May 19th, 2046 by Omar Khayyam
"Never shall we walk on top"
If ours fans weren't worried enough, they should be even more worried now. , they should be even more worried now. Our forums were flooded with the self-doubts of our people when GM Rich Young deserted us for the Western decadence of El Paso and our suicide watch lines were jammed when the people of the Red Crescent discovered that our replacement GM would be Nigel Laverick who was a GM of the year, 26 years ago, and has recently lost nearly 550 games in five years. Now I have a bigger worry, that I almost fear to post.
I was in the Souq al-Thumairi when a furtive man bumped hard into me and slipped a thick document into my hand before rushing away into the crowded throng. I knew the document must have been illicit, so I dare not look at it until I was safe at home. When I did look at it I was intrigued at once, it was entitled on the cover page as The Scouting Report of the Unified Middle-East Baseball Association”. Eagerly reading it, I was more disturbed the deeper I got into it. Here are just a couple of extracts from it
“I fear we have seen the best few years of the UMEBA amateur draft, the last few years have been excellent, but we have seen the end of that. The players that will be eligible in the next few years will be nowhere near the previous quality and few are expected to make anything more than low-level foot soldiers”
The full implication might not be fully apparent at first, but as you consider it deeper you realise that it means the twin expansion teams of Riyadh & Cairo are condemned to be bottom feeders for years to come. They’ll not get any help from the draft while the rest of the UMEBA teams have farm systems stuffed to the brim with promising youngsters gained from these recent fine drafts. Of the 50 top rated prospects in the UMEBA, 47 have yet to reach the majors and on the scout’s scale of 20-80, all are rated with a potential of 50 or more At the Moment, that must surely get better. Meanwhile for at least two, three or more years hence the Farms of Riyadh & Cairo will be stuffed with players not capable of making an impression in the UMEBA while the rest of the league introduces their much vaunted prospects into the bigs.
”The outlook for the two expansion teams will be bleak in my opinion for at least the rest of the decade if not further. Cairo may be better placed, having three players rated as a potential star player (rated 55 or over) at this moment while Riyadh has just one. On top of that Cairo has three more players rated as perhaps achieving something in the UMEBA (rated 50) while Riyadh has just two. A study of their respective farm systems reveals not one player that is expected to be more than a replacement level player (rated potentially 45 at best)”
Now I am worried, where will our two teams get the players from to even put out a replacement level team? A team that might be close to competing with teams like Beirut, Tripoli or Athens let alone the UMEBA powerhouses of Manama, Jerusalem, Bucharest and Mumbai? With the draft producing just four players over the next three years expected to currently develop into anything more than a replacement level player and indeed only 10 more players that are expected to ever reach the dizzy heights of replacement level player, it is clear that any player of a calibre that will make a name for themselves in the UMEBA will have to come from the countless BBA castoffs each year. But will they be good enough? While the prospects in the bulging farm systems of the established UMEBA teams develop into 60, 70 or more rated players as predicted while Cairo and Riyadh will have to scrap with BBA teams for the 45 or 50 rated vets. The pitchers of 55, 60 or more ratings will be going to BBA teams paying $20 million or more a season to them. A study of the current free agent market reveals just two players rated replacement level available and just one better than replacement level, the youngest of the three free agents is 32-yrs-old. So unless the players in the farms and feeders of UMEBA suddenly have a Damascus moment and become any more than replacement level in their droves, the future of Cairo and Riyadh is bleak at best and at worst a complete train wreck.
