1 Jan 2059
Boise, Idaho
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by Tony Toney
Welcome back Spuds fans! We here at The Times had an uncertain offseason with the Spuds negotiating a new deal for both beat coverage with The Times parent company, Spam, Spam, Spam, and Spam, and regional broadcasts on the Spam family of networks. But enough with that, right? I am back on the beat and just in time as the Spuds had a rather active offseason after the 2058 season left a bad taste in the mouths of Boise fans and management.Playoffs?!
Before the 2058 season started, the OSA released their eagerly awaited preseason projections. They had the Spuds winning 83 games and missing a wild card spot. Even though Boise would come close to that record with 82 wins they did, indeed, miss the playoffs. Badly. The team finished the season 14 games off the division winners Las Vegas. Of course, in the JL that's likely to be the case every year with a top-heavy group of teams, a bottom pack of rebuilding squads, and a whole bunch of teams in between. If you're not competing for the division title, the wild card bids are as much a product of luck as results. To wit, Boise's above-average season left them 3rd to last in the Frontier Division. But, again, they way it happened was not pleasant for fans or management. On July 1st, the Spuds sat atop the Frontier Division with a 48-36 record. After the All-Star break, the squad came out bumbling and stumbling their way to 82 wins.
GM Ben Teague favors, what now?, pitching and defense. There ya go. But he did have some offensive fireworks sparkling thru the year. The Spuds entered 2058 with a tiny squeak of an offseason. With the Spuds offense being slightly more helpless than pitching in 2057, GM Ben Teague's only true moves were the signing of righty C Sergei Bobrovsky, which put the catcher spot in a rare platoon at catcher with left-handed C Juan González returning. Teague also filled a need for a lefty reliever by signing LHP Anthony Annear. Accordingly, the Spuds offense sat right in the middle of FL rivals. It all starts up top with CF Lou Bayou who had a tremendous 2058 posting a .811 OPS and stealing 61 bases after registering only 27 and 29 in prior seasons. Veteran 1B Bastião Fardos did what he does generating a .851 OPS and +2.2 WAR. In another change, Teague moved Marcello Custello to his natural position at second base and posting all-glove SS Dan Raymond at shortstop. That proved to be a tremendous move given that the Spuds traded SS Qutuz Mahdi in the first half of the season.
GM Ben Teague favors, what now?, pitching and defense. There ya go. But he did have some offensive fireworks sparkling thru the year. While offense was middling scoring 4.7 runs per game, the pitching and defense were spectacular in the first half of the season. But, like the team's W/L record, pitching began a slow decline after the All-Star break. Righty SP Jeremy Nickerson, a key part of the rotation, did go down for the rest of the year just before midseason, but that's not enough on its face to put the Spuds pitching in a downward spiral. In an attempt to stop the trend, Teague used no less than 25 pitchers over the course of the season and all to no avail. In fact, Teague entered the 2058 offseason aiming for more piching help than hitting.
So a mediocre team got exposed in the last half of a season. Happens all the time, right? True. But it still doesn't pull out the dagger completely when the team had shadow-boxed to the top of the JL.