Let’s just jump right in for a moment.
Rotation:
Rookie Ford Prefect will join the rotation this year, and that should be a good thing. Or at least interesting. One hopes he remembers his towel. He’ll join Greg Shaw and Daniel Burns, and one assumes Bryan Ellender. Garrett Skiffington or Callum Martin will probably be #5. Not, I’d guess, that it will matter.
On the face of it, it’s a workable rotation but I don’t see much depth behind it.
Bullpen:
Looks like it’s going to be a bullpen by committee, with guys like Aelbehrt Schlondorff, Cade Miller, and Roberto Rodriguez taking leading roles. Don Starr showed signs of value last year, and you gotta like a guy from Skokie, right?. And guys like George MacFadden and George Souder throw great stuff.
Overall Pitching
Bottom line here is that looking at Louisville’s pitching is like watching someone throw a yo-yo. At first sight you figure there’s nothing much going on. Then after a little dipsy-do you get interested and sometimes even really intrigued. I mean, there’s some guys who can throw, and on any particular day might look great. When it’s all said and done, though, you kind of go … um … okay … is that all there is?
There’s no real big Kahuna here.
Shaw could fake a few bars, but seriously, who among you would say Greg Shaw if you were asked to list the top five pitchers in the league.
None of you. That’s who.
And the bullpen is “worse.”
So then we take a look at last year and see that the Slugger staff gave up 836 runs last year, good for 15th in the Frick. How much guts does it take to say you’re going to basically bring the band together again, and expect it to be much better. There’s regression to mean, of course. But how much meaner do you want to go?
Me, not that much.
The Bats:
The Sluggers lost Jeffrey Smith to Free Agency. At present it looks like his replacement is 24-year-old Gustavo Canales, who had his debut callup season last year, and seems to be a perfectly fine little player as long as you don’t have to rely on him to replace Jeffrey Freaking Smith. This year marks the likely arrival of 22-year-old 1B Gary Grant, too, and that will be helpful.
Still. I dunno.
To me, the best thing I can say about the Louisville outfield is that 22-year-old Amphibian Johnson is a very nice looking center fielder with a great name.
Mal Fountain is still a top-shelf 3B. Scott Torres is still listed at 3B, but he’ll return to reprise his time at 2B. That’s solid enough.
Ka’im Khayri is the team’s 33-year-old shortstop, and he just signed a 4-season deal worth about $45M despite posting a very bad 2057, which was worse than his 2056, which was worse than his 2055. Yes, I worry.
Look for elite defender Taylor Michaels to take as many reps behind the plate as possible.
Big Picture
Maybe I’m missing something, but the team’s front office took a fairly quiet “hold-em” approach this off-season. I’m not sure that’s a good recipe when you’re in the Heartland, which admittedly is fading a bit from its lustrous heydays. The team carries a $104M payroll against a $120M budget, so it’s not like it had a billion bucks they could go spend. But to not move the needle at all is a little disconcerting to Louisville fans—or at least it would be to any that are paying attention (the team’s market size has fallen a shade, I think).
The Sluggers won 72 games last year.
I’d love to say they are going to win a lot more in 2058, but I just don’t see it.
It’s possible, I suppose, that the team could move from 6th up to 5th this year. The Heartland as a whole is, I think, fading—or at least splitting into a division with true upper-tier teams an true bottom feeders rather than a solid division all the way down. Perhaps the team’s pitching stays healthy and it manages to slide past Madison into 5th. Or maybe Des Moines fades so far that the Sluggers could somehow find their way to fourth place.
But I think it takes a little magical believing to get there.
More likely, I think, that Chicago, under new management, elbows it’s way upward, relegating Louisville to fight with Yellow for the Heartland cellar.
Since I guess I have to pick a win total, I’ll go with 68.
To pull a number out of a hat.
