It never snows in Havana. The 2022 PEBA Winter meetings have come and gone with nothing left under Havana’s tree. Rumor was the club tried to piece together a number of deals and put top players and even the clubs first draft pick on the table without any takers. At one point the club was rumored to have considered a trade embargo on the whole league out of frustration.

The club’s ownership said in an exclusive interview:

“We’re a long way down he road from the heady trades of the LRS. Remember the Domingo Hernandez and Bing Zhang Chien deals? Big bold strokes, with upsides for both partners. Sigh. Those were the days. It can difficult to find a partner wiling to make a balanced proposal in today’s climate. There’s a lot of gambling. That’s why so many draft picks trade hands every year. It’s very easy to seek revolution over evolution. We’re not taking that route. Our revolution will be on the field and borne of evolution. We’ll keep building our club through free agency and the farm system primarily. We’ve been lucky with the waiver wire, mostly because we were so lacking these past two years. As we improve we expect to be getting less from the wire.”

“While we’re on the topic of going forward, I should like to state for the record that we despise having the first pick of the draft again and as owner I resolve to the fans that we will improve and it is our sincerest hope we never have another top 5 draft position, ever. It’s a disgrace. We intend to win this division and the PEBA. Our goal is to be the first club to have won the LRS and PEBA championships. We’ve started from a huge disadvantage, partly of our own making but largely not. As Fidel Castro once said ‘A revolution is not a bed of roses’. ”

Rumors have it that the club wanted to do more but that there is some tension growing between Ownerniship and Manager Shinichi Seki over the rosters and player assignments. Ownership feels that there are deals they could make but Seki is not willing to play players according to the Owner’s script. This recently came to head when the club signed DH Jim Thompson. On the face it seemed a curious move for a non DH club. The scuttlebutt is that the the club wanted to move C Yosuke Imai to 1B leaving Thompson to work with developing C Hirotsugu Suzuki
Leaving the Winter Meetings empty handed seems to have raised the frustration levels for both parties.