Defensively, the team’s scouts say, Noel has stepped up his game. And he had a nice season with the bat in single A Fort Worth—key words there: “Single A.” Still, he hit .307/.339/.473 while showing at least a little pop (52 doubles!). All total, the kid OPS+ed 122 relative to the league, which shows it’s not inconceivable that Noel could at least hold his own in the big leagues. Maybe. If nothing else, at least there’s enough there for fans to lie to themselves and say it could work. If nothing else, that Noel hits from the right side of the plate suggests that he could come up as Saucedo’s platoon mate and step in for him in the late innings.
Noel, who came out of the team’s international complex, is just happy to be fielding the questions at this point, but said he expects to play in AA, or maybe skip up to AAA from what he’s heard so far. “They’ve told me to be ready to come to Spring Training camp, though,” he said. “So that makes me happy.”
OTHER OPTIONS SOUGHT
The team is also thought to have been looking around at Free Agent options, as well as creating a list of possible trade partners. “There are opportunities out there,” YS9 GM Ron Collins said, “but we still like Mauro and we’ve got him under control for another season. I can’t see any great reason to do anything rash.”
ED Note: Immediately upon using the term “rash” in this press conference, the local reporters set upon a line of questioning and a subsequent bout of word association about Louisville and their front office that we’ll delete from this news note, but take our word for it, the whole place was giggling by the time it was done.
Another alternative is to use current AAA center fielder Anibal Moran as the RHB platoon partner for Saucedo—a configuration that worked fairly well in the later stages of 2037. This would have the advantage of clearing the path for Noel to play every day in Indianapolis as a 19/20-year-old.
Perhaps it doesn’t need to be said, but several of the more vocal fan groups around the city are not particularly happy with the tone Collins uses when discussing Saucedo, suggesting he’s being too soft and that they’ll be stuck watching Saucedo in center for another season. “We don’t need that kind of apologist for the kid. Watching Saucedo chase fly balls is like seeing Aunt Trudy wading out of the Mad River,” said Kal Freedman, leader of Bleed Nine Red. “Believe you-me, if you’ve seen it once, you don’t want to see it again as long as you live.”
