Turkish Delight - 16 JUN 2042

[jcrmoon42]

New management went into this first sim with just one goal. Well, maybe more than one goal, but one primary goal. That goal was to not screw things up.

"Dangit, why didn't I ask for Mumbai?" I thought to myself as I sat down to manage the Bosphorus for the first time. "Manage the Bosphorus" sounds like a bad translation of the name of a Turkish garage band. Are there Turkish garage bands? Are there Turkish garages? But I digress.

So...having taken on a first place team and really hoping to not screw things up, what did I do? Yeah, I changed a bunch of stuff. Smart. I know.

I started with the rotation. What did I see? I saw Claudio Escobedo having somehow gotten 12 starts already with an ERA of 8.49. Yes...that's 8.49. This is a first place team with that guy as their fifth starter. So...as an attempted solution, I took the guy who had been closing for us, flame-throwing Charlie Simmons and his 13 saves, and put him in the rotation. How did that work out? He got shelled. That's how. So we may have to rethink that little bit of strategery.

What else did we do? We revamped the lineups too. Split up some platoons. Sat down some guys who had been playing poorly and gave a shot to some guys who had been playing better.

We also trolled the free agent wire, picking up a number of minor league free agents who will get jobs in place of the scrubs we currently have in the minor leagues. Some of them may even get a shot at playing in Istanbul if they play their cards right. We fired some crappy coaches and paid a little extra to bring in a better staff. We got our draftees signed up, which is huge.

We also spent some time wondering why previous management drafted a reliever with no control in the first round and wondered if that is how UMEBA drafts go. Then we saw we drafted this Australian kid in Round 2 and wondered how this club even got to first place, let alone a championship.

We looked over the minor league system and got pretty excited about a couple of these cats. The second pick of the 2039 draft was Adam Backhouse. He really has no position to speak of but his bat speaks for itself. He swings at everything, but he will make great contact and hit the ball a mile. He had been crushing AA pitchers. So we moved him up to see what he could do at the next level. Another nice spect is 20 year old infielder Takechi Eida, an on-base/speed package who should have been getting some time at shortstop but has played almost exclusively 2B. Eida has yet to put his skills together but is working things out at the AA level.

In the end, the club went 4-2 on the sim, and since that is a .667 winning percentage, that means that I literally improved the club in my first sim. Unfortunately, it also means that Baghdad gained a game on us after going 5-1. Our team heads off to Iraq to play the Kings this sim. So fingers crossed that the inevitable tinkering I do this time doesn't screw that up.

[recte44]

Simmons is a UMEBA STUD!