What happened?The pitching needs to improve, specifically the bullpen. Finishing the season 24-24 in one run games is not good enough. 48 one run games in a season!?!?! Without doing too much research, a lot of that has to be on the bullpen not holding leads. Players like Will Gagus and Richard Tolleson are off the club. Gagus may have shown improvement this season, but it is a contract year. Tolleson had decent seasons the last couple years as a starter, but there is just no room for him in the rotation. If he cannot accept ajob in the bullpen, he's gone. Plus, he walks too many batters anyway. CL Melvin Ripken just received a big extension and really needs to be the anchor of the bullpen. He got better as the season wore on, which is what we need, better play down the stretch. Katarou Sadao was another guy that was pushed out of the rotation by better talent. With Sadao not getting any younger and his better seasons behind him, he will be looking for work in 1999. Young guns like Byron Gonzalez and Freddie Alonso will need to step up and fill in those roles. If they cannot make the most of the opportunity afforded to them, players that can will be located.
The offense does not get off scott free either. Scoring 4.9 runs a game could be considered acceptable, except in the MBBA. The offensive friendly league requires teams to score more runs to keep up. Buffalo has finished in 2nd place in the FL Atlantic for three consecutive seasons. This year saw Atlantic City leap frog them. The Bison had the 4th best OBP in the FL, while hitting only 165 HR on the season as a team, placing them 8th in the FL for that category. Kevin Maas, who is a part time player, led the team in HR with 28 while only playing in 123 games. That is a horrible stat, because he only slugged .480 in that same time frame. In June and August (he was injured for July) he managed to hit about 1/3 of his HR and slugged a measley .430 something. Employing high OBP and decent defense is not going to cut it for this team anymore. Somewhere, the Bison need to locate some power, whether it be extra base hit power or homerun power.
