9-News - 48.001: Nine Face Year of Transition

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9-News - 48.001: Nine Face Year of Transition

Post by RonCo » Tue Aug 10, 2021 12:09 pm

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Front Office Koolaid Party Assembles

Yeah, we all know the deal. It’s November, so the front office of the Yellow Springs Nine are in their annual fall dissembling mode, trying to explain how—once again—a 100-win division champion can go out of the post season with such certitude that fans can set their calendars by it.

It’s got to be frustrating, one supposes, but to hear the folks talk one gets the idea that the executive suite is genuinely happy about the result this season. If so, perhaps the tonic here is that that nowhere since the Trump years has a leadership group ever lived under such a spell of self-delusion. Listening to the GM talk, you almost get the idea that the words “everyone knows we won the Landis, bigly,” come out of his mouth.

“It was a good season,” said GM Ron Collins, who was rarely seen in the club’s executive suite at Utopia Field this year, and was at one point rumored to be on a vision quest of some type. “We won the Heartland for the 8th time in ten years. What more can you ask for? I mean, many people say that’s the only reason to play the game.”

We’ll let that settle a bit more, then just move on.


Was 2047 The End of the Second Wave?

Getting down to more serious concerns, the question has to be asked if this latest October fiasco represents the end of the Second Wave of of the Yellow Springs run. The first can be considered 2026-2036, and was led by the Chavez/LaLoosh/Sanchez rotation and the McNeill/De Castillo/Garcia offense. The second carried McNeill over, but essentially ran under the wings of Carlos Valle and Ernesto Ramos, and took flight as Dong-po Thum and Rex Foster arrived.

Ramos is now past his prime, and Valle will be 34 and returning from a meniscus injury that cost him most of the year. Thum (who admittedly had a sterling season) has recently agreed to take the rest of his remaining $78M (plus bonuses) deal for the next three years, but he’s getting to the point where it will be more down than up. Foster is still negotiating a deal that theoretically will keep him with the team, but has shown injury concerns and has had two straight seasons of decline.

The rotation has essentially turned over, as has the left side of the infield.

It’s enough that today, as the front office prepares for their annual trek to Cat Island to perform the well-needed-but-unlikely-to-help postmortem, fans are taking a deep sigh and asking if this is it—is the party over? Has the run that created twenty post-season appearances in 22 seasons without a single piece of hardware resulting come to its end?


Magic 8-Ball Says: Check Back Later

The answer is…uncertain. With a rash of late-season signings, it does appear that a lot of faces will return. Catcher Jesus Rodriguez will likely again pair with Bruce McKinley to make one of the best backstop combos in baseball. Thum, as noted, will remain. Robert Chenoweth and Bret Powers agreed to come back, too, though some suggest Chenoweth may not remain on the team beyond that one-season. The club also brought back LH DH Javier Rodriguez for a single season, though some suggest that young Wilbur Lewis’s late-season injury is all that kept the front office from letting Ja-Rod walk.

News that stellar lefty Angel Hernandez has executed his opt-out means that the bullpen, which was already a bit of a question mark due to Ernesto Martas’s injury, will be in some flux. The Club is rumored to be scrambling to get into talks that would bring Roberto Ramirez back for at least one more year, perhaps longer. With money being tight next season, most insiders are pointing to the team’s 1-season extension of Al Colbert (for $8.1M) as an indicator that 2048 will be his last ride around the Nine corral.

There are more questions at hand, too: Will brilliant CF Arvin Duggan fully recover from his injury in the off season? Were the improvements we saw from Derek Cumming real? Can Elvan Masuki’s glove keep him in the bigs even though his bat is … well … does it exist? Is the Will the league adjust to the Duval/Bourque/Minty trio, and is Dave Lee going to be a bona fide stopper in the rotation?

With prospect pressure building from the bottom up, one wonders. Will Martin Herrera finally supplant Sazui Kawashima in the outfield? Or Julian Aldis take over for Natsume Kondo? Is 2048 the season the bullpen anchors become Derrick Chaney and Damian Taylor, and if so will the guys they’ll be anchoring for come straight outta Indy?

One hopes these are the questions being asked at that Cat Island shindig. But it’s doubtful they are. That’s what fans think, anyway. Fans, by now, pretty much have to see those sessions as self-congratulative cronies gather to tell Collins how great the situation is, that—yes verily—the team most certainly did win the Landis, and that they would really like to be the Minister of Defense or the Ambassador to Sacrifice Flies.
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