October 1, 2052
Madison, WI - What a year it was, the team started out above .500 in April and May, things were looking up at 30-25. Then along came June and a 8-19 disaster of a record. The team was hit by some ill-timed injuries to an already anemic offense but losing Salvadore Allende for 6 weeks, and couple that with injuries to Manobu who played his least number of games in his career this season, and Alonzo for a week on and off didn't help. This really tested the team's depth.
Once up and coming 2B Etan Cherukuri was sent down to AAA to figure out his swing, as he was barley hitting .200 in the season's first 100 games. Throw in the season ending injury to FA signing Rashardo Menne III and it was a bad summer. The front offices moves in the offseason with FA/Rule5 signings to attempt to fill the void defensively at CF did not go as expected either, as the world's oldest Rule5 guy Antonio Gonzales slashed .209/.277/.354 with a whopping -0.6 WAR.
The biggest loss to be felt all of next season was the second to last series of the year when we lost star bullpen arm
Senen Subandrio with a torn flexor tendon in his elbow which will keep him sidelined for 10 months. Best case is he back after the All-Star break next season.
With all that bad, there was some hope going into the off-season. The team decided to turn it around with the season
pretty much almost done for, by playing 20-6 ball in the month of September at one point going on a 13-1 run in the month. This included sweeping the top two teams in the #Heartland Nashville & Twin Cities in back-to-back series and taking 2 out of 3 from 3rd place Des Moines. All-in-all it was too little too late, as the club finished at 81-81
(improving on last years mark), and finishing 3 games out of what would have been a tie for the last wild card spot in Frick.
The teams pitching continued to improve finishing in the top half of pretty much every statiscal category for pitching
and even led the league in pWAR with 27.7. The staff work horse was up and coming Carter Morris who clocked in at
190.1 IP leading the team for the season. Mid-season call up of 23yo Tyler Murray turned some heads with his time in the
bullpen this season posting a 1.91 ERA in 39 games. The 2050 1st round pick is progressing nicely GM Simon added.
The 2052 Wolves Draft, turned some heads as the team signed nabbing SS Ken Proctor with their overall 1st pick.
Then followed it up by selecting 3 more SS spots in the first four rounds. Of those players only Proctor and Drayton
have remained at their collegiant spots. Shook & Yelland have moved to 1B & 2B respectively. "We like athletic kids who can play multiple spots for us..." GM Simon said. For his part Proctor has played 4 this year (3 over 10 games each) getting some valuable reps at each. This goes for all the kids we drafted, the HC down on the farms have done a great job rotating these kids around to get experience at multiple positions. "Let the cream rise to the top" HC Myers added.
I've told you guys before HC Myers said at the year-end press conference, "It takes 90 games to make the playoffs in this league, everything is so competitive, and we fell short this season. You can say those game in April or May don't matter, but if we just won a few of those Xtra inning or one-run games back then, we could be talking about our playoff series, and not what moves we are looking to do this off-season."
