2012 Long Beach Surfers Preview.

[Cliche]

Last Season: 88-74, 2nd Place FL Pacific.
GM: Jason Russell (1085-1184 .478), 7 Playoff Appearances.

My reasoning for choosing Long Beach to preview was pretty simple. I wanted to take a team that hadn't been done last year to get the extra PPT. And I've always liked the Surf, dating back to my first run in the league. I just like the team name and colour scheme. Since the reboot the Surfers have experienced both ends of the baseball experience. They spent several seasons as a bottom feeder, including an excruciating string of six seasons with a sub-.400 winning percentage. I'm surprised anybody was even watching the games at that point. But all that tanking paid off, as the Surfers made their seventh consecutive playoff appearance in 2011, a run that includes two division titles and two 100-win seasons.

The offseason was not an overly active one for Long Beach. They didn't lose any major pieces in free agency and they didn't make any trades. Their only free agent signings were middle infield depth in the form of Arnold Robinson and Rodney Sumlin. Despite having just 21 guys listed on the ML roster at this point, they've got 104.2 million in salary on the books for 2012. That's because there is still a large core of long-time Surfers intact as stars on this roster. As anybody who has ever tried to sustain a competitive team can tell you, it gets harder and harder the more veterans you have to pay. Long Beach has won less games in each of the last four seasons (100, 99, 92, 88). Is that a trend they can reverse? That's a question I'm hoping to answer here.

Rotation

1. RHP Jim Schmidt (7/9/7)
2. LHP Maynard Gnass (5/7/7)
3. RHP Lorenzo Morales (6/8/7)
4. LHP Sean Farrell (7/9/5)
5. LHP Charles Brannigan (7/9/4)?

The Surfers give up a lot of runs (5.7 per game last year), but they don't completely lack talent in the rotation. Schmidt is a very solid veteran ace who will give you a ton of innings (five straight years over 260) with a good strikeout rate and a low HRA total. Those are both good things. He can be a little wild, but you take the bad with the good and "Roo" gives you plenty of good. You start to run into problems behind Schmidt though. I like seeing a good mix of lefties and righties. I'm also wondering if Long Beach will use a four-man rotation, or simply use off-days and the "highest rested" setting to get Schmidt closer to 40 starts than 30. That would be good, because I don't view any of the guys behind him as a great starter.

Gnass has been in the MBWBA since 2004, and has bounced between being a reliever and starter during that time. He's got 145 starts in 247 appearances. Last year he won 16 games, despite a 5.19 ERA and 1.55 WHIP. The benefits of playing on an offensive juggernaut. He's a finesse guy who won't generate a lot of strikeouts, so he can tend to rely on his defense a lot. That's not always good. I would say I like Morales and Farrell a little better as pitchers. Morales has over 300 career starts with a 4.48 ERA, and he was quite effective for Long Beach after recovering from a shoulder injury that cost him several months. He's another guy who doesn't strike hitters out, but he won't walk a ton of guys and he keeps the ball in the park fairly well. If you get anything above "average" performance from Morales, that's a good year. He could give Long Beach that, but he could also return to his recent struggles in Phoenix and Louisville where he couldn't get his ERA below 5. Farrell has been a reliever for most of his big-league career, and he's got a pretty severe split. I think he'd be more useful as a guy who can toast lefties out of the bullpen, but somebody needs to start games for Long Beach. He'll walk a bunch and strike out a bunch.

I'm not sure exactly who the fifth starter will be here. I picked Brannigan over Murillo simply because he was listed above him Murillo on the depth chart. But both guys have flaws. Brannigan has good stuff and great movement, but when you see 90 walks and 66 strikeouts in 111 1/3 innings last year... yikes. I haven't seen a guy in the MBWBA who can be effective walking that many guys. So... yeah. Murillo is less flashy and has never played in the majors, but his 6/7/6 ratings could make him perfectly below average, which might be better than the potential tire fire of Brannigan.

Bullpen

CL. RHP Chris Malone (10/7/9)
SU. LHP Neil Huggins (6/8/9)
SU. RHP Louis-Emile Boucher (6/7/6)
MR. LHP Pete Humphrey (7/6/5)
MR. LHP Barnabus Stinson (5/7/7)
MO/SS. RHP Gabriel Murillo (6/7/6)

I definitely like the Malone/Huggins one-two punch at the back end, even though Malone struggled last year. Unfortunately his low stamina makes it tough to get him much north of 60 innings, but Long Beach has given him a good number of closing opportunities in recent years. Huggins has the skills to stifle southpaws, and even some poor years lately wouldn't shake my faith in him. His BABIP seems to really bounce up in those bad years. Boucher pitched a ton of innings last year, but he's not particularly good. There's not a lot of bullpen depth here, which is not really a surprise having seen some of the bullpens around the league including my own.

Offense

RHB Paul Barfoot (8/7/9/9/6)
LHB Alberto Guzman (9/8/10/8/6)
LHB Rigelio Morales (8/6/8/10/7)
SHB Juan Heredia (8/8/5/8/7)
RHB Tobias Kelly (7/5/7/9/6)
RHB Lee O'Herlihy (6/8/8/7/9)
RHB Kevin Stewart (6/4/7/8/6)
RHB Harvey Newton (9/7/7/6/5)

The Surfers had a record-breaking offense in 2011. Their 1041 runs (an astounding 6.4 per game) were the most scored in MBWBA history. Only three teams have ever broken that 1,000 run mark. That's pretty damned impressive. It's easy to see how they got there when you look at this roster. Three players (Barfoot, Guzman and Morales) all posted an OPS north of 1.000. Has that happened before? I don't know, but it's pretty amazing. Even with all three of those guys 35 or older, there's not going to be a lot of slowdown from any of them this season. And with that trio of veteran slugging machines chugging along in the heart of the lineup, there's no reason to suspect a real regression from Long Beach. Will they score 1,000 runs again? I don't know. But I suspect they will again be one of the top scoring teams in the MBWBA.

Even without the big three accounting for 121 homeruns and 385 walks, there is some impressive offensive talent on this ballclub. Heredia is an all-around player who can hit .300 with double-digit homerun power and plenty of doubles. Kelly brings a superb eye behind the plate, drawing 102 walks last season. I don't know if he can hit .295 again, but when you're walking 100 times per year you don't need to. O'Herlihy brings a nice combination of speed and power, posting 26 steals and 26 homers last year. When you have role players like Stewart who can post an .800 OPS, it's going to be tough for pitchers to have a lot of success against you. About the only shortcoming you can find here is a lack of team speed. But when you're doing the homerun trot 200-plus times per year you don't need a whole lot of swiped bags.

Defense

The outfield defense is pretty solid led by Heredia who is a stud in center field. O'Herlihy is great in right. That duo there accounted for almost +30 ZR last year. The infield is another matter where Stewart and Morales lack range. I don't love either guy at their position, but with Morales you can make the exception due to his bat. It looks like Arnold Robinson will return as the shortstop in Long Beach (I'm assuming they don't hate their pitchers enough to start old man Mora again), where he performed as an average shortstop last season. All in all this is not a strong group, which is why they posted a lousy .329 BABIP last year. I get not wanting to give up Morales' bat, but this is going to cost them some games this year, particularly the weakness at second base.

Conclusion

This is a tough team to predict. I think that they have a superb offense thanks to big-time star power. I think they have an aging pitching staff that lacks depth. Can they put up enough runs again to overcome more than 900 runs allowed? I suspect their run differential will shrink this season, and that will probably cost them some wins. They're going to be battling Las Vegas all season long for second place and a wildcard playoff spot, because I don't think they are equipped to keep up with Seattle at this point. But as an aging team with a ton of stars, they are pretty obviously going to go down swinging.

Prediction: 86-76, 2nd Place FL Pacific.

[JohnC]

Nice Job!