A pair of River Monsters miss team train to Nashville, will miss opening day.
As spring training comes to a close and the regular season ramps up, there are a lot of logistics that need to be taken care of. Players need to find apartments in city, find a good school for their kids, all the bats, balls, gloves and other equipment must head north, jersey must be lettered, ect, ect. One thing you would think a world class organization would have no problem with is making sure the players get from point A to point B.
But, aha, this is no world class organization. This is the Twin Cities River Monsters. The class mascot of the Brewster. So the news that projected opening day starter Erik Brooks and slugging outfielder Ted Benson MISSED the teams bus to Nashville really shouldn't be all that surprising at all.
Reporters around the league have been scrutinizing the event. Calling it a blatantly obvious cover up for service time manipulation. Both Brooks and Benson currently have zero service time. By missing the opening week of the season they will not be able to procure 6 years of service time over the next 6 seasons, thus giving them a seventh season with the franchise. And besides, what were bin Khairy and Linseman doing on the major league train if they had no made the big league squad?GM Alan Ehlers wrote:Well, umm, you see. What had happened was.... they are both rookies. We had two trains leaving. One to Nashville and one to Annapolis where the AAA Duluth Freeze start their season. And they accidently got on the wrong train. Rather than trying to play crazy taxi trying to get the two back from Annapolis on short notice, we have decided to carry Muneer bin Khairy and Rory Linseman
While Brooks and Benson are expected to join the team next week, another surprising cut was 2050 second round draft pick Stan Moten. Moten tore the cover off of the ball this spring with a .318/.464./.615 batting line in 56 plate appearances. Stan is expected back with the team in due time. He just needs to work on his defensive skills. Projected as a serviceable player at all four corner positions, he has yet to demonstrate mastering any of them. Hopefully he can knock them out, one by one so he can come on up to the big club.Alan Ehlers wrote:Obviously I can not comment on that. There were some factors we plugged into the analytic engine as far as the plus/minus of them playing these first two series. Nashville is a lefty heavy lineup and Brooks is much weaker versus lefties. Both Nashville and Boise nerf homers, so Benson isn't as valuable. These guys are going to be core members of our team moving forward. But yeah, they just missed the train. I don't know what else to say. It's a very sad situation.
