Injury gives Timberlake another chance
Every year we think Clive Timberlake will be out the door at the end of spring but every year he finds a niche. Six fruitless years he’s been in the BBA now and just one year (2043) as a starter. This year the fractured cheekbone of Mike England has allowed him to open the year once more on the roster, this time as the temporary starting 2B. The other new boy on the batting roster is free agent pickup Antastasio Lopez, an expensive (by El Paso standards) signing but promises much needed power if not the defence we like in the outfield. He will be taking Elmer Lomond’s left field role come opening day.
After a poor year in 2045 Jason Bowen has been ripping it up in string training, hitting over .600 halfway through he eventually ended up slashing .453/.453/.698 and will go into 2046 as the starting catcher for the seventh straight year with Brian Best in his third year as the backup catcher. Our two “Sultans of Swat” Tommy Cochran & Tony Hernandez who hit 82 homers between them last year, both career highs, will be back for their second years at DH & 1B respectively. Coming from out of the blue is Rule 5 pick Arturo Ahumade who’s showing in spring training wrested the starting SS job from Jeremy Webb. Ahumade had been thought of as one of those utility bench players we like but his .385 batting average, eight walks and five stolen bases convinced us to at least take a look at him in the SS role that Webb struggled with so much last year. Ross Quicker worryingly enough still has now real competition at 3B he will be backed up by Webb while he’s out of the starting lineup and our utility free agent signing David Guerra will be the defensive replacement (in fact the defensive replacement in most infield positions).
Across the outfield we have Lopez, Fernando Figueroa and Luis Maldonado, not a great trio but the best we have. Lopez and hopefully Maldonado will hit the cover off the baseball while Figueroa will flail wildly but run all over the park collecting those fly balls. Elmer Lomond, Chris Jenkins and Kade Lebowski will all sit on the bench bitching about the days when the starting OF roles used to be theirs. All six OF’s have considerable holes in their all-round games which to be fair if they didn’t have, they wouldn’t play for El Paso. Don Keagle, our 2045 second round draft pick, almost grabbed a bench spot with and impressive first ever spring training but we felt it would probably be more beneficial to the 19-yr-old to have a year of starting at Albuquerque. After all he passed through Rookie Ball, A ball and Double A last year so he might as well do the only minor league level he hasn’t played at in his 56-game pro career.
When I first took over at the franchise, we were haemorrhaging money everywhere and had one player rated over 50 on the 25-man roster. Now we turned our best ever profit last year to put the franchise on a stable financial footing once more and allow us to build for the future. The farm is still weak, but we have eight players rated 55 or over, the oldest being 29 and four of them 24-yrs-old or less. Rome wasn’t built in a day but year on year we are building the foundations of something, it hasn’t shown in the results yet, but maybe this year is the year it will.
Every year we have to say goodbye to players who just haven’t made, have aged too much or have just been squeezed out. Most just slink slowly away without a mention, collecting their bags and carrying a copy of the local jobs paper, after all if you can’t make it with El Paso you probably can’t make it anywhere in baseball. This year though I want to make mention of 25-yr-old Bill Burke, he was a 2039 eighth round pick of Wichita’s and went on to play 623 minor league games for the franchise without ever getting near the BBA. He won three Platinum Stick Awards at DH at three different levels, hit 123 homers and 415 RBI with 311 walks, but the time was never right for him to grab that converted BBA DH role. There was always at least one better than him and now his time has passed, we just couldn’t fit him in anywhere this year. On March 31st he left the clubhouse in Albuquerque for the last time, head bowed just hoping that someone somewhere would see the good in him and give him that one last shot of realising his dream.
Good Luck Bill, the prayers of the franchise go with you