0.
This is a first for the club in the now 2 decade stretch with Niles at the help, as they will now go an entire front half of the season, without a single trade made. Now, it appears they are trying to save face.
“We had a few offers, but nothing that caused us to jump up and down, pull the trigger, and have a pillow fight to celebrate” said Omaha GM Justin Niles in his weekly media availability.
“It’s not like we didn’t try to make a few moves, but we certainly weren’t going to force any moves. If they weren’t beneficial to us moving forward, they made sense for us to make a move, just so you guys could write down that we did it.”
On Andre Ly:
On Wilson Estrada:“Obviously there was quite a bit of interest in Ly, but with the league salary cap the way it is, we just couldn’t facilitate a deal that made sense for us financially. We aren’t going to retain players contracts on our payroll that will leave us with no out in future seasons. It’s poor to compare Ly to past instances of teams trying to dump aging veterans. Andre is 32 years old and is still a 3 WAR player with great defense. It’s a joke that at one point we were asked to include a top prospect in order to move away from a guy who has nearly 13 WAR over the past 2.5 seasons.”
On the 2052 season:Wilson is having some bad luck on balls hit hard. His .284 BABIP is a career low for a full season for him. I have absolute confidence that he will bounce back at the plate. He’s still above average even this season. The troubling thing with Wilson is, for the first time, he is struggling a bit with the glove this year. I expect this season will be just a small blip on his career. We’re excited to have him back next year and in 2054 as well, playing first base for us.
Plans with James Monger“I mean, come on, guys, we're 63-75. 27 games out of first place, and 8 games out of the wildcard. We’ve played better ball lately. Since Aug 1, we're 18-13. That slow start in April and May absolutely throttled us, but we have played well since June 1st basically. If you take away our bad luck, we're 67-71 and only 4 games out of the wildcard and honestly probably chasing it pretty hard based on where we have been. It’s not like we hit rock bottom. This is still a very competitive team that has some young stars shining through. Look at the year Eric Wagner is having alongside Du Wu in the outfield. Orlando Ordonez has been his typical self as well. That's almost 17 WAR among your outfielders. Takashi Nakamura is shining as well in the rotation, as his ERA Is almost cut in half from his struggles last season. He’s 24 years old. Chandar has been a nice addition for us as expected. We have some exciting guys coming up that we have made moves for as well. Don’t forget Stan Moton is in Lincoln, as is closer Dave Ferrell.”
On the rest of the year:Where do I start? James is up there among the all-time great players to ever wear a Cyclone uniform. His statistics show that in the box score. His play shows that. The one thing many don’t realize is just how much of a leader James has been for us over his entire career. He hasn’t announced his plans yet, obviously his option is not going to vest, and he is going to become without a contract. James knows, though, that when the time comes, he has a job in our front office. He is going to be an incredible coach for us, which will only further the legacy he has painted with our fan base.
“We’re 8 games out of the wildcard. We currently have a 0.1% chance to make the post-season. We’d have to jump a hell of a lot of teams to get in. There are 24 games left. Let’s make a run. Let’s go 20-4 and hope the rest of the teams go .500. We have the highest remaining strength of schedule among those wild card teams, because thankfully, we play quite a few of them so let’s go out, play ball, and make the postseason.”
