Game Date: Mar 14th, 2068
League Forum
Forum >> Leagues >> VI.15 
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| Post ID | Date & Time | Game Date | Function |
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| #9293 | 08/08/2014 1:47:21 pm | ||
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Brewnoe Joined: 03/25/2014 Posts: 829 Fall River Naughty Dawgs III.3 
| Anyone here? Based on last season + the waivers so far, I'm betting on Lynn Patriots to win but I'm happy with my young guys' spring performance. |
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| #9295 | 08/08/2014 5:26:30 pm | ||
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Snookbone Joined: 05/23/2014 Posts: 49 Inactive 
| Certainly hoping for a better season this year given my slump during the interleague games. This is going to be a division to watch though, I checked every other league in the game and none were closer than ours at the end of last season. Good luck to ya. |
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| #10390 | 09/27/2014 10:09:35 am | ||
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Brewnoe Joined: 03/25/2014 Posts: 829 Fall River Naughty Dawgs III.3
| Well, I'm in my typical August/September slump. (7-9 since we got back to division play) Looks like it should be a good battle between you and Brandon for the right to move up after getting spanked by the Racoons. Honestly, I kinda didn't want to move up with most of my starting rotation and my closer in "might decline quickly" land ... it's youth movement time. |
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| #10393 | 09/27/2014 10:28:47 am | ||
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Snookbone Joined: 05/23/2014 Posts: 49 Inactive
| I'm considering the same sort of rebuild if I don't promote. I wouldn't say you're at all out of it though considering last season's race. | ||
| #10452 | 09/30/2014 7:19:11 pm | ||
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Brewnoe Joined: 03/25/2014 Posts: 829 Fall River Naughty Dawgs III.3
| Last season is why I'm almost ready to quit and try another team ... inheriting a team that hasn't seen an 80 rating since season 1 really f**s thing up (edit) I said "F" ... 35 F***G days over injury across 5 palyers i was counting on .. Updated Friday, October 3 2014 @ 3:57:06 pm PDT |
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| #10570 | 10/06/2014 2:45:42 pm | ||
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Snookbone Joined: 05/23/2014 Posts: 49 Inactive
| Best of luck to you for next season, hoping to play your team again soon. You have a great system and manhandled us for most of our matchups. Navarette in particular was unstoppable at times. | ||
| #61736 | 11/14/2018 11:01:28 am | Jun 15th, 2038 | |
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crackit Joined: 05/15/2013 Posts: 315 Anchorage Lawless V.8 
| OUCH! Applewood Crossing Urbandale L 0 - 1 Applewood Crossing Urbandale L 1 - 5 Applewood Crossing Urbandale L 0 - 4 Applewood Crossing Urbandale L 4 - 9 Applewood Crossing Urbandale L 4 - 5 |
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| #63560 | 03/07/2019 2:49:23 pm | Nov 3rd, 2039 | |
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crackit Joined: 05/15/2013 Posts: 315 Anchorage Lawless V.8
| Well I am not going to claim "we're back!" but I am very happy to have won our first play-off since 2016 when we got promoted to the Legends League. After two tight losses away to Moorhead, who also had a pretty good season, we bounced back with four wins in a row. Thanks mainly to our DH, Russ Egan, hitting .500 for 11 RBIs and the strong relief pitching of Darren Bigelow (3-0) who bounced back himself from a pummelling in game one. It's been an awful long time but after achieving our most wins, most runs and greatest run difference next year we will reach the heady heights of V.8. The last time we went up we came straight back down, so I won't get too excited, but "yippee!" anyway. |
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| #89164 | 08/14/2022 8:28:10 pm | Apr 18th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Couldn't decide if i should start a 4th League.VI or necro the most recent one, nor if this is a great place for this, but i wanted to cycle through my own rebuild somewhere and hopefully nobody minds if i do it here. The team i picked was Pullman Pioneers, mostly because i wanted to make my own statement on a team with few stars, and this team had few good players, most of which looked to be around 35 years old and appeared to be losing most of their skills. I have to keep some of them until I've owned the team for a while, but I'm hopeful to cycle everyone else out when i have spots. Here's a few of the people i cut instantly. Alberto Velázquez - Looks like he was about 25 skills better in his prime and was probably pretty good for my league then, but didn't look like he had much in the tank for what i expect will be a team 2 years from now at least. So out he went Quinn Rockwell - Maybe i was too quick on the trigger here, but it seemed like a lot of waivers guys with 12 potential had bad control and some of those had better comments, i guess i'll find out if he gets picked up if it was a bad move Alfonzo Morales - I was hit or miss on the early cuts here, but i didn't really see the point of paying someone 1.5m at 33 who was barely hitting .235 and didn't have a lot of power. Maybe i should've kept him short term and booted others, but I think in 2 years he'd still have been gone so what's done is done Rodolfo Barrera - I scouted around some leagues and saw very few 10 potentials, so i considered him an autocut. Perry Pease - Thought about him as a defensive backup, but he's already old so i figure i'll find someone else younger and give them playing time and have them longer in the same role. Edgar Acosta - Almost survived the first waive of cuts, his numbers against left handed pitching looked really good, and i think if he was 28 or 29 i would have. 34 just seemed too old to go along the ride with me. At this point I kinda noticed i had a lot of guys left on my roster that had comments about being overmatched and minors recommendation. Most of them also looked like players i should cut, but i started making some signings out of the FA to cover some slots and started waiver diving for the day too. Inbound Talent Edgar Rodriguez - Short term panic signing, might be a bench bat as i get more guys in or cut worthy. Thad Sheng - Same as Edgar Rodriguez, although he has some good attributes for the lack of comments so maybe he could be a bit more, he also isn't full potential. Corey Orr - A bit expensive, but I wasn't enthusiastic about my SS options overall and so with his defense i'm hoping he can work. Gonna post a 2nd time with the remainder of the 25 or so move i made in day 1 and day 2, again hopefully nobody minds a necro of this one and where i posted this! |
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| #89166 | 08/14/2022 10:18:36 pm | Apr 18th, 2056 | |
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rivalmejr Joined: 11/11/2015 Posts: 109 Hillsboro Pikas III.1 
| Hope Corey Orr does well for ya! was hard to get rid of him, been a main stay for a long time. his play just couldn't keep up in IV sadly | ||
| #89168 | 08/14/2022 11:56:35 pm | Apr 18th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Waivers Day 1 Robert Schweitzer - 2 Claims - 23 year old minor league prospect. Minor league numbers look decent from Rookie and hasn't played much since at any level. My minors had about 6 players in it with 5 of them 11 potential or less, so just hoping for a useful pen arm out of this player Jonathan Stoddard - 17 Claims - Fortunate to land someone with 17 claims, not complaining with how much this team needs to be close to the league leaders in skilled players. at 28 he has some good years ahead of him still and will help stabilize my pitching staff which has 2-3 minor league players that are overmatched, allowing me to send some down or out the door pending their skillsets. Draftee Geraldo Castillo - I had this player and a 15 potential hitter with great contact and fielding comments, but nothing else of note and a range i think of around a 7 or 8, so that would've likely been an OBP style DH. With pitching in shambles and this player available, I pulled the trigger on a 13 potential and I am fairly happy with the style of pitcher he projects to be. FA Day 2 Kelvin Randall - He has a nice scouting report and some room to grow into it more, so I am quite pleased to have a chance to pick him up. a 9 out of 20 in fielding is not that below average to me, so a corner OF spot seems appropriate, and the plan is to push him into 400+ AB's and see if he can gain some more skills to get closer to that 100 SI mark. Robin Rea - Another decent find for FA, he does not have any speed so probably is not my style of OBP hitter, i'd prefer not a station-to-station type of OBP singles threat, but at the moment there aren't a lot of great options on the roster or in free agency so might as well give another guy some chance to grow into his SI assuming he doesn't get too old first. Óscar Oviedo - More along the lines of the OBP type of player I'd prefer to that of Robin Rea, however, the tradeoff is that he's a mediocre fielding catcher so if his offense isn't great his defense wont make up for it. May transition to a corner OF though. Francisco Jimenez - The Pioneers lack a lot of power threats that also have reasonable contact hitting grades, so Jimenez despite his limitations is hopefully a welcome source of 20+ HR power this season. If he's not too old to improve, he might be able to fit another 5-6 SI into the build so could become slightly better than he is now. Curtis McGee - 33 year old likely wont be a long term Pioneer, but there are a few players that aren't ready for the time they are getting in both the rotation and in long relief roles, and even beyond that some guys that don't deserve their roster spot. He'll likely be a SP until enough depth is found to fill the rotation with developmental guys, and within a season or two likely be phased out. Luis Rodriguez - Slightly younger than McGee, but serving much the same purpose. He's there to help the purge continue by filling a rotation spot short term and slowly shifting into a bullpen arm. Jorge Alfonso - Wondering how good control neutral pitchers can be even if it's against my preferred style in baseball sims. Alfonso has some good ratings for pitches he has no comments for, and the movement and stamina are big enough to warrant a look. He might be able to hold a rotation spot down if he performs for longer than some of the other rentals. Grant Ricci - Got a start this past series but his ratings appear more reasonable of a long pen arm, so he will likely move there given some of the talent brought in before and after him from FA. Ryan Winter - a Rental reliever with lower stamina. Got some rough defense behind him that led to some poor outtings thus far, but until the team wins a few more waivers for talent above the FA pool, there's time for Winter to build himself up. Releases Day 2 Lenny Petry - no comments and 11 potential. Not sure if lefty/righty is something that is big in this game from a bullpen management perspective, but i'll find out with better talent than this. Alex Miller - He retired at 23 right after release, so i guess that says it all. K.J. Wade - Starting to get to ok talent on the cutting block, Wade has some decently well rounded attributes I just don't think i want to invest much time in an 11 potential with limited comments when others have more of both in some cases. Ignacio Moran Wasn't particularly moving up with any real speed in terms of growth, and a 10 potential cap made me thing that despite his movement atribute being solid he wouldn't amount to much. Rene Braun - Could've kept him in hindsight, he's improving a lot and Statistically wasn't the worst, but i don't think his upside is good enough at the rough area that 11 caps out at. |
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| #89170 | 08/15/2022 1:11:16 am | Apr 18th, 2056 | |
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electriceel883 Joined: 05/26/2021 Posts: 1528 Irvine Infernos III.3 
| If you dont want to make VI.15 your own blog (no reason not to lol) you are welcome to post in 2056 Infernos + Orphans Baseball. I created it because there are few active forums for low leagues. I really like your post. I claimed Schweitzer for awhile and then withdrew it. He may be a little old for the low minors, but he still seems like a good prospect if properly brought along. My pitching skews pretty young. I had Jiminez for awhile and his profile screams that he should be good, hes just never put it together, I hope he does. |
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| #89222 | 08/17/2022 6:51:09 pm | Apr 29th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 3 Waiver Wins Rudy Olivarez - 1 Claim - Saw enough evidence in some limited AB's that his RHP might be passable so we're going to give him some playing time. Not sure he can develop any at this point in his career but my expectation is he could be a get-me-over .780-.840 ops in the lower leagues. Day 4 Waiver Wins Félix Tirado - 1 Claim - I was interested in his arm at catcher. I have hopes that he can work out as an on base type catcher who can hit well enough against lefties to get some playing time while i rebuild. Matías Henríquez - 1 Claim - a switch hitting catcher with good arm and not much majors time, so will be hoping that he can provide some wrok against right handed pitching and split time with Tirado in the short term. Travis Lancaster - 3 Claims - Minor league numbers seemed fairly impressive, and also he seems to have a lot of attributes for a low skill index, maybe because his defense is quite low. Going to give him a shot despite mediocre control to see if a pitcher like this can work. Day 5 Waiver Wins Niko Horvat - 1 Claim - This reliever is way out there in terms of skills, has not had a ton of time to develop at any level. Since there isn't much going on here for a few seasons, this is a pure gamble that this pitcher can get innings and get improvements fast. Without significant improvements this season and next it might be difficult to keep him though. Lazaro Chacon - 1 Claim - Veteran who probably shuffles into some starts/innings as i still have so many guys to purge that wont benefit from innings that i need this sort of player. Dexter Powers - 2 Claims - Tirado's build isn't awful but isn't great as a middle-aged catcher that hits versus lefties only. Powers has more defense and slightly more offensive potential imo. so the move is Tirado out Powers in here (Side note, he can't leave yet because of new owner restrictions, this seems silly on a FA/waiver player acquisition how can i make a mistake in cutting a guy i brought in myself). Day 5 Releases Óscar Oviedo - Defensive liability and is not quite as good as some of the other options recently brought in. Lastly i can actually cut him as he's not new owner restricted. Vicente Miranda - A player that never got development time in the majors. Stats are actually fine for reasons i have yet to understand (luck and low HR rate perhaps? no clue really), but there are others with good stat lines that are veterans that have more skills overall. |
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| #89237 | 08/18/2022 8:54:55 pm | May 3rd, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 5 Releases Part 2 Latrelle James - Capped out on development, and has multiple issues offensively and defensively that make it impossible to really consider using him even on the current team. Juan Chavez - Had a solid 10 innings this season, but looks like it's only because errors masked the reality of the performance, and his build seemed to be too heavily reliant on a single rating being above average for me to want to hold onto him at an 11 potential grade. Miguel Acuna - Actually not my easiest cut so far, his lack of scouting and his pace of likely 65-70 SI by 25 made me concerned that he might not actually make it and in the end that was enough to cut him. His stats just made it difficult. Russ Carson - Looks like a solid pinch runner, but i think it's probably possible to get someone that hits well enough and is fast to do the same thing, and on top of that might be younger. Outside of running and ok defense, there wasn't much to look at here. Day 6 FA signings Caesar Noriega - Lefty bat who has a bit of room to grow and is fairly young as well. Might as well throw 250-300 AB's this year and next year at him and see if he is capable of developing into a better hitter, and if not it isn't like he is blocking the way of the next big player as my minors are depleted. Buck Belcher - Looking for some power still to center this lineup around until i draft into more. had a right hander in there that was stinking it up, so going to try a left handed bat even if it's a veteran to see if that goes any better or if it's still just the same level of performance. Waivers day 6 Alfredo Marroquin - 1 claim - DH option with prolific slugger power potential. May not hit for enough contact, but at 26 seems young enough to potentially grow some more and we'll chase a very nice power comment. |
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| #89260 | 08/20/2022 10:02:51 am | May 6th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Waivers Day 7 Andres Galindo - 3 Claims - Having watched Irvine Infernos take several players in waivers we've had a claim on at this point, we are now resorting to taking their leftovers. Galindo seems like a reasonably nice CF to give some playing time to once he is ready.... I finally have an OBP threat with some speed. I'm a bit concerned that he wont quite have enough contact hitting and plate discipline before running out of development room. Draft Day 7 Raymond Sullinger - good hitter seems lie it might be fringe good enough to be an everyday player amongst the top teams, seems they have mostly very good or great hitters in their positions designated for high offensive production. However, i wasn't a fan of many other options. I had a 13 potential with great hitting and not much else, and then i think 2 12's and nothing else to choose from outside of those. his build is more corner OF to me than anything else, his range isn't particularly amazing but passable, and his arm and fielding should be just fine. Training Day 7 Decided for Primary Hitting and Secondary Ball Control focus. Doesn't seem like they do much really but every little bit helps i suppose. I had a few interesting pops, most notably Mattox in A ball. He gained a point into movement despite not having too much room for improvement. So i'm not sure if he wont improve in the majors but will in the minors as long as he stays at the level he should've been this whole time, or what the situation will be there. I'd love to see him get to 105-110 if it's possible to salvage him, i had planned on cutting him if he was never going to improve. Lots of pops in hitting overall, with Jimenez, Rea, Rodriguez and Galindo all going up a notice in hitting. Not too much on the pitching side, but I only really have 1 or two in the right age group to be getting pops over there as FA/waivers is almost devoid of good 24-26 year olds to take chances on. Waivers Day 8 Buck Sutton - 1 Claim - 4 tool offensive player that lacks good defense. it's just ok. Just stocking up on talent that is passable at this point. |
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| #89261 | 08/20/2022 10:59:30 am | May 6th, 2056 | |
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electriceel883 Joined: 05/26/2021 Posts: 1528 Irvine Infernos III.3
| Galindo was cut from a combination of two things. The drop from 13-12 in POT, which in most cases doesnt get regained through playing experience and suggests he will fall in the 12 POT range, and the fact he has had poor results in AAA (which can be more relevant than what happens in lower minors). That being said, there is no reason he cant turn it around and become a quality RF. I'd expect more of that from Mattox. There are two components to SI: Minor League Training, League XP. Someone put him on the league roster after two seasons of rookie ball. So he could have all of the League XP he is likely to get, and may be missing a lot of the Training portion of his SI. He is only 22, so he can benefit from being back in the minors. I suggest ignoring the age related AI recommendations and keep him in the minors for awhile. Updated Saturday, August 20 2022 @ 11:07:16 am PDT |
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| #89263 | 08/20/2022 1:05:28 pm | May 6th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Yeah, i can see the reasons for cutting him, i have plenty of room for guys that are fringe to make it to be able to risk it since i have nothing to play for versus your situation where the time spent to determine his value really isn't there. Releases Day 8 Scott Cochrane - Got a raw deal for many years being forced to pitch as a starter when he at best would be one of those 1-2 inning starters that some managers in modern baseball liked to use. I moved him back to the pen at the start of last weekend when i took over, but after looking at his HR rates overall i think even with less exhaustion he wouldn't really be worthwhile. He got one relief appearance due to the closer role just not being used when i wasn't winning anyways. Shi Woo Kwon - His build looks terrible, not very competitive against right handed batters. Not really that much else to say here, just a very meh leftover that finally got cut. Curtis McGee - Veteran brought in to be a 5 inning guy so the pen could get playing time but not be stuck pitching 6 innings a game, if i'm going to pay 3m even with a team that should be profitable with it on board, i want to at least have a guy come in and in the first 3-4 starts between cup and league be around a 5.00 Grant Ricci - While better than McGee in terms of the era, he's still not great, so i decided to move him out for some guys in long relief to get a chance instead. FA Signings Day 8 Harvey Barnes - Theme of the day on FA signings is pitchers that are young enough to maybe move in development but aren't great now. Barnes has some interesting ratings, and he had some decent enough numbers in the minors, so going to throw innings at him and see if he can grow some more and help fill my pen. Billy Ray O`Reilly - 28 and maybe too old to develop. No fastball or movement upside, wondering if a pure CoS and Control pitcher in the bottom leagues works for filler, he'll be the first to fall if i win some waivers on pitching. Alfonso Barragan - 27 with only one stint in the majors. Seems like Billy RoR above except more fastball pop, so probably is at least 1 spot away from the cut light in comparison. Updated Saturday, August 20 2022 @ 1:05:52 pm PDT |
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| #89316 | 08/22/2022 5:38:45 pm | May 17th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 9 - watched the same two teams mop up all my waiver claims, gained no new players and didn't see anything of note in FA to grab. Waivers day 10 Blair Bonato - 2 claims - just taking a bit of flier on this guy. low walks isn't particularly my style as the on base percentage suffers, but this guy should be ok hitting for average, and with a low SB speed grade i'm kind of guessing he should be a double and triples type. The park i play in has 35 foot walls (thats changing in the offseason 100%) and is deep outside of the lines so in theory better gap hitting should play favorably if the ballpark means anything at all. edit: changed my mind and made alterations during cup play with adjustable fencing and removal of seats. reason for waiting was to get reliable data on players, but will just locally collect data instead. Waivers and posts likely to slow down a little now that the majority of the team has turned over, at least until the new owner restriction drops and/or the next round of cuts from other teams (seems like people cut right before or during drafting). We are still on the lookout for good under 30 starting pitching to give development time to, and will always be on the lookout for upgrades, but the FA pool of under 30's is no longer above the quality of the team. Updated Monday, August 22 2022 @ 5:39:18 pm PDT Updated Monday, August 22 2022 @ 6:08:06 pm PDT |
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| #89347 | 08/24/2022 10:21:52 am | May 21st, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Waivers Day 12 Jorge Escobar - 1 Claim - Was interested in this player mostly because of his level of play. Want to see if dropping from a top flight league or at least top 2 league level to league 6 would open up the potential for improved performance. In the minors over the course of his career, he's mostly beeing decent numbers at every level that would indicate he has more than a high 4's low 5's era in his capabilities. He is 27, also something positive even if he doesn't have too much room for improvement. Javier Cano - 1 Claim - 27 year old with almost no major league games in his career. Not quite sure he's going to work out, but it's better than going predominantly veterans on the rotation as he should gain some more skill points and maybe he'll be worth something then? If not i only gave up on the following guy. Releases Day 12 Jorge Alfonso - 6 starts in and we cut the cord on this experiment. the WHIP still looked troubling 2 leagues further down, and we weren't too sure he'd have more room for development left given the lack of a pop thus far. Perhaps not a fair cut, but I believe in limiting walks so there are fewer opportunities, and when I saw 7 walks in his 2nd to last start, i no longer could stand to see him long term. Current Lineup/Rotation Random Thoughts The rotation still has two veterans in it, Strand at 33 and Chacon at 35. So ideally, there are options that do not walk the bases loaded regularly that come along in waivers that can also develop into or stay at their current skill level for a longer period of time so that we may look to the future sooner rather than later. The only other veterans on the staff are Luis Rodriguez (age 31, starter that is going to move to middle relief for the time being) and Ryan Winter (age 34, closer). The closer spot is not stealing too much playing time overall, so there isn't a ton of worry about replacing Ryan Winter, but Luis Rodriguez would be good to get back in the rotation over Chacon or Strand down the road. With FA/waivers being a wasteland of bad starters, I still would much rather not hand the ball to a 7 or 8 stamina reliever turned starter. Lancaster could take a rotation spot potentially, but there are similar problems there with control to the guy i just cut earlier in this blog/presser. There is a world where a guy like Jeremy Lantz would've been cut long ago, but at the moment he believes he is a 108 SI reliever with 20 movement, so until he loses that belief we won't either. The lineup also has a handful of veterans. Pennington at 35 (vs LHP only, having a great year), Christy at 31 (mediocre defensive SS having a great year), Phil McClain (very good bench bat this year, and game wont let me cut him even if i want to for now), and Buck Belcher (likely to be cut soon, abysmal describes his play adequately). The plan to split AB's mostly by the side of the plate that the starter dictates (5 lefties and 2 switch hitters vs RHP, 2 switch and 7 righties vs LHP) has netted limited production from a lot of the talent. Orr's production has actually been better vs RHP than LHP despite being one of two guys that bat right handed in the vs RHP lineup, which is very strange. his average has been equally poor, but he's walked a lot more against the righties. Rea at .184 and Noriega at .148 have bother been well below their anticipated production (we swapped Belcher out, but he was the 4th in this line of sub-mendoza line hitters). Rea and Noriega are young so we're going to continue hoping for some turnarounds there. Rea was batting much higher, so moving him down may help. The vs LHP has been quite a bit better overall, but there are still a handful of question marks over there with Powers and Orr not being particularly amazing. Moved Powers well down the lineup for now. We've faced 21 lefties (6-15) and 15 righties (10-5), so there might be some scouting of FA for some more production against the volume of left handed pitching faced. |
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| #89374 | 08/26/2022 11:12:25 am | May 29th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft week 4 Brady Wolff - another 14 potential in round 4, was really the only one worth taking at all as the only good hitting player was an 11 potential and he had loads of problems. I'm hoping his fielding grows at a fairly respectable rate, as math suggests that 119 is his max out mark at 14 potential. If he drops a potential this is the type of player that probably gets cut as i think the last 8 SI make him worthwhile enough. I'm wondering if his speed is doubles/triples speed based on the 0 SB pattern from college and high school. If it is, it's unfortunate that his likely hit cap is around 12-13. Releases day 14 Buck Belcher - Perhaps a little trigger happy here, but i signed him to be an instant impact bat specifically looking for 15-20 HR power and .280 average. What he did was hit .167/.306/.300 in 12 games. His salary of almost 3 million dollars was a key contributor as well. Pullman isn't hurting financially, but there wasn't any reason provided by Belcher as to why he should be kept. Thad Sheng - The lack of hitting comment is what ultimately led to Sheng losing playing time and eventually his roster spot. He was brought early on in my managerial campaign, and simply got phased out before he could show much. His stat line was not great, but as with belcher he didn't have a ton of AB's before decisions had to be made, the cutting of Sheng had more to do with needing the roster space for players that could either help now or grow to help later. FA Signings day 14 Garrett Brant - A veteran that was only making 1.05 yearly, the hope is that against left handed pitching he will hit regularly and walk regularly enough to provide a base runner for the heart of the lineup to hit while we search for a better long term solution. He's not shown much yet, but he'll get playing time through next week against LHP unless we can find better amongst the waiver wire. Rasheed Cassidy - Liked his build enough to take a chance on him at 1st base. It likely wont have enough room for him to be a long term fit there, but I'm willing to let him get a few training updates unless i find better. Training overall Sporadic growth from the team, a lot of power from the hitters. Jimenez and Bonato add some power with rea getting better defensively and gaining plate discipline. In the minors one of the players awaiting cut got power, as well as galindo (BC/Power) and one of the draft picks Keith Delaney gained some Hitting and fielding. Pitching - the 3 majors pitchers that got pops were O'Reilly, Horvat, and Lancaster. The one i'm waiting to see gain a lot of pops is Niko Horvat, a pop is nice but really hoping for multiple pops a week average to get close enough to being used more commonly than his reduced role due to capabilities at the moment. Molina and Mattox, the two pitchers with "not much room for improvement" in the minors both pop in control. Molina is probably usable right now, he wasn't that poor in terms of his build he just was losing opportunity to be more developed. If i can get ~3 more pops in the minors this season, he'll be right back up next season. Mattox on the other hand is a long way out. Beyond that, a few of depth pitchers gained, will talk more as they improve and i can understand if they have a real shot to make it. |
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| #89457 | 08/30/2022 11:27:56 pm | Jun 15th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Waivers Day 15 Tomás Zaragoza - 3 Claims - very interesting build with high hitting and decent walks and speed. Going to stick him in the corner OF when facing lefties at least to see how that goes, might expand if other veterans continue not to cut it. Jose Munoz - 1 Claim - Potential and stamina are both lacking, but heavy control/movement was intriguing and we are still starving for arms that can still grow. Releases Day 15 Francisco Jimenez - Failed to really provide any impact with the power, and 15 hit only provided a .217 average in almost 100 AB's. This is the 3rd such player with lower plate discipline but high hitting and power to be pretty awful, so i think Pullman wont be seeking as many of these out in the near future. Jeremy Lantz - One of the last holdovers on the pitching side, his stats this season kept him around for some time (he was not allowing anything in the first 12-13 appearances). He started to falter, and with his poor build that wasn't much long term hope of him sticking with the team. Day 16-18 Not a lot to report after that window of moves. Haven't seen anything that i think can help us too much short or long term, and the 7-10 claims placed all failed to bring in anyone. Loading up with another 7-10 claims over the next few days, but otherwise letting the team really tank on the results lately (not purposely, we just aren't that good and we also can't buy a break right now, so that double edged sword is cutting us up right now). Most of our suffering is on the lineup card where we aren't better than anyone in our conference. The pitching isn't too good either, but it is not last, so hopefully the next few days introduces some better batters. We are last in fielding, but we were that bad before i took over also so it might improve over the course of the year. |
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| #89458 | 08/31/2022 12:10:01 am | Jun 15th, 2056 | |
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electriceel883 Joined: 05/26/2021 Posts: 1528 Irvine Infernos III.3
| Exactly why I claimed Zaragosa a few days ago. Released him hoping I could get him back if I whiffed on waivers. I did and I didnt xD | ||
| #89495 | 09/03/2022 3:21:58 pm | Jun 29th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft Week 5 Martin Mota Of the options available, most had a particularly poor era or poor comments. Martin Mota was the best of the group at a non-comment build. Will let him hang around for now as there are a lot of incomplete players sitting in my minors right now. If nothing else his low HR rate seems favorable if he gets double digits on his velocity and movement he might be able to pitch effectively? We may have to let him go if the release restrictions don't go away soon, 4-5 spots will free up the moment i can release some of the bad build players. Roster Moves Day 22 Really nothing to write about here, we've slowed way down in conjunction with our inability to land waivers on the players we like. Maybe it's a sign that Pullman is now a team that is full of talents i kinda like, and it's harder to replace them with random low claim waivers or free agents. I have a few a day for the next couple of days, maybe my luck will turn some. Training Week 5 Hitters - Marroquin was the big winner with a triple pop in hitting, bat control, and power this week. He has a reasonable amount of improvement left to accomplish to become an everyday player on a non-rebuilding team, but we are willing to see it through for the next few weeks of training. Noriega and Henriquez improved in hitting and bat control respectively, so maybe we continue making small strides to being a more capable team offensively. In the minors, soon-to-be-cut Cedillo improved in plate discipline, and most of our top prospects improved in various attributes, while the remainder that are more mediocre prospects did not move this week. The pitching saw 6 pops from major leaguers, though two were in fielding. Javier Cano was the big winner with 2 pops, though he is the closest to going out the door as his performances through 6 outings have been as abysmal as can be. A few other pops here and there in the minors, most notably Molina's stamina pop, that might help with contributions from those players as they become ready for callups. Updated Sunday, September 4 2022 @ 10:36:58 am PDT |
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| #89496 | 09/03/2022 5:50:47 pm | Jul 1st, 2056 | |
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electriceel883 Joined: 05/26/2021 Posts: 1528 Irvine Infernos III.3
| Like most finesse pitchers, his change of speeds and control are most of whats moving. He projects to 7 velocity, 15 CoS, 10 movement, 15 control, 12 stamina. His homer numbers are good, as is his work when he is being used to relieve and not to start. | ||
| #89500 | 09/04/2022 10:54:36 am | Jul 2nd, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Releases Day 23 Buck Sutton - We tried to give this guy some time to find his form, but it's been a massive struggle offensively and defensively he also wasn't doing all that great when trying to move him into a more favorable position for our current lineup. Going to bring the switch hitter into the lineup full time instead of continuing to try and wait out the poor offensive form. Luis Rodriguez - Not the worst pitcher we had on the team, but we need some roster spots to continue making moves, so veterans that are on the team are always the most likely to go. In particular, we were just a bit disappointed in his inability to limit the amount of baserunners with the strong movement grade. Waivers Day 23 Roger Bowers - 2 Claims - he's not had a ton of success so far, but he also hasn't had a ton of opportunities. The interest from me is by far and away the combination of hitting and plate discipline with the addition of a small amount of power and reasonable enough speed to not be a station to station runner all the time. However, he has to hit better than .210-.220 which he has been known for so far. ~200 AB's against lefties and only hitting .201 is not thrilling, i'd think to hold onto this roster spot for a longer period of time that would have to sit closer to .260-.270 at least. Tomás Almeida - 2 Claims - The majors stats have been pretty bad, but Almeida had 10-12 SI less than he has now for a good portion of those seasons, and his minor league stats tell a different story altogether. The sub 30 defensive ratings, even if they are weighted differently, should in theory give him a chance to feel like a 12 potential if he can reach his full potential. He'll need to be able to improve a bit more for the Pioneers to be a long term home for him, probably right up to the 11 potential cap. |
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| #89550 | 09/10/2022 3:38:16 pm | Jul 26th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Releases Day 28 Félix Tirado - Release Restrictions gone, so is a guy that we didn't have confidence in anymore. his vRHP looks solid, but it's a 4/7 solid, whereas the vLHP split was terrible, and where we wanted him to be. Hernán Toledo - Still developing, but he isn't really a player build that we are targeting at this time. Low hitting low plate discipline and speed wise too mediocre to really be a bench threat either. Joaquín Cedillo - Extremely poor hitting grades on Cedillo made him a target for immediate cuts, but we had some restrictions allowing him to last to this point. If he had some real SB speed maybe he has a role, but he didn't and doesn't. Dexter Powers - Same as Tirado, we wanted him to be a vLHP bat and while his split was better than it was against vRHP, it still didn't break the .230 and we just need more than that. Jonathan Stoddard - 6.59 era, 5.06 fip, and righties batting over .300 against him. 9 HR's in 70 innings. While only 28, he was really signed to stablize and provide innings, but at under 5 innings a start it wasn't worth the spot in the rotation anymore. Corey Orr - It came down to the growth defensively at the position we wanted him in. He's not a great SS, just a good one. In the end, the patience in his defensive growth at the new position and the mediocre offense, we just felt it was time to look at getting offense at 3rd instead. Seemed like he might turn 30 before getting the full position experience. We have some more guys that could be cut, but are looking at replacing the players we let go first. Waivers/Signings Day 26-29 Marcos Pulido - 1 Claim - Rates and overall skills in the minors looked ok. Majors haven't been great yet, and it's gonna be bad early here most likely as he'll start and get innings even if he's getting beaten up. However, if he hits cap and his rates settle down in the minors after getting lit up, he'll stand a chance of being here to help stabilize the pen. Leroy Kline - 1 Claim - Minors is about the same as Pulido in terms of a lot of metrics, but he he the potential for better movement. He'll cap a bit quicker, but his defense wont have a huge impact on his SI numbers. Likely gets called up once he hits 75+ SI. Dan Degeno - Free Agent - Not a great defender, but a very solid hitting threat in theory. Probably a short term stopgap solution unless he goes towards the .900 ops range at some point. Draft Round 6 Ángel Huerta - Not a lot of good options, went for the spot where the most talent was left numerically in the draft. Huerta has good control in homerun reduction, but a ton of hits and walks in the amateurs and a bad control comment means he likes gets let go once we run out of room. Training Week 6 Not the best from the hitting side. Marroquin improves his palte discipline and fielding so he's probably servicable at 1B and DH. Bowers pops in power and Galindo pops in PD and wanted to come up, so we'll try to fit him into the team in spots. In the minors the high potential guys did move up with Wolff, Delaney, Sullinger, and Kerr all improving. However, all 4 are likely 2-3 seasons from being good enough to play at the majors level. Pitching was quite a bit more useful at the majors ranks, as all 5 pitchers that grew did so in control. O'Reilly in just control (depth long reliever for a few seasons), Barragan quad pops in velocity, CoS, control, and stamina, and is likely to fill into the middle relief role long term. Cano gains some velocity and control. Cano gets velocity and control, and will continue suffering starts hoping to get more development, while Barnes walks away with a control pop only. Finally, Travis Lancaster also gains CoS and Control. Minors wise, Castillo is the only notable improvement of the ranks down there. No real win goals for this season, i guess breaking trying to avoid 100 losses is about all that i would hope for. More hoping for 90+ SI on a lot of these long shot options in the bullpen so we can solve which at full build is relevant going forward. |
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| #89596 | 09/16/2022 6:55:04 pm | Aug 21st, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Week 7 Cuts The Draft Pick - Signed and cut a Korean 23 year old who seemed to be fairly mediocre in terms of build. I'm willing to give guys majors ready a shot with limited builds, but I don't think it's worth my time on the guys that aren't going to benefit from playing time now as i do have a handful of good players in the minors coming up in the next few seasons. Phil McClain - I held onto him for a little longer than most of the veterans that were saved by a rule restricting releases from the Pioneers. However, he went from a .900 ops bench bat to a .590 ops bench bat over the last 50 AB's, and at some point it's just time to give young guys some opportunities. Jorge Escobar - While young enough at 27 to be helpful for several seasons, he had no room left to improve in the majors and with the team long since removed from any sort of promotion contention and prospects starting to get the nod for majors time it's time to give some chances to those players instead. Ryan Winter - I've been told that innings tend to be needed to get a lot of development, so Winter was seen as the guy that could be the prominent veteran that closed out the one in 4 games that got to the 9th with the team in front. In the 23 save opportunities, and converted 56% of them. Not expected to be a 90% success rate closer, but 56% is really bad. Colin Strand - 33 years old. prospects ready to go, expendable veteran who was nothing special but wasn't awful. Strand's departure leaves just Chacon as the lone veteran who was swapping between middle relief and closing duties in the last day or two or interleague, and will now be the veteran anchor in the pen until years end of 56% save conversion, whichever happens first. Waivers/FA Week 7 Alec Gobel - 3 claims - Gobel's value is mostly as a depth starter without any out pitches. Top end projections are at best a back of the rotation junk pitch starter who can go deep in games to conserve relievers if the team ever lacks depth in the pen. Matthew Starnes - 1 claim - I just gave up on a SS converting to 3B and here i go again trying. Starnes is still growing and has some decent hitting projections as a jack of all trades master of just hitting for average, so thats where he has the advantage of Orr, our previous attempt. R.J. Clough - Free Agent Signing - Went after Clough not because we have high expectations necessarily, but because he has some development potential. 14+ in 4 categories might be enough to make up for bad movement, and he will get plenty of chances to get inning down the stretch. Dillon Lenz - Free Agent Signing - At 28 the clock is really ticking here, especially if that 29 mark is a hard stop to development gains. A few weeks might net a couple of double or triple pops though, you never know? Training Week 7 A very good week for development on several players The bats improved in several spots on the lineup card, with Matias getting both a hitting and power pop. Rea improved his positional mastery and also got some added power hitting. Randall and Noriega rounded out the hitting pops with contact and plate discipline pops respectively. Once again the major bats in the minors all popped, so the right guys are still developing nicely there as well. Pitching wise there were a lot of big gains. Javier Cano gained CoS, Movement, and Stamina pops. He might have a bad record at 1-10, but if he keeps growing at this rate I do think he turnes a corner in another 5-6 skill pops. Harvey Barnes also had good gains, improving in CoS and movement. He's now about 5-6 pops away from cap, but is looking quite a bit more polished than a lot of the young arms. R.J. Clough only got one start in this training period but took advantage of it with a CoS pop, and Niko Horvat continues slowly improving with a bump in his control. Leroy Kline became majors ready with his pops in velocity and control. I considered leaving him down but with only veterans blocking the way and an awful season not getting any better with them might as well try to achieve a handful of starts and see how fast he increases. In the minors, Molina continues working hard to get back to the majors, Gobel double pops in CoS and Movement, and Schweitzer gains pops in both CoS and control. So the pitching in particular is going to likely see a lot of improvement in the last two weeks, or so we hope. |
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| #89627 | 09/19/2022 6:03:36 pm | Aug 31st, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 38-40 Waiver Claims Tony Cain - 3 Claims - High movement high control reliever to potentially starter depending on if stamina ends close to 10 or 12. Higher HR rate than desired, but the thought process we have on Cain is if he can get to 18+ control and movement, maybe his total baserunners will overall be quite low, and maybe when he gives up runs via homers it's in situations where there aren't too many on base. Edgar Alvarez - 3 Claims - Very happy to have picked up this player, my favorite of the recent acquisitions. While defensively he lacks in the OF, we'll probably use him in RF to keep him knowledgeable of the OF. If he can gain 10-12 skills, he might get into the 15-16 hitting range with no deficit attributes, which could make him a multi-threat in the lineup for the next 4-5 years. Stephan Shuler - 19 Claims - Feels like 19 is a lot for his numbers in the minors, but i think him starting there might skew those. He wont be starting for us. we'll see how he does as potential setup or middle reliever going forward. Day 38-40 Cuts Lazaro Chacon - the more we looked at it, the more it just felt like we could go ahead and go all-in on young pitchers. We have a few pitchers getting close to caps amongst the younger guys, so one of them likely slides into the closer role for now, and it gets room on the majors roster for another developmental guy. Tomás Almeida - in 44 innings his development was zero. We can't afford him to be as he is now with that performance level, so he became expendable for anyone with development capabilities coming in from waivers/fa. Dan Degeno - wanted to get younger in the OF, and we found another player for the 3B role he was originally picked up for prior to this most recent group of waiver wins. With no starting spot after the most recent waiver wins, it was time to go. |
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| #89668 | 09/23/2022 6:10:00 pm | Sep 16th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 41-44 Draft & Cuts Miguel Matos - Looked like a lot of draft classes were dwindling so we went to Latin America where the highest number of talents were left. A great hitter, but with so little potential to work with and super low power and no ability to take a walk, just seemed fruitless to continue to hope he worked out. Seems pointless to really have even looked, but we are still really desperate for extra talent Day 41 Waiver Claims Jin Ho Kang - 2 Claims - Like his ability to maybe hit double digits in most offensive ratings, and his contact looks likely to hit 17. Will probably give him the rest of the minors at 3B and then bring him up next season when we let go of the last of our veteran hitters. Munenori Yamada - 6 Claims - May look into him as a catcher with just an ok arm, I don't really know what to think of the armstrength but i do know that the range is very concerning at most positions i can think of playing him. The bat however will play, as the comments could push him into high ratings in hitting and power and his plate discipline also looks above average. It's a race against at age 26. Week 8 Training Bats: Alvarez got a bit better defensively, Randall gained some additional power, recent acquisition Munenori Yamada gained both hitting and power, and Rodriguez is now talking a few extra walks. The Yamada double pop is probably the most significant of the bunch as he has the most room to grow with the least amount of time. In the minors, the 14 and 13 potentials gained the most with Wolff, Delaney, and Kerr all improving. Lang's potential is behind those 3 and rounds out the batting pops for the week. Pitching: Lots of movement here. Lenz only pops in control, and is now more likely to get cut after the season concludes. Not sure if he would grow at 29, but he'd have to grow almost 20 SI to be usable long term and would only really stay good enough to help for 2 or 3 seasons. Speaking of 28 year olds Billy Ray O'Reilly also popped in both CoS and fielding. Also likely not the longest term guy but he can at least eat some innings in the pen right now for us. Barragan pops in movement, Cano pops in control, Cain pops in velocity and control, and Kline pops in stamina to round out the majors pops of significance (clough a random armstrength pop but no SI gain). In the minors Molina hit velocity 18 and is now listed as majors promotion ready. As i noted at the start of taking over this team he looked to have been called up prematurely and stunted at the majors in terms of growth. I will keep him in the minors to finish the season i think and bring him up fresh to start the next season. at 106 SI now, he's only 5 from his SI cap so he's about as good as he's going to get. Vazquez pops in control and velocity, Castillo in fielding, and Torres in control. Finally, the other premature callup Charley Mattox is now at 14 CoS. He's still listed as only ready for double A, and i'll not have him in the majors for roughly two more seasons. Looks like about 30 games to go in the season, and fairly unlikely that Pullman avoids the 100 loss season at this point. With offseason waivers we'd like to go find another starting pitcher to replace Lenz, along with 1 or 2 more veteran exiting, and perhaps 1 or 2 fringe guys and maybe hold about a 42 or 43 man group into next season that remains largely the same as this one. All about the growth now and hopefully this season will be the last triple digit loss season for a long time. |
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| #89720 | 09/30/2022 4:10:03 pm | Oct 12th, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 50 observations Overall we've done a lot of work on this team, so here are some of my takeaways from the first season at the helm of the Pullman Pioneers Talent overhaul - there were two major struggles with overhauling the team. The talent that we did have that i felt i could potentially utilize going forward was being mishandled by the bot. Charlie Mattox for example at 14 potential seems like a reasonable guy to build around even if i'm not convinced he's really the build i have utilized in other games (I personally like to have great attributes. in Mogul for example i loved guys that had that A+ or high 90 rating on velocity or movement, and wanted to have good control with that so that i had guys with out pitches and also limited mistakes with walks and homeruns), and overall a lot of guys that would've been good role players are useful pieces for about 7-8 seasons mostly had the same sort of story. The second major struggle was terrible crop of free agent starting pitching options if i wanted to take chances on guys that might not have enough to break a good team with their current skills, but might have some upside that i could start them at 70 SI and maybe get something great out of them if i was patient through the 8.00 era seasons when they weren't able to get outs proper. The anti-purge/anti-mistake rule - I fully understand the rule and its two purposes, but if a guy is in free agency and i sign him, i dislike that he is subject to this rule. It will no longer affect me obviously, but coding it to only apply to players on roster when a team takes over would create less problems in the event someone signs say a 102 SI catcher that then hits .200 or less and costs say 3m+. Builds that work elsewhere dont work here - The big struggle i had was a high hitting high power guy in other games works with no issues, but if a guy lacks the ability to get in base occasionally with walks or strikes out a ton, it seems to reduce his effectiveness to get the high 700's and potentially 800's ops level play. A lot of the early part of this blog was me finding out the hard way that these guys here are mostly just trash. Training day 50ish Hitting - Almost exclusively majors pops this week on the hitting side (pitching was both majors and minors). Matias Henriquez gets to 18 BC and 11 fielding, so I'll probably continue to use him at catcher (he's 100 SI at soon to be at 29 next season). Olivarez didn't improve any in the SI department but is more capable in the OF now after getting playing time there. Cassidy improves defensively both in fielding and in positional knowledge (not really that exciting to me, go hit better man). Edgar Alvarez improves to 13 PD, and Marroquin gets 14 hitting and 16 power. Of the group of mostly 1B builds Marroquin is probably the most exciting pops wise. Robin Rea gets to 15 hitting and 16 PD so thats great newst for te "guy with the OPS build, don't see a world where he doesn't get more 2B time going forward now. Starnes gains fielding and plate discipline , Galindo loses range down to 16 but gains 9 fielding (i'm ok with this, 17 versus 16 range in the outfield isn't that overly significant to me), and finally in the minors Mel Trout gets better at plate disicipline and fielding. Pitching - Lenz the soon to be FA because he's sub 75 SI at 28 years old is now sub 80 SI at 28 years old after triple popping movement stamina and fielding. I think he needed to triple pop both of the other two weeks to really have a chance to hang around through spring training. Pulido gains in control, movement, and CoS in a triple pop. Cain gains in both CoS and movement as well as fielding, RJ Clough quad pops in Velocity, CoS, Control, and Stamina for a big payday for me. Niko horvat triples in CoS, Stamina, and Fielding. Horvat gains CoS and Stamina and also fielding (fielding a running gag now in the pitching gains). Kline gains Movement and you guessed it, fielding. Shuler says he doesn't need any more pitching attributes, just gains in fielding. In the minors we see stamina pops from Gobel, Mattox, and Castillo which isn't particularly exciting. Rutledge gains some CoS as does Marcelo Torres. Finally Huerta gains in Stamina and in fielding. So mostly the excitement is contained to Clough and Pulido for immediate gains. Horvat and Cain not bad as well, definitely making it tougher to cut them for better options in waivers/fa this offseason. |
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| #89818 | 10/07/2022 5:12:30 pm | Nov 2nd, 2056 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Training Day 57 Robin Rea improved to 16 fielding, Yamada to 13 PD, Rodriguez gained a BC to grow to 9, and in the minors Sullinger gained a PD. Blair Bonato fell from 17 range to 16. On the pitching side, Lenz grows to Velocity 9 and Control 11. Pulido to 12 stamina, Barnes to 15 velocity, Horvat to 13 velocity, and then some minor league pops from Schweitzer and Torres rounded out the work this season. Officially finished at a 57-103 record, which was about 120 RD better than last year and 5 wins better than last year. Goal for next season hasn't changed much in the last week or so. Just get to the turnover and start eyeballing some upgrades without sacrificing much in terms of age, and hope development prevent another 100 loss season. Lucas Pennington retires at 35, and the remaining declining fielder is the SS where we would need a replacement. Zaragoza is the only other 30 year old outside of Christy, and will need to remain a stable presence against lefties and ok versus righties to stay on the team going forward. |
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| #89832 | 10/08/2022 3:43:46 pm | Jan 13th, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 58 Releases Bryce Christy - Initially we were keeping him on for some good defensive attributes, but a 5 drop in hitting, bat control, power, fielding, and range make other younger players nearly equal to him in capabilities, and that on a rebuilding team is enough to say goodbye. Dillon Lenz - The improvement comment that i saw on a lot of 29 year olds and figured was coming did show up. I don't know that he stops gaining skills, maybe he does and i feel bad about letting him go later, but i feel more bad about not seeing him my first time around scouting the free agent players. If i had seen him at the start of the year maybe he has 4 or 5 more skills and maybe he's close enough to good where i can risk this comment on him and be ok with only 2 or 3 'full build'. Billy Ray O`Reilly - Not sure he was really as good as his stats were at the 7th or 8th training update, and he fell off by the seasons end to the point where it was just a decent year on mediocre stuff. Now 29, he probably wasn't going to get much better, so like Lenz he just has to get shuffled out so we can try to get younger and find guys with more time to develop that have the ceiling worth waiting for. |
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| #89878 | 10/13/2022 7:57:39 pm | Feb 19th, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 61-63 Waivers Oliver Houser - 2 Claims - We were looking for someone with some development time left to replace Lenz. Houser was one of our secondary options we put a claim on and the only one thus far to come in. His ratios are fringe, however if he fully develops out he might be able to overcome some of the issues he has by having more dominant stuff at that point. So we will, baring a win elsewhere, be putting him into the rotation with hopes of getting him close to 100 SI. Elmer McGee - 1 Claim - He hasn't had any majors time to this point and is now 28. He is only about 10 SI out from the point where he might stop anyways, so we might give him a look, he probably splits time with Rea overall and ends closer to 95-96. Long Lee - 4 Claims - Really excited to land Lee. I think he's probably better suited to play SS for our team short term, and while he might be on the below average end of SS's outside of league 5 and 6 we probably aren't getting out of the basement of the league pyramid for another season or two, so perfectly content to see where he caps at. Releases Rasheed Cassidy - Between him and Zaragoza for the cut to make room for the 2B and SS out of waivers, in the end we felt like the 1 development in 250 AB's across the final 100 games was just not enough movement to merit keeping Cassidy on his performance level. Zaragoza survived by hitting better than him. Offseason Plan For both pitching and hitting, we're mainly looking at better options now. I don't think there's anyone else that gets replaced at the majors level at this point for another fringe type player, really only 1 hitter and 1 pitcher that i would look to replace at all at this point as i kinda want to see where the guys go at this point. So don't expect Pullman to show up on a ton of the smaller claim targets for a little while. |
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| #89948 | 10/21/2022 7:55:35 pm | Mar 16th, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 70, Draft Week 1 Kerry Mcwhorter - Went with College because i am trying to push the tempo of recruits on both solid hitting threats and pitching. I was not impressed with many of the 12+ potential hitters in the group i received, with most lacking a hitting comment or having low PD and low power. Mcwhorter is a bit of a concerning 1st round pick for me as his amateur numbers suggest his HR rate is fairly high, but a lot of that was his last season where he had 15 HR's in 94 innings pitched, all other seasons were much closer to 1 every 9 or 10 innings. So while he is probably good enough to help me in VI, i'm not looking at him as this franchise ace for 8-10 seasons. Spring Training Update It was a very mediocre hitting training update, with only 3 total pops. Noriega got a fielding pop, our new acquisition Long Lee got a bat control pop, and our defensive SS lost his 19 range and gained a plate discipline. It was a very disappointing week overall given how many guys were getting time that are young enough to gain skills and are very likely to get a lot of playing time this year, I was counting on some more help from this update. Pitching however was quite a different story. Pulido gained fielding which isn't all that great, but others did gain pitching stats. Barragan gained a control, Clough also gained in control, Horvat gained in Movement and Control, Kline gained in CoS, and Lancaster gained in CoS and Movement to round out majors pops. Barragan has the least amount of time left to gain more attributes being age 28 this season, so it is very important for him to finish strong in development this season and get to 95-100 SI so that he can have every opportunity to limit his walks and perhaps get a few more strikeouts. Horvat getting two pops is also important as i think he might be the closest to hitting a majors development cap of the guys up in the majors, so the more he pops this season the better and he probably needs to get to 90+ SI to stick. The minors saw mostly the secondary options gaining some SI. Schweitzer gained in movement and control, and remains one of the most likely callups by end of season. Vazquez popped in CoS and stamina, Castillo in Velocity and CoS, Rutledge in Movement, and Huerta in Velocity. Mcwhorter gained Velocity, CoS, Control, Stamina, and Fielding, but was the draft pick and i have seen things like this from draftees more commonly so i don't think too much of it. We are still desperately in the market for starting pitching options that can upgrade our depth and can still grow, so expect to see us in the market for guys that can beat out or top 5 in waivers/FA. |
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| #89962 | 10/23/2022 6:11:31 pm | Mar 20th, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Season 2 vs Season 1 There are now no holdovers from last years starting lineup, as every single player from 2055's opening day (2056 too many roster moves to determine the lineup) is now off the team. In 2055 we had a team with an ops of .634, with a .253 average against left handed pitching and a .213 against right handed pitching. Our pitching was about a half point behind the next worst team at a 5.49, with FIP nearly worst in the league and the BAA dead last as well. We had nearly 50 HR's less than the 6th place team in the other conference, and were almost 85 down locally in the West. Defensive ratings were about the only thing we had going for us, but that only netted about 52 wins. Our Expected Win/Loss ratio was 46-114, so we were lucky to have even netted 50 wins. In 2056, things were still looking pretty mediocre in most categories. We evened out the vLHP and vRHP, but at only a .245 average in both, which was still near the bottom of the league and it was the worst in the west. We also had far worse stolen bases percentages, though we were only about 35-40 HR's behind the rest of the league instead of 80. On the other side, our rotation only netted 1 complete game, we had no combined shutouts, but we were a half point better and overally the pitching was about 4th best in the west, and maybe tied for 8th best overall. Batting average against was also quite a bit better, not good enough to catch the top teams in the league but no longer dead last. We instead decided to be the worst team in fielding, though this is mostly my fault from learning that defense wasn't going to be something players could learn in the bigs at a rate reasonable enough to attempt to do so from a 0 experience start point. This year nobody is in a spot where they are completely green, at worst a half position status is achieved across the board. Season 2 Lineup vs LHP we have two switch hitters (Rea and Henriquez) and the rest righties (McGee, Zaragoza, Bowers, Starnes, Randall, Yamada, & Kang). vs RHP we have the same switch hitters, 5 lefties (Lee, Marroquin, Olivarez, Alvarez, and Galindo), and two righties (Starnes & McGee). While we will get away from lefty/righty split lineup cards eventually, i'm not the guys we have can hit so great that they can be successful in both lineups outside of the necessity of certain positions to need a righty throwing player. The team now has only 1 player (Galindo at age 23) that is at a 12 hitting, the majority of the team sits at a 14 or greater at this point, so the contact hitting in theory can only continue to improve. We need the starting lineup to pull closer to a 15 or greater i think to get closer to the top teams in the league and push for a promotion. the rotation is setup with Houser, Pulido, Clough, Cano, and Kline. Pulido is there because of a lack of waiver SP depth amongst the under 29 crowd, and his performance last year in the same role was admirable. He's otherwise mostly at cap. Houser has 9-10 pitching pops he can gain still, we want him to get close to that by the halfway point in the year. Clough is about 12-13 away and we are hoping to have him achieve that by seasons end if he proves he can overcome the poor movement. Cano should only need 8 to reach max, while cline is about 13-14 away. The team's efforts to get close to .500 are reliant on some heavy growth in the rotation in my opinion. The pen is a max and match of a lot of guys that are fringe major league pitchers. Joaquin Molina is back up after getting a few more pops in the minors, and we need him to get close to the 2052-2054 level to help get us to the closer. We'll start with Barragan and Lancaster on LR duty in case starters fail to make it deep, Shuler and Cain in the middle to get us from the 6th to 8th inning, and Horvat, Molina, Munoz, and Barnes will look to close most games out if they come in during the 8th inning. Given how the league landscape looks currently, If we can hit closer to a .260 average and get the ERA down to a 4.50 as a team, we'll be capable of reaching our short term objective of an 80 win season. We are aiming to promote by 2059 when our draft picks start to get majors ready statuses. |
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| #90011 | 10/28/2022 6:20:18 pm | Apr 10th, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft day 77 Guillermo Almanza - Not very impressed with the selections available at my 2nd round pick. Almanza could be a decent reliever with time, but when i looked into his amateur level play i saw a lot of concerning red flags. That being said, most of the rest were 11 potential or less, and no hitters outside of a 10 potential with a hitting comment at all, so we took the best player available. Training week 2, Day 77 Edgar Alvarez and Alfredo Marroquin gain in Bat control, with Marroquin also improving defensively. Mcgee gained a point into power which matched with the high PD makes me think the OPS is just held back by hitting at this point, so just need to see that get to 14 as soon as possible. Starnes improves on hitting, think 100 SI is about the extent of what he'll be able to develop to this year in the best of scenarios so we will decide at the end of the year whether or not he'll continue to play. Kelvin Randal gains a point in Plate Discipline, now bring that to 12, and with his higher hitting vitals it should give him enough now to hit solid against left handed pitching. In the minors Delaney gets to 10 fielding, Trout gets to 13 hitting and 9 power, and Kerr triple pops in hitting, plate discipline, and fielding. On the pitching side of things, Tony Cain improves in control, though if i don't see a lot of improving soon he probably wont be gaining too much more SI with me. R.J. Clough pops in velocity, movement, and stamina, so the risk of him running out of majors experience is less troublesome now that he's parked up against the 90 SI number. Leroy Kline gains control and stamina, the sooner he gets to double digits in control the better. Also would be ideal for him to get closer to 10 velocity though his growth over the last 6 or 7 years suggests that might be a pipe dream. The last majors pitcher to pop is Lancaster, triple popping in Velocity, control, and stamina but is also similar to Cain in getting ripped apart in his appearances so he too needs to show signs of his growth helping him turn a corner to hold down a roster spot. In the minors, most of the secondary prospects (the guys that aren't starts but supporting cast) gained pops. Schweitzer, Torres, Rutledge, and Gaytan all gained in 1 pitching attribute, with Almanza the new draftee pick up a double pop. Hoping to see Trout and Kerr gain eligibility to move up a level in the minors soon. Trout is on pace right now to cap in the minors. |
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| #90072 | 11/04/2022 4:17:23 pm | May 4th, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft week 3 season 2 (day 84) Hunter Sears - Not much chance of him being on the team if we get to 50 players. No comments for his pitches and bad stats in amateurs is a recipe for a cut, but it was one of the best players on the board unfortunately. Training week 3 Lineup wise Alvarez doubled up in hitting and power. He is currently batting .190, but his career line is much better than that contact wise and his Slugging despite his poor average is still rather quality, so lets hope he turns it around. Marroquin tripled popped in hitting, plate discipline, and power, reaching 94 SI. Not sure he has a ton of room left to grow contact hitting wise but in theory he has room in other areas. Matthew Starnes improves in power, he has a long climb ahead to get to his cap and it obviously wont happen, but a triple digits SI number is still a dream we have. Yamada lost some armstrength but gained some bat control, so he stays at 88 SI. Might get him more AB's as the season goes along to try and push him to 100-105 SI range by the end of next season. Super Sub Bonato gained in hitting, and continues to get brought in for injuries and first off the bench situations. In the minors basically all higher potential guys moved. Wolff got 12 hitting, Delaney got 11 BC, and Sullinger gained in Power Pitching wise, Barragan gained CoS. He's not had a ton of appearances this year so it's kinda unlikely he gets to his cap at this point. Harvey Barnes quad pops in CoS, Movement, Control, and Fielding. his success rate in the closer spot isn't too amazing, but he is one of the better built relievers we have so not many alternatives there. RJ Clough gains CoS and control along with fielding, further cementing his rotation spot. Kline gained movement, Carrizales gained a stamina point, and Shuler gained even more velocity. no fielding bumps included Castillo, torres, Mattox, Mcwhorter, and Huerta. We made a lot of smaller moves over the course of the week, might break them down later with extra time but mostly just shuffling one fringe player for another, outside of the 1 or 2 veteran injury plug-ins we picked to fill in. |
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| #90106 | 11/11/2022 7:27:51 pm | May 31st, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| roster moves overview Not going to do the formatting as a lot of these guys were fringe guys or 28 year olds. However, worth noting that while i've slowed down the amount of updates i still am trying to improve the team here and there when i can. Tony Cain after investing a season into him in the majors it just looked like he wasn't moving enough and his era was never below a 6.00, so it was something we didn't feel was profitable for us anymore and we let him walk. Edgard Rodriguez was a 'good hitter' comment left handed bat right handed throwing OF only type given his poor fielding coupled with range and arm. Without the ability to hit for power or to walk, and without the ability to field at a high enough level to take a spot in the infield, i didn't see a long term opportunity and he is now a FA looking for a home. Schweitzer never made it out of the minors, his HR rate and his overall statline was not strong enough in my eyes to continue using a roster spot on him. Cano appeared to stop moving in training this season in his 4 starts, and his ERA thus far was not even remotely impressive. In the end sometimes you just have to look at a player and decide he isn't capable enough and thats what this cut was about. Munoz looked talented when i got him and hadn't gotten a lot of innings so i had hope he would move with innings, but he also wasn't moving and unfortunately i think his stat line this season is more likely the real one. his 3.60 era and 3.05 fip last season was with a BAA of .301 after all. Pulido was a fairly difficult cut as he was one of the few that wasn't doing horribly in 2056. However, without a plus pitch and with him aging, the fall back to presumably early was enough to try to find someone younger who might still gain skills. Speaking of tough cuts, Rudy Olivarez was really helping carry the team against right handed pitching last season, but this season he is a shell of his former self. With him being 29, he was essentially a 12 potential full capped player in the end and we ultimately felt again like there were options out there that could grow and be here for a longer period of time. Finally Ricardo Navarrete was an injury helper. veteran with hitting as his primary asset, he did what he was brought in to do for a series or two. Draft Day 91 Rodrigo Casillas - for a 4th rounder he has some potential upside. looks like he could be a mediocre fielder, so a 1B spot isn't out of the question. His plate discipline growth will be the key factor in his chances of staying on the minor league depth chart long term. Training Day 91 Randall leads off with the positional pop to a capital OF. Bonato gained some fielding and his power is now 19, gotta think that 15 hitting pop will be critical if he can get it. Noriega the fielding CF specialist is still just that, but he did gain a little pop. Not really looking at him long term without that hitting grade going quite a bit further up. Galindo popped in plate discipline which is solid but he really needs to get hitting to a 15 to make it, and any more pops outside of PD and hitting probably doom that chance given he has just 9 SI left to his 12 potential ceiling. In the minors, Delaye gains in hitting, Sullinger gains in bat control and fielding, and Kerr also gained a bat control. Pitching is where the action was in development this week. Barragan gained a stamina pop, Barnes pushes to 16 velocity making him one of the leaders on the team in a velocity. Clough double pops to 14 velocity and 15 stamina, while Horvat is now at 80 SI as he gets to 14 velocity and 14 control. Rubio triple pops in movement, control, and stamina while Carrizales one of the newer waiver pickups gains in control. Finally Lancaster rounds out the majors pops with CoS and movement pops, both to 14. In the minors a lot of the AAA group moved up. Gobel gained in CoS and control, Vazquez gained in velocity and movement, Castillo gained in movement, and torres in velocity. The lone AA pop was Mattox gaining a movement pop. In a ball Sears moves to 6 stamina. The teams performance has dipped slightly, but we remain confident that with experience at least some of our rotation and bullpen options will improve further. Our pen in fact appears to have settled down quite nicely already, so perhaps a lower pitch count or hook on the starters will help the teams performance. We will have to weigh this versus more batters faced for development on our starting 5. |
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| #90172 | 11/20/2022 11:04:21 am | Jul 2nd, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft Day 98 Charles Parsons - Probably a delayed cut for Parsons. He was the only draftable talent from my draft pool, and that was mostly on the grounds that he was 2 potential higher than all other options and was one of 2 with a positive non-stamina comment. I'll hang on to him short term and see if he ever gets a pop in control, though i think his comment puts him topped out on it right now. I have at least two roster spots until i'm out of room though and waivers/free agency aren't exactly filled with other options that i can land. Training Day 98 Elmer McGee gains a plate discipline and a fielding pop. His .276 against lefties means his on base from that side of the plate is sitting around a .360 and the slugging is almost .600 against them at this point in the season, so his roster spot on that side of the plate is completely secure. Robin Rea also gains a plate discipline, and is pretty much the same player on both sides of the plate, although his damage is almost all on the road. Long Lee improves in hitting and plate discipline, and is showing signs of being able to eclipse the 90 SI plateau this season while also eclipsing the .260 average mark against righties. I think we've probably found a slightly below average SS defensively that can be a reliable bat, so we'll probably stick with this guy for the short term. Jin Ho Kang improved in fielding, and is the defensive SS that should hit for average but currently is just awful all around at hitting and fielding. the fielding needs his SS grade to improve his understanding of the position. but a 15 hitting grade for a right handed bat should never be a .179 average against lefties. Keith Delaney and Raymond Sullinger both improve in the minors, so it's good to see the high potentials moving. Pitching wise we have 7 players taking positive steps this week. Alfonso Barragan improves to 15 control. He needs to pop at least 4 times to have a roster spot next season as he is 28 this year and still in the 11 potential range with his SI. R.J. Clough improves to 16 control. He is one of the few guys in the rotation that probably holds his spot long term. Niko Horvat improves in movement and fielding, and is now at an 82 SI. HE needs to continue moving towards that 90 SI mark and beyond, though his stats these last two seasons indicate to me that he probably will stay regardless of when he stops improving. Ramon Rubio triple pops in velocity, CoS, and control. He probably doesn't quite have the potential to survive long term on the team, but we are hopeful that he can make us question whether or not he is worth keeping by the time our minor league guys are majors ready. Leroy Kline gains in stamina. At this point he's gotten 24 starts and can barely get through 4 innings before the blowup happens and has only gained 10-11 skills since i started using him, so i don't know that the experiment can last that much longer here either. Stephan Shuler gains movement and control. He definitely is a long term guy at this point as he can be the lefty specialist with his current skillset in the worst case scenario. He's been good enough on both lefties and righties to this point that i've been playing him longer than 10-15 pitches against left handed hitters. Finally David Norris double pops in control and movement. He has an awful era and an awful statline, but his 12 potential and lower defense are probably going to buy him a little bit more time as he could end up in the 15's in CoS and movement while also having very respectable control. Might just be that he is suffering because he is so far from that cap still. In the minors Gobel has learned about all he can after his movement pop. He is a junk ball pitcher that can eat innings, and his statlines down there have been decent so i have some hope he can help me. However, he is not a top end prospect. McWhorter improves in control and stamina, but i'm still pretty concerned about his HR rate. Mota is similar to Gobel minus the stamina, he is a low HR guy that has a lot of junkball type stuff. CoS and control both moved up a notch. Huerta and Sears are both 11 potential low defense guys that gained some, but we wont really know if they are guys we can keep for a while still. Overall the team has been fairly poor for the last little while. We're really going to need to improve going forward on the road if we want to achieve the must-have of no longer losing 100 games. The chance to finish .500 is all but gone. Might start making some moves on some of the 28-29 year olds soon if they don't start to look a bit better. |
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| #90203 | 11/25/2022 9:24:03 am | Jul 21st, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft Day 105 Benjamin Carbone - Drafted him and cut him. While his HR ratio is ok, his lower fastball comment with CoS and control below and what appeared to be at least semi standard development early in his amateur career left me concerned in 3 spots. He wouldn't gain a potential at some point based on his development pathing and his comment, he wouldn't have high CoS and control as they were below velocity by a few levels on relatively even development rate, and he would essentially be capping at below 14 across the board based on where his skillset started. I'd rather have open roster spots for potential waiver wins here and there who might have a better shot. Training Day 105 A lot of action in the development side of things this week. Starting with majors hitters, Edgar Alvarez gets slightly better in the field, which takes him to 16 fielding at 1B. Elmer McGee is now at 18 power with a few chances in training before he hits 18 remaining and 7-8 SI to grow still. Jin Ho Kang grows to 10 power, while Munenori Yamada grows to 15 hitting. Yamada needs to pick up the pace to reach his 13 potential cap at this point. Kelvin Randall manages to reach 18 hitting this week, hopefully he can sneak in another power or PD pop before he finishes his development. The last majors pop belongs to Caesar Noriega who hits 15 hitting. I've been trying to be patient with him this season and he has started to turn his performance into a potential .700 ops bat with CF defense, it started pretty ugly. Wolff gained a BC and fielding, Delaney a PD, Stan Lang a BC and a fielding, and Casillas in rookie ball gained a power pop to cap off the minors for the hitters. The Pitchers almost had everyone in the majors moving this week. Iseul Kim the 28 year old double popped in CoS and Movement. We're probably going to try to push him through some more innings with that stamina pop in hopes of maxing out his development the rest of the season. Barragan gains in velocity and movement, he's now at the low end of his potential range with less than half a season to go in his development window. Harvey Barnes gets a stamina pop and has probably capped out. Niko Horvat gains a stamina and has another 15-18 SI to go to hit cap, so i am hoping to see him gain plus velocity and plus control before that potential cap. Rubio gains in movement, control, stamina, and fielding for a quad pop. He's only got another 3-4 pops in him before he reaches the 95 SI limit on him, so we'll see what his full build looks like next season. Kline grows in CoS and Movement, and is now in the 80's SI wise. Carrizales gains in fielding and doesn't see his SI grow at all. Lancaster gains his 10th control level, Shuler gains in Stamina and Fielding, and Norris gains in CoS, Stamina, and Fielding to round out majors pops. Shuler hurts because he's meant to be a short relief specialist so we lose almost 2 full SI to things we don't want. Lancaster is a long reliever at best and Norris is the real interesting one to watch of the 3 as he could get to a decent build path in the end. In the minors we have Vazquez popping in CoS and control, Castillo in Stamina, Mcwhorter and Parsons in fielding, and Hunter Sears gains in CoS and fielding, so a pretty awful minors update to go with a strong majors push. We are still taking some really big lumps for developing all these guys in the majors and the "avoid 100 losses goal" is starting to also become less realistic. However, i am very hopeful that with at least 4 or 5 pitchers reaching full build they might become more solid options at minimum (sub 5 era). We could really use some stability and i'd hate to have them all fall short of being useful and have to dip into some veterans to stabilize the team. |
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| #90253 | 12/02/2022 10:28:08 pm | Aug 21st, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft Day 112 Sign & Cut. Guy with Movement and bad potential and statistics that were no good, if people are interested in a 9 potential they can see the team transactions and go get him. Waivers of the Week Lemond Brandon - 1 Claim - He is behind and needs a lot of playing time to reach his potential. But if he reaches his potential, he is a solid 1B/DH. So we will let him sit in AAA this season and if he can get another few SI then we will look at him going into next season as a starter. Training Day 112 Alfredo Marroquin has had a dreadful season for the most part, his .230 average against RHP is 20 or so points below where we were wanting it in league 6 against the competition he faces. However, he triple pops to 16 hitting, 18 power, and 15 fielding, so he is arguably one of the best built to succeed amongst all of the project players, so we are struggling to give up on him for the moment. Hopefully he catches fire down the stretch and rewards us for staying committed to giving him development time. Robin Rea gets to 95 SI with a double pop to 16 hitting and 17 fielding. The time remaining for him to get pops is dwindling but if he can get just a little more out of his build it probably seals his spot for the next few seasons. Munenori Yamada pops to 14 plate discipline, 15 power, 13 fielding, and gets fully trained at 3B this week. With a year and change another 15-20 pops left in his build, the team will also be committing to his playing time, pushing him north of 400 AB's a season in pursuit of a full time 3B/DH threat. Long Lee pops in power and fielding, which is helpful as we've been playing him a lot at SS at a substandard fielding level for what we think is needed in hopes of him getting 2 or 3 pops between now and the end of his development time. We have some SS options coming up the development pipe, so he needs to showcase some on base percentage capabilities in order to be given a spot. Waiver pickup Lemond Brandon picks up a pop in plate discipline, Brady Wolff the defensive SS in the minors gets to 9 power, Me Trout gains a bat control pop, and Stan Lang gets to 6 PD to round out the minors development. Brady Wolff believes he is ready for the bigs, but will not be featured until at minimum spring training of next year. Niko Horvat improves to 15 control and 84 SI. He still has a lot of room to grow in his build but seems to be an effective pitcher for this level at 84 SI, so i don't know that i will care if he falls a bit short of full build if he continues at this pace. Ramon Rubio double pops in control and stamina, and continues to be very mediocre performance wise. It's gotta get better eventually right... Carrizales is the Horvat mold, need him to develop faster than a single pop a week so we don't suffer underskilled pitching outings for too much longer. Lancaster triple pops in CoS, stamina, and fielding. Not the best triple pop but 12 stamina does make him a reasonable replacement starter in a pinch. Gobel pops to 14 stamina, and will make his debut this weekend at some point. We are looking at whether a pitcher with no movement comment and no velocity at all is able to pitch in the bigs, we will look at these 7-8 starts and determine that. Stephan Shuler loses a range and goes down an SI. with as much fielding SI as he has he could drop off another level or so in arm and fielding and I'd be ok with it. In the minors Vazquez pops to 12 stamina. He's gained 10 SI this season but has awful control and hr rates so he's not honestly a guy i really have high hopes for as a starter. We might give him a shot in the pen. Marcelo Torres gains a CoS and stamina pop. He had an awful season in the minors this year after looking like a guy capable of preventing HR's in every season up until this point, so here is to hoping that it's a fluky year. Might get the callup next season if he does well in spring training. Charley Mattox gains a velocity pop. He's now +10 SI since going back to the minors with a 'not much room for improvement' comment. He will be promoted to AAA next season, and will be promoted once reaching 110 SI or age 25, whichever comes first. Rutledge improves in velocity, control development is concerning still. Almanza double pops in Velocity and CoS, already in AA so he's on that early majors call-up path where he might only be around a 70 SI when he wants to be in the majors. He won't get allowed in until closer to 80. Finally Charles Parsons improves in CoS and stamina. still waiting to see if he pops in control before the end of next season before making any real decisions on his long term outlook with us. Season Thoughts through Inter-league Pullman finished strong with 3-2 series wins against winning teams in the East on Wednesday and Thursday. Overall, the team is 26 games below .500 through 110 games. The team is almost half a run better offensively this season in comparison to last season. We have about the same level of pitching this season despite the monster number of pops from the majors pitchers that are in development, which is fairly depressing. We had hoped to see a quarter or a run to half a run difference this season and it hasn't happened. Mostly to blame are the closer Harvey Barnes and the starting pitching. Barnes has 19 saves in 31 opportunities, and will likely be losing his job next season as the closer (though we still plan on using him in some capacity until he proves he just isn't cut out to be a Pioneer). Leroy Kline (who we cut), Ramon Rubio, and David Norris were a combined 3-24 through inter-league, which isn't acceptable at all. Rubio is nearing full build and has steadily declined in era from the 7's to 5's range. Norris from the 10's to the 7's. Norris has almost 20 SI left to grow which is why he was being given opportunities, but the 13 HR's in 50 innings is as brutal as it gets. We're going to probably give Norris the better part of another season to show he is capable, Rubio with a bad start to next season is right next to Gobel the call-up on the chopping block, especially if we can land a decent waiver in the off-season or our best AAA pitching prospect shows readiness for the majors. The lineup even with the improvement we really need to get a bit more power out of the team. We have the worst slugging, the worst OPS, and the worst fielding team. It may be worth biting the bullet soon on a veteran if we feel like we're through the development gains on most of our majors talents. Updated Friday, December 2 2022 @ 10:28:58 pm PST |
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| #90311 | 12/14/2022 4:48:11 pm | Oct 5th, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Training Day 119 We're going to forgo drafting week 8 of our 2nd season for the moment, we went and scoured FA for some talent to take chances on instead as last year and this year the end of the draft really had squat after the first 5 rounds anyways. So onto training! Hitting wise only Noriega popped in the majors to 13 PD, which is fairly disappointing. A lot of guys in the majors should be moving with the playing time they are getting, so thats really frustrating. Wollf, Delaney, and Kerr are the movers in the minors. Kerr triple popped to 15 hitting, 11 PD, and 10 Power. He is only in AA at 98 SI, i think we might try to push him to AAA early next season. He hasn't had a full season at AA yet but at the pace he is on he'll be full build before making the majors. I'd like him up at 22 years of age. Wolff & Delaney got the learned all they can comments, so Wolff will get full playing time at minimum next year. If Delaney doesn't show signs of getting to 12-13 hitting i don't know that he'll have much of a starting spot. Wolff is nothing more than a defensive monster at this point either, though honestly he's not awful offensively either with no offensive category below a 9 and his hitting at a 12 without a comment. Anyways, Stan Lang and Rodrigo Casillas round out the development in the minors with a power pop and fielding pop respectively. Pitchers were on the move in the majors. Kim lost a velocity for the moment (he might get it back before the end) and a fielding pop to go down in SI to 84. I think he's probably cut at seasons end. Barnes gained a control pop to bring him to 96 SI, only about 3-4 pops away from likely concluding development. Niko Horvat is now at 87 SI with a velocity and CoS pop, which marks 20 SI gained in the last two seasons. Don't think he gets to 100, but 95 would be nice. Shuler gains Velocity and CoS as well getting to 97 SI, so he's pretty much in the Barnes line of get me 3ish pops and show me what you have at that level. David Norris has not really been improving much in terms of his performance, but he did quad pop and is at 88 SI. He was almost exactly 10 innings per HR in the minors, and in the majors he gives up a HR every 4ish innings, so i am really just banking on him getting closer to maybe a 7ip per HR rate after he rounds out his development. Minors wise there are a lot of pitchers that moved. Castillo Gained his 10th point in control, Torres improved to 12 movement. With 200 innings in AAA this season, Torres probably gets called up at the midpoint next season at the latest as we kinda expect him to be ready to make the move within the first week or so of games. Vazquez might also get the comment, but at the moment we're struggling not to cut him for potential upgrades in the offseason given some of his abysmal ratios in control and HR areas, we were hopping to see him improve some more this week but he didn't. Mattox moved to 15 CoS and 104 SI overall. We are still planning on a full season of AAA after this one, and still want to see close to that 13 cap even though he has 14 potential. Rutledge gains a CoS as well, and Almanza rounds out AA play with a movement pop. Lindstrom and Bourdreau are the last of the pops and did so in velocity. Roster Moves Denis Boudreau - FA signee - We picked him up in hopes of getting some development for him. We think he has more upside than a potential draftee. Cole Lindstrom - FA signee - We felt like of the guys out there, Lindstrom had the best chance to pop his potential to 12 given his defensive ratings and how his build should likely end a bit more balanced with a velocity and movement both pushing double digits to 12's. I don't know that he'll be worth it long term, but better than sign and cut 9 potentials in the draft. Ricardo Salcedo - FA signee - A rare vetran pickup, we wanted to fill a spot in our lefty lineup card with a power threat as we were sorely lacking. He is taking no significant roster opportunities away and is there in hopes of getting us out of the season with less than 100 losses as a team. Updated Wednesday, December 14 2022 @ 4:48:50 pm PST |
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| #90331 | 12/16/2022 9:55:30 pm | Oct 14th, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Training Day 126 Robin Rea with a double pop in PD and power. winding down the age 28 season and he's at 97 SI, so considering we took a flyer on him last season with 18 SI of room in his build and 2 years to do it, seems like the payoff is reasonable. His lefty numbers in particular are really great. Matthew Starnes gains a pop in hitting, plate discipline, and fielding. Probably not going to survive the cut at this point, his defense is not quite what i would want and his offense isn't going to make it to the point where it will be great either. Maybe a bench bat, but i like bench bats that can platoon rather than pinch hit. Long Lee is the lone sub 28 year old on the majors hitting roster to pop, popping in hitting and bat control. Looking for a fielding pop and a plate discipline pop by the end of spring training. Sullinger pops to 5 plate discipline in AAA and Stan Lang pops to 11 hitting in A ball to round out hitting pops. Pitching pops in the majors were scarce this week. Kim who is unlikely to survive the offseason cut list pops in CoS and movement. He would need to pop in the post season training into the 90's to even have a small chance, and i'm leaning cut regardless. Niko Horvat double pops in movement and control. I cast a wide net at about 20 different potential diamonds in the rough, and he's one of a slim few that turned into a very good player. Minors pops start with Castillo. Looking forward to giving him innings soon. Rutledge pops in control and is in AAA now so he's probably a solid year out from getting innings. Marcelo Torres now has 14 control and a bit better defense. Still holding on for callup until next season at some point. Mattox pops in fielding but not SI, Guillermo Almanza pops in control, Mcwhorter pops in velocity, and Parsons also pops in velocity to round out the minors pops. Did a lot of things we wanted to this season even if it was a pretty lackluster performance on the whole. All of my players currently on the team battery got 200 AB's or more. When all but 2 or 3 of them are in development years, thats a pretty important balance to connect on. It sacrificed perhaps the max pops on a few guys, but got everyone a chance at probably a large chunk of what they could get. Pitching we have Molina, Shelton, Horvat, and Clough all showcasing proper talent at this point. There are some others that could develop into their roles, and there are more beyond that whom just don't appear cut out to be full time players in brokenbat league 6. Likely candidates include: Tomas Zaragoza - 31 years old next season, ops with me around a .690 with his performance this season being part of the reason we didn't get to our sub 100 loss goal a lot earlier. if he hit for his 2056 numbers, even if it was only against lefties, we'd probably have won a few of those close games. Blair Bonato - Hitting isn't strong enough, plate discipline in the garbage, ops similarly awful given he hasn't really made good use of his power or speed. Matt Starnes - Age and others with decent enough talent with similar defense. Iseul Kim - Age Rubio or Norris - Skill, could eliminate both. |
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| #90427 | 12/23/2022 9:08:30 am | Nov 2nd, 2057 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Training Day 133 Jin Ho Kang popped to 16 hitting. I'm thinking about keeping him around for his decent defense, though it's gonna keep getting harder for him to get to a big 2B or SS as players start getting the callup. Blair Bonato popped to 20 power. It will save him from the cut this offseason, but with 14 hitting and 5 plate discipline, his 20 power and 18 speed have a rough time shining and i think by the time we get through the offseason he still might be gone. His power has not translated in the amount of hits he gets. Lemond Brandon reached 12 BC. He will be coming up next season to play in the majors, our left handed pitching version of the lineup has a lot of vacancies. Pitching wise, Niko Horvat got 13 fielding so thats kinda meh. he's still been really good for us so far and any further improvement next season is a bonus. Alec Gobel got off to a rocky start as a major league pitcher. He is still 0-7 but he had 3 quality starts to end the year, going 0-1 with 19 innings pitched and 5 runs allowed, dropping his era from 6.92 to 4.96 and his BAA to .317 from .357. While the BAA is too poor to allow to continue over the long haul if it doesn't continue to drop, i at least wanted to note that the 0-7 record was not indicative of his play lately, and the pop to 14 control and 15 stamina should further assist him in his pitching. Iseul Kim popped one time, but is too far behind at 28 turning 29 to continue spending time on. Starnes, Zaragoza, Kim, and Rubio all had issues impressing me or developing as much as i had hoped over their stay for me to continue using them. We will be monitoring waivers to determine the fates of a few more roster players, including Bonato and Norris. Overall Development thoughts We've had a couple of guys really stand out in development this last season in various ways. Travis Lancaster was someone we weren't entirely sure we were going to be using given his potentially poor control. His walks allowed are still really poor, but the interesting note on his development is he is at 10 control despite coaches thinking it'll never pass below average. He also has jumped almost 20 SI as a bullpen arm in 1.5 seasons with us and has the comments in other spots to potentially be a really good all around pitcher if his control climbs a little further with those other areas. It looks like he will be a keeper after all, he at least beats out some others who have failed to impress at all. Niko Horvat is a name i've said often including above in the training area this week, but for a gamble on a guy that wasn't even at 70 SI points he has worked out incredibly well. Charlie Mattox has improved 11 SI since going back to the minors with no room to learn any further from his majors experiences. A well rounded mostly 12's ratings to a well rounded approaching mostly 14's ratings will already make a huge difference, and he will likely be in AAA next season with a chance to grow at least a few more SI. Marcelo Torres is the teams 2052 first round pick. In his last three seasons in the minors he has moved 9-10 SI a season. We have posted multiple times about his season this year and the HR rate skyrocketing, and his current projected potential cap might hamper his ability to be a top end rotation type, but he appears to be bound to break into the rotation within the next few training updates, and maybe could make the opening day rotation with the right minor league evaluation and pending what the club brings in. We will also be looking to freshen up the coaching staff. We went in with the notion that the talent itself was the majority of the problem, but there might be some potential for increased improvement with the right coaches in place so we will try to locate some up and coming coaches and/or a few veteran coaches to see if that helps young guys improve. |
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| #90498 | 12/29/2022 6:53:33 pm | Feb 19th, 2058 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Offseason Changes Coaching Changes We let go of Javier Lugo and so far have let go of 4 of 5 members of the coaching staff. Of note, they averaged 3 negative 1 positive comment across the board save for our hitting coach who is just proficient in fielding training. All of the inbound staff are young and lack the experience to show their best attributes. Head Coach - Salvador Escobar - 36 years of age, currently looks to have plus coaching attributes in defense, pitching, developing defense, and developing pitching. in comparison to the retired Javier Lugo, he might be somewhat lower in projections in player development but it seems unlikely he'll be as poor with managing the pitching staff. Pitching Coach - Miles Gibson - 39 years of age, he really does develop fielding the best, but he is also extremely strong at managing pitchers and develops them at a reasonable clip as well. Bench Coach - Quincy Gipson - 39 years of age, he probably will shift to hitting coach, but he has good hitting, decent pitching, and decent fielding coaching capabilities. He also has good player development and good fielding development, and really only has trouble relating to young pitchers as a downside. Regardless of where he stays at in terms of coaching position, we love that he has a lot of potential growth as a coach. 1st base coach - Phil Farina - 36 years of age, he doesn't have particularly great pitching management but we are hopeful to see him around an 11-12. He does however work really well with young pitchers, so with most of our staff and pen developing it's worth it to try. 3rd Base Coach - Eddie O'Toole - 39 years of age, like the head coach he has good defensive and pitching coaching and development. With no real negatives to his coaching game, he brings stability over the previous coach who showed no real coaching ability at all (0 positive, 2 neutral, 4 negative, how does a coach not auto-retire with 4 negatives and no plus attributes!). Player Changes Daniel Malachi - 12 claims - has 12 SI to gain at maximum with a season to go, so he will get all the spring training time and will likely land 350-450 AB's this season in the lineup, probably also getting spring training time at catcher to see if we can use him there at the start of the season. with 1 pop in the 4 hitting attributes and 1 fielding pop he will probably be about average. If he can get a 2nd pop in hitting, pd, or power it probably will do a lot more to getting him an established roster spot. So that 6th and 7th SI gained this season will be critical. Jong Yul Shin - 1 Claim - He was the backup option if we didn't land Malachi, though the arm strength probably wasn't good enough. We might use him to start the year in RF, but overall it's more likely he gets a chance to play more elsewhere as fielding wise it's just hard to put him somewhere. Óscar Isales - 12 claims - happy to have landed Isales, he is fringe to be able to start, but he will get starts to hopefully accelerate him to his full build. Don't see it being too difficult to get him to 12 stamina at least given his development path. looking for the control to be his big attribute with enough movement and velocity to get outs. Mark Agosti - 1 Claim - He has his issues no doubt, but we missed on a few 3-4 claim guys we liked more so he's sufficient to cover a rotation spot until we have some depth from the minors come up to the majors or maybe get lucky in waivers. Manuel Salinas - Free Agent - Will play here and there as a starter and will mostly be a late game bench replacement for defense. May move him out with a proper waiver win at this position that makes more sense long term. We cut our starting catcher over the last few seasons given his build was a bit scary for consistent results. Additionally, we let go of the two relievers we brought in at lower ceilings for some cheap development. We've had some guys pop in potential and drop in potential, so was maybe hoping for that to be what happened to them but better for it to happen to well rounded pitchers who could become top-end guys with a pop in potential. Updated Thursday, December 29 2022 @ 6:54:39 pm PST |
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| #90572 | 01/07/2023 12:36:08 am | Mar 16th, 2058 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft Day 147 (season 3 round 1) Benjamin Iglesias - Took a look at one of the smaller pools for round 1, looking to add a player that might be able to help us more immediately. Iglesias is 26 and already going to be close to running out of time to get his hitting up to a level that can work in the majors. Going to get him in early in the season and make a determination pretty quickly as to whether or not we want to spend a lot of time hoping for some hitting and plate discipline pops or if we want to cut our losses, which is unfortunate because we were really hoping for a bit more out of such an early round pick. Training Day 147 29 year old Elmer McGee gets his hitting to 14. If this is his last pop, he ends with 14 hitting, 17 plate discipline, and 18 power. Kang reaches 9 plate discipline. He's fringe to make the team at this point, mostly for his decent defensive capabilities, as his average has been underwhelming (expected .270+ vs LHP, .240+ vs RHP, he missed on both last year). Wolff improves in positional understanding, which is important. Larry Mathew, whom we are going to look to for vs RHP DH duties, gains a BC. Need him to get to about 10 PD and some continued gains elsewhere before his development completes to feel like he'll be a long term mainstay. Delaney rounds out the majors pops with a fielding pop. He'll need to be a 13-14 fielding defender to be a long term guy for us as his offensive upside is limited. In the minors, Sullinger pops in BC and Power, Kerr in fielding, and Casillas in hitting and bat control. Pitching had pops galore which is a big deal as that'll be where we need to make the most ground up to be competitive this year. Carrizales pops in control, he'll be a middle inning movement specialist. Gobel popped in CoS to 12 and Movement to 14, so he should be able to survive more innings with the continued growth in his abilities. Finally Isales, a 21 year old Waiver pickup, popped in CoS and fielding. The minors were where most of our pitching in spring training was coming from. Angulo pops in CoS, control, and stamina. with him being a more prominent fastball/changeup pitcher we are hoping for some gains in both CoS and velocity going forward as he could really shut down the opposition with mastery in those two fields in particular. Vazquez is doing everything he can to cling to his roster spot given his lack of control and his high HR rates by quad popping. Velocity, CoS, Stamina, and Fielding all went up. Mattox pops in Stamina and is now ready to move to AAA for the start of the season. We're doing everything we can to stay patient on him and so far the chance to go back and work his way up has netted big gains, and i think 1 more season of patience is going to be in his best interest and ours. Castillo gains a movement pop, while Rutledge improves in movement and stamina. Both are fairly behind in talent for the level they play at but have made it work, so if they get the ready call this season they'll likely be in the majors in 2059. Almanza pops in Stamina, and needs a ton of work to make the majors, he'll probably be held back even if he is ready until 2060 if he keeps his roster spot. Mota gains a movement pop, while Mcwhorter pops in CoS and control. Mcwhorter has pitched pretty well and has some potential with a low enough fielding grade, so we're becoming more confident in his future prospects. Parsons, Sears, and Gaytan round out the rest of the pops. They however are all quite some ways away. Much like year 2, year 3 is all about getting guys to the majors from our farm team when they are ready. A lot of them should be more capable than the cycled FA/low claim waiver pool that we've been filling our development in the majors program out with for the last 2 years, so the majority of the rotation has one last chance to impress me. The Pen should be very strong this season though, so we could really look to win 75-85 games with the right hitting and quality starts. |
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| #90641 | 01/13/2023 2:07:56 pm | Apr 7th, 2058 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft Day 154 - Week 2 We cut our first round draft pick to make room for the 2nd round draft pick. http://brokenbat.org/player/305066 for those looking, 13 potential but at 26 has just 10 hitting towards a 'great hitter' comment and felt like with great luck he might get to 14 before he ran out of time. Mateo Jimenez - 14 potential with unhittable fastball and exceptional curveball, not much else really stood out. We went back to pitching since the foreign pool was such a bust and we REALLY need starting pitching still. The downside to Jimenez is he has a really high HR rate in some of his appearances in amateurs, but he was starting a good chunk of those games in the years where he started spiking his HR rate, so with a lower usage maybe that is at a more reasonable number....hopefully. Waivers Day 152 Sung Ho Park - 12 Claims - Feel like i won a pretty good corner OF here. He wont have great range and his arm is just ok, but his fielding and most of his hitting skills look like they'll be more than enough to win their way onto my team. I can see why really good teams can't spend time in him, but we are far from that still. Training Day 154 Starting with a drop, the SS i've been trying to build up and survive with lost armstrength. 17 to 16 at SS isn't super important to me. However, he's fringe at best in actual fielding so he's not the most ideal for the spot anyways, and thus plays versus lefties only. Yamada, who kinda fits in the same theme of not ideal defense for a 3B (Range is too poor, arm is below average) is at least going to stick as a DH if nothing else at this point, as he triple pops to 16 hitting, 12 BC, and 15 PD. Doesn't have to hit his cap to be quite useful, though we'll keep pushing him to do well and improve another level in all hitting areas. Noriega pops in fielding. He's my defensive CF that helps me survive the corners being somewhat worthless at times defensively. Park popped in hitting after joining the team from waivers, Sullinger is at an 11 fielding now, Trout improved on PD, and Kerr improved in PD as well to round out the hitting improvements. Pitching pops start with a triple pop in movement, control, and stamina from Agosti. About enough room for one more full round of pops, and then we'll know where we stand with his skills. Carrizales now has 12 velocity and 6 CoS, bringing him to 74 SI. He's only an 11 potential but has very low defensive ratings so he's fairly close to a 12 potential's ceiling in reality. Shuler improves in fielding, and his statistics across his career here have been great against lefties baring 10 innings with his prior team, so i'm happy to have him even if he has stopped developing. Norris triple pops in CoS, Movement, and Stamina. his H/9 is still terrible though, we need that number to go down or i'm going to eventually be too frustrated to keep him. Isales triple pops in Velocity, Movement, and Control. In theory doesn't have enough stamina to start, but we're pushing him into the role to try and maximize his development. In the minors we had improvements across a good chunk of the players, with Angulo gaining fielding, Vazquez gaining Movement, Castillo popping in stamina, Rutledge popping in fielding, Mota also in fielding, and finally Mcwhortter popped in Movement, Stamina, and Fielding. A few of the AAA guys are now listed as ready to get called up, so we're gonna make some critical decisions here in the next week or so. Pullman is 6-4 this early in the year, which is a nice start but it's a long season. |
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| #90670 | 01/20/2023 10:38:34 pm | May 6th, 2058 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 161 , Draft Week 3 Went College to try and get now talent, didn't have an incredibly deep pool to choose from but we may have a decent prospect in Austin Radford. He is going to be a very low OBP player, but could be a decent vs LHP corner OF with a little bit of work. We'll monitor how quickly he can get to 13 hitting, if he isn't there by 25 probably going to look elsewhere but we aren't capped out on depth by any means. Releases Mark Agosti - not convinced he has really shown everything he is capable of, but we're also getting a bit tired of poor performance after poor performance. His movement should be his best attribute, but he is givving up way too many hits to right handed hitters and since the average team is heavy on the righties we can't justify the .301 average across 90 innings, all with a decent amount of skills. Training Day 161 Yamada pops to 16 power. Again, not really expecting him to get to that 13 potential cap, but happy to see him pushing towards the top end of the 12 week after week. Long Lee moved back to 2B and has been much more solid defensively there, and now also has a 13 in PD to go with the high contact and solid fielding. However, he needs to not be sitting at a .173 average if he wants to stay with the team. Randall the part time OF with the vLHP lineup is doing qutie well this year, and improved from 10 to 11 in bat control. Larry Mathew was brought in to be the productive DH of the next 5-6 seasons if he could move quickly in development. He was slow going the first couple weeks but this week he double popped in plate discipline and power. he has done very well this season with his current build, so we're hoping as he improves he can stay close enough to that performance going forward. Lemond Brandon is the vs LHP lineup equivalent of Larry Mathew but needed another hitting pop or two to really justify playing him in the majors. He now has that 12 hitting. If he can speed through some pops in the majors when he gets his look here soon, then he has every chance to be a dangerous 1B/DH. Mel Trout popped in power, trying to patiently wait out his callup signal from the coaches. Finally Morris Kerr is now at 101 SI and stuck with the AA projection, as he pops to 16 hitting. Gonna take a lot to keep him in AA or AAA if he caps you know.... Pitching wise Niko Horvat's having a rough year as the closer, but he triple popped to 94 SI with improvements in Velocity, Control, and Stamina. I might move him around and look for another Closer option or just go without, he's been too solid as a standard reliever to give up on now. Carrizales pops in movement to 15. He should be well on his way to capping movement before he caps his build, and despite the 75 SI he has a solid statline for his career so far. David Norris pops to 12 control. He's really got a strong build in every area but strikeouts, so his improvement to a 4's era from a 7's last season seems reasonable. Geraldo Castillo is set to make his majors debute in the rotation this weekend. He popped to 6 CoS. We're not expecting his minors performance level to hold up, but we are hopeful to see him gain 8-10 SI at a reasonably quick pace with the innings he should be getting. Marcelo Torrest improves to 12 CoS and 11 Stamina. After being in the majors way too early in 2055 and 2056, he is now a more refined pitcher in 2058 at over 20 SI from where he was as a 21 year old. Oscar Isales rounds out the majors pops with a pop in both Control and Stamina. Kinda similar to Geraldo Castillo in that we're giving him innings knowing they might not all go well. In the Minors Mattox pops to 14 in control. he now has no stat lower than a 14 in the pitching vitals. I'm sure i could call him up now and have a good starter, but we're still 1 season out from turning the corner. Hunter Sears is the other pop, with movement going to a 6. |
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| #90756 | 01/29/2023 12:56:39 am | Jun 4th, 2058 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Day 168, Draft Week 4 Rodolfo Solano - High movement with good numbers in amateurs, might be a usable SP in a good 5-6 years. Needs a lot of polish before he gets to that point. Not much more to say until i know more honestly. Training Day 168 Edgar Alvarez gains the OF capitalization back. Not that he's a amazing corner OF, but he is passable in comparison to other guys we have now. Daniel Malachi gained in positional knowledge at C, and also gained hitting and plate discipline. Pretty much at the border of 12 and 13 potential, looking forward to seeing him gain a few more SI before the end of the season. Munenori Yamada gained more fielding, which is helpful at 3B where he's slightly weak. Long Lee is still having quite the terrible season, but is gaining in hitting and fielding, so now he look even more like an underachiever. Larry Mathew gets a terrible fielding pop, he's still a permanent DH. Raymond Sullinger gains in hitting, and Morris Kerr gains in BC to round out hitters. Niko Horvat is now up to 95 SI with gains in Movement. Carrizales gains in Stamina, which really isn't something we were predominantly wanting out of him, but i guess it'll help in the long run. David Norris improves in Cos and in stamina, bringing him to 16 CoS and 18 Stamina. His numbers have improved quite a bit over last years at this point, probably has something to do with him getting close to full build now that he's at 96 SI. I also think his HR numbers last year were quite the anomaly. Geraldo Castillo is taking his lumps in the majors, but he is only 23. Gaining in velocity and control should help stabilize him some. Think it'll take all of this season and next season for him to get close to his cap, and at that point we'll have to see exactly what he's made of. Marcelo Torres is also 23, and is also taking a few lumps. However, now at 90 SI after Movement and Control gains makes me think we won't have to worry too much about his performance by the start of next season. Isales is 21 and gaining in fielding and range, asking to get sent back to waivers with this sort of update, if nothing else it tests my patience. Minors wise, Charlie Mattox grows to 15 movement despite a lack of movement comments. Almanza, who is probably too far behind and mid level at best gained in movement. Jimenez is improving in control, which is great with how much improving he can do in movement and velocity. Parsons improves in CoS, Gaytan in Control, and Sears in Fielding to round out the minors. Waivers Day 165 Nathan Silver - 19 Claims - A nice young 1B/OF, Silver has everything i want in a hitter except his ability to drive the ball in the air consistently. Going to start getting him some more AB's in hopes of getting him towards the 109-110 mark this season for full build. |
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| #90815 | 02/05/2023 8:55:30 am | Jul 2nd, 2058 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Draft Day 172 Gonzalo De La Fuentes - Probably best as a Catcher from what i can see, but i don't think he'll survive at 11 potential and with just good hitting and no fielding comment. Thinking about cutting my losses. Waivers Week ending day 172 Hitoshi Tatsuya - a 30 year old 2 claimer, he doesn't really have great offense, but i've grown a little frustrated of the poor defense at 2B/SS over the last year or two and the high hitting graded Long Lee has been poor, so we've decided to part ways with the younger of the two upon getting Tatsuya in. Long term if Tatsuya hit's a .600 ops with his defense playing to his grades, we think we could get a solid 3 seasons out of him no problems and we might be looking to rotate high defensive veteran players at the SS and perhaps 2B over the long term until we can find better in our own development system. Releases Long Lee - Hitting at or under 250 with an 18 hitting, an with his low power making his slugging non existent we were getting essentially nothing on the bat side. defensively he's probably just good enough at 2B, so he got demoted from SS to 2B and them from 2B to out of the lineup when his bat still hadn't recovered at all. Robin Rea - .256 despite really good hitting and obp potential really just wasn't going to cut it. He should've had more potential power but it never materialized, and without any power production or good speed, he was essentially only a plus player with his 17 fielding grade, and that wasn't enough reason to keep him in with the barely double digits range and arm. Training Day 172 Not a very big update this time around. Newcomer Nathan silver, as well as Mathews and Noriega, gained in hitting. the last hitter on the list was Malachi, who gained in fielding. no minors pops occured on the hitting side, but the 3 hitting pops are pretty important to our success as Noriega is our defensive CF and can maybe contribute a bit more offensively, and Silver and Mathews are trying to grow into full time roles. They all hit 16 hitting together in this update. Pitching wise a little more improvement occured. The Younger Barragan improved in control, he's not getting a ton of playing time so it'll be difficult to get him to cap probably, but we don't want to continue being a poor team for much longer, we're turning the corner and getting close to having talent ready at about every other spot so we'll have to see if he can get to 78-80 si this season without getting massive innings. Carrizales improved in fielding, which makes another update where he really didn't improve in pitching ratings. Castillo's been getting beaten up a lot in starts and only has a stamina gain to show for it. Torres who went down to the minors after his initial callup two seasons back has continued to show what that extra polish can do for a player, and he continues to improve this week in Velocity and Stamina. We've been using him as a starter so that stamina pop to 12 is actually very important. Isales triple pops in velocity, movement, and control. We really wanted him to work out better than he has this year, as he is so young that if we had found a 4th or 5th starter out of him he could've fit for 10+ seasons. However, he's still around a 7.00 era and his HR rate has blown up since his amateurs/minor days. We anticipated he'd not be the best at keeping the ball in the park, but it's really been beyond poor in comparison to what we expected (we'd estimated in 70 innings to have 10ish against, and he's all the way up at 16). Someones gonna go next season, might be him. In the minors, Almanza gains in CoS and Control, he's a very fringe prospect though. Jimenez gains in CoS and stamina, he's far less fringe even with a questionable Hr rate unless he drops to 13 potential. Mcwhorter double pops in Velocity and CoS. |
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| #90878 | 02/16/2023 8:02:14 pm | Aug 19th, 2058 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Had a bit of a rough week at work so haven't been on more than a few times, but here is the abbreviated version. we signed and cut a draftee, not much to speak on there. maybe will take a chance again this week, or not. haven't decided. On roster moves, looking at veteran SP's out of necessity, the pen ends up in the end of series worn completely out with 2-3ip starts due to awful starts. I think the defense could be a bit better in spots. Next year we'll probably mix a few young and a few old SP's and focus more on finding quality veterans this offseason in FA/waivers. Training Day 179 Silver gets a Pd bump, Malachi a BC jump, and thats it for the hitting in the majors. Trout gets a hitting in the minors, and gonzalo de la fuente gets a bc bump to complete the entirety of the hitting pops. On the pitching swide of things, Castillo triple pops in movement, control, and fielding. Torres triple pops in CoS, Control, and fielding. Vazquez in the minors got his pops in Velocity and Stamina, he'll be on the way up again soon. Rutledge gains in CoS and control, Mota in CoS, Jimenez in Velocity, Mcwhorter in control, Sears in CoS, and Solano in stamina. Updated Thursday, February 16 2023 @ 8:02:31 pm PST |
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| #90942 | 02/26/2023 10:18:19 am | Sep 20th, 2058 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Still lots going on, but lets get back into the habit of writing these shall we? Training day 193 Larry Mathew is now up to 91 SI, Power now at 14, and his range popped to 11. Noriega gained his 14th PD, and Delaney gained 13 in BC for the majors pops. Wolff is getting retrained as a 2B in the minors, Trout gained a fielding, Sullinger a PD, Kerr a PD and Fileding, and Lang a BC. Of note, Kerr is now at 105 SI with a 13 potential and is still not projected majors ready. I am thinking of bringing him up regardless once we reach the allstar game next season, he's good enough to play for my team now but more importantly by then he might be capped.... for pitching, Carrizales gains a control, Castillo triple pops in CoS, movement, and stamina. Torres gains a Control and Stamina pop to bring him to 99 SI to round out the majors pops. In the minors, Rutledge gains a movement pop, Mcwhorter a stamina and fielding, solano a movement, and gaytan a control. End of Season Evaluation At this point we're well into our rebuild of the roster, and some things simply don't seem to be working as well as others in terms of positional work. The following players will likely be hitting FA at the end of the season. Elmer McGee - Did not overcome his mediocre hitting as much as hoped. It's severly limited his power production to the point where the value simply isn't there on Plate Discipline alone, which was pretty solid still with the split between average and obp. We were hoping initially for the last hitting pop and maybe a consistent enough .250 average guy, .223 just wont work. We'd rather go find someone who can play better defense at the .700 ops value. Kelvin Randall - 3 seasons here, and similar to other guys his 1 'great' attribute is really overshadowed by a lack of others. Needed to see a little more in the walks department, needed to see a little more in the HR power department. Looks like the HR power if he were to play against all opposition might be 10-15 HR power, and his on base percentge looks a lot closer to 30-40 walks a year on a 12-13 PD rating at it's end. Roger Bowers - After a really good 2056, he followed it up with a 'mid' 2057 and a pretty poor 2058. He turns 30 and is mediocre defensively and offensively, so we might just go look for something that provides more. Particularly, we're disappointed in the falloff in his average this season more than anything, a .250 against lefties that honestly i thought would normally push .280-.300 given his hitting grade being in the middle of the very good rating. Keith Delaney - Honestly i was keeping him mostly because of his draft status and his potential. However, i just don't see the value in a poor outfielder outside of CF perhaps, and i worry that his ending SI of 108-110 range might only net me a 13/16/11 CF. If i'm going to go weak in offense, i want to have more fielding that a projected 13. Gilberto Barragan - Not finding enough opportunities, not pitching particularly well enough to stay in the game when he gets them. He was a 'grow in the majors project' type, and we're growing out of that. In order to make these moves happen, we do need guys to come up and take their spots or to go out and sign more talent. Brady Wolff probably becomes a full time defensive depth infielder when we likely drop one of our aging defensive SS's. Me Trout will be age 25 next season as well, so those two have a great chance to be in the majors to start the season. Pitching wise, Charley Mattox appears to be slowing down on his SI gains now that he's at 108 SI in the minors. He'll also be 25. So my guess is he is about as good as he is going to get. We'll likely send Vazquez or Gobel into FA. Vazquez has control issues in both walks and HR's but occasionally flashes brilliance so we were thinking more short term K and get out of a jam type of guy, but his cup of tea this year was really bad HR wise. Gobel has no real pitches to get guys out, throws garbage and hopes the hitters cant recognize it. He might stay as the minor league 'floating injury' guy. The rest of the minors is likely too far out to help next season. Rutledge is the next closest, a reliever type that has decent numbers in the minors and projects relatively well to the majors. Almanza i don't like much, kept on just to see how HR's and minors ratios would look and....well not great. We'll be searching for a good defensive infielder and a big veteran bat in the offseason to compliment our callup strategies, and see if we can't finally break through and back into the win column. We've gone from a -265 to a -187 to a -90 projected this season, so the growth is there, just needs a bit of help. |
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| #91109 | 03/18/2023 3:33:06 pm | Mar 3rd, 2059 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Pullman 2059 Lineup Ideas: Catcher: Dan Malachi is the go to. That is a bit by choice, and a bit by the waiver gods smiting us every time we tried to get a catcher. Of the 8 we went for, 2 were long shots, 2 were 7 and 8 claims, 1 was 4 claims, and 1 3, and 2 2's. Still likely to find a veteran that works, Malachi despite his age will get all of spring training to continue learning the position. 1B: Alfredo Marroquin coming off a great season last year is unlikely to lose his spot this season. has high fielding but low range and arm, so there aren't too many spots to put him otherwise outside of DH. 2B: Piero Costantini is a free agent we swooped up after having luck similar to the catcher scenario. We did not lose a lot of 2 and 3 claim targets here, we took bigger chances and failed though. His numbers in limited action of his career have been ok, and while not the best defensive 2B in terms of range at this point in his career, he does still have a plus glove to limit the errors. 3B: Munenori Yamada will retain his starting position. There isn't a lot of backup here, so we'll be needing either Malachi to sub in occasionally, or we'll need to find a FA to help fill the voice for games Yamada can't play. SS: Hitoshi Tatsuya is a defensive rock, and will regardless of OPS likely get the nod the entire season. Backup infielders - Currently, we have defensive Specialist Brady Wolff, but there are some targets we hope to hit on to secure some strength at 3B before we head into the regular season. OF's: Juan Carlos Fernandez - Veteran signed with hopes of providing some offense from a corner OF position. Most likely a vLHP bat, but could shift into both spots. Larry Mathew - vRHP bat, less about defensive skill and more about offensive production potential. Nathan Silver - vRHP bat, similar to Mathew but glove is better and arm is worse Caesar Norriega - CF that likely can see time against either lineup because of plus defensive capabilities. Mel Trout - vLHP bat, we want to give him ample playing time if poissible this season so expect some vRHP AB's as well. Sung Ho Park - another vLHP bat, less likely to make it long term but again want to give him some AB's to showcase his abilities and grow a bit. These 6, plus 1B Lemond Brandon, are likely to split the 3 OF and 1 DH spot throughout the year, with matchups against starters likely to determine some of that lineup. OF Keith Delaney is unlikely to see much playing time going forward and is first in line to be cut as his hitting simply isn't good enough to make use of the power and other attributes. |
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| #91116 | 03/18/2023 8:14:08 pm | Mar 4th, 2059 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Pitching Setup #1 - Jerry Myers - Long term Council Bluffs pitcher who is starting to fall off more rapidly this season, but we're hoping he has enough left in the tank to stabilize the rotation. In most seasons, the HR rate is acceptable, and overall it's been in a higher league that VI. Hoping for a continuation of what he's done for most of his career, with the falloff the last two seasons in skills and the falloff in competition cancelling. #2 - Charlie Mattox - He's finally back out of the minors. He was thought to be damaged goods a few years back by some fans and team officials, but has worked tirelessly to come back up through the minors with great numbers at each level. at 25 he's got a chance to prove that he has what it takes once again after not seeing the majors in almost 3 seasons. #3 - RJ Clough - Regressed a small amount last season. However, he is now not counted on in the same capacity as he has been for the team, which has mostly been in the veteran role of a young staff. He's now a #3, and has 2 veterans helping anchor the rotation around him. #4 - Bartolome Bustos - Most recently a Rohnert Park Rebel and prior to that a long tenured Cedar Park Raider, Bustos is also starting to fall off in the later stages of his career. Like Myers, it's all about whether or not he can hold onto some of that form while dropping down another level from where he was last year. If he can, the Pioneers will be above .500 #5 - Marcelo Torres - Now at full build, the expectation is that he gets closer to the 1.3xx whip number and also stabilizes a bit more in the ERA department. Expectations are around a 4.50 era with a .500 record. Getting that out of the #5 would be a major bonus. LR - Travis Lancaster - While he doesn't necessarily have the best scouting report on the team, Lancaster's performance last season is worthy of bringing him back. Most situations where Lancaster will be entering the game involve games out of hand and hopefully keeping them close enough for recover, so if he can continue this level of performance it'd be helpful. LR2 - Matias Carrizales - Carrizales is less experienced in the majors, and he needs some development time to hit maximum build. The expectations are that he has the same entry as Lancaster, but when Lancaster is fatigued. Development is the key part of Carrizales future on the team, the sooner the better for us. MR - Joaquin Molina - one of the rocks of our pen the last two years He's been preventing runners and he handed quite a few games to the closer (who when we worked without a setup ended up closing games). MR2 - Niko Horvat - from a rock of a player since he reemerged from a minors stint to a guy who was literally unable to perform in the minors he was so underdeveloped, Niko Horvat has come a long way from the single digit skills across the board in 2056. He is now a perfectly fine complement to Molina, making the tandem one of the strongest in the conference last year. LHS - Stephan Shuler - A rocky 2057 gives way to a great 2058. Shuler honestly can put together a season similar to his first 13 innings in 2056 and we're good SU1 - Alfonso Barragan - Statistically not as good as the middle relievers, but last year's HR rate was seemingly an anomaly. If not, we'll have to do some rearranging of the pen. SU2 - Miguel Vazquez - A rookie who will get a handful of chances at most to prove himself this season. If he continues the same HR rate, a veteran will be picked up and we'll try to find a better solution for the future at a later date. Closer - Harvey Barnes - The 2057 campaign was really rough, the 2058 was much better, and more comparable to the 2056 work. 2059 needs to be like the 2058 or 2056 campaigns to keep his spot here. |
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| #91236 | 04/01/2023 10:13:17 am | Apr 10th, 2059 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Training Notes Thru Week 2 of season 4 Lemond Brandon gets stronger at hitting and is now at a 13. He has the build capable of being a DH, but we've been struggling to get him playing time. He could also play 1B given his solid fielding. We may bring him into both lineups in full shortly to see if we cant get him towards 92-93 SI this season and maybe near his cap by the end of next season (99-101), but i find the balance of competing and getting underdeveloped guys training time difficult in year 4. Malachi at age 29 gets to 106 SI, and is still the main player at catcher. He has the ability to still play at 3B but we have others who can also fill that role. Mel Trout is now up to 14 bat control, and is looking like a solid vLHP option going forward even though the early going has had limited chances to face off against lefties. Miguel Vazquez was the only majors pop on the pitching side, and he popped in stamina which isn't really what we care for given his lack of high control makes him too weak as a starter. In the minors, Raymond Sullinger gets to 11 power. His hitting still looks pretty borderline to make it in the majors, so we'll hope for some more pops there as soon as possible. Morris Kerr reaches 14 plate discipline, and is up to 107 SI in the minors. He has a potential cap that is now up to 14 rather than at 13 like it was last year, so he wont threaten to cap in the minors, but we will see how much my patience gets tested this season with waiting for that promotion request on the minors page. Stan Lang improves in power, he's more of a depth player for us at this point. Gonzalo De La Fuente gains in bat control and fielding, and is kinda similar to Stan Lang in the sense that he is there for depth until we get more talent in via the draft and waivers. In the pitching side of the minors, Gobel continues improving in areas such as control this week, so we might give him a look again in the majors down the road. Geraldo Castillo is in the same boat there, gaining in movement and in control. Mateo Jimenez is the first non-ready pitcher on the training list, improving in velocity. Mcwhorter also gains in velocity and control, and parsons in CoS to round out some of the closer-to-ready player group. Rudy Gayton and Benito Silva also gain in CoS/Stamina and movement respectively. Drafts week 1 and 2 Shannon Green - while he has limited power potential, he looks like a solid OBP threat against lefties. We'll consider training him in 2B short term to get that solidified before moving to 1B and OF as the secondary spots. The defense is slightly below what i have started to align with at 2B, i'd prefer to be 1 or 2 points higher in range, but if his offense gets strong i wont complain about him there. Benito Silva - this draft pick looks a lot more fringe, with higher range/arm and lower potential. We'll give it most of this season given we have 1 or 2 others in similarly depth spots that are too old to likely show added potential, but this was not what we were hoping for in the 2nd round. Team Standings This year we've been generating close to 8 runs per game and we've gone down from 5.2 to 5.0 runs allowed at the super early point in the year. The lineup is stronger this year, and so is the rotation in my opinion. So while we don't expect to be maintaining the offensive strength that we've started the season with, it should likely be north of 5 runs per game for the year, and we are hopeful that improved defensive strength with veterans and 1 or 2 good veteran arms will be enough to give us the edge to promote in what seems to be one of the weaker western conference we've been in for a few seasons. |
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| #91422 | 04/30/2023 7:28:10 pm | Aug 2nd, 2059 | |
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gFrie Joined: 08/13/2022 Posts: 43 Inactive
| Rough month on the IRL side, time to try to get back into writings these weekly, now less about training and more about how the roster decisions are being made since we're finally winning some games! Standings We're 14-1 in the 15 games since the all-star break, and have been piecing it together most of the way given a few rotation injuries have occured. Our pitching has dropped the era's dramatically over the last few weeks, which is the reason for the increase in the win column. We let go of some of the veterans we brought in to stabilize the rotation, and realized that we had a lot of what we needed all along. Geraldo Castillo in 5 games since returning from the minors is 2-0 with a 3.73 era and a 2.75 fip, with an average appearance lasting just over 6 innings. Alec Gobel returned earlier in the campaign and in 10 starts has a 3-0 record with 6 quality starts, a 3.33 era and 3.69 fip. He has also pushed about 6 and 2/3 innings per start. The team is a bit above the league average defensively, and really the only area that has seen some struggles from game to game are the bats. We have below average power and speed, and we strike out a lot as a team, so we're probably going to have to fix a spot or two on the lineup card going forward. Transactions Ryota Bessho - 6 claims - a necessity signing for the team. there weren't any real options that we felt comfortable with left in the minors given a lot of that depth took over for underachieving veterans and we got hit with a 2 week injury on a starter. If he can cover another series with great production it might push Mattox into the pen when he returns as a long reliever. Morris Kerr - promotion - he was brought up by former management well before he was ready. he made it all the way to 110 SI before being deemed ready to go by the minor league staff, and he's been producing well since returning to the big club for the first time in a few seasons. Matias Carrizales - released - tried to give him some low-impact innings, but he ended up playing in higher leverage situations and poorly, so while i won't be shocked to see someone else make better use of him, at some point we just had to look elsewhere for better numbers. Keith Delaney - released - without a good average and a solid amount of walks, it was too difficult to project him as a starter. a handful of other signings and releases have occured, but most have been cups of tea to see if the player still had something. The team has a handful of decent prospects working their way up the farm and developing well, so there is some chance to see some more reinforcements before the end of the season from within the organization rather than reaching out for some veteran stability. |
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