Off Topic
The Majors
As noted in the first rock of this series:
The Storm had a solid little farm system, “they” said.
And OOTP itself seemed to back “them” up. It was listed #7, with four top 100 players:
I’ll talk about that more in the next rock, but first I feel like I need to start with the big league roster, partially because the team has been living off its high draft picks for a decade now, and so a lot of that “system” is in the majors. So let’s do it that way.
Digging into it, we see “the system” had also already delivered 2054 first round pick Michael Buckley (RF) to the big leagues as well as 2052 3rd rounder Clyde Hughes (DH), and seen 2053 15th round pick Juan Schoor (1B) develop into a borderline useful player. 3B Run-ming Gui was a scouting discovery who has had some value. Hit hits balls far, anyway, and that’s always helpful.
On the mound, it looked even better. Samuel Nebraska, Lucio Juarez, Doug Eckhoff, and Enrique Aguilar looked to be a solid young rotation. All of them were in the bigs, but the dark cloud is that both Juarez and Aguilar have been ground in the injury mill, and Eckhoff simply can’t seem to get anyone out. He’s currently being relegated to the bullpen to see if he can reclaim something that might look like a career.
You might note that even with all these high-end #1 picks in the bigs, the Storm (and now the Krill) are still very bad. But let’s put a pin in that for now and see if I remember to come back to it.
Going All-In
All right. Let’s run time back two seasons and see that the Storm were sitting on these kids who were just coming into the big leagues and there was some thought that Seattle should be/could be good again with just a little help. Given all that, Egan opened up the pocketbook and signed the following:
CF Frederick Brissett (Due $13M, traded)
OF Theo Bourges (Due $15M, with PO for 2058)
SS Larry Barkin (Due $13M for next three seasons, VO for a 4th)
2B Wilson Andrade (Due $13M, and $12.4M next, VO for 3rd)
Along the way, he’d also dropped big dollars onto longtime Seattle OF Alexander Julyan (due $11M this season, but released). All of these were older players who age had either already caught up to when the deals were struck, or who faded over the season. They were due to cost the team something around $65M, and did not play particularly well. As a five-pack the registered a total of 4.7 WAR.
In retrospect one could try to argue this was simply bad luck. And, if each of those were 1-season deals, I’d go with that. But these deals were longer-term, and so they feel to me like kind of last-ditch decisions. Which are always suspect, right? We all know what that feels like. Throwing big cash at a mistake and hoping it resolves. Alas. when the pitchers got hurt and the kids showed a certain amount of (I’d suggest predictable) inconsistency, the team crashed and burned and lost $14M on a revenue stream of only $112M.
This is pretty close to death because that means next year’s budget is going to be $112 to start with … and, with the cash balance in sub-zero territory, well, the script is laid for the next few seasons.
But I digress.
At the end of the day, even if these contracts had worked out, there’s question as to whether they would have been good signings. Seattle’s budget and whatnot means they can spend only $90M or so on payroll, and to dump $65M on five players means you have only $25M left for 22 players. Given that minsal is $500K, that means Seattle had only $14M in flexibility to get those 22 players. Yikes. Add in injuries and other 40-man roster costs, and you’re hurting.
Wouldn’t it have been better to get 10 players at $6M a piece than five at $12M each?
Roughly?
Anyway, that’s the situation at the beginning of the year, and that’s why you really, really don’t want to be giving long term contracts to older guys unless you really just HAVE to.
Ron’s Approach to 2057
This is a long-winded way of saying that almost as soon as I looked at the team, the goal for 2057 became to remove as much financial weight as I could, and also manage to a total spend that removes all (or a large part of the $11M debt, as well as (hopefully) bumps the budget up to something bigger than $112 for 2058.
So far, so good, I guess.
In the process of managing to the finances, I spent a total of 50 PPT in order to buy back a little of our debt. It wasn’t much, but it was a lot of my PPT “stash.” [Note to people who say GMs can “just spend PPT to erase cash issues” … yes, it’s possible. But it’s also a good chunk of PPT. I’m very prolific. It cost me 25 TN to get that far.] Anyway, I also made as many cash deals as the market seemed to bear. I packaged Frederick Brissett up with a prospect while retaining salary, and I sold Fred Lee for $2M.
I just dealt Manuel Torres (another $4.6 M overpay I didn’t even mention above).
I’m still working to deal Andrade or Bourges if I can find a partner for whom either make sense. I’ve even offered free prospects for someone to take Andrade, and noted the distinct lack of activity and interest from those who said he still looked like a viable player as the season began. Such is life. With luck, Andrade will prove them all right, and have a blistering second half.
I also raided teams in the Rule 5 draft, selecting ten guys, several of whom are still on the team—including both my catchers, who came along because both are $500K and both have high ability. As time goes along this next few weeks, I expect I’ll bring up a draft pick for one of them. We also have Stephen Grant and Beeno Steenveld and John Hurry pitching for us from Rule 5. As well as Theron Muscouti and Alex Brayton on a waiver claim and both Bryan Longstaff from a Minor League FA contract. The only Free Agent we signed for the staff was veteran Adam Barber, who cost $2.4M.
All of that was important because through off-season attrition we lost pretty much our entire bullpen. Which was fine, I suppose, because it wasn’t that good, and it was (like the whole organization, basically) right handed.
Offensively, I combed through the organization and tried to pick out a few guys who might make some value some place. 30-year-old Center Fielder John Henderson has been respectable. Third baseman Hufeed Hamal had a good month before seeing to fade. I like little Manuel Martinez as a bit player, but he’s being asked to do too much right now. And Graham Aubry might well find a serious place with the team after having a nice little debut. We’ll see.
Along the way I traded for Lee Stone, who I like as a hitter, but who I need to get the hell of the defensive end of the game as soon as possible.
At present, it appears our balance in 2058 will be about even. If so, that will be a success. But that supposes I can keep people coming to the park.
As such, I’ve been signing every popular player I can find, which includes minor leaguers. I’ve also attempted to use arbitration extensions to keep the fans interested.
In that vein, I should also say that having the league donate a small ballpark as enticement to move was a benefit. I lost seating, which will hurt for the long-term, but gained in reduced stadium cost that will help to save my finances now. It will be a pain to grow it back, but when you have no revenue, there’s almost nothing you can do regarding the stadium (unless you want to go even deeper in debt, something that Ben T. tried in Nashville some time back to very poor results that Brett the Second had to deal with).
Big League Review – Summary
So that’s the top end of the organization – with a small dip into top prospects.
Let me be clear, I was fairly certain we’d win more than the 55 games Seattle won last year – because if you’re focusing, you almost can’t do much worse than 55 wins. I say this because when I was looking at the last ten horrible seasons for Seattle, I did a quick study on the worst ten-season stints for every franchise, I saw eight other teams had worse stints. The kicker, though, is that six of them were expansion teams that started with basically noting, and the other two were Des Moines (classic), and Brooklyn (fairly recently).
Brooklyn’s case hasn’t been about neglect so much (I’d guess) as accidentally getting into deep financial issues that he wasn’t sure how to get out of until (hopefully!) recently. Des Moines’ case is all about Ed, who was an amazing person, but never really did get a handle on OOTP.
So, yes, as Alan has said before, getting a bad franchise turned around isn’t that hard. It just takes diligence and focus. And that’s what I’ve done so far.
The team is not good, but the ship is turning around.
Slowly.
As noted in the first rock of this series:
Last time I did an overall level setting. This time I’m going to dig into the big league roster a little. Usually I scan the minor leagues first. That’s the right place to start when we’re looking at a rebuild, anyway. At least that’s how I see it. That’s about the first thing I really do when I look at a franchise, and it’s what I did when I took over the Seattle franchise. There was a buzz going around it, after all. Some folks were quite complementary of the system.We’re a half-year into this thing, and now that I’ve had a little time to dig into what used to be the Seattle franchise, I figured it’s time to kick the tires and see how things are shaking.
The Storm had a solid little farm system, “they” said.
And OOTP itself seemed to back “them” up. It was listed #7, with four top 100 players:
I’ll talk about that more in the next rock, but first I feel like I need to start with the big league roster, partially because the team has been living off its high draft picks for a decade now, and so a lot of that “system” is in the majors. So let’s do it that way.
Digging into it, we see “the system” had also already delivered 2054 first round pick Michael Buckley (RF) to the big leagues as well as 2052 3rd rounder Clyde Hughes (DH), and seen 2053 15th round pick Juan Schoor (1B) develop into a borderline useful player. 3B Run-ming Gui was a scouting discovery who has had some value. Hit hits balls far, anyway, and that’s always helpful.
On the mound, it looked even better. Samuel Nebraska, Lucio Juarez, Doug Eckhoff, and Enrique Aguilar looked to be a solid young rotation. All of them were in the bigs, but the dark cloud is that both Juarez and Aguilar have been ground in the injury mill, and Eckhoff simply can’t seem to get anyone out. He’s currently being relegated to the bullpen to see if he can reclaim something that might look like a career.
You might note that even with all these high-end #1 picks in the bigs, the Storm (and now the Krill) are still very bad. But let’s put a pin in that for now and see if I remember to come back to it.
Going All-In
All right. Let’s run time back two seasons and see that the Storm were sitting on these kids who were just coming into the big leagues and there was some thought that Seattle should be/could be good again with just a little help. Given all that, Egan opened up the pocketbook and signed the following:
CF Frederick Brissett (Due $13M, traded)
OF Theo Bourges (Due $15M, with PO for 2058)
SS Larry Barkin (Due $13M for next three seasons, VO for a 4th)
2B Wilson Andrade (Due $13M, and $12.4M next, VO for 3rd)
Along the way, he’d also dropped big dollars onto longtime Seattle OF Alexander Julyan (due $11M this season, but released). All of these were older players who age had either already caught up to when the deals were struck, or who faded over the season. They were due to cost the team something around $65M, and did not play particularly well. As a five-pack the registered a total of 4.7 WAR.
In retrospect one could try to argue this was simply bad luck. And, if each of those were 1-season deals, I’d go with that. But these deals were longer-term, and so they feel to me like kind of last-ditch decisions. Which are always suspect, right? We all know what that feels like. Throwing big cash at a mistake and hoping it resolves. Alas. when the pitchers got hurt and the kids showed a certain amount of (I’d suggest predictable) inconsistency, the team crashed and burned and lost $14M on a revenue stream of only $112M.
This is pretty close to death because that means next year’s budget is going to be $112 to start with … and, with the cash balance in sub-zero territory, well, the script is laid for the next few seasons.
But I digress.
At the end of the day, even if these contracts had worked out, there’s question as to whether they would have been good signings. Seattle’s budget and whatnot means they can spend only $90M or so on payroll, and to dump $65M on five players means you have only $25M left for 22 players. Given that minsal is $500K, that means Seattle had only $14M in flexibility to get those 22 players. Yikes. Add in injuries and other 40-man roster costs, and you’re hurting.
Wouldn’t it have been better to get 10 players at $6M a piece than five at $12M each?
Roughly?
Anyway, that’s the situation at the beginning of the year, and that’s why you really, really don’t want to be giving long term contracts to older guys unless you really just HAVE to.
Ron’s Approach to 2057
This is a long-winded way of saying that almost as soon as I looked at the team, the goal for 2057 became to remove as much financial weight as I could, and also manage to a total spend that removes all (or a large part of the $11M debt, as well as (hopefully) bumps the budget up to something bigger than $112 for 2058.
So far, so good, I guess.
In the process of managing to the finances, I spent a total of 50 PPT in order to buy back a little of our debt. It wasn’t much, but it was a lot of my PPT “stash.” [Note to people who say GMs can “just spend PPT to erase cash issues” … yes, it’s possible. But it’s also a good chunk of PPT. I’m very prolific. It cost me 25 TN to get that far.] Anyway, I also made as many cash deals as the market seemed to bear. I packaged Frederick Brissett up with a prospect while retaining salary, and I sold Fred Lee for $2M.
I just dealt Manuel Torres (another $4.6 M overpay I didn’t even mention above).
I’m still working to deal Andrade or Bourges if I can find a partner for whom either make sense. I’ve even offered free prospects for someone to take Andrade, and noted the distinct lack of activity and interest from those who said he still looked like a viable player as the season began. Such is life. With luck, Andrade will prove them all right, and have a blistering second half.
I also raided teams in the Rule 5 draft, selecting ten guys, several of whom are still on the team—including both my catchers, who came along because both are $500K and both have high ability. As time goes along this next few weeks, I expect I’ll bring up a draft pick for one of them. We also have Stephen Grant and Beeno Steenveld and John Hurry pitching for us from Rule 5. As well as Theron Muscouti and Alex Brayton on a waiver claim and both Bryan Longstaff from a Minor League FA contract. The only Free Agent we signed for the staff was veteran Adam Barber, who cost $2.4M.
All of that was important because through off-season attrition we lost pretty much our entire bullpen. Which was fine, I suppose, because it wasn’t that good, and it was (like the whole organization, basically) right handed.
Offensively, I combed through the organization and tried to pick out a few guys who might make some value some place. 30-year-old Center Fielder John Henderson has been respectable. Third baseman Hufeed Hamal had a good month before seeing to fade. I like little Manuel Martinez as a bit player, but he’s being asked to do too much right now. And Graham Aubry might well find a serious place with the team after having a nice little debut. We’ll see.
Along the way I traded for Lee Stone, who I like as a hitter, but who I need to get the hell of the defensive end of the game as soon as possible.
At present, it appears our balance in 2058 will be about even. If so, that will be a success. But that supposes I can keep people coming to the park.
As such, I’ve been signing every popular player I can find, which includes minor leaguers. I’ve also attempted to use arbitration extensions to keep the fans interested.
In that vein, I should also say that having the league donate a small ballpark as enticement to move was a benefit. I lost seating, which will hurt for the long-term, but gained in reduced stadium cost that will help to save my finances now. It will be a pain to grow it back, but when you have no revenue, there’s almost nothing you can do regarding the stadium (unless you want to go even deeper in debt, something that Ben T. tried in Nashville some time back to very poor results that Brett the Second had to deal with).
Big League Review – Summary
So that’s the top end of the organization – with a small dip into top prospects.
Let me be clear, I was fairly certain we’d win more than the 55 games Seattle won last year – because if you’re focusing, you almost can’t do much worse than 55 wins. I say this because when I was looking at the last ten horrible seasons for Seattle, I did a quick study on the worst ten-season stints for every franchise, I saw eight other teams had worse stints. The kicker, though, is that six of them were expansion teams that started with basically noting, and the other two were Des Moines (classic), and Brooklyn (fairly recently).
Brooklyn’s case hasn’t been about neglect so much (I’d guess) as accidentally getting into deep financial issues that he wasn’t sure how to get out of until (hopefully!) recently. Des Moines’ case is all about Ed, who was an amazing person, but never really did get a handle on OOTP.
So, yes, as Alan has said before, getting a bad franchise turned around isn’t that hard. It just takes diligence and focus. And that’s what I’ve done so far.
The team is not good, but the ship is turning around.
Slowly.
