We are not alone

So with the winter meetings over Charleston revealed the worst kept secret in PEBA, yes Hurst was also moving on. The return of two highly rated prospects softens the blow a bit but also the arrival of Takeda could immediately help the Statesmen out.

Hiroshige Takeda adds some real power to the Charleston lineup but he doesn’t seem to have had to sacrifice contact either. He slots straight into left field at Moultrie Field and should feel at home since he possesses solid defensive ratings. When he’s been healthy all year he’s been a 3 win player, which is even better considering the relatively cheap extension he signed last year. ($6.4m/2yr) Takeda is likely to win over Statesmen fans with his work rate and loyalty to the team as well; all-round he’s a fairly good guy to have in Charleston. He’ll need to adjust from the LRS but he has the skills to do so in the teams opinion.
Reinaldo Anelas is a third base prospect the team are very excited about, has the potential to be a solid all round hitter. And considering he’s only 17 he has plenty of time to reach his potential. He’s from Brazil originally so Sitka is probably a bit of a contrast for him but he already has some surf-snow experience under his belt.

Takanobu Shirai is a right handed pitcher that looks set to start the season in AAA, a repertoire including a slider, curveball, sinker combination of pitches which all possess excellent movement. Still needs a bit of work on his control but the team expect that to improve with time and experience in the league.

While he may not the finished article yet, the team are very excited to have him on board. He adds a bit of a spark to a AAA rotation that was looking like it may well only be filled with fodder from failed spring training projects.

While losing the trio of stars looks to have hurt the rotation, pitching is where Charleston has shown depth and has been able to add to it further with the addition of Jung-hoon Changgok. The biggest issue facing him is, who exactly is he?

Some say he’s originally from Korea, but none of my contacts over there have any data about him. He’s got years of ratings and pro experience but again, no data available on any league files. The first suggestion put forward was that he was an imposter, simply trying to get to a new life in the USA on a stolen passport. Then it dawned on me that’s far too logical, perhaps he’s one of the pod people!

Rumours about the pod people appear every now and then, but nothing seems to really come of it. But this year there seems to be an abundance of these strange players with no history, but they can play ball appearing around the league. Every year all eyes turn to the free agency filings and GM’s look to add to their respective teams, but his year swathes of strangely talented, completely unheard of players flooded into PEBA.

Most of these players say they’re from Japan and Korea which perhaps gives the suggestion that this is part of the fallout of the league merger. Not that there’s been an influx of players into the FA pool but that the space-time continuum has actually ripped apart and a bunch of pod people have filled the void with their dazzling off-speed pitches and solid contact hitting.

Whoever they are and wherever they’ve came from its clear that PEBA GM’s are interested enough to make offers on most of these guys. It seems as if the league has reached a new level of unity recently between the expanding PEBA into new markets, the merger of the LRS and now the warm embrace of the pod people. Shiny, happy people working towards a brighter baseball future, whether they’re pod or not.

Brigham Lennox

The above ramblings were based on a comment made at this year’s winter meetings: