March 30^th, 2018

And so is the careers of many baseball players. As the spring camps break up and head off for familiar pastures there will be tears of joy as players unexpectedly make the big club, tears of despair as the realisation sinks that the dream is over for another year whilst for the unlucky few they will stand at the gates watching the lucky ones disappear before slowly turning to get on with the rest of their lives.

It was no different when the London camp broke and headed once more for Wembley Stadium. When I entered the office our staff were sat around arguing about which of our three catchers in camp would be the one to miss out. 30-year-old Luis Cruz had hit .263 in the end, thanks to a late rush, but it was the smallest sample size. 28-year-old Al Murdoch, the regular catcher for the last two years, had hit just over .200, had no homers and only two extra-base hits. 28-year-old Dave York, in his first London camp after arriving in the Juan Hernández trade, hit below the Mendoza line at .196 but had at least three doubles, two triples and a long bomb to show for his potential. The conversation was killed when I slapped the contract on the table.

“Gentlemen, we have a solution, Wilson Berry has signed our deal, we have a catcher that can hit close to .300 with double digit homers!” As the others read the contract there was a murmur about how much it had cost us for the next two years. Holding up my hand I silenced them again. “He may be our highest paid player now but he has to get 500 PA’s to get the second year and that’ll mean he’s producing. Catcher has been our Achilles heel in the lineup. How many rallies have stopped because up comes Murdoch and the third out?” That simple contract had proved to be the end of Cruz’s London career, his age was against him. Murdoch had just not shown any potential improvement and would head for Worcester while we would retain York as Berry’s backup. That left poor Cruz, waived to get him off the 40-man and no spot at Triple-A if he did clear waivers. 189 games he had managed for the Underground, hitting .226/.281/.303 with four homers and 68 RBI. He’d also accumulated 505 minor league appearances in five years in Double & Triple-A, 13 post season games for Worcester and he’d hit .350 in the Underground’s play-off series last year.

A more joyful task Hitting Coach Emílio Flores would have to do would be to tell Lorenzo Valenzuela that he had made the club for the first time. Drafted originally with the 7^th pick of the second round in 2013 by the Canton Longshoremen he failed to sign and re-entered the 2014 draft where London drafted him two spots higher. Named the PEBA’s #94 prospect after his first pro year he climbed to the #47 spot before an injury hit 2016 set him back a bit. His first cup of coffee came last September where he was disappointed with four RBI and .185/.185/.296 in 15 outings. He came to his first camp fired up, showed great defence and hit .289/.349/.395 while scoring ten times & stealing six bags without being caught. The decision to keep him up was made a little easier by Dan Truax heading for the D/L after camp with back tightness but in all honesty he had outshone Paco Shaffer & Ralph Woods with his enthusiasm anyway. He’ll have a spell in the opening weeks to prove he can do the job and when Truax is activated another decision will have to be made.

Another Happy Bunny was Gabriel Álvarez who has grabbed the fifth and final spot in the Underground rotation. Hiroyuki Nii, Leonard Carver & Miguel Rosa had claimed rotation spots as expected while Ángel Luján had proved his fitness after last year’s six month absence with a shoulder inflammation. That left the last spot up for grabs, Bryan Bedell will be upset to lose out following posting a 3-1, 2.25 ERA record in camp but what cost him was his continued lack of control as he walked 11 batters in just four starts. 23-year-old rookie Erwin Callahan in his first camp after only being drafted two years ago started well and won his opening two games but the batters were sizing him up and he finished up giving up 12 runs in four games for a 6.75 ERA. He will return to Worcester and then probably winter ball for final seasoning. That sort of left Álvarez in the fifth slot by default, he too went 3-1 with a 2.25 ERA in camp but the difference with him and Bedell was Gabriel kept opponents down to hitting .209 off him. Also despite a loss of control in his final game where he walked four he was generally in command and walked just seven in four starts.

London was fortunate in that given the general young age of the camp attendees all of those returned to Worcester had options left and were able to bypass the need for clearing waivers. Several of the players will not be so lucky next year and it will be a pivotal year in their careers. The main hardship this year was not felt by those players but by the Worcester players and a few in lower minors that ended up losing their jobs to make way for the final cuts. The most highest profile player to be released was Ernesto Burgos who had made 218 appearances for the Underground over a six year career. He was a career .234/.280/.340 hitter with 12 home runs & 64 RBI but had fallen out of grace with the emergence of Victor O’Sullivan. Burgos was limited to just 10 games with the big club in his final year and London ate his final year’s $756k contract. Amongst the surprises to be released were 28-year-old Dwight Thompson who had racked up over 530 appearances at Double-A & Triple-A hitting at over .300 at both levels but his power had disappeared in recent years. Left fielder, 26-year-old Dean Morrison was another who had 450+ appearances at the top two levels of minors but will never now get a cup of coffee with the Underground, squeezed out just by the number of outfielders in Worcester who have PEBA experience. 28-year-old Edgar Knight, picked up as an off season minor league free agent, leaves without having pitched in anger for the club. Heading for Double-A Montréal Métros is 29-year-old James Kennedy, the highest placed Englishman in the organisation. His dream of playing for the City of his birth appears to have evaporated as he gets further away from the PEBA.

2018 sees London attempt to reach the post season in back to back years for the first time in franchise history. Whether the management has made the right decisions out of camp to enable that remains to be seen  …. And is Wilson Berry really the Underground’s highest paid player ?