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Harold Lamoureux
The Cajun Chronicles
September 19th 2022
New Orleans, Louisiana
The New Orleans Trendsetters’ 2022 season did not exactly go as smoothly as it could have gone.
That first sentence implied that things went off the rails at some point. But, in reality, things would have needed rails to begin with. Instead, this team was strapped onto a moving freight train, heading straight to the catacombs of the Dixie Division before the season even started.
As expected, the team ran into injury issues. To the team’s dismay (and contrary to a slight inclination to pray to a higher being), it fell on the fragile pitching staff in May, as star starter Jose Martinez deconstructed his elbow in a violent way in a game against Dayton, and would need over a year to recover. The team was then praying again, hoping medicine and science could reconstruct what Martinez un-did in the spring.
What to do now?
Well, the team did have another young phenom in John Turner, but it was never going to lift the team to anything competitive. The team had a half-chance in competing with Martinez and Turner, but Turner alone was never going to be enough. The main concern at this point was to patch things up in the starting lineup, but the team was gutted the previous winter, and most of the major-league talent was gone, and so the team would have to field a glorified AAA pitching squad to see out the season.
With a team-wide ERA of over 6.00, no one in the stands were fooled.
So, maybe the team can generate some offense?
On paper, the team looked like a decent team offensively. The team had the home run king Tsumemasa Morimoto, who hit 49 home runs the previous year, but his production dropped dramatically. “The King” realized that you can only hit home runs if you don’t strike out, and he did a lot of the latter this year. Alongside that was the team’s other big-money infielder Al Edwards, who (with Morimoto) combined for nearly 1/3 of the team’s budget in contract money, yet did not hit much better than the team’s bench players, who were being paid less than 5% of their salary.
Look! A prospect!
Fresh from the Dominican Winter Leagues, young pitcher Angel Ramos was a “can’t miss” prospect that appeared in August. A knuckleballer by trade, he showed that he could have the potential to be a major-leaguer. The Trendsetters signed him to a $4,500,000 contract to prove they have faith/desperation in the youngster.
The young Ramos found that batters in the majors were quite clever and could actually hit his knuckler and thus gave him an ERA of over 8.00 after August ended,. After a brief glimmer of potential in early-September, he was out of the lineup with an injury.
Speaking of which, once the team was eliminated from the playoffs, it seemed like the team unwound and started to injure themselves, as if the season was now officially a loss.
Third Basemen Al Edwards blew his ACL while running the bases, thus nearlty guaranteeing the fact that the team would waive his team option for the following season. Meanwhile, superstar left-fielder Dave Nash tore his calf and right-fielder Patrick Williams fractured a finger just a few days later.
What is going on?
The team is now 57-93 and nearing the end of the season. There is not much hope for the team this year, but things will have to change in the coming season, or else the faith that the Cajun community has put on the quiet Canadian will vaporize very, very quickly.
As exciting and dramatic as Trainwrecks are to watch, they can be avoided with a little common sense. Hopefully New Orleans’ GM will be able to steer the team onto better roads....