Growing old in Cairo (2041-4)

[Fat Nige]

Once Spring's bloom has faded

There was precious excitement in the Chariot Archers spring camp, one of the best things you could say about it was that for a change there was a lack of injuries. Poor Adrian Young who missed 2040 through injury managed 24 mediocre spring outings before heading back to the IL for around five weeks with a sprained ankle. A $4.5m contract hanging round his neck won’t make it easy for him to come back as a regular starter, get that tag of injury prone with a BIG contract and when cap space is precious, you’re the one they’re looking at. The only other injury coming out of camp was to another rightfielder, young 19-yr-old non-roster invitee Anastasio Correa, he will be out for a month with a fractured finger. Correa has had three years building himself in Tapei after being released by Twin Cities, a month after they drafted him. Currently listed as the UMEBA’s #13 overall prospect he is ticketed to spend the year in Montevideo once he returns from the IL.

Talk about the pitching crew before ST and you’d get a Gaelic shrug of the shoulders, talk about the pitching crew after ST and the response would still be a Gaelic shrug. A month of meaningless baseball hadn’t really cleared anything up. With Cairo ‘touching the cloth’ of the salary cap {English colloquialism : close to desperate (for toilet), similar to ‘the mouse is almost poking his head out’}, the emphasis would be on financial aspects as much as the normal playing factors and options left. A hard decision had to be made about Tony Caraballo, he wasn’t earning much ($170k) and had turned in a 10-7 record last year . . . but the signs were there, hits allowed and walks had risen dramatically plus his age of 36 had to be factored in. Looking at the age of many on the Cairo roster it appeared that the window on winning was shutting fast, it was time to get younger and build again. Caraballo shuffled off to the waiver wire along with Barney Everhart (old & appalling at 2B) and Rio North (not old, but perennial backup now seemingly superseded by the three years younger Felix Torres who had such a good post season last year).

One pitcher that impressed (read: stunk less than the rest) was 30-yr-old Tae-kyun Chong. Cairo had picked him up in the off season as a minor league FA, he had been passed around several BBA teams without a lot of success in their minors and had even had three BBA games with San Antonia about six years ago. Caleb Benavides’s poor form had seen him slip into the body of the bullpen, at 35-yrs-old he was the only bullpen member in 2041 over thirty. Now the test was to work on getting the Rotation age down.

The batting lineup worked out more or less as it had in 2040. The big addition was Raul Castrejon who arrived in the off season on a 2-year $11m contract. He was mainly a Triple-A player for Atlantic City, but had managed 78 BBA games for them over the last two years, it was hoped that he would give the Chariot Archers a solid defensive presence up the middle while being a major contributor with the bat too. Felipe Sanchez, who had been a Cairo backup infielder last year, had slipped into the starting 2B role whilst 23-yr-old Allen Miller would open the season with a tenuous hold on the SS job.