The Bourbon Street Baseball Blog
Don’t Look Now…
May 7, 2040
Life in the Big Easy- Not much was expected out of the 2040 Trendsetters. Still in a deep rebuilding mode, the organization has concentrated most of it’s resources to developing their farm system and on making the most of the draft and the draft picks they can pick up. But, 2040 may have thrown off that schedule. Through May 7th, the team is in 3rd place. Not the normal third place where Florida and Kentucky are 20 games ahead of everybody else, but 3rd place in an honest to goodness battle for first!
New Orleans sits at 18-14, 3 ½ games behind the surging Charleston Statesmen and 2 ½ behind the Florida Farstriders. What has been the main reason for this sudden ability to win more games than they lose? Well, a few, the first being the rather weak schedule in the first few weeks. The Trendsetters have only played two teams with a record above .500, those being Charleston and Florida, and six teams under .500. The overall record of their records of their opponents so far has been 92-147, a .385 winning percentage. The other reasons are more favorable. Nathan Gallard has begun to emerge as a #1 starter. Take away his lone disastrous start against the Statesmen, and Pitchy McPitch Face has allowed just five runs in five starts with a 1.93 ERA. Joe Arnold has been solid and is 3-2 with a sub 4.00 ERA and recently acquired, Alonso Hernandez has been dominating hitters over his first six starts with a 2.79 ERA featuring plenty of opposing whiffs.
Offensively the team has been fairly middle of the road with Royce Green and Michel Bastide providing solid, if not spectacular at bats, but a big difference has been the improved defense. Barry Wallace has been a major improvement at SS and with Bastide in center field and Tenshin Kudo at 2B, the team is pretty solid up the middle and are 7th in defensive efficiency and 8th in Zone Rating, whereas they were dead last all season in both categories last year. Who knows what a tougher schedule will bring in the month of May, but, so far the season has been a breath of spring air for long time Trendies.
A Block off Bourbon Street- The top three minor league teams in Fayetteville, Delaware and Ensenada began their 2040 schedule. The Braggarts lead their division in AAA by two games and have featured excellent pitching. Especially by Raul Munoz, who threw a Perfect Game! On April 19th vs. the Chesapeake Bay Oysters. Delaware, though tied for 2nd in their AA division, have a pretty nice 20-12 record, led by Masanobu Ozawa, a one time prize prospect overshadowed by Li-Zhu Ho. Now, Ozawa has moved up to AA while Ho is repeating Single A in Ensenada. Speaking of the Evil Witches, Ensenada seems to have had a curse put on them. They began the season 5-15 and prospects such as Marco Jimenez and Weston Harris have found the jump to full season A-Ball difficult to say the least.
Trendie Town Talks- This time around the Bourbon Street Baseball Blog talks with Manager Alfredo Vega and asks, “Who was the toughest player you ever saw?”. Vega did not hesitate when giving his answer. “Before I was picked up by the Gloucester club in the mid 2000’s, I played in the Milwaukee Brewers system. Back in 2005 I was playing in AAA Nashville for the Sounds and Prince Fielder was our 1B and he was massive. An even six foot and 265 pounds and he was as wide as he was tall with power to spare. One time we were playing the Memphis Redbirds, our division rival, and their pitcher, Adam Wainwright starts throwing further and further inside. Prince starts jawing with their catcher and tells him if Wainwright hits him, he will take him out first, Wainwright out next and whoever else after that. Both teams start jawing at each other and the whole Redbirds dugout starts yelling at Fielder who calmly walks towards their dugout and challenges anybody to come out and take him on. I never saw 24 guys all look at the top of their shoes so quickly. Nobody would take a step out of the dugout. Keep in mind Prince had a reputation for being unafraid of anything or anybody. Once, in Memphis coincidentally, we pulled up to the team hotel on Front Street and nearby was what was formerly known as Jefferson Davis Park. There were a few, maybe four, Lost Cause idiots carrying a Confederate flag demonstrating the changing of the park’s name and yelling racist slogans. At this time, the Chapelle Show was very popular and had a character played by Dave Chapelle that was a blind African American who had no idea he was black and was a member of the Klan and he would shout “White Power!” So, Prince gets off the bus and sees these idiots and starts walking towards them yelling “White Power!” These clowns had no idea what to make of a gigantic African-American walking straight at them yelling White Power. They started backing up and Prince kept walking towards them and they backed up all the way to their trucks and left. A few people even applauded Prince. Easily the toughest player I ever knew.”
Crawfish Future- The rebrand of the farm system continues along with positive responses from the first name change when the Ensenada Cenicienta del Pacifico, translated meaning “The Cinderellas of the Pacific”, underwent a name change and uniform change and so far it has been a hit. The name change to the Las Brujas Malvadas was a smashing success and next year the team is expected to not only change the name of either the AAA or AA team, but likely move the franchises as well. Both cities have aging stadiums and the team has been negotiating with other locations to host the teams in the next few years. Likely the teams will each undergo name, logo, stadium, city and uniform changes in the next few years. Finally, ground has been broken on the New Orleans Trendsetters new state-of-the-art Player Development Lab, the Banner University Medical Center Player Development Complex. Expected to open prior to the 2041 season, this complex will be devoted to player development of the Trendsetters prospects and established players and is expected to pay big dividends in the future for the organization.
And, once again we leave you with one of my favorite baseball quotes:
“If I had as many singles as Pete Rose, I’d have worn a dress.” – Mickey Mantle