Scottish Rebuild Chronicles 32.001

[Vic]

The Scottish Rebuild Chronicles

Welcome to the Rebuild.

This series is going to be a bit different from the usual … um … coverage of the Claymores. We’re breaking the fourth wall here to speak directly about what we’re doing, our reasoning for what we’re doing, and then a no-doubt withering assessment of how and why it didn’t work.

The withering part will be down the road a bit, though.

For now, we’ll sum up where we are.

After the 2029 season, it was clear that Scotland was going nowhere. We had an expensive roster composed mostly of expensive, aging players who had collapsed in the playoffs, lumped their ratings and were asking for even more money going forward. We also had a farm system that was almost completely devoid of talent, with the exception of one guy: RP Keiji Honda.

At that point, I decided to clean house and started to lay in some hazy plans for rebuilding the farm system and trying to get Scotland to a place where it had a consistent pipeline of decent players that wouldn’t require us to dip into (expensive!) free agency every year.

So, we tore down a lot of it in 2030, and finished the job in 2031.

Now what?

Well, now we start trying to build it back up. Technically, you could argue we tried to start the process last season, but things were pretty unsettled in real life, and we hadn’t spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do.

That process starts here.

So, we’ll start by saying we at least have a little core of fairly minor talent starting to build, largely in our pitching ranks but a few position players, too: Manuel Sanchez, SP (4 stars OSA/3.5 stats scout); Keiji Honda, RP (3.5 stars OSA/3 stars scout); Matt Longchamps, SS (4 stars OSA/3 stars scout); Kyle Colquhuon, RP in Rookie League (5 stars OSA/3.5 stars scout); Masanobu Agano, RP in Rookie League (4.5 stars in OSA/2.5 stars scout).

There are a few other guys I like, too, but those are the high points.

Next, I thought it would be useful to lay down some operating rules and principles:

1. Do not, under any circumstances, trade draft picks. Not to anyone, not for anything. Period. Our team sucks and will suck for the next 3-4-5 seasons, which means our draft position should be solid each of those years. This is the primary engine for building up the farm system, so we will not short-circuit that. We don’t need veterans right now. We need good prospects who’ll work cheap. The way to get them is to draft them. Note to self: Do. Not. Forget. This.

2. Protect our fan interest. Our team is terrible and will lose a LOT of games, so fan interest is going to want to crater. But to keep revenue flowing and keep our owner from contracting our budget to zilch, we need to keep as many butts in seats as we can – especially in the form of season ticket holders. One way to do this is to find and keep popular players – which is why I pursued a terrible pitcher named Bob Riddle in free agency. He’s a half-star player, but for some reason he’s popular, so we signed him to a one-year $1.2 million contract, and he has already helped hedge against the FI hit we took when Tomas Flores signed a free agent contract with Crystal Lake. This is also why I pursued some of the Rule 5 guys I pursued and spent CPs on fan interest. In all, we’ve gone from the low 70s back up to 85 and managed to hold it there despite the Flores departure. This will be a war of attrition, I’m sure, but our goal will be to keep building Fan Interest back up through whatever means are available.

3. No big multi-year contracts for now. Until we’re ready to emerge from the rebuild, we need to stay agile and cost-effective. So, we may try to pick off a high-priced free agent for a one-year contract here and there (there’s no such thing as a bad one-year contract, they say) in the interest of boosting fan interest, but we don’t want to tie ourselves up more than we already are with Orlando Barron and Carlos Perez. For the foreseeable future, the roster will look a little schizo: lots of young cheap guys and a few oldsters on short-term contracts.

4. Turn a profit, but not a big one. Yes, we want to stay in the black. No, we don’t want a big pile of cash at the end of the year that the owner will just confiscate. We want to stay out of debt, bring in revenue to keep our budget healthy, but not line the pockets of owner, Brad Kern.

5. Don’t tank. Oh, we’ll lose. I mean, look at the roster! We’ll lose a lot. But we won’t try to lose – we’ll try to win at every stage by putting together the best lineup, rotation and bullpen we can with what we’ve got. And as we add good young talent, the results should start to show up. My hope is that it’ll start to show for real in the minor leagues first, with Khartoum, Maui and Govan showing some signs of life by next season. If we can start to gather talent and move it through the system in waves, the higher minors should start to revive in a couple of years.

Ok, that’s enough for now. I can’t imagine anyone but me is still reading this. But, I thought it would at least be useful to me to lay out a plan – in public – and then see if I can hold myself to it.

We’ll see how it goes.

[Borealis]

1. Do not, under any circumstances, trade draft picks. Not to anyone, not for anything. Period. Our team sucks and will suck for the next 3-4-5 seasons, which means our draft position should be solid each of those years. This is the primary engine for building up the farm system, so we will not short-circuit that. We don’t need veterans right now. We need good prospects who’ll work cheap. The way to get them is to draft them. Note to self: Do. Not. Forget. This.

Then the shocking, magical seasons comes along, shiny as Fool's Gold...