It came as some surprise to many that for the first time London was active during the PEBA’s Winter Meetings under GM Nigel Laverick. After sitting quietly for the last three years the Underground emerged from the shadows and completed three deals. We caught up with the GM after the meetings and he talked us through them.

“The one problem we have in London at the moment is money,” Nigel started off “despite making the playoffs for the last three years now our budget is preventing us from really establishing ourselves. Our stars are getting big contracts through arbitration and we really have to work hard to squeeze every penny. We had made several attempts to fill our roster needs through free agency but we just don’t have the financial wiggle room now even for the couple of players we needed. We were heavily in for Clive Finbow, we’d have loved to have a genuine Englishman playing out of Wembley Stadium, but we weren’t prepared to mortgage the franchise on him. We had also made a substantial offer for Wayne Williams who we could really see being London’s #1 catcher next year but he wasn’t prepared to accept our ‘pittance’ offer of nearly $6m. So we were back to square one. We have had some limited success over the past few years with Rule 5 draftees, José Valverde & Felipe Garza, so we’ve had another crack at trying that route this year again. William Ferguson, our pick from Florida Featherheads, will make a good bullpen arm while Javier Sepúlveda, from Aurora Borealis, will probably be a good fourth outfielder for us. We’ve got a lot of new outfielders competing to revamp our outfield and he could be better than most. The only one we’re not too sure about is Christian George, our second pick from the Aurora system. We didn’t really expect to get him but we like his overall upside, just a bit worried about his control, 70 odd walks in each of the last two Triple-A campaigns could come back to bite us.

So we entered the Winter Meetings with a couple of gaps in our roster and one deal already struck. Some time ago we were dragged into the cancer that affected the LRS, we had agreed a deal to send Toyokazu Kurihara  and a prospect to the devil’s lair so when the Lupin Cliff Hangers came calling about Adrián Fuentes we felt we owed it to the final throes of the LRs to help them with a similar deal. That was supposed to be the extent of our invelvement but when catcher Víctor Martínez became available we felt he could be at least an equal to our only current catcher, Dave York. So we struck a deal for him with our 2019 second round draft selection, Tyson Cameron, going to the Neo-Tokyo Akira. Victor  has really been no better at the plate than Dave but his 136 homers in five years with the Akira at least gives us hope that he’ll add so pop to our line-up. The shopping of outfielder Barton MacLugash by Kentucky Thoroughbreds caught my eye too and we were quickly able to agree on a fifth round pick in the 2020 first-year-player draft as an acceptable price for him. We saw Bart as a possible upgrade on the aging Dennis Carter and mybe a chance to cash in on 2018 IL Royal Raker award winner Tuo-zhou Yang. His near $16 m arbitration award really put us behind the eight ball and the addition of Sepúlveda & MacLugash gave the opportunity to shop him for a top end of the rotation guy who would cover Leonard Carver who still won’t be back for at least six months. We did manage a few bites for him but unfortunately his salary made it too difficult to complete a deal that everybody felt was fair value. Overall though we rate this as a pretty successful Winter Meetings for us and our fans can look forward to a reshaped line-up, hopefully an improved line-up too, in 2020.”

 

So there we have it. Yet another catcher tries to make it big in Europe, more outfield battles as London try to sort out their muddled options in the outfield and young Gary Stanley also attempts to

take Luis Mora‘s closer mantle that he wore for so long at London. The real reason London could feel that Yang is now expendable is the free agent signing  of Tomás Gonzáles, signed on a three-year $6 m contract just before the Winter Meetings, he is an outstanding defensive outfielder and is a career .276/.347/.368 hitter in seven years with the Tempe Knights. It will be fun in spring trying to see how the Underground sort out their myriad of options  to patrol the wide open spaces of Wembley.