2057.15 Lessman says Nine's Silver Springs Has Dried Up (The Zeroes)

[Trebro]

Editor's note: Our amazing, award-winning farm reporter, Nes Lessman, wrote some amazing work about the Yellow Springs Nine 2056 minor league seasons, the first in which the organization under GM Rob McMonigal reached that achievement. Unfortunately, they got lost in our offices until recently and are presented here for our readers to see just how good Lessman is at evaluating talent.

Last time we met, I talked about how good most of the 2056 Silver Springs Tarpons were. Well, not everyone was good. In fact, some were quite bad. Here's the players I think may be on their way out, even if they go up to Santa Cruz in 2057...

The Zeroes:

RP Roy Hall. 24. Hall was signed as a minor league free agent in 2056 because some scouts loved his stuff. Well, stuff isn't useful if you can't hone it and in 40 games, Hall managed a -1.3 WAR despite going 8-2 with 11 saves in 68.2 innings. His bb/9 of 4.7 and 1.8 HR/9 were the big issue. He might be org filler in Santa Cruz, but that's all.

RP Terry Helton. 25. Helton crashed and burned hard in AA and was demoted to A-ball to fill in as the injury bug hit. He had performed well in 2055 with a 2.93 ERA in 30 games, but it looks like he'll be gone unless AA has a desperate need in 2057. The 12th round pick in 2053 has reached his limit despite having arguably better raw material than others who've bypassed him on the depth chart.

OF Toshikazu Ueda. 24. BBA scouts still love this guy, but it's hard for me to see why. An international free agent signing in 2050 (with an eye-popping 4.4 million dollar bonus), Ueda has only one good year to his resume, 2054, where he batted .273 and had his only positive WAR, .8. He was given 132 games in 2056 to impress and fell flat on his ass, batting .229 with 8 home runs and a WAR of negative 2.1. Worse yet, he can't even field, offering negative value in left at -1.7. I'm sure there's pressure to keep trying him given the large outlay of Bo's money, but McMonigal really needs to give up on this guy or try to ship him out to another org that thinks they can fix him. It's not working for him right now and forcing the issue at AA, given how much talent McMonigal has in the outfield, makes no sense to me.

C Jim Kantor. 24. Oh wow. This guy. I already talked about him to you when I cautioned how promising players can fail. That's this former #1 pick, McMonigal's first, in a nutshell. He destroyed Rookie ball in 53, then struggled in Short-A in 54. He looked like he had it together in 55, but 2056 found him batting .171 in 19 games for the Tarpons and McMonigal moved swiftly to remove the drag on a promising team. He recovered with Cat Island, batting .269, but will now have to prove it in 2057 with Silver Springs, or risk release. It must have really stung to be a former top pick left exposed in the Rule 5 Draft and not be selected to boot. Perhaps that will motivate him. Or perhaps this is the last you'll see his name mentioned by me.