Going Undergroud - a London Underground blog

[Nigel]

August 17th, 2021

Short term at least the shake up in London had its desired effect. The team went out against Trendsetters at Wembley and blew them away. Bryan Bedell was in commanding form on the mound pitching a four-hit shutout walking just one and striking out 12 but it wasn’t just him. Three of the remodelled bottom four batters actually got a hit. Joe McNeal savouring his first PEBA cup of coffee hit a 3-run homer off John Turner the New Orleans starter in his second ever big league AB while Ralph Woods, restored to the starting RF role, hit an eighth innings homer as London cruised to an 8-0 win.

London did suffer an embarrassing 10-1 defeat in the very next game where New Orleans outhit them 15-3 but the new line-up generally worked well as they split the four game series 2-2 and then went on to sweep West Virginia 3-0. The bottom of the order contributed 17 runs driven in overall with eight hits from Valenzuela, seven from Woods, six from McNeal and three from Martinez. A good week for them and let’s hope it wasn’t a flash in the pan. Christian O’ Rorke who a few weeks ago just couldn’t hit anything went on a 10-30 streak for the week with five doubles while Leonard Ramsey hit three homers to take his season’s tally to 30, his fourth season out of five hitting 30 or more (and the other exception he hit 28). Decheng Wen has reached 90 RBI for the seventh season in his career but he has only passed the 100 barrier twice (2017 & 2019).


Bedell, two wins & 22 K's for the week

The pitchers had a mixed bag of results with Nii suffering his second straight defeat and Callahan surrendering three homers in his outing against New Orleans equalling his 2020 tally of 29 homers given up with high on 10 starts left. He did bounce back to hold West Virginia to one run but his place in the rotation is looking increasingly insecure with Robby Holmes being touted as a possible replacement. A good week though for Gary Stanley who posted a win and two saves and Bedell who added 10 more K’s in his second outing of the week. His New Orleans complete game shutout was his second of the season, his only other was way back in 2016. The bullpen as a whole had a good week, overworked by their standards, pitching 14 innings. They gave up eight runs, half by Robby Holmes’ first four of the season, walked five while striking out 13. Bryan Bedell’s 22 K’s for the week has now taken him past 100 K’s for the fourth straight season in his career, remarkable as he has only started 47 of his 154 PEBA appearances

Now with a three game lead over Amsterdam London face a vital week, three games in Havana are just a warm-up to the main event - the final three games against Amsterdam. Amsterdam lead the season series 8-7 but a series win by London would go a long way to securing their fourth straight division pennant

[Nigel]

August 23rd 2021

With an important series coming up at the end of the week London didn’t take their eye off the ball in their series in Cuba. The Underground were only behind once during the series and comfortably swept the struggling expansion side. The second game was notable though for a few reasons, in the 3rd innings Chris Long recorded the franchise’s first inside-the-park home run during my tenure, and probably in the franchise’s history as well? An innings later there was a major scare for London as Leonard Ramsey left the game after being hit on the knee by a pitch, would he be fit to take any part in the Amsterdam series? London’s immediate options at first base were severely limited, either the aging Bailey Rohr who didn’t often come up with hits these days or the disappointing rookie Ramon Rodriguez who hits even less. Hiroyuki Nii sailed on serenely though and picked up his 16th win of the season but more importantly his eighth complete game of the season, a PEBA single season record, taking him out of a tie with Markus Hancock, Yoshiaki Rin, Geoff James & Kijuro Kojima who have all recorded seven complete games in a season. Perhaps London did have their eyes on Amsterdam in the final game before they headed there as they rapped out six hits in the top of the first and then took the rest of the game off in a 6-3 win.



Nii, now the outright PEBA leader in single season complete games with eight

With Amsterdam having dropped two games to Dayton at the start of the week it seemed to be in London’s hands but they were a complete mess in Game One. Bedell coughed up five walks and two homers and left trailing 4-1 before Juan Perez surrendered three runs in a innings as London slumped to an 8-2 defeat. Callahan & Luján steadied the ship though as London took the next two games 5-1 & 6-1 to tie the season series with the Lions at nine. More importantly London headed for home leading the Trans Atlantic division by six games, the fourth successive pennant was in their hands if they maintained their form over the final month or so of the season.



Zak Martin, the 2nd ever Englishman to play for London and the first ever Londoner

The final blow of the week though came in the final game. Rookie Joe McNeal who got his cup of coffee thanks to Hoshino’s poor bat had done better than expected by hitting .286/.302/.405 with one homer & nine RBI in his 13 outings. In that final game in Amsterdam he tore his thumb ligament and will miss most of the rest of the 2021 season. London were reluctant to restore Hoshino in centrefield and have taken the gamble to call another PEBA rookie up from Worcester and a significant one at that. 27-yr-old Zak Martin, signed last November as an international free agent, has hit .281 with eight homers in Triple-A and now will become the second ever Englishman to represent their homeland in the PEBA.

[Nigel]

September 1st, 2021

Having gone 17-8 in July to firmly establish their credentials as possible Pennant winners London accelerated away in August posting a 20-8 record in the month. London at the roster expansion date then stood at 84-48, eight & a half games ahead of nearest rivals Amsterdam and just 15 wins short of their all-time mark of 99 wins with 30 games left. London are on an 8-2 streak in the last 10 games and have held opponents to one run or less in five of those games.

Normally the roster expansion passes the English capital without much activity but with Worcester & Montreal being way out of contention and London struggling to stay within budgetary limits this year the Underground made moves right from the first day of roster expansion. There was much shuffling at all levels to ensure that Worcester & Montréal still had line-ups to put out for the final four games of their season and several players gained unexpected promotions to fill out the rosters. Meanwhile six players took the trans-Atlantic flight from Worcester to the Capital. Four of them were getting their first PEBA cup of coffee and London had to do a bit of 40-man juggling to accommodate them. Long time utility man Bailey Rohr found himself off the roster as part of the changes, the 33-yr-old was in his eighth year on the Underground roster but has only 352 appearances in that time. 37 appearances in 2021, mainly as injury relief for Long & Ramsey, had yielded five homers and eight RBI while hitting at a .205 clip. His defence had also suffered a notable drop-off. The disappointing 29-yr-old Cuban rookie, Ramón Rodríguez, also lost his roster spot after hitting just .200 with six homers, 27 RBI & six bag steals in 61 appearances. He had started well but the production had dropped off and his defence at the hot corner wasn’t up to the high standards they demand in London. Off-season free agent signing Orlando Gonzáles also lost his 40-man spot, he failed to win a place in London at Spring Training and has spent a mediocre year in Worcester.



On June 17th Hayes, pitched the franchises first ever Perfect Game & has four 10+ K games in 2021

Arriving in London for the first time were 28-yr-old shortsop Carson Holder, 25-yr-old 3B Hiroya Yano, 27-yr-old pitcher Warren Hayes and 25-yr-old pitcher Dan Hudson. Carson Holder arrived as an off season minor league free agent and has had a good year at Worcester showcasing some solid defence while hitting .272 and driving in 44 runs. Hiroya Yano, another off season signing, arrived at the franchise after a seven year pro career mainly spent in the lower reaches of the Japanese LRS minor leagues. He has spent the year in Worcester not hitting terribly well (.215) but flashing the leather with style at the hot corner. Warren Hayes will forever been known as the first franchise player to pitch a perfect game, his call-up is partially as a reward for that but also as in his first season in Triple-A he has halved his HR/9 ratio, added a few ticks to his K/9 ratio while keeping his BB/9 to just a 0.3 rise from his Double-A figures. Dan Hudson, the third out of the four to be off season MiL free agent signings, split his year between Montréal and Worcester. The fireball pitcher who can touch 98 mph made 10 starts in Canada posting a 4-4 record with a 3.38 ERA. An injury call-up saw him move to Worcester’s bullpen where he made 23 outings, three as starter, posting a 3-4 record with four saves and an ERA of 1.66.



33-yr-old Rohr will be pondering his future after being waived off London's 40-man

Also back in London was sure-handed defensive outfielder Javier Selpúlveda who unfortunately has had major troubles hitting PEBA pitchers since his Rule V from Aurora in 2019. At 28 he might be a bit long in the tooth to improve that much but he makes a good defensive replacement. The final arrival is 22-yr-old Canadian Marc Bourbonnais on his second successive September call-up. Marc didn’t do too well in 2020 hitting just .174 in his eight appearances but has added to his reputation in his third year in Worcester. Outstanding defence at first, 40 homers in the last two years plus 158 RBI in the same period has lead the club to believe he could be the long term replacement for Leonard Ramsey.None of the six will initially get starting roles but look for more and more playing time as London creep closer to sealing their fourth successive division Pennant

[Nigel]

Monday October 18th, 2021

So once more I sit here in amongst the wreckage of another London playoff campaign, one & out once more. To be honest London have been spiralling away since the beginning of September. Going into September they led the Trans Atlantic division by 8 ½ (85-48) from Amsterdam but by the 28th of the month an 8-16 record by seen the lead cut to just two games and London were suddenly in danger of blowing it. They certainly didn’t like weekend’s as they lost seven of the eight games played on weekends in September but they did however finish the season on a 5-0 tear and clinched their fourth straight division pennant by three games with a 98-64 record only one win shy of last year’s record mark.


Luján was the only winner for London in the 2021 playoffs

The Underground went into the playoffs without their ace again as Hiroyuki Nii pulled his hamstring on the penultimate day of September and would take no part in the playoff campaign. Nii had equalled his career best mark off 19 wins (set in 2017) but would be robbed of a chance for his first ever 20-win season by the injury. Angel Luján was the only one of the rotation to have a record over .500 in September and ‘ace-in-waiting’ Leonard Carver failed to win in five starts.

The playoffs were a complete washout, having lost the opening game in London by one Luján pulled them level before heading for the Dutch capital. There it all went wrong, the Underground blew 5-0 & 4-0 leads to lose by one each time and ended up losing all three games and being dumped out 4-1. Bedell & Fountain ended up with BB/9 ratios over 10 but the batters were just as much to blame. Valenzuela hit .412 but only one double and one homer while five of the regular starters failed to hit higher than .222 including slugger Leonard Ramsey. London managed just five doubles and one triple while no-one contributed more than one homer.


Al Murdoch is pleased to return to London

So London will contemplate how they will improve and add to their solitary PEC appearance. One change has already been forced on them, Victor Martinez, who in two years with the Underground hit .235/.279/.415 with 46 homers & 150 RBI, has been released after he failed to lower his $10 million contract demands which was well out of London’s range. They have moved swiftly though to bring in a replacement as backup Dave York hit just .179 in 2021 and have resigned Al Murdoch on a one-year $850K contract. Murdoch was originally drafted by London in the third round of the 2011 draft and went on to make almost 200 appearances in 2016-17 before being claimed off waivers by Crystal Lake in late September 2018. He spent a year in their minors before heading for a year in the Bakersfield minor league organisation. Rio Grande Valley gave him six games back in the PEBA this season but released him in late April, a month after signing him.

[Nigel]

November 8th, 2021

You don’t realise just how much clutter you accumulate in your office until you have to clear it out. All the pictures off the wall took a couple of boxes by themselves. One of my favourite ones was me at the draft with my first #1 selection, Erwin Callahan, who 14 teams passed on. He sure hit it big, a regular in London’s rotation now with three pro all-star appearances, a Triple-A gold glove, a Triple-A Outstanding Pitcher Award, an IL Wonderkind award and a PEC ring from his PEBA rookie season. Chris Long & Nathan Carter at the end of season awards 2016 is another favourite, they’ve gone on now to become arguably one of the best middle infield partnerships in the IL if not the PEBA. The photo of Nathan & Kata Nakamura displaying their Royal Raker & Golden Arm awards from 2020, Nakamura was a good signing because there was no way we could afford to keep Tuo-zhou Yang but unfortunately Kata had to go too as the payroll escalated.

Everything packed up now I swept the office with my eyes one last time. The trophy cabinet glinted, One PEC, four Division Pennants, two Royal Rakers, two Wonderkinds and a Golden Arm wasn’t a bad haul for my time at London. I do feel a bit of a fraud though at times, I arrived just at the right time. The building blocks were in the system already, I just had to assemble them in the right order.

A deep sigh, I stood up, and closed my journal for the last time. The cover had “Going Underground” on it and I resisted the temptation to scrawl “The End” across the last page