By Howard Rourke, Kalamazoo Badgers beat writer

6/12/2009: Kalamazoo, MI –  The PEBA trade deadline is fast approaching and playoff races are heating up.  The Sovereign League’s in particular is actually boiling, and in the pot trying to figure out how to come up with a strategy ‘al dente’ is GM David Ellison.  He has not left the Badgers’s facilities in Kalamazoo, MI since June 22^nd, when the team was in the midst of five-game losing streak.  While being barricaded in his surprisingly humble office, he has been sifting through piles of folders and documents that are spread out in some type of organized mayhem.  The goal was to come up with dozens of proposals to strengthen his club, in which he was successful.  In his search to find the right roster improvements, he said he contacted what seems like every team in the PEBA.  He was able to find success through completing deals with the hated-yet-respected division rival in Fargo and distant foe of the Imperial League, Arlington.  But in between, as general managers do, the Kalamazoo GM discussed a monsoon of options, opinions and strategies with front offices across the league.  One that I found interesting through my time spent discussing these in detail with Mr. Ellison was his talks with Tempe’s equally controversial GM Chris Van Hauter.

Basically, the conversation was Tempe expressing the frustration of building up a winner in south central Arizona with the shackles placed on him and his organization because of the lack of a vibrant market in the Knights’s desert region.  His sentiment voiced to Ellison was that it would be a lot easier to fill holes in his roster if he could afford to take advantage of free agency and resign his own.  “I agree having money makes things easier,” was David’s exact reply to Van Hauter’s pleas.  But in my further discussions with Kalamazoo’s personnel boss he made sure to let me know that it’s never easy building a champion and it’s a constant struggle to balance the present and the future.  For example, it’s never easy letting guys like RF Gregory Arnold go.  But at least our Badgers could resign community favorite CF George Crocker, something not possible for teams like Tempe where he would account for two-thirds of their present payroll.  There are many league dynamics other than money that prove obstacles in small market teams’ battle for playoff contention.  But nothing is impossible.

From a writer’s perspective, the one main thing outside of the control of the general managers of smaller market clubs is the weak demands of players’ agents and/or the players’ lack of greed.  In the PEBA there has been an outbreak of top 20-something players locking themselves up in long-term contracts, but making it even more of a thorn in the side of teams in the same situation as London, Tempe and Yuma is that they are often well below market value, too.  As a writer I am not a greedy individual, but if I know I can get $100 as easy as I can get $10, I would take $100 every time.  I assume most of you agree unless you are part of minority that think money is evil.  I guess a large part of that very small minority play in the PEBA!  I could list a lot of players but I will focus on one of the most popular (but regretfully not one of the most prosperous) players in the PEBA: 5 time IL Player of the Week, 3 time Batter of the Month, 2 time All-Star and 2007 Royal Raker Award recipient, 27-year-old New Jersey Hitmen 1B Rubén Cruz.  Prior to the season, Rubén and his agent agreed to a 6-year contract extension that pays an average of $12.17 million before incentives and in consequence avoids the free agent market until he is 33 years old.  We know that Rubén Cruz is a gentle giant from all the work he has done to improve the grammar schools in his home town of Santo Domingo.  But he could do a lot more philanthropic good with the extra $5 million per season the market for his talents would supply.  Situations like this allow those lucky franchises with ample resources that little bit of extra breathing room that allow them hold on to more quality names.  But really, competition does seem well balanced.  One can look simply to Manchester’s history to see that anything is possible, and as in society as a whole it’s a perpetual struggle of the haves versus the have-nots.

However, there are ways for our little friends to win some division titles.  From my limited experience covering the PEBA as a journalist, it’s very simple to say and not as easy to do.  The solution seems to be: stockpile talent and draft picks by any means necessary.  This is even more true if one is not in contention.  For instance, if through evaluating your roster and place in the standings you find there isn’t a realistic chance to break through into the post season, then I would be a seller.  When I say seller, I mean a wheelin’, dealin’, used car, no money down, get the fifth one free type seller.  So if I were lucky enough to manage even the most meagerly monetarily blessed franchise, I would be looking to wring out every ounce of value for each and every desirable asset I possessed on the active roster.  I say active roster because prospects, especially in low level ball, I would hold very dear.  But if I could ever find another personnel chief willing to give me anything that could prospectively produce 2, 2-and-a-half or 3 starters for my studly, perfect-in-every-way fan favorite, then by golly we got ourselves a deal.  With this outlook, not only will you (hopefully) have ample resources in your farm system, but when the sun does shine on those empty seats in your stadium and you begin to reach a lofty place in your division you’ll have the pieces needed to trade for that extra piece.

Hope all you in Kalamazoo enjoyed my little lesson on general managing a big league club.  And hopefully we can all one day create algorithms using a mix of players’ VORP, batting and pitching stats and salary to come up with numerical scouting reports, like the mastermind behind the Kalamazoo Badgers, David Ellison.