Is the Third Time the Charm?
Crystal Lake Daily – by Ed Harris
10/1/2009: Crystal Lake, IL – Stability in the Sandgnats organization has paid dividends, leading to the team's third consecutive division crown. The Gnats have never won the Rodriguez Cup, but after a quick out in 2007 postseason playthey advanced to the 2008 Planetary Extreme Championship before losing in 6 games to the New Orleans Trendsetters. After a busy offseason they resumed their quest for the Cup, winning 112 games in the 2009 season and finishing 2nd in both hitting and pitching in the Sovereign League behind the rival Aurora Borealis. They completed the season on a strong note, defeating Canton in all three games.
With their young gun starting staff and potent offense, the team seems to be on track to repeat last year’s success. Whether or not this team will be able to go all the way is yet to be seen, but the franchise’s success has produced a kneejerk reaction by some competing owners who have labeled CL a co-conspirator “evil empire” with the Borealis. I caught up with Sandgnats owner Dean Giesey to ask him about this charge, but more importantly to hear what has been happening in the organization due to its success and what his plans for the future might be.
Interviewer: Crystal Lake is a homemade success story. With its third divisional title in hand can you share with us what this means for the organization and for you personally?
Giesey: Thank you Ed. The Gnats are definitely the crowning achievement, the organizational jewel, but let us not forget that for the first time in the organization’s short history all five of its teams won their division crown – no short achievement. We also have championships at double A Brampton and low A Mauna Loa. It is a testament to everyone’s hard work.
Interviewer: Yes, that’s true and you are most justifiably proud.
Giesey: It affirms the efforts of the entire organization and is more fulfilling than a personal or organizational award. It is recognition of the work everyone in the organization has done, from the front office to the scouts and to our coaches. This is what Crystal Lake is about – the sum of the parts is greater than the one or the few. Many thanks go out to the Bill, my operating partner, as well as the coaching staff and the great bunch of young ballplayers that make up our organization.
Interviewer: You mentioned Bill Hewitson. How essential is he to your team? The coaches say he is a hard taskmaster compared to you. Are you really a softy, and how well do the both of you get along?
Giesey: Billy is a lamb (laughs) – especially next to Wayne Kedsch. Where are you getting this stuff (laughing)? He is big part of our success. Bill has been charged with building up the coaching staff, which we believe is the weakest part of the organization. Bill takes this seriously and he has worked very hard to upgrade the player instruction and development. As you can see we have performed very well at all levels and we believe that we have, or will have shortly, a steady stream of prospects with which to feed the parent team. We get along very well, sometimes completing each others sentences (smiling). We have had our moments but I don’t want “yes men” all around me. Bill is proactive and acts in the best interest of the team. He tells me what he thinks and that’s what I would rather hear from him and all of our coaches.
Interviewer: The local papers have made much about you propensity to trade prospects. How do you respond to this?
Giesey: Yes, we have traded quite a few, especially catchers. Our organizational strategy is to win at all levels and we want to win now! We have five teams; they all should and do compete. This strategy has served us well but has led to some interesting player movement and acquisition. We make moves to shore up weakness and we are not afraid to trade players.
The Roberts trade earlier in the year was not popular within our organization. We moved a ML-ready starting pitcher with good numbers (by our scouts) who was modestly signed to a three-year, three million dollar contract along with a 6th round pick for Trent Roberts and another player. I wanted Trent because we needed an A-ball closer to shore up El Cajon’s weakness. He was more valuable than a reserve starting pitcher who was basically an injury replacement guy since it would have been difficult for him to break into our current rotation. I just didn’t see Coop unseating any of our current ML starters. I hated to move Cooper – he was a good man but we needed to pull the trigger. As a prerequisite we did acquire Chris Croker, and that was for insurance just in case of an injury. The press would have had a field day if one of the starters went down and I moved our backup starter for an A-ball reliever. The deal worked out very well for us. Chris was also a good acquisition but he later had a season-ending injury. Thanks to our pitching depth we were able to call up Shawn Burris, who is looking like a real gem at this point.
Interviewer: You mentioned Shawn Burris. What other players are on your short list and how well do you think you have done in the college draft?
Giesey: It is certainly not for lack of trying. I believe Baseball America ranks us 15th in terms of top prospects – we are moving up. We think we are much better than that but only time will tell. We started with zero players on Baseball America’s top 100 list. We have 5 now. Don’t uncork the bottle just yet! At least we are moving in the right direction. We have some sleepers as well. I don’t want to slight anyone for our short list but Burris, Petersen and Hall are about major league ready. We have another player, Yosh Koyama, who has been moving rapidly through the system. We might see him in a late season call-up next year if he continues to progress.
Interviewer: There are some in the league who have called you an “evil empire”. How would you respond to that?
Giesey: I read that article (smiling). I want to believe the author meant this as a compliment. Or at least I hope he did, Look – we have never been the league champion, so it’s not like we sit on high and look down on everyone else. We have been successful to be sure but we are still trying to reach the summit. Because of our success we are growing in market size, but we started as a small-to-mid market team with a small fan base. It terms of resources, our media revenue this year was something like 14th. This is below the median. In spite of limited resources and other disadvantages, Crystal Lake has been able to perform well and thrive.
This is in large part due to the strength of the inaugural draft and, in particular, starting pitching; our greatest strength. We believe that our starting four might be the best rotation in PEBA. Anderson, Pacheco, Cruz and Stewart won 81 games this year. We had two twenty-game winners and two nineteen-game winners. Most of the team was drafted or signed as free agents. We do have a couple of blue chippers that we were able to acquire, but they came to us with season-ending injuries and we were obviously taking some risk (we needed to save money).
We must be very frugal with our contracts. Our fan support prior to this year was not very good. This meant that not only could our richer rivals outspend us but they had the advantage of gate revenue without performance. We, on the other hand, must win to obtain cash.
Put simply, we are mid-market team with a fickle fan base that must win to draw. We are getting better and certainly the stadium expansion and the baseball village construction has helped us to grow in popularity and, hopefully, a larger media market. We play hard and have a winning tradition now, but evil? Hardly. We have been fortunate thus far. Hopefully, we can continue to make our own luck.
Interviewer: Lucky? I know better. I want to thank you for your time and wish you good luck in the LDS.
Giesey: Thank you Ed. This is our third go round with the Palm Spring Codgers. They are a great team. Maybe the third time is the charm.