Calzone's fans appreciate efforts

[Nigel]

San Antonio, Texas – November 10th, 2035

2035 number crunching

It was a hard first year in San Antonio, arriving just as Spring Training did at a cash-strapped, aged, middle of the road team. The Interim GM had done a fine job trying to lower the teams age with no less than eight Rule 5 players. It turned out to be a bit of a double-edged sword as we broke spring camp though as the number of high-paid aged players out of options & Rule 5ers unable to leave the roster made it difficult to set up a roster. Still, we managed and fought on all 2035 trying to improve a team that hadn’t made the post-season since 2018 and had suffered financial losses in each of the last four years, totalling around $56 million. With the all-conquering Farstriders in the division it was never going to be easy to move up in the league table. We struggled on all season, trying to be fiscally sound, and eventually ended up in third in the IL Dixie where we have finished in three of the last four years. The fans though showed their appreciation of our efforts, a lot more have renewed their Booster Club membership already for 2036 and the fan loyalty surveys we sent out lead us to believe that our fans are definitely feeling closer to the team, most describing themselves as “more loyal” going forward.

Anyway, here’s a flavour of 2035 by the numbers:-


Five of the eight Rule 5ers survived the entire season on the Calzones roster. Harry Dondale pitched just over 100 innings as he finished the year in the bullpen while Conrad Lissenberg (129) & Masaharu Noguchi (137) played well over 100 games each.

While we finished third in “the Dixie” as we had in 2034, we won 75 games which was three more than in 2034. That’s five straight years we’ve finished in the 70-80 wins margin, unfortunately it’s now eight years since we last had a winning season (2027).

Our winning percentage of .463 is .019 up on 2034, helped no doubt by a pythag record of +8, the first time we have managed a positive pythag record since 2028. Our team batting average of .219 was .006 up on 2034 while the team’s ERA was 0.19 lower at 3.22 and the BABIP (.246) was our lowest ever in the team’s 29-year history.

Our total attendance of 2,207,754 was nearly 100,000 down on 2034, but just a few thousand up on 2033 which was our lowest ebb since the horrendous 2013 season when we only won 47 games and attracted just 355,677 fans through the gates.

Our final payroll of $90,055,814 was the second lowest since 2024 ( in 2030 a payroll of just $40,998,913 resulted in a 49 win season). The financial responsibility shown here resulted in a profit of just over $9,750,000 which was an improvement of nearly $24 million on last year’s loss of over $14,229,000 (our biggest loss since 2031). We’re not out of the woods financially yet though, our payroll for 2036 is already predicted to be around the same $90 million mark. It won’t dramatically improve until 2037 when Dean McNeil & Derrick Dwyer’s contracts come off the books, the pair of 36-yr-olds will earn $43.5 million between them in 2036. We have considered a salary dump deal involving one or both of them but given the threadbare state of our farm system we have decided that we will ride out 2036 without giving away any scarce prospects to grease any such deal. We will have to rely on a few minor leaguers stepping up next year and a few more Rule 5 picks of course.


So, there we have it, our team stats in numbers for 2035. We have established a baseline for the GM Laverick era, now we have to slowly edge those figures up year on year. It’s not going to be easy to move up the division with Florida winning 120 games this year and Kentucky improving up to 98 wins, but maybe a win or two closer each year in possible? Time will tell.