Final moves of the season (2041-37, Wichita 41-11)

[Fat Nige]

Actions in the closing days of the 2041 season

I had emailed the club to bring up our top pitching prospect, Kohuru Haukea, for the final time round the rotation so he would get a chance to see what the bigs were like as he certainly would be going into spring camp as a favourite to catch on with the Aviators. Turned out to be a big mistake as three innings into his BBA career he blew out his elbow and will now be looking at a 2043 return. With no-one really left to call up for the last three games of the year, I instructed Devin Clark to skip the fifth starter and give Kevin Morales the chance to be the only Aviator to win 10 games in 2041. That didn’t go well either as Kevin lasted just over three innings before he got the hook, with Wichita down 5-3 to Boise in the top of the fourth, he had given up all five runs on seven hits.

Looking at the contracts of the franchise’s personnel, the Genius had extended most of them so they were contracted mostly to 2043 or 2044. The one exception was the manager of Double-A Columbus, one of his extended family, Lightning Hopkins. I phoned him to talk about the possibility of a new contract for him, but he was keen on a 33% raise. Admittedly he had got the team to 74 wins, the first time over .500 since 2037, but five of those wins were over pythag-expectations. I felt that $330K was a bit rich and I got Clark to hire a new manager there. We landed up with Rafael Castillo, he had had a year with Boise’s rookie league team and one with Valencia at the same level. He had good ideas though and he is an easygoing guy so we handed him a three year deal at about a bit less than we were playing Hopkins.

I’m disappointed that we still have eight players on the IL and all of those bar two will still be there until mid-2042. Ryan Rose (Wichita) and Augusto Ramirez (Anchorage) will both be fit for spring camps next year, but when you’re as broke as we are it’s just not nice to open the season with six on the IL even before the grind of the season starts to add to that list.