High-water Mark for Niihama

[Ghosts]

Niihama, Japan - September 22, 2035

Four years of rebuilding. Nine years of losing. One historically bad season and eight years of banishment to the WIL. It's been a long, crappy road for Niihama fans. The once proud LRS team that made five playoffs in eleven seasons and only had three losing seasons in its 14 year history has, since the collapse of the LRS, only enjoyed three winning seasons, all those coming after banishment while competing against overwhelmed WIL foes. It's worth noting that the team lost over $175M in those first three WIL seasons.

So to now see the Ghosts, after all that, winning their 78th game with a modest payroll stacked with talented young prospects while projected to make a nearly $30M profit with record setting attendance (4.7M and counting!) is a wondrous sight. The Ghosts need only win five more games in their last 8 to secure a winning record in PEBA for the first time ever. Such a feat would also mean the first winning and profitable season since 2020, the year the LRS was lost.

Today, however, we celebrate the new high-water mark for a franchise desperate to prove it belongs in PEBA. As the only team that's been a member of three different leagues since the collapse of MLB, the Ghosts are PEBA's least storied franchise. 2035 is only their 7th season in PEBA. The Ghosts this season have promoted eleven rookies from the game's top ranked minors system and added them to a roster featuring just seven players age 29 or older. Only four 2035 Ghosts are over 30, and one of those, Orlando Barron, joined the team midseason (although the Ghosts did trade away veteran Christian Webb at the deadline). The point being, this team is incredibly young, and sometime around late August, it figured out how to win. The Ghosts are 19-6 in that window, and have witnessed the emergence of not only young stars like MacVurich (1.136 OPS) and Tall (1.022 OPS) and Stowe (0.936 OPS), but of veterans that needed time to adjust like Sean Peters (1.083 OPS), Gilberto Fernandez (1.087 OPS), and Garry Charron (1.062 OPS). The continued reliability of rotation leader Jerome Evans (5 GS, 2.86 ERA) and the re-emergence of Yuji Yamashita (5 GS, 1.00 ERA) have helped to stabilize the pitching enough to let the red-hot offense lead the team to an outstanding finish.

This is the team fans have been waiting four, nine, or perhaps fifteen years to see, and they are only going to get better as these incredibly talented young players continue to improve. The Ghosts have seen more roster turnaround than perhaps any other team in PEBA since they've arrived, but they are expected to return this team almost entirely in tact next season. They have no major losses upcoming, unless Sean Peters turns down his $16M player option at age 36, or Steve McDonald opts out of the three year, $80M deal that would keep him in Niihama through age 36. Even if those losses occur, one has to imagine they could be accounted for by the $80M in budget that would open up (alongside the Ghosts current $35M cash).

There is a lot of reason for excitement about the future, but for now, celebrate the accomplishment of the day. The winningest season in Ghosts PEBA history... so far.