Neat Stuff, Post-Sim Thread: 2035, Season 29

[Thoroughbreds]

Forgot to mention this last sim, Aranda became the 2nd pitcher in history to get to 600 saves.

At 41 he is having a solid season; 3-3 15sv, 2.54 ERA and 1.01 WHIP --- After looking like he was completely done last season when he posted an ERA above 6.00

RF Kowalski has a career high in homers (35) and he has tied last seasons total of 114 RBI.
CF Canseco has a career high in homers (37) and is 5 RBI away from his career best

He won't get there this season, but Brad Davis is 46 hits away from 3000 - maybe I shouldn't have benched him earlier on.

[Ghosts]

Yuma went ahead and dashed the ridiculous hopes for the playoffs in Niihama. Although not yet eliminated with just two sims remaining, the Ghosts would need a miracle finish to slide in at this point.

Still some neat stuff!

-Rookie 3B Roberto Tall hit an inside the park HR at Oikake Maze
-Charron and Gilberto Fernandez continued their torrid finish to the season with another 2 HRs this week, going back to back again. They've hit a combined 15 HRs over the last 20 games, in which the Ghosts have gone 16-4.
-After teaming with the Borealis to send the Bears to a 2-4 week, the SL Wild Card race got more interesting for Duluth and Crystal Lake. The pair of Great Lakes stalwarts now sit just 3.5/4.0 back from SS for the second spot and 4.0/4.5 from Bakersfield for the top WC spot. CL faces off against SS this week (as well as division leader KAL), so it seems to be make or break week for the 'Gnats. After being shutout of the playoffs for two seasons, I'm sure fans are on the edge of their collective seat!

[Borealis]

Despite treading water - and yet still picking up ground, the big Neat for Aurora has been the two week start to David Simmons' career. He was 10-24, with 2-2B, 5 HR and 8 runs scored, and named PoW. He's hitting .400 thus far, with 7 HR! and is making a clear statement that he's ready to meet the club's expectations for 2036. Neat-O!!

[Badgers]

After a rough month, the Badgers put together a good week, going 6-0 and getting some great production out of some young talent.

Juan Carlos Ornelza managed to put himself in a great position to hit 36 homeruns for the third year in a row.

Ian Vader, in his first major league game, went 2-5 with 2 homers, and finished out the week hitting .235 with 4 hits, 2 homers, and 5 RBIs.

Most exciting of all, my best prospect, SP Jose Valdez, started two games and got two wins, not allowing any runs on 7 hits, 2BBs, and 7 Ks.

Vader isn't eligible for the post season, but Valdez may have earned himself the 5th spot in the rotation.

[Underground]

Admittedly I missed this is my write up for last sim, but I am going to call out Duane Moss for having surpassed his previous single season win total record last sim with 14! He added an insurance win on this sim to bring him to 15 wins on the season. I have carefully managed my rotation to allow him one more start this year, so he has a chance to climb to 16. I know by mega-team standards it's not particularly impressive but London hasn't had a 15 game winner since 2032 and hasn't had a 16 game winner since 2031. Checking in on Wunderkid hopeful Rocky Nichols, he went 9/22 with 1HR and 6 RBI this sim. While still quite a bit below Mr. Roberts, he did improve his BA from .259 to .264 and his OBP from .314 to .319 this sim as well.

Another interesting thing is Luis Cervantes, who is nothing more than a depth pinch hitter for me at this point, had one at bat this sim and hit a 2-run homer with it. Going back to his last 5 appearances he is 2/5 with....two home runs? Dude is clinging to the PEBA with everything he's got left. He'll be a free agent in the offseason if anyone is so inclined.

My AAA team was sadly knocked out of the playoffs in a heartbreaking game 7 defeat. The upshot is this frees the mad man Troy Rush to be elevated to the PEBA where he will immediately become the 6th man in the rotation. He timed his arrival perfectly as he is ready to pitch immediately and thus will get two starts in the final week of the season, which most critically allows me to have Duane Moss fully rested for the playoffs.

Speaking of the playoffs, we lost half a game to Havana in the race for the Trans Atlantic Pennant but we gained a half game over Amsterdam who got surprisingly shellacked by the Fishermen. With 7 games left and a 4.5 game cushion on the final wildcard spot we are allowing ourselves to breath - barely. We've got four games at home against the Fishermen who, as mentioned, just did big work against a similarly talented divisional foe so that is definitely a possible trap series. We wrap things up on the road in San Juan - they just took two of three from us but last sim we took two of three from them and our season series has been extremely tight as well. Our magic number is down to 3 and I do feel pretty confident that we can manage to win 3 games out of this group of 7. Amsterdam meanwhile has three games against Havana so they could ironically do me a big favor in the race for the Trans Atlantic by doing some damage there, so long as I keep up my end of the bargain.

It has been an incredibly exciting two months of PEBA action, I say without a doubt my most fascinating and exciting two in-game months of my PEBA career. I hope it pans out positively for my team of course, but regardless it has been a heck of a season!

[Lions]

Brad Davis hit hist 400th HR on 9/17. Just 43 hits to go to 3,000!

[Ghosts]

The Ghosts secured their best PEBA season ever by winning their 78th game! We're now 14-6 in September and hopefully we'll be coming into 2036 hot.

[Nigel]

Well, I suppose it's really a tribute to Greg who was the Calzone's caretaker, but I'm pleased to last till September 20th before getting the "You're out the playoff" email lol. Having had little time to tweak the team before the season started I at least managed to gain a few cents on the dollar on San Antonio's recent showings. With six games left (all away) I have equaled the 2034 record thanks to a +9 pythag record, as the last three of those are in Florida I don't expect to extend that much further lol

[Arroyos]

After last week's good news, it was all gloom and doom this week. 3 of our 5 minor league teams were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. 'Nuff said.

[Underground]

With the regular season over I can finally exhale. Super proud of this team for exceeding all expectations - don't think anyone picked us to finish second in the Trans Atlantic and be fighting for first until the final week of the season. While I certainly hoped to make the playoffs going into this year I have to admit I lost the faith going into the All-Star Break. It has been a wild ride.

This will be my first time in the playoffs since joining the league. It has also been a successful season in a number of other ways:

- Best winning percentage in my time as GM
- Greatest regular season revenue of my time(+$1,871,616 more than previous high)
- Largest regular season expenditure of my time (+$5,131,531 more than previous high)
- Greatest total attendance of my time (+323,205 above previous high)
- I have achieved 4 of my owners goals, with three of those at the excellent "blue" shade of success

Looking ahead to the playoffs, I'll be starting on the road at Kentucky. Obviously a tough team, they earned 12 more wins than me this year. More concerning, they were a fantastic 52-29 at home and with home field advantage there the onus is on the Underground to steal a game early here, I think. Of the possible first round matchups this is probably the least brutal though. We went 3-6 against Kentucky this year which isn't good...but it's more wins than we had against WV and FLA combined so I can at least feel as though there is a chance we don't embarrass ourselves. We played each other in early September in Kentucky and they took 2 of 3, but two of the games were 1-run affairs and they didn't exactly run away with the other game, winning 5-2.

One interesting tidbit of this series is that Kentucky starting catcher Antonio Mesegue was originally signed as an international free agent by the Underground and played four seasons in the PEBA with the team. I traded him to Madison in 2033 for a package of players that included Raul Padilla, who will be my starting DH against Kentucky. Will be interesting to see how they compare!

[KenH]

Great season for the Farstriders. Despite "half schedules" for our starters the last month of the season, we ended up basically where we were the past two seasons. We did this mostly without the presence of one of our biggest bats and our best arm.

Some highlights of the season:
The pitching staff was great. I was very proud of our team's ability to throw 35 team shutouts despite only a handful of complete games. This speaks to the depth of our 'pen. Playoff ball tends to be more "top heavy" though, so I'm hoping the extra rest in September revvs up my starters to go longer in games.

Luppe has become my number four starter. While that may not seem like good news, the fact that I have George Moss, Edgardo Trevino and Juan Acosta on my team and locked up for years is a good omen.

Hen-to Tse -- the main piece of the return for dealing Joe Arnold in the offseason -- pitched very well in AAA and made 6 starts for the big club down the stretch. He held his own, pitching to a FIP of 2.22 and looking wiser than a 20 year old should be. He may end up being our fifth starter next year. It's really going to depend on how the market plays out. We have our eyes on the Enrique Vazquez situation in Amsterdam...

Speaking of well-positioned veterans, Bartolo Mora and Danny Burton have played very well this year and well-positioned with unrestricted free agency in their cross-hairs. It's looking more and more likely that the homerun king of 2035 is going to opt out of his remaining years with the club and seek one more big pay day. Burton has not been a slouch either. Despite missing a month of the season, he almost crested 4 WAR in his age 38 season. I could see Burton getting a 2 year deal worth 20 mil on the open market -- something he hasn't been able to have once in his entire career -- and Mora getting another guaranteed 6 year deal at 30m a season. With some of the young bucks that Florida's bringing up, we may not be willing to retain at those levels, though I do think they will both get paid.

Some lowlights:
Shigekazu Shimizu/ Teruo Nagai/ Bob Vollmer: We were feeling cheeky and brought on a bunch of low-priced dudes to play back-up roles. With our prior success of scrounging the scrap-heap for productive pieces, these three fit into our scheme relatively well. We figured that, given 200 ABs in a season, these dudes could hold their own. We were incorrect.

Injuries: While the injury bug wasn't super prevalent, when it hit, it hit hard. George Moss and Vito van Wondel suffered ligament damage in one form or another. Trevino and van Dam, Roberts and Knopp also had DL stints. You know who didn't get hurt? Shimizu, Nagai or Vollmer. C'mon guys.

[Borealis]

Aurora had a number of rookies who made their ML debuts in 2035 - some from Opening Day, and others who came in later on, with a mixture of results:

SS Jose Aleman, a leading Wunderkind candidate, was by far the best. He hit .280, scored 77 runs - mostly out of the lead-off spot. He hit 37-2B and 12 HR and posted a team-leading 6.1 WAR. He also stole 60 bases. If you look at the SL Rookie stats, if he's not the leader (AVE, OBP, WAR, R, 2B, SB) he's probably in the top 5.

C Pedro de la Cruz, didn't perform quite to expectations - offensively, hitting a meager .234 with 8 HR and 45 RBI. Defensively was a different issue - the poorly rated defensive catcher committed 19 E, though he threw out 20% of base stealers - a figure that improved as the year went by.

OF Tony Munoz started the year hot, cooled, got hurt, but played better down the stretch, finishing at .249 with 22-2B, 4-3B and 4 HR, scoring 44 R from a mixture of top and bottom of the order locations.

OF Angel Silva, who came up near mid-season hit .245 in 163 AB, with 6-2B and 3 HR, stealing 18 bases in 20 attempts.

3B David Simmons, a September call-up was the most surprising event for the Borealis - and his play alone may very well be why Aurora won the Desert Hills. in 23 games he hit .329 with 10 HR, 16 RBI, he scored 21 runs - though he did commit 5 errors a top the 16 he had at AAA. To put those homers into perspective, that was tied for 5th on the team (with G-Rod), with Raul Munoz hitting 11 and Aleman and Walden hitting 12. Claudio Hernandez was the team leader at 26.

All five will factor into next year's starting lineup - with the Borealis hoping for improvements from de la Cruz, Munoz and Silva - and hopes that Aleman and Simmons have shown what they will have to offer for the future.

Of note, no rookie pitcher made much of an impact, with RP Kenko Hirose getting in 32.1 IP with a 4.18 ERA, 30 K, and 16 BB.

[Zephyrs]

This was my most disappointing season to date. I really had high hopes but for some reason the team just couldn't manage to break .500 baseball. Rookie pitcher José Ojeda was definitely a bright spot - however, the team was a pedestrian 9th in runs allowed. On the hitting side it was even worse. The RBI leader was 1B Jonathan Hill with a whopping 52 RBIs. And what the heck is wrong with Steve Boyer? The man hit 54 home runs at the age of 26 and has declined to his career low of 19 this season. The one bright spot this season was team defense. We have a lot to fix next season and I am not sure where to start.

[Arroyos]

The minor league playoffs are over so quickly there's no time to savor them. Yuma had 5 teams make the playoffs, and 3 were eliminated in the first round. When the next announcement came, the remaining two had been eliminated as well. But, after searching more extensively, it turns out that both those teams survived to the championship round in their league! Before we could celebrate that, they were defeated. Better order more anti-depressants for Yuman beings, put the police headquarters on suicide watch, and restrict the sale of ammunition for a couple days.

We will take some comfort in knowing that the Arroyos performed down to expectations.

[Shisa]

Coming up for some air as its busy days here locally with continued lockdowns and remote schooling...

Some interesting items out of Okinawa:

• Young movement in the pitching staff? Its conceivable that we might run Saitou(24), Anaya(22), Zambrano(26), Kim(22) in our starting rotation next year.

• 2031 #8 overall pick Mike Robinson will be missed, looked like he had some potential before the career ender in his 2nd inning of the season this year.

• #3 pick Shirai Mori hit the 20 save threshold only allowing only 5 ERs over 36.2 innings.. was tracking be be under 1 ERA until the Ghosts got to him in mid Sept.

• 28yo 2B Gerald McKnight came out of nowhere.. from .215->.301 avg improvement and from a-0.2 WAR to 3.8 WAR this season.

• Tynan Stuckey finally getting PEBA playing time coming over in an offseason trade with WV posted a decent 21HR 61RBI season out of the DH slot.

• 3B offseason Carlos Romero coming out of the ABSF disappointed as her turned into magic beans showing his age as the season wore on.

• 39yo Luis Bonilla torched AAA pitching with a .430OBP and 1.030OPS.. and got a callup for 30 games in PEBA hitting 5HRs and 25RBIs in 30 game. Does that let him go out on his own terms?