It seemed as soon as Omaha signed Aki Kondo in the 2043 off-season that Omaha has turned a corner and became known more for the team’s pitching than its batting lineup.
Those moves that Niles mentions included the acquisition of Lance Harrison & Jorge Hernandez, both from Montreal in separate moves, nearly 2 years apart. There was also the trade that brought Terrence Kelly to Omaha from Long Beach, where Kelly had struggled with a 6.17 ERA in 2045.“We spent quite a bit of time and carefully analyzed moves to build up a pretty good rotation, and also had a few drafted players and scouting discoveries that have helped us out along the way. It’s fun that people are talking quite a bit about our pitching, despite us being a top run scoring team at the same time, including this season where we rank 1st in most scoring categories” Omaha GM Justin Niles said.
Pair those with Omaha’s long time “ace” in Timo Dooley and former “reliever turned starter” Norio Hayashi and you have a pretty swell rotation.
Now with the news of 2046 first round selection Mike Alexander joining the rotation next week, due to Kelly suffering from back tightness, you begin to wonder with everyone signed on for multiple seasons upcoming, what is Omaha going to do with a surplus of pitchers?“I remember when the trainers told me that Norio had learned to throw a cutter in the off-season of 2043. I kind of laughed it off at first, but then we put him into the rotation in 2044 mid-season and have never looked back.” Said Niles.
We haven’t even mentioned Rich Jacobs yet, who looks like he is likely going to be ready in 2047 as well. Thankfully Takashi Nakamura and Hatitosa Sandipan are a few years off from that still as is Johnny Lovell.
It’s worth noting that while everyone is under contract for 2047, Jorge Hernandez, Lance Harrison and Norio Hayashi are all potential free agents after next year. There are already rumors floating that Omaha plans to resign all 3 based on their current asking prices and the likely contract of James Monger falling off in 2048 to allow the space to do so as they should have around $23,000,000 in cap space which apparently is enough for the trio to resign.
It's also worth looking ahead to another season in 2049 and seeing the club with $67,000,000 in projected cap space however no contracts for obviously the trio in Hernandez, Hayashi, Harrison but also potential free agents in Donald Miller, Wilson Estrada, Orlando Ordonez, and Andre Ly. That's not to mention Emilio Morales would also be a free agent if you assume he isn't going to hang up the cleats at that time.
If you spent $23M on the trio of pitchers, that would leave $44M to sign those players mentioned which might be reasonable but also could be close depending on those players demands or how the contracts were distributed.
But if Omaha re-signs all 3 of these guys, that would give Omaha a minimum of 6 or 7 starting pitchers in the near future. If you want to bank on Nakamura, Sandipan, or Lovell developing then that is 10 starting pitchers in upcoming seasons, but we’re not banking on that completely.
One might ask what should Omaha do?