Shisa Weblog

[Morris Ragland]

Burton has so far been aging gracefully (knock on wood). His contract is one of a very few in recent years that I don't regret negotiating. I'm hoping that he can keep his OPS+ above 750 this season.

[Morris Ragland]

Okinawa's first trip to the Death Star went perhaps even worse than expected. Swept by the Evas (not a big surprise), getting outscored 19-2 with two 5-0 shutouts. None of these games was competitive and perhaps illustrates the (vast, vast) distance between Shin Seiki and the rest of the division.

[Morris Ragland]

Okinawa's Ouendan are Prepared

Shiba Taguchi, Ryukyu Sports News

Naha, Okinawa - April 27, 2021: Shisa fans have had to wait until the fourth week of the season, but the time is now fast approaching when Okinawa will host a team from North America in Shisa Stadium in a regular season PEBA game. It will be an historic first for the ball club and its supporters are eager to make an impression on the rest of the league. The Kalamazoo Badgers come to town on April 30th for a three game series. Okinawa's two fan cheering clubs (ouendan), the reds and the blues, are ready to put on a show. Both of the clubs rehearse the official song of the Shisa even when Okinawa is on the road.

The Okinawa Shisa's Song
(Official English Language Version)

Running swiftly like the wind that blows from the North
Like the graceful heron soaring in the azure sky
Indomitable spirit of the youth shows the victor's grace
The name that shines in glory "Okinawa Shisa"
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Okinawa Shisa
Go, Go, Go, Go!

Powerful hits display the strength and
Skillful pitches display the cunning
Trained with every discipline here at Naha
Crowned with constant victory glorious, matchless feat
Always proud, invincible "Okinawa Shisa"
Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Okinawa Shisa
Go, Go, Go, Go!

With the reds seated in the left field bleachers and the blues seated in the the right field bleachers, the two supporters' clubs hold a competition of their own during the course of Shisa home games, each chanting and cheering their hearts out and trying to outdo the other. I spoke with Nako Takanibu, a member of the reds, who was very excited about the coming series with the Badgers. “For the first time the rest of the world will see how we do things in Shisa Stadium,” he told me, in reference to the television broadcast of the series on three continents. “It will be Kalamazoo's first trip to Japan as well, so we'll be introducing them to our kind of baseball. They will hear the sound of our voices and the beating of our drums. If we do our part, it will haunt them in their sleep.” A member of the blues, Sakamoto Tsurayaki, agreed. “We will shout ourselves hoarse this weekend, no doubt. We may not win, but the Badgers will be in no doubt about where they were.”

Eight foot fences separate the ouendan bleachers from the rest of the stadium. “To keep the animals in,” jokes Nako. The members of the two supporters' clubs pay annual dues for the privilege of sitting in these sections set aside for them, and they are regularly at or near capacity. The ouendan of Okinawa, unlike those found on the mainland, rely solely on their voices, their drums, and their hands in their chants, eschewing other musical instruments and noisemakers. “All of the Japanese ouendan incorporate drums,” says Lupin right fielder Kuniyoshi Kato, who has played many a game in the outfield of Shisa Stadium, “but the Shisa fans use drums. You can feel them in your gut. Boom, boom, boom.”

What will the Badgers players make of the cacophony of chants and drumming coming from the outfield bleachers? I posed this question to one of the gaijin on Okinawa's roster, Michael Burton, who played for eight seasons in the PEBA. “For the outfielders especially it's going to take an adjustment. Playing in the states, you're used to the odd heckler or drunken bleacher bum yelling things out, but the ouendan are on another level. A few guys it won't effect much at all because their concentration is so good that they can just tune it out. For others it's going to be a long three nights. And God help you when a runner gets into scoring position. There's a whole other cheer for that, and it's raucous.” When asked how long it took him to adjust to road games in Japan in his first year with the Shisa, Burton chuckled, “I'll let you know when it happens.”

[Morris Ragland]

Well, Kalamazoo did just fine, sweeping us in a fairly inauspicious home series.

[Morris Ragland]

Speed Freaks:
Okinawa Amateur Draft Review

Shiba Taguchi, Ryukyu Sports News

Naha, Okinawa - June 9, 2021: In the old LRS, amateur drafts rarely merited much attention. Beyond the second round, frequently the pool of talent became very shallow indeed, and there were rarely more than a dozen players worth writing about. In the inaugural draft of the new thirty-two team PEBA, however, there has been plenty worth commenting on. The Shisa drafted 17 players in 15 rounds in 2021. Knowing that the vast majority of draftees never play in a big league game, I was curious how the talent Okinawa brought in (assuming all the players agree to terms with the Shisa) might be viewed by the global baseball community that is the PEBA. I sat down with baseball analyst Lawton Keith to discuss the draft Okinawa had, and what might be in store for followers of Shisa baseball in the future. These are his thoughts on the individuals Okinawa drafted, and the job the Shisa front office did in their debut on the world stage.

OF Mike Clarke (1st Round, 29th Overall)

Keith: Clarke's had an interesting ride the last couple of years. Omaha drafted him last season fourth overall, in the now famous Listgate draft. The Cyclones pretty much let everybody know that he wasn't their guy and didn't sign him. Clarke went back to school and fell to Okinawa at twenty-ninth in 2021. Obviously Hartford still didn't want him, passing on him four times in the first round. I think a lot of scouts were concerned by what appeared to be significant regression for Mike in his last year of college ball. This is a kid who was projected as a solid five-tool prospect last year. He's twenty-two now and we're kind of wondering if his power is ever going to develop. As far as make-up goes there's nothing not to like about this guy, and he's really shown some maturity in how he handled the whole situation last year. The speed on the base paths and the defense are all assets for him. Villanova played him in left primarily, but I see him as a right fielder going forward. Not quite the can't miss prospect he looked to be last year, but potentially an above average starter in the outfield.

CF Dave MacIntosh (2nd Round, 64th Overall)

Keith: A solid defensive center fielder, who should only get better, with ridiculous speed. As you might know, they like to play small ball in college, and MacIntosh was Houston's drag-bunt specialist. We're talking about a right handed hitter here regularly bunting to get on base. I imagine he's going to be swinging away a lot more in the pros, because he's got some decent power potential that Okinawa will want to develop. Has the potential to be an above average everyday center fielder.

OF Tom Patton (2nd Round, 70th Overall)

Keith: I'm going to start sounding like a broken record here, but the Shisa again go for an outfielder with pretty good defense and amazing speed. This time they pick up a high school guy. The scouts I've spoken with really liked this guy's build. He's still a rawboned, lanky kid at 6'5” and 160 pounds, and looks like he'd blow over in a stiff wind. Obviously, he's got a long way to go in his development, but the pure athleticism appears to be there. The Okinawa scouts seem to think that he can put on some weight and really turn into a power hitter, but others disagree. I think the upside is there and that he could at least turn into somebody who can get on base, steal a lot of bases and play good defense, but in left field, where his so-so arm would seem to put him.

SS/2B Carlos Rosales (3rd Round, 107th Overall)

Keith: A young high school guy out of the Dominican, this middle infielder (I think he's a shortstop) is another great pure athlete with tremendous speed, but there doesn't seem to be any sort of consensus on his offensive potential. Okinawa thinks he's going to be able put the ball into play, but other scouts I've talked to would really like to see him shorten his swing, and question whether he ever will.

RHP Taizo Sato (4th Round, 122nd Overall)

Keith: Finally, a pitcher. Sato has a 98 mph fastball and a decent curve ball. Without an off-speed pitch Sato projects to be a fringy reliever. If the Shisa can teach him to throw a decent change-up, and the curve ball gets some more bite to it, then you're talking about a potential back-end starter, but there's really only an outside chance of that. Sato's most likely destination, even with a third pitch, is the bullpen.

OF Gary Gunn (4th Round, 133rd Overall)

Keith: Here we go again. Outfield prospect with good defensive tools and great speed. Really a coin-flip kind of guy, sort of the definition of a fringe prospect. Shisa scouts think he could make the team, probably as a bench bat, but this is really debatable. Other scouts just see too many problems with the swing and a hitter that will always struggle to get the bat on the ball.

SS David Muller (5th Round, 154th Overall)

Keith: Arguably a traditional Shisa middle infielder in the making. A guy with plus defense, but replacement level offensive potential. Okinawa seems comfortable with playing these kinds of guys, and for that reason Muller actually has some starter potential. His college team had him splitting time between short and first base, which is puzzling.

CF Mashashi Abe (6th Round, 186th Overall)

Keith: There is a big difference of opinion on Abe. Some scouts have him really as a non-prospect. Others, like Okinawa, have him as somebody who could at least make the big league club. Another great athlete with good speed and range in the outfield. The biggest concern with Abe voiced by scouts I spoke with is that the offensive potential just isn't there.

2B Manuel González (7th Round, 218th Overall)

Keith: Plus defense, plus speed, and a coachable kid. You like this kind of pick in the later rounds. Offensively, he looks a lot like Muller. Kind of replacement level potential there. The arm probably isn't what this team is looking for at shortstop, so I think you'll see Gonzalez stay at second base.

RHP Clay Ellis (8th Round, 250th Overall)

Keith: Given where Okinawa is right now with their pitching, I guess you'd say he's a starter prospect with a fair shot of making the big club's rotation. On most other teams you might say he's a fringe starter prospect. Good mix of pitches, fastball, curveball, slider, and changeup, but none of them is what I'd call a plus pitch. He's a pitcher that's going to have a hard time missing bats as a professional, though he has enough movement on his pitches to limit the hard-hit balls.

RHP César Ruíz (9th Round, 282nd Overall)

Keith: The biggest concern about Ruíz that I've heard from scouts is a lack of maturity on the field and off. Whether or not Okinawa's coaches will be able to get through to him is probably going to be the difference between making the club and washing out in the minors. Right now he doesn't project to make a big league club, so he's going to have to work hard to improve, and it doesn't look likely to happen.

CF Lonnie Griffith (10th Round, 314th Overall)

Keith: This is an interesting story. Griffith is a really good athlete and was looking at scholarship offers from a lot of big schools to play football. Safety, I think, was his position. But then, part way through the process he shut the whole thing down and declared that he didn't want to play football anymore, citing the obvious health concerns. He only took up baseball in his junior year of high school, and even then he wasn't on the field much at all. Four plate appearances, two walks, and two strike outs, with two stolen bases. He then worked out for a few PEBA clubs, including Okinawa. This was a bigger story in the states, where it's part of the larger narrative about the decline of American football. Does he have any chance of making it? Well, he can run very well and cover a lot of ground in the outfield. As with a lot of the guys the Shisa took, it will be a matter of developing his offensive skills. This guy literally needs to learn how to play baseball.

LHP Bobby Hebert (11th Round, 346th Overall)

Keith: A 98 mph fastball and a decent curveball. He needs a third pitch, but could end up being quite a steal in the eleventh round. Scouts wonder how seriously he takes the game, and how seriously he will take his own development as a pitcher. Right now he looks like a fringy reliever prospect, but that could change with time.

C Kyoji Nakashima (12th Round, 378th Overall)

Keith: A guy with decent skills at his position who will do a good job warming up pitchers in the bullpen. Nothing much too him beyond that.

RHP Takahashi Sekiguchi (13th Round, 410th Overall)

Keith: Had a difficult time getting guys out in college. Throws very hard, but very straight. Doesn't miss as many bats as you think he should, and gives up a lot of hard-hit balls. Minor league journeyman material.

RHP Paul Miller (14th Round, 442nd Overall)

Keith: I think the Shisa saw a guy who could hit 99 mph on the gun still on the board in the fourteenth round and just went for it. There's not a lot of movement on that fastball, though, and the changeup needs a lot of work. Needs to learn a breaking pitch to be effective either as a starter or a reliever. That said he has a great power pitcher's frame at 6'5” and 230 pounds and I could see his upside improving with time.

RHP Hirotada Okuta (15th Round, 474th Overall)

Keith: Not a kid that expected to be drafted, and by all accounts intends to finish up his schooling. He's got pretty good size at 6'2”, and good velocity at 96 mph. Control issues would be the biggest concern with him. Right now he just doesn't project as a big league pitcher. Likely won't sign, but who knows? Maybe the Shisa see something we don't and throw some money at him.

I asked Lawton Keith what he thought of Okinawa's first PEBA draft overall. “A couple of things stood out to me,” he replied. “One, it was pretty clear that the front office was really taking this draft seriously. A lot of times, especially on the second day of the draft, you see teams manning their desks with some junior executives who are just flipping though a binder with names that the head scout gave them, checking off boxes as they go, but you saw the Shisa GM in the room on both days making the selections. I think that sends a positive message, especially to the fans of a team whose on-the-field product is simply not very good right now, letting them know that the front office gets it and is working hard to turn things around.

“Two, I think you saw something of the Shisa's philosophy with respect to the sort of talent they want to bring in to the organization. You saw Okinawa go after guys who were athletes. They brought in a lot of kids with a lot of speed. You also saw an emphasis on defense, and with some of the middle infield prospects, that might have come at the expense of offensive upside. Pitching, especially in the early rounds, didn't seem to be a priority, which I imagine is going to be a disappointment to a lot of people who follow this team and might have been hoping for some dramatic improvements there. It's definitely a deficiency that the team is going to have to address, and I'm not sure how they intend to go about it.”

How would Keith grade the draft overall? “This organization had such a need for talent across the board that it would be hard to screw up the draft. If those first three guys pan out for Okinawa, then you will have an outfield where very few balls drop in. Three outfielders who can play the position and cover a lot of ground will really help this team's pitchers. These guys will also be fun to watch when they get on base. This team really went out of its way to bring in some speedy players. On the other hand, the team didn't get a single bankable pitching prospect in the draft, just some projects that may or may not work out for them in the long run. I would expect more of an emphasis on bringing in pitching talent next year. As for this year, I would rate this draft as a b-minus for the Shisa, but get back to me in five years and I'm sure that I'll have a different answer for you.”

[Morris Ragland]

At the top of the list of owner goals in 2022, "Don't suck completely".

Thanks, boss.

[Morris Ragland]

A Conversation with Red Hook

Shiba Taguchi, Ryukyu Sports News

Naha, Japan - February 3, 2022: Alex Bothwell plays first base for the Shisa Triple-A affiliate Shizuoka Anguirus. Born in New York City in 1999, Bothwell grew up in the aftermath of the death of big league baseball in the Big Apple. He played his youth baseball in local city leagues before heading off to college to play for the Pittsburgh Cathedrals. In his senior season at Pittsburgh he hit twenty-six home runs in fifty-eight games and had a slash line of .313/.465/.754. The Amsterdam Lions (then known as the Connecticut Nutmeggers) drafted Bothwell in the second round of the 2020 draft. That winter, the Lions traded Bothwell, along with the Amsterdam first, second, and fourth round draft picks to Okinawa for pitcher Grim Reaper Kokan. Last year Bothwell largely split time between the Shisa's AA and AAA franchises, and he made a brief appearance at the major league level late in the season.

I caught up with Bothwell while he was in Naha for some organized off-season team activities, which the first baseman describes as Japanese etiquette and language lessons for the team's growing list of gaijin players and prospects, what those players have begun to refer as 'Shisa Charm School'. My first question for him was how he had gotten the name 'Red Hook', which seemed to be a new appelation.

“It's funny because I mostly grew up in the East Village. My family moved to Brooklyn when I was in high school. That neighborhood we moved to is known as Red Hook. Nobody called me that until I started playing for the Anguirus. The skipper, Enrique Cortéz, started calling me that when I came up from Double-A. I guess I'm stuck with it, because [Shisa manager Kijuro] Yoshida started calling me that too, though not always in fun. I didn't exactly turn heads in the PEBA last season when they brought me up,” Bothwell recalls. He tallied just four hits, all singles, in forty-one at-bats. “I remember Yoshida asking me 'Red Hooka, how you hit twenty hoomuran in minors? Your swing,' and he just shook his head, 'terrible!'”

Bothwell laughs this off. “He was right. I've been working on shortening my stroke so that I don't get blown away by big-league pitching again. They were killing me with inside fastballs and I just couldn't turn on them. I'm excited to see the results of that this year.”

It helps to have a thick skin when playing in the PEBA, and Bothwell's upbringing in New York seems to have prepared him well. I asked him about the experience of playing youth baseball in the Big Apple.

“People are usually surprised to hear it, but New York is probably the best place to play ball as a kid right now. The fields, equipment, coaches ... everything's first class. It was a blast.”

This wasn't always the case. In 2008, when it was clear that New York's big league professional teams weren't coming back, and that the PEBA wasn't going to be moving any teams in, the city was in a funk. There was, for a time, talk of establishing a rival league, and in stepped Bernard Kohl. Kohl, a well-known Wall Street corporate raider and founding member of the private equity firm Redmond Kohl Kirkpatrick & Co. (or RKK), decided to put his considerable personal fortune to use.

That July, New York Times sports writer Alexandra Poole wrote that Kohl, a man known more for mass layoffs at newly purchased companies than any sentimental streak, had what she called “his Ebeneezer Scrooge moment.” At a brief press conference, Bernard Kohl simultaneously announced his departure from RKK and the formation of not one, but several new baseball leagues. “Baseball was born here on the banks of the Hudson, and by God we are not going to let this great game die here. New York has lost professional franchises in the past, and I believe that one day big league baseball will return to Gotham, but that's not what I came here to talk about this morning. Rather than morn the loss of our professional baseball clubs, let us make this promise to the youth of this great city, 'that they will not have to live in a city without baseball'. To this end, I am announcing the formation of the New York City Youth Baseball Alliance that will organize and equip youth baseball leagues from Tee-ball on up to the Babe Ruth level, serving all of the youth of New York from the ages of four to eighteen.”

The NYCYBA (or YBA for short) then swung into action, purchasing land in the five boroughs of the city to greatly expand the number of fields available for youth baseball, including land that had once been occupied by major league stadiums. The YBA became a very fashionable cause in the city, with many businesses and wealthy individuals joining in and sponsoring teams. Between 2009 and 2014 participation in organized youth baseball trebled in the city.

Bothwell recalls the time his Babe Ruth team, the Pirates (sponsored by Jerry Seinfeld), won the city-wide championship series in 2015. “It was big time. Seven thousand fans came out to MCU Park, where the [Brooklyn] Cyclones used to play. The YBA bought the park a couple years before to hold the post-season tournaments. We were based in Brooklyn, so we kinda had home-field advantage.” Bothwell went three for four and drove in three runs in an 11-7 victory in the sixth game of the series, a win that clinched the NYCYBA championship for the Pirates. “It was a heck of a way to go out,” says Bothwell.

Two years ago the YBA purchased another parcel of land, this time in Manhattan, after the Polo Grounds Towers, a public housing project, was torn down. This past summer, baseball again was played in the shadow of Coogan's Bluff on the six fields of the Polo Grounds Youth Baseball Complex.

Players used to come from all across the globe to play professional baseball in New York. Today, New York serves as a source of players for professional teams all across the globe. As of this writing, there are twenty-four New Yorkers on PEBA active rosters, and thanks to a burgeoning alliance of youth leagues, there are more, like Red Hook, on the way.

Does Bothwell think that professional baseball will return to his hometown? “There's a hunger there, that's for sure,” he says. “The PEBA is moving into bigger and bigger markets. Tokyo has a team, London has a team. There are a lot of people in New York asking 'why not us?'”

[roncollins]

Great article. Harbinger of things to come?

[Morris Ragland]

Great article. Harbinger of things to come?

I don't know. For one thing I'm not sure if moving teams to the larger North American cities is even consistent with the founder's vision.

As for the Shisa, they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Their financial outlook is improving slowly, but steadily. Fan loyalty and interest are still pretty good and season ticket sales have been brisk. They're not a relocation candidate right now.

[Lions]

Bothwell will be fun to watch. I'm happy with Kokan so far, but Bothwell may make me regret that move down the line!

The PEBA was founded in the collapse of MLB, and the aftermath thereof was that no PEBA team could be in a former MLB city. Whether or not that changes at some point will be interesting to watch.

[Morris Ragland]

Declining to play the role of Dan Jennings on the Shisa ball club, I am going to be going 'GM only' for 2022. This should be interesting.

[Morris Ragland]

Shisa Spring Report

Shiba Taguchi, Ryukyu Sports News

Tuba City, Arizona - March 13, 2022: The Shisa gear up for 2022, hoping for an improved record, though most experts don't foresee much success for Okinawa in the coming year. Executives have worked hard to bring in players to help the team, but may be forced to watch that same team evaporate at the end of the season, regardless of on-field results. In the clubhouse, the mood is mostly positive, but in the boardroom there is tension and anxiety as executives contemplate an uncertain future and a crisis not of their own making. The Shisa are a team isolated on a small island, both literally and figuratively. A club whose off-season efforts to improve seem to have been ignored by the larger baseball world, and beset by an angry and capricious sea of rules indifferent to its successes.

The Pressing Question: Will the New Acquisitions Make a Difference?

The Shisa had a very busy off-season, adding ten players to the active roster (eleven, if you count Salvador Rodríguez, who starts the spring on the disabled list) in an effort to improve on the team's lackluster 61-101 record last year. The baseball press has greeted this influx of talent to Okinawa with a collective yawn, with most pre-season polls predicting that the Shisa will make, at best, marginal gains in the won-lost column, and some actually predicting that Okinawa will regress in 2022. Much depends on how well the new pieces fit into place.

The Shisa added three starters to bolster an alarmingly bad 2021 rotation. Only one pitcher with fifteen or more starts last season (Yoshiaki Rin) posted an ERA below 5.00. The front office went out and acquired three affordable starters on the free agent market, Chris Graves, Livewire Hendricks, and Alex Stinnett. While none of the three is an all-star candidate, all are ground ball pitchers who should have some success pitching to contact with the Shisa infield defense behind them.

Okinawa also added a couple of right-handed relief pitchers, two-time all-star Michael Ayers and Fernando García. The Shisa specifically needed to fill the gap left by departing reliever Marcos González, who is now with Rio Grande Valley, and to improve right-handed relief depth in general.

Third baseman Scott Morris is the only new Shisa position player to get a multi-year deal this off-season. He fills the void at the hot corner in the wake of the trade of Tsukasa Okada to Kalamazoo. A longtime Underground stalwart with a career OPS of .742, and who has shown flashes of brilliance in the past (3.8 WAR in 2019), Morris is out to prove that he still can play at a high level.

Playing alongside Morris in the left half of the Shisa infield will be journeyman shortstop Rusty MacCune. MacCune has superlative defensive ability, but hadn't been able to stick with a big league club in the past due to lack of production at the plate. Philosophically, the Okinawa front office seems comfortable sacrificing offense for defensive prowess at short and prizes defense up the middle in general. MacCune may be an everyday starter on this club.

The Shisa answered any lingering questions about whether Red Hook would be rushed to the big league club this season by acquiring two first basemen with one-year deals. Dax O'Mannis is a right-handed hitter with an .884 lifetime OPS against left-handed pitching. His counterpart, the left-handed hitting first baseman known as El Chupacabra (Octávio Pexego), has a lifetime OPS of .871 against right-handed pitching. Okinawa first basemen had a collective WAR of -2.4 last season, so the acquisition of these two hitters could alone account for 5+ wins in 2022 over the previous year.

In the outfield, the Shisa went out and got an inexpensive center fielder, Mario Martínez. While he was nothing special at the plate last season in Duluth (.239/.314/.368), his ranginess in the outfield propelled him to a WAR of 1.9 in 124 starts for the Warriors, and he is three years removed from a 3.9 WAR season in Palm Springs. Sources in the Okinawa front office say that he has tremendous defensive instincts, getting good jumps on hard hit balls and making up for sub-par foot speed.

There is also Rule 5 pick Salvador Rodríguez to consider. While he is currently nursing a broken knee back to health, Rodríguez could be poised for good things in what will be his rookie year. Sources within the Shisa organization describe him as a “natural born thumper,” who has had success everywhere he's been in the Kalamazoo organization.

The Position Battle: Second Base

There are three holdovers battling for a starting spot at second this season: Gigolo Komatsu, António Pérez, and Sadahige Seki. Any of the three should be tremendous in the field, though none have excelled at the plate since the transition to the PEBA. All three bat right handed so the situation doesn't seem to favor a platoon at the position, though sources say that skipper Kijuro Yoshida may be favoring a split of Komatsu and Perez at that spot. Regardless of the outcome, Okinawa is poised to have a double play combination that should be the class of the league in the coming season, which they'll need with a rotation that isn't going to be striking a lot of batters out.

The Big Prospect: Salvador Rodríguez

Salvador means 'savior' in Spanish. That's quite a name to try and live up to. The one blessing for Rodríguez coming up to this team and at this time is that he is under very little pressure to be 'the guy' in the Shisa lineup. Expectations for this team are not high, and the need for an impact bat for a team not expected to be in contention is therefore not great. Okinawa isn't looking for a savior, just an every day left fielder. While most scouts are high on Rodríguez's skills, there are some questions about his drive and commitment to improving his game. Early and sustained success at the major league level could answer those questions, but a protracted struggle at the plate may end a career just as it begins. Rodríguez experienced some struggle transitioning from college to minor league ball, and overcame it. Will he have to do the same transitioning from the minors to big league ball?

The Nagging Problem: Accountants

Thanks to new financial reporting rules put in place in the wake of the scandals that ultimately brought down the old LRS, we know quite a bit about team finances. For 2022, the Shisa are estimating net revenues of $133M, excluding revenue sharing from the previous year. This would be an increase in income of nearly 27%. Revenue from tickets sales is projected to increase from $62.8M in 2021 to $80.2M in 2022. The Shisa's media contract has increased from $30.25M in 2021 to $42.75M in 2022. While you'd think this would be cause for rejoicing in the Shisa front office, you would be wrong. Okinawa is spending nearly every penny available to the club this season, and this is actually a very big problem.

Baseball accounting rules, which one executive who wished to remain nameless described as 'perverse', require a team to assume that spending levels on things like player development and scouting will be unchanged year-to-year; spending over which the team has total control. Further, when budgeting for player salaries, a team must assume that all team options will be exercised and that all arbitration-eligible players will be retained. Again, things over which the team has total control. Additionally, some teams, such as Okinawa, are stuck with projected budgets for future years only incrementally higher than their current season's budget and at variance with current income levels.

For the Shisa, this could bring the club to its knees in the coming year. There currently is a massive divide between the team's current budget of $103.5M, and its expected revenue of $133M. This divide persists when planning for future years. In 2023 and 2024, the team is forced into a budget of $104M (a mere half-million dollars higher than in 2022), which completely ignores the changing financial picture of the club. These budgets also curiously slash expected media revenues by $11M, for no apparent reason. The short of it is that the Shisa are projected to outspend their 2023 budget by some $26M ($130M in expenses versus a budget of $104M). Of that projected 2023 spending, $41.5M of it is tied up in team options on player contracts that the club can decline, and scouting and player development budgets that simply carry over to the following year, but over which the team also has full control in fact but not in theory. Unless the situation is remedied, the team will be unable to retain any of its players or personnel whose current contracts don't already cover the 2023 season.

Says one front office source, “We are spending the money available to us to improve this franchise both in the near and long-term. This is good for baseball and the health of the PEBA on the whole, but we are about to be punished for it in a very dramatic way. It is beyond frustrating. We could double our revenues from the previous year and it won't matter. This team is not in financial distress, but we're going to be treated as if we are.”

[Matt]

I am glad you wrote this. I had to go see what was happening with media revenue, because that disparity made no sense. Long story short, OOTP made some changes to the baseline for national/local, a change, btw, which actually makes sense is something along the lines of a discussion I had with the board a few months back. But, I think I had carried over previous baselines (and made an error when doing so, doh!) from ootp 15. When I investigated and saw what was happening, I made a correction that should bring things back in line more with what OOTP intended and should result in mostly minor changes to media revenue in the out years. You won't see that huge disparity for your team after next sim.

As for budgets, OOTP still sees you operating at a loss of near 16M in 2021, and projects an operating loss of 21 M for this year, in which case it is unlikely to give you a budget increase.

[roncollins]

OOTP's budgeting scheme makes it almost impossible to spend and perform your way out of the hole. Lupin is walking a very thin tightrope in this area, too. We have an ace or two in the hole, but it may not be enough in the long run. :)

[Morris Ragland]

I am glad you wrote this. I had to go see what was happening with media revenue, because that disparity made no sense. Long story short, OOTP made some changes to the baseline for national/local, a change, btw, which actually makes sense is something along the lines of a discussion I had with the board a few months back. But, I think I had carried over previous baselines (and made an error when doing so, doh!) from ootp 15. When I investigated and saw what was happening, I made a correction that should bring things back in line more with what OOTP intended and should result in mostly minor changes to media revenue in the out years. You won't see that huge disparity for your team after next sim.

As for budgets, OOTP still sees you operating at a loss of near 16M in 2021, and projects an operating loss of 21 M for this year, in which case it is unlikely to give you a budget increase.

Yeah, real life me understands what's happening and I expect that it will get sorted next off-season. We have a lenient and charitable owner, so I expect that going forward this won't really be an issue at all. I could have avoided the situation by spending less lavishly on scouting/player development, but this makes for a more interesting fictional narrative. Had I plowed that money into more one-year FA contracts, then there really wouldn't be a problem.

Still, it would be nice if the out-year budgets were more responsive to actual revenue in the current year.