Enter 2036.
A dozen years after his arrival, and the trophy case is still empty of the one trinket that everyone covets.
And now, people are buzzing a new buzz. The team has failed in the fall. Collins has weathered scandals and accusations of ethical misconduct that might have killed people of lesser obliviousness. The owner is eyeing the budget with some degree of despair, and now prospects are not prospecting, stars are being traded, and who knows what to expect of the bit players?
Fans are asking themselves, is the Nine done? Has the luster faded from the golden boy? With every division rival getting better, are we facing a long and painful slide to the bottom?
Let’s look at some facts:
1) The team traded Victor Guerra for 23-year-old pitcher Hiroyasu Osaragi, and a day later Guerra bumps a bunch and Osaragi’s movement drives to the dust. This looks ugly.
2) The team’s reported replacements for Guerra are some kind of platoon of rookies George Robertson and Pat Allen. Perhaps (and it’s a big perhaps) the kid’s bats will work out okay, but the fact that neither can field does not seem to have gone through Collins’s head. Or perhaps it has, and those facts just never his anything but wind resistance?
3) Once a top prospect that opposing GMs pitched a tizzy about, 20-year-old CF/2B Juan Lopez is fading fast. His 6/8/8/5/8 talents are still solid enough, but he’s dropped two points of contact, a point of power and a point of Eye in less than six months, while Eric Fabre, the prospect the club sent to Edmonton in the deal, is looking like an upper third of the league catcher.
4) Several other prospects—particularly a thick relief pitching corps—have fallen on tougher times (LHP Adergazoz Ouakili still looks interesting, but seems to have stalled). We’ve been seeing several of these guys at the big league level, and will continue to see more, but none other than perhaps Curt Phillips really look like the lock-down studs they were promised to be.
5) And speaking of Phillips, a decision was apparently made to let Miguel Macias walk because this 20-year-old might fill his shoes. This is what you call your basic high-risk move, and not a move that an established team makes. Fans are not impressed.
6) The club dropped $21M in IFA’s last year, and at this point only 17-year-old Jose Camacho has retained his status. It makes fans worry about young Dong-po Thum.
7) Once a bastion of stalwart ballplayers, the Nine have brought in John Ginn and Carlos Camacho, two players with temperaments known to be disagreeable. They tried this with Travis Lara last year, and it failed miserably. Burn me once, shame on me, burn me twice…
And there are, of course, more markers of concern—perhaps none more distressing than the fact that Lawrence Columbus LaLoosh and Lucas McNeill have opt outs in their contracts that could make them free agents at the end of the year.
So we ask, are the wheels ready to fall off?
Are the Nine done?
Will they even make the post season this year?
The questions abound.
