceding a walk and four singles to take his third loss in the playoffs, which he wore along with a 15.00 ERA.

Titans @ Capitals … 9-7 (12) … (Titans win 4-0) … BOS Chris Almanza 5-6, BB, RBI; BOS Antonio Esquivel 3-5, 2 BB, HR, 4 RBI; BOS Keith Leonard 3-6, 2 2B; BOS Javy Salomon 4.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 3 K, W (1-0); WAS Rob Howell 3-6, RBI;

You’ll never guess it – but up 7-4 in the ninth inning, the Capitals turned to Ben Marx again and he was torn up for another three runs (and a 17.55 ERA at the end of his outing). Danny Arguello saved the Capitals into extra innings, where they could not get the upper hand against the Titans’ Javy Salomon. The long reliever had entered the game in the ninth inning and would never leave it. Doubles by Jonathan Stephens and Adrian Reichardt against Washington’s John Watson break the tie with one out in the 12th inning, and Allen Reed would plate Reichardt with a wild pitch later in the inning. Salomon would issue a 2-out walk to Jason Stone in the bottom 12th, but Shane Walter’s groundout to Stephens ended everybody’s season.

This was the second consecutive World Series sweep in ABL history, after the Loggers stomped the Blue Sox in four games in ’21, but only the sixth sweep overall. None of these two teams had been involved in a prior sweep.

2022 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS
Boston Titans
(5th title)

[UltimateAverageGuy]

The off-season is always so intriguing in this league, can't wait

Sent from my SM-J727T using Tapatalk

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by UltimateAverageGuy

The off-season is always so intriguing in this league, can't wait

Be careful what you're wishing for.

+++

Three things in life were unavoidable even under the best circumstances: death, taxes, and Pricks being pricks.

The 2023 Raccoons would have a radically slashed budget of $27M available, which was a $4.5M reduction compared to ’22. Two years after ranking in the top 3 in the league in terms of money to throw around, the Raccoons dropped into the bottom half, tying the Falcons for 14th place in financial prosperity. Looking only at the CL North, they were fourth behind the Crusaders (2nd overall, $35.5M), Titans (7th, $32M), Loggers (10th, $29.2M), and ahead of the Elks (18th, $26M) and Indians (22nd, $23.2M).

The biggest budgets were enjoyed by the Scorpions ($39.5M), Crusaders, Blue Sox ($34.5M), Cyclones ($33.5M), and Gold Sox ($33M). The smallest budgets were to be found with the Buffaloes ($24.6M), Stars ($23.4M), Indians, Thunder ($23M), and Wolves ($20.2M).

The median budget was $27.7M; the average budget was $28.7M.

Also, dark times were ahead.

Before we get to the meat of the offseason, we should perhaps mention that the AAA Alley Cats made the playoffs, which ran long and stretched into the major league playoffs. One year after winning the AAA Championship, the Alley Cats dropped to the Loganville Bombardiers in seven games in the same best-of-seven series, losing all odd-numbered games, including Game 7 in a 12-0 rout.

Now, although the Raccoons had a sizable amount of free agents that would disappear from the organization in a wee while, they also had next to no money available anymore. Considering that only roughly 75% to 80% are typically available for actual payroll of the total budget for the season, $27M translated into a major league payroll of about $20M to $21M. The salaries of Jonny Toner, Gil Rockwell, and Cookie Carmona alone for 2023 would add up to a whopping $7.9M, and here was our first dilemma already, because Cookie had a $2.3M team option that required a quick decision.

The only other guaranteed contracts on hand belonged to Brett Lillis ($1.8M), Jesus Chavez ($1M), Matt Nunley ($700k), and Josh Stevenson ($600k). That makes $12M for seven players, of which – depending on your personal opinion on how Stevenson performed the naked eye test – two or three were numb nuts, and two more were best described as “injury prone”, and that is before we discuss how Matt Nunley was on the Opening Day roster nine times in his career and played 150+ games for only the fourth time. He has however been the Critters’ primary starter at third base for the ninth consecutive season, tying him for second all-time in franchise history for consecutive ribbons as leading starter on the same position with a multitude of players. Still untouched: Dan The Man, who started most games in leftfield for 13 consecutive seasons until displaced to the other end of the green by Vern Kinnear in ’92.

So we have about $6M to $7M to find another 18 players for the major league roster after deducting the minimum salaries of the 40-man roster dwellers. Fun times ahead?

Regarding the upcoming free agents it might be safe to assume that none of them will be back, except perhaps Bobby Guerrero depending on how much we need that innings eater at the end of the rotation. Of course Ryan Nielson pitched well after he was promoted as a desperate measure from AAA. But a year before, Ricky Martinez had pitched well after he was promoted as a desperate measure from AAA, and that one turned into a 7.26 ERA turd the following season, even without Nielson’s career credentials of a wannabe quad-A swingman type not useful in any kind of role.

But sometimes pitchers find their inner greatness at 30 years old, don’t they? No?

But for a team that couldn’t do too much picky-picky, choosy-choosy, Nielson was an attractive option for being a swingman and left-handed alone, and his career ERA of 4.03 in the majors was not exactly attractive, but we weren’t exactly going to run for the playoffs in ’23, were we? Also, at age 30 he was still at least one year removed from breaking free of minimum salary shackles.

Maybe Guerrero, maybe not. Maybe Bricker, maybe not. Can Brett Lillis be turned into some hot 20-year-old boy players that will soon make a major league All Star team? It didn’t work in July, and I am not sure it will work in December. A rebuilding team probably won’t need both of them.

We only had three arbitration cases, and they were all sad. Cory Dew was a good-to-maybe-great reliever, but had torn up his shoulder, which was a thing that has been known to ruin careers. We’d tender him, although he would probably not get off the DL until July, and not back to the majors until August. Then there was Ricardo Romero, whom I didn’t want to have in the very first place after he was thrown into the Yoshi deal with the Gold Sox, who refused to go away, and spend roughly 200 at-bats doing absolutely nothing to help his team. He batted an uninspired and powerless .244, and while advertised as a base stealer, his success rate was a whopping 25% - interestingly fairly close to Danny Rice’s share of runners caught stealing. I’ve been yelling at his picture in the yearbook, desiring to know why it was in there in the first place, for months – I’m not sure whether this has to go on… And then there was Ezequiel Olivares, who had enjoyed some neat success as a rule 5 pick, but right now was a 31-year-old .188 batter with no friends relegated to St. Petersburg. The Coons are probably settled on Elias Tovias as their starting catcher in ’23 – the kid batted .232/.283/.429 in 60 PA, which is the kind of output for a 22-year-old that makes you cautiously optimistic that this time all things will shake out well, please, please just once! – and Olivares is one in a sea of unqualified backup options available that includes not only Edwin Prieto and Isaiah Jones (who?) on the major league roster, but also Jake Burrows in AAA.

Between Elias Tovias, Tim Stalker, Daniel Bullock, Jarod Spencer, Zach Graves, and Omar Alfaro the Raccoons had a flood of minimum-salary youngsters that had been penciled in not only for starting roles but also for team-carrying starting roles only months earlier, but of which only ONE (Spencer) had batted more than .246 in 2022, and of which Tovias’ .712 OPS had led the group, and then we loop back to the 60 plate appearances he had enjoyed in his brief career. For the others, Spencer led the back again with a .672 OPS, which was something losing teams were made out of.

There it is – the Youth of a Nation. How many will live to see the end of next season?

Since we are sitting on the Toner, Rockwell, and Carmona (like I’ll let him go for free!), 2023 will probably be a year where all the youngsters can show their very best behavior as an application for future considerations. We do not have to – and will not – pursue any big name batters this offseason; with Cookie, Stevenson, Alfaro, Nunley, Stalker, Spencer, Rockwell, and Tovias we already know our eight starters come April. The only asterisk in that group is really on Stevenson, who could be trade bait.

Watch that Spencer kid. Not only because between him and Bullock there are 1,286 major league at-bats without a single home run, and we will keep counting up merrily. No, watch him because I have touted him as something that will get us forward, and back to the top, and he’s already been around for 1 1/2 years and has piled up 745 plate appearances of an 85 OPS+. The reasons for him failing are pretty obvious. He has absolutely no power, and he has no self control at the plate. He was an – unintentional – walk rate of 1.1%. That is right. He comes to the plate 90 times, and he will walk ONCE.

The Raccoons are once again counting on players that already have a decent sample size of major league plate appearances and have shown to be active game losers. We had this in the past, and it did not end well AT ALL.

Watch that Spencer kid for Luke Newton reasons. Or Chris Parker reasons.

Mike Crowe.

Chris Beairsto.

Clyde Brady.

Fun fact: The only player to start the most games in rightfield for the Raccoons in even THREE seasons ever since the Clyde Brady era ended, 18 years ago, is Cookie Carmona, doing so from 2018 through 2020.

I am not kidding – the Raccoons have run out a dozen further players that led the team in starts in rightfield in the other 15 years, including some you a) managed to erase from your mind via abuse of controlled substances a long time ago, and b) could swear the Raccoons received money FROM to actually allow them to toil away out there. The often dirty dozen includes, in chronological order:

Christian Greenman, Bob Mays (who?), Luke Black (twice), Ron Alston (twice), Keith Ayers (OUT AT HOME), John Alexander, Mike Bednarski (twice), Luis Reya (who?), Ron Richards, William Waggoner (you serious?), Eddie Jackson, and Zach Graves.

[Westheim]

Offseason proper started with picking up Cookie’s option for 2023, because I can’t possibly live without him ever again, and Maud also briefed me on Bob Mays, who was such a good player that he picked up all of 620 at-bats in a career that ended more or less at age 24. The season he started the most games among Critters in rightfield was year 10 of 10 of the thing I don’t want to talk about anymore, but constantly do. He batted .249/.281/.363, and yes, we actually wondered back then why things didn’t go forwards at all.

I also picked up the news that 2003 Coons first-rounder and 2007 CL Reliever of the Year Angel Casas had thrown in the towel after a 5.73 ERA campaign with the Capitals, far and away his worst-ever season. He ended up with 641 career saves and a 53-52 record and 2.28 ERA, and we’re gonna see him on the Hall of Fame ballot once and once only five years from now. There were a couple more players that retired at the start of the season, even those we know by name (even me!), including Jorge Gine, Pedro Cruz, Jason McDonald, and a few more, but none of them could even remotely stink up to the 9-time All Star Casas, who retired second all-time in career saves.

Fun fact: Did you know that Travis Garrett won 16 games in 2022 (between two levels) and I still can’t stand his face anymore?

Something that I picked up while I sifted through the general detritus of a 71-91 team was a lot of sludge sticking to the edges of the (full) 40-man roster, and also a few players that were not on it, but should be mentioned.

One such instance was the centerfield situation, where the Raccoons had picked up Josh Stevenson in their deDeWeeseian trade with the Thunder two winters ago. Stevenson, 29 by now, was a capable defensive centerfielder, who was a career .260/.327/.368 batter for his career and hadn’t strived from those numbers uncomfortably far as a Raccoons. You pretty much knew what you’d get from him – substandard batting (96 OPS+ for his career), and lots of injuries. He was far from the only “capable defensively” candidate for the centerfield job, because there was also the arbitration-eligible Ricardo Romero, who had somehow managed to bat even less than Stevenson and get caught three out of four times on the bases, and had managed to be worth not even half a win in terms of WAR in ’22 despite appearing in 93 games, starting 52. The good news was hey, finally a batter that didn’t get worse upon arrival in Portland! Romero had cost the Gold Sox .5 WAR in ’21. Hitting the big three-oh before the end of October, there was no real point in wasting oxygen on him, especially with a $390k estimate.

No, we shall pass – the Raccoons could find barely replacement-level centerfielding for a minimum salary, thank you.

There were several candidates for that, sorted in ascending levels of rancidness: Frank Santos, who should be put down simply for having been waived by the Wolves in the first place, Dwayne Metts, who had batted all of .087/.192/.087 in 11 games in Portland this year, and was rapidly joining the line of “what was he ever gonna do here?” players in our batting register, and also Kevin DeWald, who somehow was still making meal money off the Raccoons despite batting .229 with one homer in AAA this year.

There was also one more player in AAA that was younger than all the other guys, way more adept defensively than the other guys, stealing bases at a much higher rate than all the other guys, and who had entered the organization for a paltry $15,000 in 2016, signed for that token amount out of his drug-infested slum in the Dominican. Danny Torres, 22, ticked a lot of boxes, but unfortunately also a few wrong ones. He had no power stick to begin with – so 16 years after his retirement, his adherents were still waiting for the next coming of Neil Reece – and he had also made an Alfaroan splash in St. Petersburg in September upon first being promoted there, batting .157 with no homers in 51 at-bats.

So while Torres was no candidate for an Opening Day lineup assignment in ’23, there was another player in AAA that was at least trying to make a name for himself. 23-year old 2020 supplemental-round pick Justin Gerace was purely, barely a leftfielder by trade, but he had surely generated attention with his full AAA campaign and .282/.376/.494 slash with 18 homers and 104 RBI. If Alfaro’s April is going to be like Alfaro’s September, Gerace could be up in the brown shirt quicker than you can wonder why we can’t have nice things to begin with.

For practical purposes, however, it looked like a) Josh Stevenson might stick around, b) Ricardo Romero wouldn’t, c) Frank Santos can go get bitten by bedbugs, and d) we might sign a really cheap three-position defensive outfielder on the market or just actually go with Dwayne Metts’ probably syphilitic corpse by Opening Day. Hey, the kid has only had 500 plate appearances to prove himself, he can still be so much more than a .223/.320/.314 hitter…

That’s how 10-year nightmares start, with sentences like that one.

Thinking about it, we might not sign a single free agent this winter. Why bother? Why the hassle? Besides, I despise meeting new people anyway. Maud, just make them all leave me alone.

Not even the agony of crippling loneliness was in the cars for me while I was evaluating centerfielders by order of magnitude of their colossal ineptitude – when Cookie Carmona dropped by in October to pick up his copy of the team option being executed, he brought his youngest brother Cristiano along – the kid that had been in a wheelchair (and would be forever) with then only three wheels until Cookie had gotten his first proper paycheck from the Raccoons to buy a proper vehicle for him. Cookie gleamingly announced that his now 18-year-old brother had been accepted into Portland State University to study business administration – not only the first member of the Carmona family to attend school past the age of 14, but also obviously the first to be admitted to any kind of university, and the first to become an actual manager of … something! Cristiano, whose eyes were almost at the same level as mine despite him being in a brown-and-black wheelchair since age and sorrow had bent my back badly in recent years, and who persistently wore a penetrating white smile in the middle of his face of dark brown complexion, couldn’t help himself but hug me again, as he had done the first time he’d been to Portland, and I cried a little again, as I had done the first time he’d been to Portland.

By the time they left, Cookie had wrung a paid internship for Cristiano from me and the budget, which I had to confess to Steve from Accounting, and everybody was happy. Mostly.

Oh well at least the kid will learn from the best.

Me. I mean myself.

Well, who could be better at administrating sadness and minding his own business than me, and wasn’t that what he studied? And my track record is … uhm … long.

(whistles sharply and paints a vertical circle in the air with an index finger)

Back to actual baseball things that needed addressing, the Raccoons actively needed to figure out their rotation in 2023. There was Jonny Toner, and then some.

On the left-handed side, there was Rico Gutierrez, who now was where Ricky Martinez had been a year earlier, and Martinez had ended up in the AAA bullpen at one point, then the DL after suffering demotion in May. Gutierrez had pitched to a 3.11 ERA and had held his ground despite a losing record. He really lived on his fastball, with none of his breaking pitches being extremely good, but maybe that was enough to actually be a #3, #4, #5 starter? The higher up in the order the deeper the team was in the division, of course. Then there was Ryan Nielson, really a bunch of nothing that had somehow managed to pitch 124 good innings after sample sizes from ’17 through ’20 that had been bad enough that he had never been called up in ’21 and you might remember that everybody but Chad and Slappy got turns at tossing the ball that season, too. Relying on Nielson to repeat his deeds was exactly like building an actual castle – not a sand castle – on sand.

From the right-hand side, Jesus Chavez and Matt Huf had enjoyed no more than mixed success. Both had been just over 4 in terms of ERA, while Bobby Guerrero, the only Coons hurler to reach a qualifying number of innings during the season, struggled to a 4.40 ERA while losing ALL THE GAMES. Chavez had been roughed up badly the previous year, so he had improved already, and one thing I noticed was how he issued very few walks – 1.8 per nine innings in ’22. The same was not quite true for Huf, a mid-season acquisition from the Blue Sox, who was walking everybody and had barely amounted to 5 1/2 innings per start thanks to being inept. More castles on sand.

And then you have a collection of pitchers in AAA: Travis Garrett and Trevor Taylor – both 26 – had both been looked at and had been adjudged as being insufficient as pitchers AND as persons, too. There was Jonathan Shook, who had come over in the Dumbo Mendoza trade, and had pitched 101 very decent innings between AA and AAA, and there was also Juan Mendez, who had cost us next-to-nothing as 2016 International Free Agent, and who had also performed remarkably well between AA and AAA, although his walks were a bit high. Both Mendez and Shook were 23, and we weren’t even done yet with not-completely-crap starting pitching in AAA, because there was still the youngest of the kids there, 22-year-old Canadian Reese Kenny, who had campaign with the Alley Cats for a 10-8 record and 3.64 ERA, walking almost as many as he struck out, but the Riddler rhymed about bathing in maple syrup, so I assume Kenny will be well.

There was technically also still 26-year-old reclamation project Roger Kincheloe, whose arm had delivered 200 innings’ worth of baseballs between AA and AAA without blowing out, even though the results had not been that awesome, and, oh, ****, yeah, Ricky Martinez, too!

So, we weren’t exactly starved for young pitching, because by my count that makes a baker’s dozen and we are only going to need five of them. There was probably no point in paying Bobby Guerrero any longer, or making him lose more ballgames.

But, yeah… we ain’t got no need for a starting pitcher, ain’t got no need for an infielder, ain’t got no need for a catcher, ain’t got no need for a centerfielder…

So I assume we’re gonna win 105 next year, right?

[Westheim]

Let’s see whether we can actually advance a day in this update!

+++

As the last days of October rolled by, I got several requests for AA/AAA 3B Mike Grigsby, who had hit a whole lot of nothing as a 20-year-old at either level. Scouts kept raving about him anyway, and the Crusaders and Miners were bending over backwards to make an offer, the latter even suggesting that they could keep Gil Rockwell warm for that last year of his contract. In turn we would have received Will Newman.

There were some issues with the proposal, and none of them had to do with Grigsby, a second-round pick from 2020, who had a K/BB rate of 7.8 even at Ham Lake and was in my eyes not worth anything right now. The biggest problem was the fact that Newman was a corner outfielder and our spots were already occupied with Cookie and Alfaro. Also, Rockwell was a free agent after the 2023 season, but Newman was due another $5.22M at least by ’25.

And you might remember that trade of Newman-for-something-anything because it’s more or less been floating around for a year now. Newman appeared in 82 games for the Miners, but started only five, and so his .310 batting average was not worth a whole lot.

Cory Dew signed a $260k deal in the last days of October, keeping the Coons out of salary arbitration.

Meanwhile I reordered the leftovers in the bullpen. The relievers that the Raccoons would have in hand for next season would be Lillis, followed by a huge gap, then Moore, Brotman, Cowen, West, and Kipple. That sounded a lot like a terrible bullpen, including two inept left-handed rookies, two late-20s right-handers nobody had ever loved, and Joe Moore. Supplement the whole thing by the worst starter between Nielson, Huf, and Gutierrez, and you probably don’t have to worry anymore that your team scores nothing, because your pen wouldn’t be able to hold on to any lead at all.

Why not extend any of the extant personnel? Well, MacCarthy didn’t excite me, Sloan didn’t either, and there are alarming tendencies in Manobu Sugano’s stats. While his ERA dropped almost half a run in ’22, his strikeout rate went down a whopping 30%. There are these subtle signs that you’re in trouble, and I think his age 37 season was the last decent one that anybody could squeeze out of him. That leaves Noah Bricker, whose strikeouts dropped as well in the last few months, but he didn’t quite see that. In his mind, he was worth a 5-yr, $6M contract. Remember that this is the reliever that we basically picked up for his dinner tab prior to ’21, when nobody wanted a piece of him at all after repeated and persistent injury woes had held him to 117 innings over three seasons, including 79 in 12 starts in the first of those. Now he wants to make big dough through his age 38 season.

+++

October 22 – The Cyclones trade 27-yr-old LF Yasuhiro Kuramoto (.287, 45 HR, 219 RBI) to the Wolves, receiving 28-yr old CL Matt Bohan (4-12, 2.90 ERA, 38 SV) and a prospect in return.
October 29 – 27-year-old C Matt Harry (.295, 42 HR, 272 RBI) gets swapped from the Stars to the Gold Sox in exchange for 1B Justin Godown (.306, 37 HR, 183 RBI) and 23-year-old SP Pete Molina (0-0, 3.00 ERA).
November 2 – The Bayhawks trade OF Alex Duarte (.253, 34 HR, 211 RBI) to the Rebels for LF/2B Jeff Rinehart (.265, 19 HR, 200 RBI). Both players are 29 years old.

+++

Absolutely nothing else of note happened to the Raccoons by the time of free agents filing in mid-November. I had abortive trade talks with the Crusaders for reliever Joe Jones, and with the Condors for centerfielder Matt Jamieson. Neither of those teams were even remotely asking for a price that I was willing to pay.

+++

Amazingly, the harvest for the Coons during awards season was … paltry?

2022 ABL AWARDS

Players of the Year: PIT LF/RF Bill Adams (.331, 35 HR, 134 RBI) and IND RF/LF Cesar Martinez (.286, 33 HR, 101 RBI)
Pitchers of the Year: CIN SP Koto Hayashi (22-7, 2.68 ERA) and BOS SP Chris Klein (16-8, 2.28 ERA)
Rookies of the Year: DEN OF Bobby Ortega (.291, 20 HR, 70 RBI) and IND 3B Justin Jackson (.244, 17 HR, 77 RBI)
Relievers of the Year: WAS CL Ben Marx (4-7, 2.20 ERA, 43 SV) and TIJ CL Jayden Reed (7-4, 1.36 ERA, 37 SV)
Platinum Sticks (FL): P TOP Jerry Moran, C RIC Casimiro Schoeppen, 1B RIC Luis Moreira, 2B SAC Ricky Luna, 3B SAC Jason LaCombe, SS CIN Andrew Showalter, LF PIT Bill Adams, CF NAS Tom Schorsch, RF SAC Pablo Sanchez
Platinum Sticks (CL): P ATL Luis Flores, C ATL Ruben Luna, 1B CHA Pat Fowlkes, 2B CHA Matt Good, 3B ATL Tony Avalos, SS LVA Andres Medina, LF SFB Rafael Gomez, CF TIJ Matt Jamieson, RF IND Cesar Martinez
Gold Gloves (FL): P DEN Tom Weise, C NAS Armando Leal, 1B SFW Xavier Garcia, 2B WAS Dave Menth, 3B SAC Jason LaCombe, SS DEN Omar Camacho, LF SFW Jeff Wadley, CF LAP Joe Vanatti, RF LAP Mario Diaz
Gold Gloves (CL): P IND Mario Alva, C MIL Josh Wool, 1B TIJ Andy McNeal, 2B NYC Sergio Valdez, 3B MIL Alberto Velez, LF VAN Alex Torres, CF MIL Ian Coleman, RF VAN Man-su Kim

[Westheim]

Hugo Mendoza resigned with the Cyclones on November 22, the deal being worth $23M over six years. That will take Dumbo through his age 37 season and far enough away to not take out his frustration on the Raccoons. He’s probably going to be in the Hall of Fame eventually, just not as a Raccoon.

Nothing happened in Portland for the rest of November, with all trade attempts that I made being abortive. I primarily tried to get Julio San Pedro from the Titans, who weren’t even using him to his full potential as a swingman, but there was apparently nothing on our own roster that could be piled up to make any kind of trade work in this case.

In late November, with the rule 5 draft fast approaching, I restructured the 40-man roster to such an extent that four extras ended up on waivers, including Guillermo Aponte, Edwin Prieto, Isaiah Jones, and Jose Castaneda.

+++

November 16 – The Bayhawks acquire C Brett O’Dell (.253, 8 HR, 74 RBI) from the Cyclones, parting with 2B Gerardo Gonzalez (.252, 12 HR, 76 RBI), neither of whom has ever been a regular at 28 and 27 years of age, respectively.
November 23 – Ex-CIN SS Andrew Showalter (.308, 162 HR, 826 RBI) signs a 4-year deal with the Gold Sox that will pay the 31-year-old right-hander $10.56M in total.
November 24 – Former Condors closer Jayden Reed (75-65, 3.18 ERA, 262 SV) gets another payday at age 39, signing a 2-yr, $3.44M contract with the Miners.
November 25 – One big-name domino falls every day now as the Warriors snatch up the Miners’ RF Justin Quinn (.302, 81 HR, 499 RBI). The 28-year-old right-handed bat will cost them $19.64M over six years.
November 26 – The Condors pick up 29-year-old SP Luis Flores (90-58, 3.29 ERA) from their division rivals, the Knights. Flores will make $22.64M over six years.
November 27 – The Miners add ex-CHA CL Dusty Balzer (64-55, 3.33 ERA, 158 SV) to their roster, paying the 35-year-old right-hander $5.72M over three years.
November 30 – Ex-ATL CL Harry Merwin (29-40, 3.28 ERA, 195 SV) signs a 3-yr, $4.76M contract with the Aces.
December 1 – Rule 5 Draft: 25 players change teams over four rounds, with only the Aces picking past the second round. The Raccoons draft 23-year-old MR Kevin Surginer from the Rebels.

+++

If you think you remember that Surginer kid from somewhere, then you are totally correct. This is in fact the second time the Coons have picked him in the rule 5 draft after the 2021 edition of the rule 5 draft, although back then we returned him to the Rebels eight weeks later after stashing our pen through other means. I don’t think he’s gonna be returned this time around; even now (excluding Cory Dew) we only have seven relievers on hand for Opening Day and you’d think that lightning would strike the West / Cowen / Kipple group first should be sign free agents.

Talking about free agents, with all catchers except for Elias Tovias removed from the 40-man roster, the Raccoons are pursuing a veteran catcher that is used to backup duties and should come cheap. That is currently all the effort we are making on the free agent market…

While the jury is still out, this might be the point where you want to take a wager on a 100-losses season!

Other former Raccoons finding shelter in the cold: Ezequiel Olivares signed a 2-yr, $444k contract with the Rebels; the Pacifics added Logan Sloan for $270k;

[Westheim]

Even after adding Kevin Surginer in the Rule 5 Draft, the Raccoons had only nine players on their books that made more than the league minimum, only adding a tenth on December 2 when they signed a backup catcher – more on that below.

Heading into the winter meetings, I was uncertain where we were even going to go. Trading Toner and Cookie was not ENTIRELY out of the question, but I sure needed the right incentive for doing so.

However, rest assured that no Toner or Cookie trade happened during the winter meetings. In fact, the Raccoons were so uninvolved that I spent four of the five days having dinner alone, which hadn’t happened in a number of years. On the fifth day, I was joined by the Wolves’ GM as we formed the Oregon Outcasts, that hip new band that nobody wants to see because they play 60s progressive rock. All he wanted from me was Mike Grigsby, though, and I wasn’t trading Mike Grigsby for a sodden, sad excuse for another first baseman that wasn’t hitting anything in plain sight.

So that was a failure. What was even still on the table for the Critters? I was not totally averse to adding a new #2 starting pitcher, and Frank Kelly was on the market again, except that he had had Tommy John surgery in July and now wanted someone to put $25M on the table. So, that was not going to happen. And between the other free agent starting pitcher left by December there were exactly two types: those that I didn’t like, and those that were type A free agents. Even Matt Rosenthal off the ****ing Elks was a type A free agent, and I sure as hell wouldn’t give the ****ing Elks a second-round pick!

Then again it wasn’t like a #2 starting pitcher was separating the Raccoons from the playoffs. Am I worried that Rico Gutierrez is probably our #2 heading into the season? You can bet your bum I am! But no trades were possible, and all the free agent options were thoroughly unappealing.

There was one type B free agent, 32-yr-old former Scorpion Brian Simmons. He was a stretch for a #2 to begin with, given that he had led the Federal League in homers dinged off him once, and had come close a couple more times. He was allowing a long one every 10.5 innings, which was an alarming rate, and one that was even more concerning in Raccoons Ballpark. The million bucks that he was looking for was probably better placed in the toilet, which would then be flushed.

So yeah, the Prick cut the budget by $3.5M, and after the winter meetings I was still sitting on roughly the same amount and didn’t know where to go with it. Steve from Accounting said in the middle of December that our payroll had dropped to 19th in the league and continued to drop. Yeah, no ****, I know that. I haven’t signed anybody of any kind of accolade…

Steve from Accounting also pointed out that we had $11M in budget space for 2024, except if Senor Valdes would take another cut. So make that $8M.

Should we even be so cruel to resign Jonny Toner? Or should we give him a chance to become an actual World Series champion?

Fun fact: When the Raccoons last won the World Series, Cookie Carmona, Jonny Toner, and Matt Nunley were all two years old.

+++

December 2 – The Raccoons sign ex-TIJ C Tony “Ogre” Delgado (.261, 79 HR, 466 RBI) to a 1-yr, $400k contract.
December 3 – Reigning Federal League batting champion, 38-year-old ex-DEN 2B Ieyoshi Nomura (.307, 79 HR, 973 RBI), signs a 2-yr, $5.52M contract with the Blue Sox. Nomura is a man on a mission, sitting 183 base hits short of the magical 3,000 mark.
December 4 – The Rebels will pay $1.66M in 2023 to secure the services of ex-DAL CL Alex Silva (39-36, 4.23 ERA, 128 SV).
December 4 – The Crusaders send 27-yr-old C Jason Travis (.261, 5 HR, 39 RBI) to the Rebels for a prospect, #67 C Felipe Delgado.
December 5 – The Indians trade for the Aces’ C Tony Perez (.224, 10 HR, 50 RBI), with MR Miguel Morales (6-7, 3.87 ERA, 1 SV) going to Las Vegas.
December 7 – The Rebels re-unite with C Jamal White (.262, 199 HR, 821 RBI). The 36-year-old catcher signs a 3-yr, $2.85M deal to play for Richmond again, from where he was traded to the Indians during the 2021 season.
December 8 – The Capitals trade for the Cyclones’ outfielder Victor Hodgers (.281, 75 HR, 471 RBI), leaving the Cyclones with two prospects. Hodgers, 31, has missed major time with injuries in the last three seasons.
December 8 – The Warriors trade 31-year-old CL Tyler Nodelman (62-60, 3.31 ERA, 132 SV) to the Blue Sox in exchange for three prospects, all somewhat dull.
December 14 – The Crusaders sign 33-yr old former Knight RF D.J. Fullerton (.290, 132 HR, 692 RBI) to a 4-yr, $6.88M contract.
December 15 – The Aces swoop up 33-yr old ex-POR MR Noah Bricker (88-68, 3.57 ERA, 24 SV) on a 2-yr, $3M deal.
December 16 – The Buffaloes pick up left-hander Tim Wells (17-19, 4.17 ERA), who is 25, from the Warriors for unranked, but promising prospect 1B Brett Judkins.
December 17 – The Raccoons sign 33-year-old MR Francisquo Bocanegra (15-13, 4.50 ERA, 6 SV) to a 1-yr, $350k contract. The left-hander debuted with the Raccoons in 2015 and has pitched for the Crusaders and Bayhawks since.

+++

The 35-year-old Delgado, who was a starting catcher only once in the last six years, will back up Tovias in ’23. It is a cheap, but solid solution, I think, even though he is coming off his worst offensive season in a decade, but those are not words that are shocking anymore to anybody that was close to the ’22 Coons, who in fact had put up the worst offensive showing by any Raccoons team in 17 years, and the fifth-worst ever with 584 runs scored.

Bocanegra was a desperate addition once I realized that David Kipple was probably not going to last long against major league pitching and needed more seasoning OR … another career choice entirely. Bocanegra’s results have been uninspiring, so I assume he will fit right in. He pitched to a 4.00 ERA in ’22, chased to 78 innings by the Baybirds. But he added 0.4 WAR in offseason transactions to the roster, bringing our total additions in terms of WAR to … 0.5 … and that is … that is without all the departures.

Also, the Hall of Fame ballot is life, and it is the last one without Nick Brown on it, who will campaign for his election 12 months from now. This one does have a Raccoons starter, though, although I don’t fancy Ralph Ford’s chances.

And where are they now? Adam Zuhlke signed with the Cyclones for $380k; Manobu Sugano joined the Scorpions for $466k;

[edtheguy]

This offseason is going really....

well...

it's...

it's going....

Why can't we have nice things?

[Westheim]

We have plenty of nice things!

Rico Gutierrez
Jarod Spencer
Matt Huf(?)
Ryan Nielson!
Daniel Bullock...?
Tim... Stalker...?
Oh, uhm, The Age of Omar?

Yeah, well, sometimes you can't have nice things.

[Westheim]

Brian Simmons signed with the Bayhawks just before Christmas, and the place by the Bay would be a way better park to pitch in for him. While Luke “Duke Smack” Black had been the type of player to get OUT of the Baybirds’ park to amount to anything, Simmons might actually turn into a decent pitcher in a park where it was incredibly hard to surrender 30 dingers in. Then again, some people liked a good challenge.

Which is bring us back to this rotten roster on which the designated starting rightfielder for 2023 had ended the previous season in a bone-dry 8-for-80 wringer with zero home runs. Those Loggers and Elks and Crusaders were shivering already …

The Coons waived and DFA’ed Dwayne Metts after signing Francisquo Bocanegra because the 40-man roster was full. Full of what was the actual question here, but for the moment we had no idea who between our ten-or-so potential starting pitchers would dud out first, so it was best to keep all of them around.

I also found out the hard way during December that we had indeed nobody left that was in the least way attractive to potential trade partners. Not even Jonny Toner, with his recent health issues, and not Cookie Carmona, who was still considered overpaid and not worth the hassle. The only player that attracted any kind of interest was Mike Grigsby, who had batted not even .240 between AA and AAA last year and while not being as averse to walking as Jarod Spencer was, still managed to glide into the winter with a combined .277 OBP. Neither did he have Matt Nunley’s defense at the hot corner, and the longer I was thinking about it the more I wondered why I was holding on to his 21-year-old carcass so direly.

The newest trade offer in question arrived three days before Christmas, with the Capitals kindly offering a swap of Gil Rockwell for former Critter Shane Walter – assuming they could also get Grigsby.

At first glance this was something to think about. Walter’s D at first was no worse than Rockwell’s and while he had no power to speak of, he had actually produced a higher OPS than Rockwell in ’22. Their salaries were almost equal… there was a hair in the soup though. While Rockwell’s deal was going to be over after the 2023 season, Walter was going to make big bucks through 2026, $2.68M this year, $2.48M the next two, and $2.08M in ’26, which would be his age 36 season – and all were guaranteed. It was one of those R.J. DeWeese type of deals – except this time we knew beforehand there’d be no happy zone. Rockwell was the last actual home run hitter on the Raccoons even though his output in 2022 had sucked, and although I still hold out hope for Omar Alfaro to… Well, without Rockwell, the most powerful hitter on the team is going to be Matt Nunley. When have we ever called Matt a home run hitter?

Truth be told, the Rock of Warwick, Rhode Island, hit .238/.297/.409 in ’22, which tied or went well below his career-worsts in all categories. Rockwell was a sub-100 OPS+ batter for the first time in a full season. There was no reason to believe he would not be well below 100 OPS+ again this year. Walter had actually put up his best OPS+ (124) in years with a .335/.376/.427 season – but there were another $7M attached to this deal AND Mike Grigsby.

Oh well, I’ll just write an email to their GM Ramón Munóz that we can’t do that. It’s not going to work out with Grigsby, who some think might maybe be some kind of prospect.

(hits ‘send’ just as Cristiano Carmona rolls in, balancing a tray with two plates with a couple of sandwiches and two plastic bottles of waters on his numb legs)

Ah, my favorite paid intern is here. Did you fix the arm that broke off the Kisho Saito bobblehead in our collection when Chad panicked and ran into the display while wearing the costume yesterday? – Excellent! What are the plates for? – But I already had lunch today. – Well, I had a coffee with sixteen sugar, and a handful of pills. – No idea what they were for. – What do you mean we should have lunch outside, and you insist? – My health is fine. – Okay, I’ll come. (I just can’t say No to the little bugger!)

Yet just as I got up, the mail program thing tooted and Munóz had already answered. The mail was just two words.

“**** Grigsby.”

+++

December 19 – The Gold Sox sign 36-year-old ex-PIT RF/LF Mike Bednarski (.285, 184 HR, 901 RBI) to a 3-yr, $5.88M contract.
December 21 – Another addition for Denver, as they pick up 40-year-old former Blue Sock 1B Alberto Rodriguez (.292, 185 HR, 1,409 RBI) for one year and $1.5M. This will be the 2006 FL Rookie of the Year’s sixth major league team – all in the Federal League.
December 22 – Former Falcon, 35-year-old RF/LF Ryan Feldmann (.257, 217 HR, 956 RBI) signs a 2-yr, $2.8M contract with the Miners.
December 23 – The Raccoons trade 38-year-old 1B Gil Rockwell (.263, 412 HR, 1,249 RBI) to the Capitals for 33-year-old INF Shane Walter (.308, 41 HR, 517 RBI), who already played for Portland from 2016 through 2019.
December 26 – The Gold Sox sign ex-SFB SP Joao Joo (107-91, 3.62 ERA) for 4-yr, $6.4M. The 34-year-old left-hander has lost 11 games for four consecutive seasons.
December 30 – The Raccoons acquire 24-year-old MR Vince Devereaux (9-9, 4.10 ERA, 2 SV) from the Pacifics in exchange for 27-year-old lefty swingman Ricky Martinez (2-10, 4.67 ERA).
December 30 – The Cyclones sign ex-VAN SP Matt Rosenthal (44-51, 4.44 ERA) for 3-yr, $6.38M.
December 31 – The Aces pick up former Rebel C Casimiro Schoeppen (.262, 67 HR, 537 RBI), signing the 33-year-old backstop to a 4-yr, $10.56M deal.

+++

We traded a borderline starting pitcher that got lit up last year and turned him into a totally fine potential setup reliever in the Devereaux trade, which makes the bullpen a bit better for sure, but we’re all here for the other deal, right?

I must admit, Shane Walter was not on my mind much at all this offseason and I didn’t think Rockwell would go anywhere at all. The Capitals rolled over me with their proposal to trade those two big earners much like Cristiano accidentally rolled over my foot entering the elevator.

Speaking of Cristiano – ever since he’s been here, Maud has been wearing her hair open. She never does that – it’s always in a bun. It’s been six or seven years since her last date with a living man, but I know that every 66 full moons she blossoms like some of those giant flowers that stand in full bloom only for a night or so.

I think I have to protect our intern here.

Meanwhile Shane Walter was reassigned #11 which he wore during his first stint with the Coons, and which had been Sam Armetta’s last year. There was not even a discussion in that matter. Armetta had it taken away, and that was IT. Also, Shane Walter was apparently not happy about the trade, posting (since deleted) on his Tweetbook how Christmas was ruined now.

Maybe the Raccoons were lucky for once – Walter was not *that* far away from full 10/5 rights to veto a trade.

Armetta could have it worse – he got Bricker’s #17 and he still figures to be a backup, while the last spot on the infield might be contested between Russ Greenwald and Daniel Bullock. However, since Spencer can slide to the outfield, we could go with an extra infielder at the expense of Zach Graves and his .583 OPS.

The Coons released two minor league outfielders after Christmas. This includes Kevin DeWald, a horrendous batter that was up in Portland a couple of times, and at 26 was clearly overmatched by AAA pitching, as well as 2020 third-rounder Joe Wells, who had some power, but was also striking more than once per three at-bats in Ham Lake, aged 23.

What else? Reigning Continental League Rookie of the Year Justin Jackson fell off a motorcycle he was *standing* on, while the bike was *moving* at speed. He suffered a concussion. The Indians are none too happy I hear. Jackson doesn’t know it yet, however, he’s still busy drooling all over his hospital bed.

Also, Bobby Guerrero suffered the ultimate disgrace, having to sign a $270k deal with the Elks. Jason Seeley, 36, keeps hanging on, somehow, inking for $278k with the Rebels.

+++

2023 HALL OF FAME VOTING RESULTS

A quarter of the 16-strong Hall of Fame ballot made it into baseball’s house of honor. Included is the third Japanese player that debuted with the Canadiens, but the first to actually go into the Hall of Fame with their insignia, and two Cyclones that were teammates for eight years from 2005 through 2012, winning the 2010 World Series over the Raccoons along the way.

CIN RF Will Bailey – 1st – 97.9 – INDUCTED
SFB CL Johnny Smith – 2nd – 85.7 – INDUCTED
VAN SP Juichi Fujita – 2nd – 77.6 – INDUCTED
CIN CL Ian Johnson – 1st – 76.4 – INDUCTED
CHA CL Luis Hernandez – 1st – 67.5
SFW CF Earl Clark – 1st – 64.1
TIJ SP Kelvin Yates – 4th – 30.8
??? SP Chris York – 5th – 29.1
MIL CF Jerry Fletcher – 6th – 22.4
DAL SP Paul Miller – 2nd – 13.1
LVA C Eduardo Durango – 1st – 7.6
SFB C Gabriel Ortíz – 4th – 4.2 – DROPPED
TOP CF Javier Gusman – 1st – 3.4 – DROPPED
WAS CF John Alexander – 2nd – 2.5 – DROPPED
POR SP Ralph Ford – 1st – 2.1 – DROPPED
??? LF Mohammed Blanc – 2nd – 2.1 – DROPPED

Inducted with the fourth-highest vote share in the post-Secret Ninja Committee era (for which no numbers are available) after Tony Hamlyn (99.6), Jeffery Brown (98.8), and Martin Garcia (98.7), Will Bailey was the Federal League Player of the Year five times during his career, all with Cincinnati and between 2001 and 2010. A regular slow starter who made only seven All Star Games, Bailey won a triple crown in 2009 and led the FL in slugging twice more. He batted over .300 with 20+ home runs regularly through his age 36 season, and was still competitive and combative with the Rebels in his final year at age 40.

Ian Johnson did not debut with the Cyclones like Bailey, but joined as a free agent prior to the 2005 season. He would take home the FL Reliever of the Year trophy in 2008, but would not lead the FL in saves until later in 2012 and 2013. Regularly shouldering a high workload for a closer, Johnson pitched more than 70 innings 12 times until his age 34 season after which his arm started to give out. He was less effective with the Bayhawks and Miners in his final seasons before retiring after 2017. Interestingly, he made more All Star teams than Bailey (8).

Debuting at 20 years old and pitching well only through his age 32 season, Juichi Fujita burnt out early and retired at 35, but by then had left his mark on the league. While he never won a Pitcher of the Year award, he led the CL in wins three times, and in innings four times, and despite the relative brevity of his career (under 3,000 innings and just over 2,000 K) he managed to win 207 games against 135 losses. The Canadiens got all of his good years; his last three seasons were spent with the Scorpions, but he never managed to pitch to a sub-5 ERA.

Joining Ryosei Kato as the only Bayhawks Hall of Famers – both closers – Johnny “Skinny” Smith made seven All Star teams and was a Reliever of the Year in either league in consecutive years, 2006 with the Bayhawks and 2007 downstate with the Pacifics. He never led the league in saves, topping 40 only twice, and wouldn’t be a regular closer after his age 34 season when he left the Scorpions for the Crusaders. He was a prolific strikeout pitcher, though, whiffing triple digits five times in his career and as far as 12 years apart, first doing it at the tender age of twenty.

+++

So – honestly; who thinks Brownie can get into the Hall next year? That strikeout total begins with a 3, just to be sure:

[Westheim]

Good news everybody! – What? – Nah, we’re still gonna lose 90.

But on February 8, the Raccoons and Cookie Carmona jointly announced a 4-yr, $7.5M contract extension with the Panamanian outfielder, who will make $2M in 2024 and 2025, and then gradually less as old age will reduce him to bone dust.

+++

January 4 – The Stars trade 1B/LF/RF Jose Avila (.298, 38 HR, 264 RBI) and cash to the Falcons. Their compensation amounts to two long-shot prospects.
January 9 – The Warriors give a 2-yr, $2.64M contract to ex-OCT SP Evan Greenfield (86-90, 3.96 ERA).
January 14 – 40 years old, LF Jose “Dingus” Morales (.326, 352 HR, 1,388 RBI) still has an axe to grind with those goshdarn baseballs and signs a 1-yr, $348k deal with the Buffaloes.
January 23 – The Condors add 32-year-old ex-DEN/RIC RF/CF John Wilson (.267, 115 HR, 596 RBI) for 4-yr, $4.54M.
January 30 – The Miners trade 34-year-old RF/LF Will Newman (.289, 96 HR, 566 RBI) to the Raccoons for 23-yr-old AAA MR Markus Bates.
January 30 – OCT SP Bryan Hanson, who won 17 games in ’22, will have to undergo surgery to remove bone spurs from his elbow and will miss the first two months of the season.
February 1 – Ex-DEN/ATL SS Piet Oosterom (.261, 8 HR, 424 RBI) signs with the Cyclones. The 30-year-old Dutch Antillean will make $550k for a single season.
February 7 – The Cyclones also add 29-yr-old ex-SFB/RIC 2B/SS Raul Claros (.274, 43 HR, 370 RBI) on a 1-year deal that will pay the left-handed hitter $520k.
February 9 – The Pacifics add 32-yr old right-hander Matt McCabe (101-112, 4.23 ERA, 1 SV) on a 3-yr, $2.86M contract. McCabe was with the Capitals for the last three seasons.

+++

The Miners finally succeeded in planting me with Newman, whom they had signed to a rich 6-year contract prior to the 2020 season and had since then left him to rot on the bench. He started all of five games in 2022, batting for a not very meaningful .310/.375/.506.

While there are three more years and $5.06M left on that 6-year-deal, it’s actually more like two years and $3.6M given a very team-friendly buyout for 2025. And in fact, Newman will continue to rot on the bench after being exchanged for a non-prospect, a wannabe closer with horrendous control. The Miners knew they got nothing – and they’re still happy. They actually wanted Bates AND Dwayne Metts, but I had to curb their enthusiasm a bit there. In a pure salary dump, you should not get greedy.

Where does Newman fit in? Well, Cookie and Alfaro occupy the corners, but in all honesty Alfaro SUCKED in his rookie season and batted that already-mentioned 8-for-80 to end the season. He looks like something the cat vomited on your favorite pillow. We tentatively scheduled Omar Alfaro bobbleheads for late May, but I’m not actually sure he’ll still be around in late May. If he does not pick up his game, it’s off to St. Petersburg right away, and then Newman might actually have slid into a starting job. For now, Zach Graves will be put out of his misery with this trade, since between Cookie, Alfaro, and Newman we have zero players that I want to see in centerfield, and so I need both Stevenson and the odd creature Frank Santos on the roster.

What the **** is Santos doing here again?

(shakes head)

Elsewhere, the Thunder picked up Cole Pierson for $318k. Quinn MacCarthy settled on the Stars for $426k, and the Stars would also pick up Mike Denny for $260k. Danny Rice had to settle for $284k from the Knights. Eddie Jackson hooked up with the Rebels for $296k.

And now the good one!

****ING R.J. DeWeese is a free agent no more, signing a $312k deal on February 6.

With the Loggers. Who also blew their second-round pick to sign 41-year-old Antonio Esquivel.

They’re still drunk up there from that ONE micro-dynasty they built, hah?

[Westheim]

As February was running out of days, there was still a type A free agent left over on the market. 30-yr-old right-hander Alberto Molina had posted consecutive losing seasons, but you had to suspect the Buffaloes in general to have a hoof in dropping to those. His ERA had twice been roughly four. He was not an overwhelming pitcher, his control wasn’t very good, and while the price of free agents invariably sagged as the new season was drawing up, I still didn’t feel like chasing after a type A free agent, given that the Raccoons needed all the draft picks that they could get … and they had received none whatsoever from their own free agency departures.

Frank Kelly was also still on the market, but also still out of action after Tommy John, yet still was hoping for someone to shell out the big bucks.

+++

March 9 – The Titans snatch up ex-TOP SP Alberto Molina (102-90, 3.54 ERA) on a 4-yr, $10.72M contract.
March 12 – The Loggers trade 38-yr-old RF/1B Tom Reese (.258, 234 HR, 1,145 RBI) and cash to the Buffaloes in exchange for 29-yr-old MR Luis Calderon (19-21, 4.72 ERA, 11 SV) and a prospect.
March 21 – Veteran southpaw reliever Mike Stank (26-50, 3.46 ERA, 133 SV), formerly with the Bayhawks, signs a $570k with the Pacifics.

+++

Jose Gutierrez signed a $296k deal with the Rebels – by the way, it’s been 14 years since he was a Raccoon, but once a Raccoon, always a Raccoon. He once managed to appear in 104 games for the Wolves in a season, while actually only making the starting lineup four times. The Buffaloes dug out Pat Slayton from somewhere and paid him $296k for the 2023 season. Slayton has seen so much, he’s got a grey moustache by now. Also, the Condors added A.J. Bartels for $304k.