Off Season notes (2038-4)

[Fat Nige]

Despite the departure of Kirshbaum and Maguire leaving Louisville an extra $30 million to play with, it was a quiet off-season in Louisville. The team started a “New Era, New team” policy and that extended to the management structure as well with three new managers coming in to skipper the affiliates and fan favourite Brian Clough returning to the club as Hitting Coach in Missouri. On the playing front though, it was a different story.

Antonio Cruz was selected in the rule 5 draft by Wichita “home for old Sluggers” Aviators and returned in double quick time but other than that, the only addition with a major league contract was 23-yr-old reliever Fabiano Perrolas. He signed a one-year $1.5 million deal with us and still has an option left so we can ship him to Missouri if he doesn’t work out. He is often quite wild with his pitches but has in recent years posted a WHIP only just over 1.00. He can touch 100 mph on the radar gun and has a plus+ fastball with a curveball not far behind. We think he fits in well with Rosa, Klomp and Okamura, all young with wicked pitches; they just need to get a bit more movement on the ball while concentrating on locating it better.

There were no big free agent batters coming in though, we seriously looked at the market but felt it just wasn’t right for us. The big players were going for so much we wouldn’t have been able to add more that one or two to the roster and we just felt that that wouldn’t have been prudent. Louisville lost $22,000,000 last year, our biggest loss since 2007 and third largest overall ( $27m in 2007 & $24 m in 1999) so the thinking was rather than straight away land the club with another possible albatross contract we would have a fallow year to replenish the franchises coffers, bearing in mind of course that it was very recent that the franchise built a new stadium as well. The majority of the 40-man is now mid-20’s or younger and there is still room for growth amongst our youngsters. If they develop, we might be able to better target free agents to really make a difference to the team’s position.

We did bring in a load of players on minor league contracts, mainly in their early 20’s. Again, if they develop, we might be saving ourselves millions. Talking of that we were successful in all of our arbitration hearings and were really pleased to have kept the payroll under control there. We are also deep into contract extension talks with Kevin Morales but at the same time are talking to several teams about possible deals for him. We’re not overly committed to trading him, the sort of figures we’re talking about on a six-year extension are affordable for someone who will only be 31-yrs-old at the end of this proposed extension, but if we can significantly improve the team we would be fools not to consider a deal.