Let’s not beat around the bush, shall we? It was a painful year for the Lupin Cliff Hangers, equal parts bitter and difficult. After an atrocious 2021 that saw them go 59-103, the team entered the season with both pundits and fans expecting great things. And, to be fair, the team opened April in 14-9 fashion. Lupin’s bats hit .286 as a whole and scored 5.1 runs a game while the pitching staff was at least adequate.

But, even that early in the season, the signs were there. The writing, as they say, was on the wall. The leaves were in the tea. The … well .. you get the idea.

In an event that came to be known as the Cliffi-Leaks, an anonymous member of the team’s front office leaked a series of information to the press that showed much of the Cliff Hanger’s internal workings, not all to the positive.

Kinnosuke Iwisaki, the team’s 64-year-old manager, quietly made news when he told the press he wasn’t interested in returning next year. Rumblings came that Tomatsu Yoshida, the club’s scouting director was unhappy with the team’s budgeting, which was rumored to be slanted gently toward player development rather than his scouting staff. Yoshida would subsequently be replaced by ex-Okinawa scout Daisuke Wakabayashi in late August.

As we know now, Lupin would end the season with the league’s worst home and away splits, winning 48 games at home and only 27 on the road (a 21-win gap). Astute observers could already see this in April, as the Cliff Hangers were 11-3 at home, 3-7 away.

On April 22, the first of what would become the defining element of the season occurred when designated hitter Roberto Cisneros slid into second base and destroyed his knee. Cisneros was hitting .455 at the time, with seven doubles, a homer, and 14 RBI. But, after that day he was done, and though they didn’t know it at the time, so were the Cliff Hangers.

Oh, yes, there were certainly moments where it looked like the club could still pull a miracle out of their hat.

Time and time again Lupin’s organization came up with remarkable performances as they pulled guys out of Yamauchi who then posted blistering numbers in their first weeks with the club. Takechi Yoshida stepped in for Cisneros and dropped a .917 OPS in May (to go with 6 homers and 13 RBI). Kohei Sakai stepped in for the injured Sato and slashed .314/.364/.557 for a month before he faded and then got hurt himself. When first baseman Hirotsugu Tenno went down in May, Kevin Arnold came up and blasted 8 homers while slashing .307/.346/.604. (As a result, many say Tenno was rushed back to the field too early, as he was terrible for several weeks upon his return, but eventually got his act together to finish the season with some respectability).

The fans took to calling their team “Misfit Boys” and the club clung to the .500 mark at the end of May, remained in some form of contention even through June, and even clawed their way back to .500 by the end of July. But the magic wore out in August when pretty much every starter was either on the DL, or had been on it recently—of the few who had not, Shiro Adachi was suffering a broken bat, and both Larry Martin (a slug defender who did at least get on base), and Kevin Forrest, this year’s try out at third base were given their outright release in a financial move that drew the ire of the fans (more on that later).

To say the Cliff Hangers were awful in August is like saying Ann Coulter is a little conservative. This team was horrendous. Their 7-19 record doesn’t even begin to describe how bad this team was. Oh, sure, some Cliff Hanger fans could say that nine of those losses were the 1-run kind. But let’s get serious. This is a team that on August 19th lost a 1-0 game … in 20 innings. Think about that one for a minute. But it gets worse.

Kalamazoo won that game when Jaime Lopez walks, and Spike Ouwens attempted to sacrifice him over, but Lupin was unable to take such charity, and instead Ouwens was safe at first and runners stood at first and second without an out. Tsukasa Okada was then able to actually give himself up to put runners at second and third, whereupon Lupin intentionally walked Scott Wiggins to load them up. Lupin’s pitcher, young Hyeon-cheong Yong (acquired in the off season from Aurora), got Hector Garcia to pop up, and then worked a 2-1 count to left-handed hitting Russell Guy before the team lost the game on a swinging strike that got past catcher Yeijiro Kojima for a passed ball.

Yes, a passed ball in the 20th inning cost Lupin a 1-0 loss.

The team had been slumping previous to that game, but fans generally point to that moment as the time the Cliff Hangers officially gave up. They beat Kalamazoo 4-2 the following day, but lost consecutive shutouts the next two days (1-0 to the Badgers in 10 innings, and 6-0 to the Akira) and the season was done.

All total the team used 28 hitters and 17 pitchers in their big league club.

They finished with a 75-87 record, which in the end is probably a testament to how good the club’s AAA squad could have been. Those 75 games, however, represent a 16 win swing from the disaster that was 2021, and in truth there were some outstanding moments to be had for Cliff Hanger fans (who came to the Castle 3.4M strong, the second best showing of any season in the club’s history).

Rookie Chad Miller, he of the 2.95 ERA and 30 saves, may be the top of this list. Miller throws 101 MPH and struck out a hitter an inning. Veteran starter Akira Watanabe was healthy all year, and turned in a masterful 16-13 record with a 3.39 ERA. On a decent team there exists a chance he could have been a 20-game winner. New second baseman José Escobido posted a remarkable .425 OBP in the lead-off spot before he (of course) fractured his foot. Young star Okakura Ishikawa appeared to be growing a much deeper understanding of the game with both the bat and the glove before he tore his meniscus. Lefty starter Bill Courtney came in from Mexico and posted a nice 3.95 ERA before hurting himself (get the pattern here?), and, of course, Roberto Cisneros will return in 2023, though what will remain of that monstrous bat remains to be seen.

And then there was the team’s minor league system, which the front office put a lot of time and money into and which yielded post-season appearances in three of the four levels. While it’s still true that the system probably has very few “can’t miss” kind of prospects, it is now littered with interesting guys at every level.

Financially, the team was among the league’s top 10 revenue generators, and turned what’s being estimated as a $15-$20M profit.

Of course, it’s the Cliff Hanger finances that got the club into hot water with its fans. Perhaps that says something about the region, doesn’t it? The fans watched this team cobble itself together under a lame duck manager, and play contending baseball for four months before falling apart, and instead of heaping pressure on the players, the fans pointed to the exact origin of the problem, in this case, the front office—specifically the owner, Paul Walker.

For months Ron Collins, the club’s general manager, had been asked what he was doing to plug gaps that the team’s rash of injuries were creating, and for months Collins had given vague corporate-speak responses before it eventually came out that he was under direct orders from Walker to avoid spending money on new players at the big league level. “I could spend our cash on just about anything else,” he said later, “but Paul was certain he didn’t want to be signing any multi-year deals, and that’s pretty much all she wrote when it comes to getting a real player to come help you. You have to be able to commit more to guys like that than Paul was willing to handle.”

We all know the story at this point.

Lupin fans pissed off. Lupin fans mocking Walker. Walker’s tone deaf responses. Collins dumping cash into International Free Agents and massive minor league contracts. Lupin fans boycotting advertisers and picketing the ticket office. Secretive meetings, and finally, the announcement that the club will be branding itself under the Toyama banner for 2023 and beyond.

So, yeah, just another workaday season for the Lupin Cliff Hangers.

Move along, eh? Nothing more to see here, right?

So, after the dust clears the questions that remain are all focused, as they should be, on the future.

There is talent on this squad, no doubt about that. Fans of the club are not wrong to think they could have done much better without the medical curse that hung over the Cliff Hangers. The team finished the season 16-13 as a majority of the club’s injured players returned, so despite the struggles, it’s reasonable to say that Lupin was an August away from the playoffs.

And yet, the club needs to make some key decisions.

Decisions like:

• Is it worth $6.7M to pick up the option of third starter Tsuyoshi Nishiyama? Nishi had a very nice season going in June (4-4, 3.07) when he herniated a disc in his back. He was nowhere as effective when he returned. At 33, he’s getting to that point where cautious eyes must be cast.
• Who is going to play short stop. Shiro Adachi has been in and out of the role for two seasons. He was signed to a cheapish extension in the flurry of financial activity toward the end of the year, but it’s clear he’s not an elite player in that role anymore, and in fact, has been a better second baseman than shortstop for a couple seasons now.
• What should be done about Sadatake Sato? The 30-year-old center fielder has been decimated by injury and is clearly not the player that fan s of Japanese baseball saw when he was in his prime. He can still hit the ball hard, bit his BABIP has faded to nothing, and his range in the field is sub-par. The club finished the season with a platoon of Rubén Hernández and Ben Ray at the position. Hernández was, of course, in and out with injuries, but generally terrible with the bat. Ray was just pretty much terrible. Both, however, were plus-plus fielders, and the team did win with them on the field. Collins drafted center fielders with both the amateur and international drafts, but it’s unlikely either will be ready to play in 2023.

What will happen in 2023? We have no idea. But we’re guessing it’s going to be interesting.