The Road to 2042 concluding as we enter pre-season
What could be the final pieces slot into the mix as we enter 2042 pre-season, preparing to run headlong into the new season. There could very well be a brick wall ahead, but we can’t stop now. We’ve used all our duct tape, polished all the shite to look like rust and now we have to live or die by what we’ve got.
Finally, we have added a couple of pitchers to our staff. Neither cost a lot and neither will set the world alight. 25-yr-old Adam Simons joins on a two-year $3.5m deal and 29-yr-old Kidanu Cherono has a two-year deal worth $3m. Last year we didn’t have a single pitcher make a double-digit win tally, in fact we only had three pitchers with more than five wins on the season, and only one of those is still on the team. To be honest though I can’t see much improvement there, Cherono might have 337 BBA games but went 1-10 between stints in Charlotte & Nashville in 2041 with an ERA firmly over eight while Simons went 5-7 in Triple-A. I just couldn’t bring myself to spend 8-10m on a pitcher that might change that at this stage of our rebuild. I’d rather just take a gamble on some improvement from our younger pitchers and get our finances back on track.
Simons and Cherono, our two new FA signings
Talking of finances owner Thomas Magnum has clawed back an extra $6m of our budget, leaving us with a $100m budget. With our two new additions our payroll is now just over $62 million, add in our staff and miscellaneous expenses and we’re spending around $88-89m at the moment. That includes a First-Year draft budget of around $7.5m, we hope to spend a lot less than that, but given that we draft fifth overall we’ll be wise to have the money there in case we land one of the expensive hot picks. Our current projected income for 2042 is around $91-92m so at the moment we are on course to turn a near $20m loss in 2041 into a small $2-4m profit in 2042.
We probably didn’t help ourselves by dropping $1.8m on the International FA market. In all reality we should have stayed out of it, but when your farm is a barren wasteland you might as well gamble. I hope $1.8m spent on a couple of 16-yr-olds will prove a better long-term investment than handing some 30-yr-old who owns a 5-12 record the money instead. Our two International free agents are both 16-yrs-old, 3B Juan Carlos Espada from Puerto Rico and Pitcher Michael Holman from Canada. Juan has some defensive ability virtually all over the field and has a good arm & range already, his drawback is his lack of speed which won’t help his outfield defence. If we can school him well he could perhaps develop into a super-utility player like Bryan Robson, he might get an early promotion to Rookie ball Anchorage so our coaches can manage him getting plenty of reps all over the field. Michael can already throw a decent fast ball and has the makings of a reasonable slider & splitter; he’s got decent stamina and can hold runners well. He’s on the way to becoming a fairly good starter if he works hard at it. We also have claims in for a couple of players on the Waiver Wire which while they would probably cost us all our projected profit would be a great help to our strength in depth.
Espada & Holman, 2042 IFA signings
So, with our last couple of possible additions due to arrive (or not) within the next few weeks, we are more or less set for 2042. I have giant mood swings on what we have assembled for the new season, I think we’ll struggle to even reach last season’s tally of 59 wins given our pitching staff, but then I look at our young developing batters and think, maybe, just maybe, we have the seeds for an Aviators side that could be challenging in five or so years. The thing that will be a constant anchor on what Wichita can accomplish is our finances. We only have four players earning between $5m-14m, if we ever really want to challenge for a pennant we’ll really have to be creative to achieve it on that sort of budget.
