The Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance

Toyama went into this season with extra depth expecting injuries to our usual suspects. What we didn't plan on, was our closer in his 2nd season of PEBA to tear his UCL and be out for 11 months.

Already looking forward to 2028.

Wind Dancers wrote:Toyama went into this season with extra depth expecting injuries to our usual suspects. What we didn't plan on, was our closer in his 2nd season of PEBA to tear his UCL and be out for 11 months.

Already looking forward to 2028.

Ouch

I suggest to anyone who's upset about anything with their team this year... at least you're not Kalamazoo.

We are already and are going to continue to be historically bad this year. We are on pace for 12 wins. We have yet to play Aurora, Shin Seiki, or Okinawa. After the first week, we had some optimism because we were drawing walks, but that has vanished now. We're pretty much dead last in every offensive category.

On the pitching front, I've never seen such a sorry collection of major leaguers. These guys should largely be in AA let alone AAA. Finding fungible relievers has been relatively straight forward, so the pen will end up being the strength of the staff, if you can call it that. The rotation is just abysmal. I wanted Clark Snow for a variety of reasons, but held back due to the draft pick associated with him. I get that draft pick compensation is ostensibly there to help the weaker teams retain talent... or at least get something in return for it, but it also makes it harder for us to sign those types of players. At what point in the year does that compensation drop off, if the player remains unsigned? Is it the ammy draft?

I've been able to sign a few guys who should be better going forward than the chaff I encountered in Spring Training. The bad news is that none of them went to Spring Training, so it'll be some time before they've hit their stride. I'm shooting for a record no worse than last year, but we'll see if we can pull that off. StatsLab's playoff odds has us averaging 63 wins over the simulated seasons, but that seems ludicrously high. If we hit the 44 wins that it has as the bottom end of our projection, then we'll have played .288 ball the rest of the way... that shouldn't be too hard, right?

I believe compensation disappears at the draft - though Snow has signed with London...

Borealis wrote:... though Snow has signed with London...

Yes, I was aware of that. Just asking for future reference.

A 3-3 sim is acceptable at the moment, only team in the Seaboard with a record over .500, as I work out what I've got. A free agent signing too! I noticed one of the pitchers that was let go last year, Juan Garcia, had posted a 17-8 record in the pen for us in 170 games over the last three years,. I offered him a one-year $1.5 million deal, a million less than his last salary, and he happily took me up on the offer. At 38 he's lost a point of stuff and gained a point of control so we'll see if the gamble pays off.

Double-A Laval have now won eight of the last nine games to surge to the top of the division

Harpoon wrote:A 3-3 sim is acceptable at the moment, only team in the Seaboard with a record over .500, as I work out what I've got. A free agent signing too! I noticed one of the pitchers that was let go last year, Juan Garcia, had posted a 17-8 record in the pen for us in 170 games over the last three years,. I offered him a one-year $1.5 million deal, a million less than his last salary, and he happily took me up on the offer. At 38 he's lost a point of stuff and gained a point of control so we'll see if the gamble pays off.

Double-A Laval have now won eight of the last nine games to surge to the top of the division

Grinder was great during my time in Hartford, it's good to see him back in blue.

Well, I really can't complain about a 14-5 start!

We lost 2 of 3 vs Amsterdam to start the week off, then swept Kentucky in the weekend series (only allowing 4 runs in the 3 games, incl. 2 shutouts!)

Pitching

Cactus Kang has really been performing: a league-tying 1.42 ERA and a perfect 4-0 record after 4 starts. Our knuckleballer Angel Ramos has also been doing great, allowing only 2 walks so far, which is pretty impressive for a knuckleballer to begin with! He also allowed no walks in 3 of his 4 starts.

Our closer Hugh Higgins has also been sharp, with a perfect 0.00 ERA in 10 appearances, and 7 saves.

Hitting

The bats have somewhat been all over the place.

Sluggers Pat Barry and James Heard combine for 7 HR and 21 RBI so far, but they only hold batting averages of .215 and .185 respectively. However, they have been drawing tons of walks to make up for it!

On the flip side, Roberto Garcia and Jim McIntosh, both with career batting averages in the low-.200s, have been hitting the ball at an impressive pace! Garcia is batting .336 at the moment, and McIntosh is .467 in 6 games.

Next week

Next week is all-Havana! 3-game series in Cuba to start the week, then we host the Leones for a 3-game series over the weekend!

Strange sim for Hartford A loss (thrashing) to Florida before grabbing two one-run wins followed by a win against London before two one-run losses

Maintaining a mediocre pace but at least it’s on the right side of .500 (just)

A weird 4-3 week for Aurora feels like treading quicksand in the DH...
- The Borealis split a 4-game series with the Codgers - winning the bookends, tanking the not so creamy filling. Paul Carlisle, who would go on to be the SL PoW, beat the Codgers pitching for a 9-15 - with zero power... Domingo Gutierrez (5-11) and River Pope (4-11, 2B) had the best series at the plate... Neat...
- Rookie Jose Torres (1-15, 6 K) struggled at his first round of starting at 1B, Mike Britt (2-16, HR, 5 RBI), and rookie Ricardo Zamora (2-12, 4 K) found themselves on the bad side of the plate... Not So Neat...
- JT allowed 1 R, 4 H and had 7 K, though he only managed 5 IP, while 'Terror' went 7.1, with 8 Hm 3 R and 6 K - both were good enough for W's... Neat...
- 'Tugboat' struggled over 5 IP, with 7 H, 2 BB and only 3 K, with 4 R equating to an L... Not So...
- In taking 2 of 3 from the Zephyrs, Carlisle (6-11, 2B), Castro (3-7, HR) and McIntyre (4-11, 2B) were the Neat Bats, while the Not So Neat Bats belonged to Pope (1-11), Flores (1-13, HR) and Britt (1-6)...
- Starters were the only ones to give up runs to Reno, Nieves allowing 2 in a win, Diaz 5 (2 ER) in a loss, and Taylor 4 unearned in a rubber match win.

What's on Tap
A trip to The Lake for an early season grudge match, before returning to The Front Range to take on a struggling Duluth team. 'Tugboat' v MacCowan and JT v. McNeil being the week's Primo Match-ups!

Also on Tap? Rumors... oh, rumors are flying about Aurora HQ...

Borealis wrote:
Also on Tap? Rumors... oh, rumors are flying about Aurora HQ...

I hear there are rumors of a big story about to break in Florida too....

Rumors, too, of a soon-to-pop investigation by the Edinburgh News into the unseemly circumstances behind that recent "Dr. Evils" trade ... and the reasons for those nicknames.

Claymores wrote:Rumors, too, of a soon-to-pop investigation by the Edinburgh News into the unseemly circumstances behind that recent "Dr. Evils" trade ... and the reasons for those nicknames.

Goody-Goody-Goody!!! Can't wait!!

Week in Review...
Another week, another couple of losses in close games. We had an unlucky month with 1-run games, sporting a 2-6 record in those contests despite some other games where we absolutely mauled our opponents. I'm excited about the improvements of our team from the first week to the fourth. Despite our overall record, I think we're in a good position going into May.

Neat...
+Old reliable Dave Crocker has finally come around and is starting to play Dave Crocker-style baseball. He's had a great last seven games hitting .571 and raising his wRC+ to 160. I'm elated that he's turned around his beginning struggles so that I don't look quite as incompetent!
+Danny Burton finally had a good week as well. He has hit safely in 7 straight. Impressive, especially with all of his off-the-field issues... (check later this week for an update!)
+Mushanokoji Matsumoto is now tied for the team lead in homeruns despite only 36 (!!!) at-bats! I kind of love Matsumoto's style. He has 5 homeruns and only 4 base hits this year. We love our back up sluggers, don't we folks!?
+Hyotaru Hayashi is leading the team pitching-wise. My number 4 starter is leading the rotation in K/9 (8.78) and FIP (2.36). Hayashi's interesting because his stuff has always been pretty so-so, but every time he gets the ball he seems to pitch well. Not sure what that is, but I will take it.
+Despite his ghastly ERA, Pedro Marquis is turning into a stable 'pen arm. He has the highest ERA on the team right now, but that was due to one bad outing where he gave up 5... also that outing was largely exacerbated by BABIP noise. I was kind of worried that I had missed something with him, but he has really gotten into his stride. He's now sporting a 1.35 FIP and averaging almost a strikeout per inning!

Not so Neat...
-Ray Lortie earned a starting spot as DH vs LH out of Spring Training. I thought this might provide the venerated rule 5 pick with some much-needed at-bats. He's gotten better every year that I've had him, yet he has started this campaign at a veritable slug's pace. The guy hasn't been doing anything right. There's no advanced stat I can look at to even find some future promise. Here's to hoping he can turn it around to avoid the waiver wire.

What's on Tap...
It's a tough week-long road trip starting with four against West Virginia then hopping a plane for a three game set down in sunny Havana and their six man rotation. Looks like we *may* be missing WV's 'Nails' who seems to have some lingering shoulder issues, but a lot of the guys are excited to meet back up with long time Featherhead great Chris 'Moondog' York who is finishing up his career there in the foothills of Appalachia.

We've decided to let Miguel Yanez take the week off and stay at home-base to get healthy. He has had a nagging thumb injury for the past two weeks and it made more sense to have him rest it and get ready to go for next week's games against the Coqui. To fill in, we're bringing up veteran center-fielder Pablo Cabrera. Cabrera's a 13-year veteran who had his best years with N'awlins, getting up to 5.7 WAR in their 2017 campaign. Since 2019, he's been primarily a role-player with minimal impact. He did make a full-season return in 2025 with the Trendsetters again, however he was largely punchless. With his strong start of year performance in Chesapeake, though, he is hoping to turn his call-up into something more substantial...

We're actually 8-5 since our 1-12 start. The run differential is not in our favor, even over these past 13 games, though. Hopefully we'll settle in to a final record somewhere between .350 and .400. That would actually be a significant improvement over last year, and I'm not sure the rotation is up to the task. That said, the bullpen has been decent and I feel like I've picked up enough cheap options on offense that we'll be ok there. The latest addition is 1B Mike Harris, who I originally drafted with Connecticut back in 2016. Last year's offense posted an OPS+ of 69... which is just dreadful. Surely we can improve on that!