By Frank Terry, Canton Repository
Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The Canton Longshoremen took life in the PEBA 2007 Inaugural Draft with a plan to use sabermetrics and a slugging offense to carry the Great Lakes Division of the Sovereign League.  Now, after three full years of baseball, the Longshoremen have a winning percentage of .407 and have never finished closer than 40 games out of the playoffs.  A look back should reveal where it all went wrong.

2007: The season dawned with great expectations.  Projections had the Longshoremen between 82-90 wins and this reporter even predicted a division win.  A raft of early trades designed to bolster the pitching instead brought in next to nothing beyond bit piece Arron Campbell and prospects Ryuichi Yamauchi and Sadao Ichihara, neither of whom got much of a chance at the big league level.  Manuel Gómez fell apart after a very good start and a staff ERA of 5.02 doomed the Longshoremen to a heinous 62-100 record despite a respectable offense.

While the season was a disappointment, the damage done to the franchise was not evident on the surface.  Dreams of contention, combined with a decent start, kept the Longshoremen from trading the massive contracts of Lee Ritchie, George Riley or Eric Morse.  With that weight on the payroll the financial crisis of the next two years was all but a given.  More troubling was the indecision shown by GM Brad Dobney as he failed to make a decision on pulling the plug on the team until it was too late to move the contracts in favor of prospects.  This, combined with the trading of several draft picks for pitching “help” (Canton selected only seven players in the 2007 amateur draft), torpedoed the team for the next two years.

High point: George Riley has a career year and posts an OPS of .896.  Canton fans flock to Svab Memorial to see the new team.

Low point: Dobney stands inexplicably pat at the trading deadline, neither dumping payroll nor acquiring the talent to make a push.

Draft: Sergio Vallejo (1^st), Graham Hunter (4^th) and Steve Moleyns (5^th) are progressing well while Cole Howard (2^nd) and Carl Douglas (7^th) face make-or-break years in A-ball.  Terry Thornton (3^rd) was traded to Tempe, rushed to the majors and has to join Glen Wallace (6^th) as the biggest flops of the draft.  Ryosei Kichikawa signed as a 17-year-old free agent and has developed into a legitimate power prospect in A-ball at the age of 20.

2008: The won-lost record of 72-90 seemed to indicate a team moving in the right direction; the spate of offseason moves suggested a team heading toward financial ruin.

First to leave the team was second base tragedy Manny Sánchez.  Sánchez projected as a solid hitter with gap-to-gap power but instead posted a .259 OBP and has since bounced around the PEBA, posting negative VORP wherever he lands.  No one special came the other way, but $2.3 million came off the ledger.  Dobney waffled on the complete rebuild again less than a month later when he used the money freed by the Sánchez trade to acquire the equally priced Tim Smith from the Connecticut Nutmeggers.

The biggest move of the offseason saw star SS George Riley leave for West Virginia in a four-team move designed to slash costs and increase pitching.  Travis Reynolds and Orlando Valadez were the main pieces coming to Canton and both have failed to develop the promise they showed in the 2007 campaign.

Finally realizing that the season wasn’t salvageable, Dobney shipped reliever Carlos Antonio to New Orleans on July 6^th and got a decent (and cheap) player in John Greene in return.  The rest of the trade, however, was a total flop, with none of the prospects panning out and a sixth round pick spent on a player who never appeared in the Canton farm system.

Shortly after the July 6^th trade, the deadline move of Oscar Holloway was the white flag that all of the PEBA knew was coming.  The Holloway move saved the Canton franchise from impending financial doom but failed, yet again, to net much in the way of prospects in return.  Dobney, believing his team was no more than a year away, took ML ready players Anthony Bagg, Zander Miller, John Knight and Albert Rishworth instead of going with a package composed solely of prospects.  Though Miller has gone on to pitch fairly well for Canton, Bagg and Rishworth have fallen apart while John Knight was moved in a later trade.  An opportunity to build for the future went by the wayside and the Longshoremen staggered to the end of the season.

Lost in the bigger moves was the trade that epitomizes the Canton problems.  Martín Bido, a well-rated 1B, was moved to Manchester in a straight minor league swap for Bill Mytton, a poorly-rated catcher who was ripping the ball in AAA.  Dobney, relying on peripherals more than scouts, made the move thinking Mytton would develop.  Mytton instead played to his scouting levels and has remained mired in AAA while Bido has hit well wherever he has gone and is currently in line as the 1B of the future for Aurora.

High point: The franchise record 72 wins.  Of course, that 72 wins is the franchise record speaks for itself.

Low point: The Holloway trade not reaching its full potential to restock the team.  25 pitchers appeared in games and only ten managed an ERA of five or below.  Luis Navarro.

Draft: Bill Rice (2^nd) is the cream of this crop and could actually see the majors as soon as 2011.  Mitchell Hunt (9^th) has risen quickly to join Rice at AA and has to also be considered a legitimate prospect.  Raymond White (3^rd), Bruce King (4^th) and Fraser Richardson all are playing reasonably well in A-ball while Juan Sánchez (2^nd) is a complete bust and Héctor Álvarez (10^th) has been traded.

2009: The idiotic optimism that a mediocre 2008 prompted was erased by the disaster of the 2009 season.  A 63-99 record saw the Longshoremen avoid losing 100 more by luck than judgment.  Main acquisitions Jack Miller (.717), David Koch (.694) and Geoff Green (.715) all had OPS’s that were an absolute embarrassment and freak show SS Jack Cobb saw his VORP drop from over 32 to 8.  All around, the season was a nightmare offensively as the Longshoremen averaged only four runs a game and posted an unforgivably low slugging percentage of .380.

GM Brad Dobney finally took it easy on the trading front, cutting loose only minor salary and adding Todd Sizer and Shigeaki Otani to stabilize a bullpen that had been nothing but a liability.  Beyond that, not much of anything happened.  This marked the first season that Dobney didn’t add any salary in a misguided attempt to make his team better in the short term.

High point: Pedro Silva finally got a whole year under his belt in Canton and responded with a .265/.369/.512 line.  Silva has recently said that he would like to remain in the grey and blue until his career is over.

Low point: The team managed only a completely appalling 648 runs.  Nathan Clark managed to accrue 267 at bats despite a .488 OPS.

Draft: It’s far too early to tell but Bob Dunn (1^st), Ken Vance (3^rd) and José Villa (5^th) all project well at this point.  It is safe to say that the draft has been the one area where Canton has done reasonably well over the few years of their existence.

This offseason Dobney solved the issues at catcher by signing Jacques Fillion and snagged OF José Cortéz on a two year deal.  While both signings address areas of need, they don’t seem to fit the bill of a team trying to rebuild from the bottom up.  Third baseman Luis Hernández was sent to Duluth in exchange for a prospect and a pick.  The recent machinations suggest a GM stuck between competing and rebuilding but doing neither well.

Canton‘s latest draft has begun to show some solid signs of progress. Pat Deatherage (2^nd round) put up a triple slash line of .333/.437/.456, Millard Hodge OPS’d .776 and stole 13 bases in 16 attempts and 19 year old FA signing Jing-bo Huang posted an ERA of 2.06. The Longshoremen themselves have set a franchise-record with 76 wins and remain only a five game winning streak from .500. More importantly, Jack Miller found his stroke and OPS’d .861, which led to his being tendered – and accepting – a four-year contract extension. César Costa was also resigned and provides versatility and a decent bat.

Grading the Canton system
GM: C. What can you say about a man whose job it is to produce winning baseball but has failed to do that?  You could say that he should be fired, but that might be premature.  Might be.  Said Dobney, “My biggest regret is the failure at the 2007 deadline.  I could have admitted we needed to rebuild then and salvaged these last couple years.  I didn’t. I understand why people are upset. That said, this year seems to indicate that, unlike what that billboard says, I don’t totally suck.” Sure enough, over the last six weeks the Longshoremen are in a much better position than many thought possible.

Manager: N/A. Mitchell Irwin replaces Armando Zamora who replaced Sergio Figueroa.  None have impressed thus far, but Irwin seems the best of the lot.  He has four years remaining on very team friendly contract, so expect him to get a good look.

Minor Leagues: C. The Allentown Falcons (AAA) are a wasteland but the lower levels of this system are beginning to see the fruits of the draft.  The Youngstown Thunder (AA) have a crop of players that may only be a year away.

Draft: A-. Canton has gotten any of the young talent it has through drafting and minor league free agency.  Steve Moleyns spent 20 games in the majors replacing Luis Hernández. He hit .294 over that stretch. We also know that Canton had another good draft.

Trades: C. It’s a generic grade but Dobney has been handcuffed by budgetary constraints.  That does not come close to forgiving his inability to land a frontline prospect.

Free Agents: B. José Cortéz, Pedro Silva and Jacques Fillion are all good catches for a team that has never been a big player in free agency.  This grade changes if the Longshoremen are unable to push for contention soon.

Final outlook: B-. Northeast Ohio has been hard hit by the economic downturn and Canton is no exception to that.  Attendance at the average Longshoremen home game is around 29,000.  What those faithful few hope to see is a team that will improve to eventually be the contender they were promised in 2007.  While help may still be a couple of years away, it’s not hard to imagine that things take an upturn in Canton soon.