Crawdad Chronicles 45.03 - Failure.

[JimBob2232]

Failure.

Thats the only way to describe the 2045 season in New Orleans.

After making the Cartwright in 2044 - and losing virtually nothing of significance - the Crawdads were widely expected to be a strong contender for the Landis.

They started out hot. in fact, they were pretty strong through mid- July. On July 20th, they had a 57-40 record. A .587 pct through July 20th - which as it turns out would have been good enough for the top wild card slot. Then they went 11-27 or .289 over their next 38 games - which for comparison - is even worse than Portland's league low .296. A shocking fall from grace is not well received.

We dont really know what happend, GM Jim Roberts said. Nothing was working for us. We had some clubhouse issues. Losing begat more losing. We just lost our way.

SP Christan Garcia was on his way to a nebraska. On August 1st he had a 15-3 record with a 1.92 ERA. Only to lose his next 4 starts and watched his ERA balloon over a point in the next month\

1B Raul Fernandez hit .198 in july. A far cry from his .256 season average

3B Rookie Phenom Mal Foundtin hit .174 in July and .238 in August

Free agent OF Lionel Crepin hit .157 in July and .190 in August

Prized Acquisition OF Cris Marinez, comign off a great early start in New Orleans hit .21\ in August

You just cant win if you cant play in August.

Gilberto Cruz was suspected of being one of the prime culprits. Its no secret he did not get along well with the rest of the team. In early September the former first round pick was placed on Waivers and picked up by Las Vegas. At that point the crawdads went 15-12 in September. But it was too little too late. Coincidentally Las Vegas went 9-10 since picking up Cruz.

This season certainly wasnt easy in the big easy.

[Joshua Biddle]

Those chemistry killers really do hurt a team, that's for sure.

[usnspecialist]

for the first time in his career Cris Martinez put up an average season. He has either been really good or really bad prior to this.

[RonCo]

Baseball rips your heart out.

OOTP rips your brain out.

All the same, I suppose.