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

[Hitmen]

After multiple 6-0, 5-2 and similar sims to get us back to .500, now we run into the real test against the top teams in the IL. Havana, Florida, West Virginia, Kentucky, to name a few. So a 2-4 sim to start the gauntlet and a couple injuries is not the way I was hoping to get it started, but I am interested to see where we land after this run.

I still feel NJ has an outside chance to get in through the WC as the race is relatively tight. Will know more after the next couple sims.

[JDC]

No new manager bump for John Collins. The new Coqui manager is 3-9 to start. However, six were against Florida while nine were on the road. Time to turn things around before it is too late.

[Underground]

Mentioned this in Slack, but it has been fun to watch Jose Cruz make his case for Wunderkid consideration after a broken elbow ended his season in AAA last June. He now leads my team in batting average (.278) and HR (12) while being third in RBI (28) and second in WAR (1.9). His OBP is a cool .312 and for good measure he's stolen 4 bases and not been caught. I haven't scoped out the field for Wunderkid much, but given the anemic offense across the league right now I wildly guess that Cruz is at least looking pretty solid.

This months dev report also had overwhelmingly good news, so much that I am compelled to take one final stab at relevance this year and am calling up the 21 year old Juan Chavarria. Elite fielding in all outfield positions, 10 speed and stealing, and a big OBP guy. If there's anything left unspent in my tank for this season he is it.

Most logic would say to (once again) punt on this season for a better draft pick and save the service time on Chavarria but that ain't how we run the show here in London, we get good or fail trying!

Realizing I am high off my own supply of copium right now, my basic belief is that my team is slowly turning a corner - long dormant bats (particularly Nichols) are finally awakening, Bill Jones is finally back and literally hit a grand slam in his first game returning to the lineup, and my schedule for July is on paper much kinder than May or June was. In fact, I won't play a team with a winning record until July 16th and have just 8 games in the entire month against teams above .500. If the team can finally put it all together there is a chance, however slim, to really blast off in July and I'm not SO FAR back in the Wildcard (-7.5 games) that it's impossible to imagine entering the dog days of summer with a fighting chance.

Oh, one final note I finally found a breaking point for ticket prices. It happened so suddenly it's quite shocking since I only increased a further 10 cents, but I went from 50k to 32k overnight from last sim to this sim and saw it dip to as low as 25k in one game, so we'll be reducing prices back to where they were and adjusting more slowly.

[JDC]

32-year-old rookie RF Carlos Perez is en fuego! In 12 games, he is batting .368 with two homers in 38 at bats.

[Lions]

We quietly brought top catching prospect Iwao Yamamoto up to the big leagues in June. He was not hitting well in AAA, but his performance last year and Bum-kyoo Kim's lack of performance suggested the switch was worth trying.

Yamamoto doesn't have much power, but he should get on base. He's got a great eye and improving bat to ball skills. He's a bit raw defensively, but we like how he works with pitchers, so I don't think his defense will be a problem. He's got some room to grow there, too, and our scouts are already suggesting he's learning on the job.

[Apollos]

Neat: Tempe just posted our first back to back quality months since our return to human ownership. A 16-13 record in May followed up with a 13-13 June. Since a dreadful April our team is now actually 4 games above .500 If anyone had asked me at the start of the season what I was projecting for the Knights, ye olde spreadsheet had us around 68-69 wins so we're well ahead of that pace despite some lousy contributions from what was expected to be the middle of our lineup. All that said, the pace is almost certainly unsustainable given that we're 18-8 in one run games to go along with 7-1 in extra inning affairs. Nonetheless, we'll take it.

Also neat is the contributions this year from journeymen SP's Ryutaro Nakano and Joe Russell. Nakano, a guy we added via FA our first year back in the PEBA has hung around and bounced between the rotation and pen, but has proven himself an entirely solid inning eater, on pace for 230+ innings and a 3.11 ERA. Russell meanwhile was plucked from the WV scrapheap this offseason on a somewhat inflated arbitration deal but has carried his success forward since leaving the Alleghenies and leads our team in most pitching categories to include ERA at 2.58. He's on pace for a near 4 WAR season... not so bad for a stopgap solution.

[Alleghenies]

This was the first sim since I took over WV that Bartolo Garcia wasn't part of my organization. When he retires, he definitely has a job here.

Also Ewon Kody in his first week hit .391 for my team only to be out done by Sixto Lopez in his first week with a .412 average. Welcome to the Show guys.

Justin/ARL stopped Jose Lopez streak of 48 games saved.

My manager finally used RP Fusarpoli after a month and he was rewarded with the W.

[Lions]

We seem to be losing a lot of close games recently, with our wins coming when the offense scores some actual runs. 13-18 in 1 run games so far is hurting us as we should be ahead of Havana by pythagorean record rather than 5 games back.

Our pitching was great last year, but has regressed a bit. The offense has actually been quite a bit better than expected. We signed Bob Wade after the start of the season and he's been a nice pickup at SS. Horiuchi Sugimoto watched Francisco Montoya learn how to hit last year and figured he'd do the same while playing 2B, so I can't complain there, either.

Our fans were quite excited by the trade for OF Francisco Rodriguez, and I'm hoping he'll add a bit of pop to the lineup. He'll be the everyday CF versus righties and come off the bench versus lefties. We're also going to turn him loose on the bases, something he didn't do as much of in Hartford.

[Nigel]

Third year manager Kijuro Yoshida was given his marching orders this sim. His Calzones record of 194-220 probably wasn't that bad but he was constantly clashing with the board over their demands that he should utilize the speed of his players more on the base paths which he refused to do. That was the spark that ultimately cost him his job with his contract running out at the end of 2035 anyway.
San Antonio were quick to appoint 59-yr-old Pedro Rodriguez who spent his early managerial years in the Puerto Rican and Dominican leagues winning Manager of the Year in 2013, 2016 & 2017. After a few year in the PEBA minor leagues he got his first PEBA job in 2022 with the Tempe Knights. Qualifying for the post season in his first year there, he only stayed one more year before leaving. After 10 years out of baseball he reappeared in Kalamazoo in 2033 for half a season, posting a 42-31. He has been out of baseball since then, but the Calzones are confident he will be a success in San Antonio.

[JayA]

Batting averages and OBPs seem to be REEEEEALLLLLY low in this league.

[Borealis]

They seem to have evolved that way over multiple versions - research is going on on how to fix it...

[Underground]

Well since my last update here things have turned significantly for the better in London and following a 5-1 sim we are am now 8-2 since the All-Star Break!

Rocky Nichols has FINALLY gotten hot and started to hit like the batter I knew he was all along. In July he is batting .304 with a .368 OBP along with 5 HR and 11 RBI. I cannot overstate how important it is for my team to finally have Nichols, aka "the Prince that was promised", finally living up to his billing.

Jose Cruz continues his somewhat improbable Wunderkid Campaign batting .306 for July and .280 for the year. Overall his campaign has seen him amass a .313 OBP and .437 SLG which his put him in a tight battle with CLOGGER to see who will ultimately lead to team's HR race (CLOGGER currently leads by 1).

Raul Padilla is making the most of his recent promotion to full-time DH and for July is batting a pretty magical .385/.460/.769! He leads the team in RBI during the month as well with 17 in just 15 game appearances and is tied with Nichols for 5 HR, albeit in two less games.

You may recall I mentioned calling up Juan Chavarria as my last desperate bid at relevancy. While his batting is still below the Mendoza line, his OBP is a far more respectable .288 which is quite good for his first 16 PEBA starts ever. Furthermore, in just 16 games he already has 13 stolen bases and is therefore having an outsized impact on the team's ability to score runs - a category we have been anemic in all year. This is pretty telling but already he is second on the team in stolen bases. Even just a small improvement in him offensively will only continue to prime the offensive pump.

The bullpen continues to be strong, with Norm Batsone hitting 60.0 IP for the year this sim and still holding onto a 0.75 ERA. Only one arm in my pen has an ERA over 3.00 (a 3.02), showcasing a group that is more than just Batstone...even though it's mostly Batstone. Among the starters Duane Moss, freshly off a last minute ASG snub has already surpassed his win total from last year in 12 less games and is just two wins away from his career high of 13. This is...highly indicative of the teams I have given him to pitch for but nonetheless underscores my point throughout this thread - there might be something going on in London in the summer of 2035.

Some may recall my excitement at my relatively easy July schedule and undoubtedly that has helped, but I should point out we won our series against Kentucky and outscored them 19-9 in three games so it is not as though we have rolled over to real playoff contenders, either.

All that comes together to create a scenario where suddenly London has gone from as much as 8.5 games back of the IL wildcard to today sitting at 4.5 games back, which puts me behind two Trans-Atlantic foes (Claymores and Lions) for a playoff birth. My next series is three games in London against the Scottish, followed by a likely tough series against Havana, but then 6(!!!) straight games against Amsterdam which could, theoretically, if everything went perfectly, put London in a playoff spot....or end our season.

Either way, with the three of us in the mix it should be a heck of a battle down the stretch as I will play those two teams a combined 19 more times before the season is over.

It's still just as likely the team collapses into a flaming pile of disappointment by the end of all this, but given how things had been going prior to July I am allowing myself to get a bit excited!

[Thoroughbreds]

5-2 sim.

Starting pitcher Brian 'Stinger' Gutierrez ruptured is ulnar collateral ligament and is out for 12 months. Who did the manager call on during the sim to start as his replacement? 41 year old Alfredo Aranda, former closer who now more of a low leverage guy. Aranda has 586 career saves.
When was his last start? in 2020, almost 15 years ago. I wonder if there has been anyone else go 14+ years between PEBA starts?

Newcomer C Mesegue had a great start, hitting .353 with 1 homer and 4 RBI in his first 5 games.

[JDC]

Coquis go 2-4 against the top two IL teams at home. Two of the losses were in extra innings. Hard to tell if we are close to turning this horrible slide of 15 wins to 34 losses that cost a GM and a manager their jobs. It seems like every other series is against Florida.

[Borealis]

It seems like every other series is against Florida.

That's because Drew Streets sold his soul to the Devil - but he is rumored to have received a good price...