It’s a wrap
At least no-one can accuse Riyadh of coasting the season out, we took both our final games to extra innings and disappointedly lost both. We played right to the end and came out empty handed as we had through most of the season. The only half decent thing you could say I suppose was at least we won 54 games, beating Cairo’s 2046 total by a game. It doesn’t seem much but the Red Crescents only rival at the moment is fellow expansionist Cairo, last year we got the better of them, this year we flip flopped results. They won the 70 games and we struggled to get around the mid-50’s mark.
Our losses finally topped the $10 million mark, there’ll be work needed on the finances for next year. Our revenue was only around $52 million, which probably means that our 2048 budget might well be below the UMEBA’s salary cap of $55 million. This year, following our 70 wins in 2046, we tried signing the free agents to lift us further and that was an unmitigated failure. Juan Rodriguez never got going, he only managed seven wins and led the entire league in losses (19), sure he struck out a team leading 95 batters and kept his ERA to a manageable 4.53, but we paid him to do a lot better. Our other great hope, Andresa Pires did even worse, in 11 starts he went 1-6 with an ERA north of five. Claimed off waivers by Manama he at least improved a bit there, posting a 7-4 record in 18 starts with over a point shaved off his ERA. Next year we’ll have to go with bringing the players through, we’ll struggle to better our 54 win tally, but at least we’ll rebuild our finances. Who knows? We might even find a few rough diamonds and grab a few extra wins, who knows?
None of our batters managed a .300 batting average, Clive Timberlake (.289) & new boy Grady Fern (.288) were the best in that respect. Masaki Sato came close to repeating his dominant performance of 2046, but fell just short and most importantly upped his strikeouts tally from 96 to 153. Those extra strikeouts cost him the stats and maybe cost the Red Crescents too. We had given 35-yr-old Jamie Ramirez a vesting option of 450 PA fearing that he might not still cut it, but we needn’t have worried. Ramirez, now 36, certainly cut the mustard, he ended up with 610 PA and earned his second year deal. He had 150 hits, scored 72 runs and stole 14 bases, all second all-time single season records for Riyadh.
So, there we have it, 2047 is a wrap. A welcome wrap as far as Riyadh is concerned, it’s on to 2048, will that be with me at the helm? Who knows? No-one in the Riyadh was pleased with the big drop in performance, but will I pay the price for that?
2047 Final Riyadh Results against the UMEBA
Vs BURT
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baghdad | 5 | 10 | 1 | 17 | 117 | 197 | 6-27 |
| Beirut | 6 | 12 | 6 | 9 | 131 | 186 | 11-21 |
| Jerusalem | 6 | 8 | 6 | 13 | 128 | 174 | 12-21 |
| Manama | 9 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 126 | 133 | 16-17 |
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athens | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 23 | 40 | 3-3 |
| Bucharest | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 18 | 40 | 2-4 |
| Cairo | 0 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 20 | 40 | 1-5 |
| Mumbai | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 25 | 27 | 1-5 |
| Tripoli | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 11 | 39 | 1-5 |
