Foundations: An inside look at Cape Fear's offseason roster decisions (Part 1) (2065-02)

[woods]

It was mid-December in the Cape Fear front office. The Winter Meetings had just ended, and President of Baseball Operations, Woody Donahue, needed a vacation.

Fortunately, he had a standing booking at this time every year at his preferred five-star resort in Mallorca. His bags were packed, and he was leaving directly from the office to catch his red-eye.

"Hey, don't work too late," Donahue announced to the four staff members still lingering around. "Matter of fact, don't work much at all for the rest of the month. Enjoy the holidays. We'll attack free agency hard in January. Maybe get ourselves a nice power hitter."

Assistant General Manager Jorge Salazar responded with a grim nod, as if he had just been told he has cancer, but that at least it was one of the good kinds.

The others in the office didn't so much as acknowledge Donahue. Head Scout, Brady Futon, was at his desk, watching video on repeat of a local high school prospect's bat-flipping technique. Kathleen, the Brand and Communications Manager, was adjusting the placement of a Daniel Pepper jersey on the wall of team memorabilia and accolades. And the office manager, Jewels, was at the copier, preparing to send out the team's holiday cards.

"Right, then, I'm off," Donahue said, as soon as it was clear no one was going to say anything. "See y'all in a few weeks!" And with that, he rolled his suitcases out the front door, closing it behind him.

Not a second later, the team sprung into action.

Kathleen activated a secret switch, hidden behind the number '1' of Pepper's jersey, which flipped open several hidden panels in the walls, each one loaded with player names, stats, and analysis.

Jorge Salazar took his place at Donahue's seat in the war room. "Listen up, everybody!" he began. We've got two weeks to improve the team before the boss gets back and tries to load up on home run hitters. No one leaves tonight until we get a few good deals in the works — for capable defenders." He turned to Jewels, the office manager. "Right, Jewels?"

"Range Factor above 3, or that's a 'no' for me," Jewels recited, while setting up a cache of laptops to screen share several detailed charts and graphs on various screens around the room.

Jewels was not an ordinary office manager. She was also the team member most proficient in advanced analytics. Ever since the organization's last Head of Analytics, Graham Luna, mysteriously disappeared one night when he didn't show up to a team offsite at a hibachi restaurant (Donahue had theorized that Luna was scared of onion volcanoes due to a traumatic childhood event), Donahue refused to hire a new one. "You don't need analytics to know the fans want dingers," he frequently cited.

An astute 25-year-old and recent graduate of UNCW's Business Analytics master's program, Jewels took it upon herself to learn sabermetrics and advanced baseball analytics (her thesis involved training neural networks to determine probabilistic outcomes of at bats for the purposes of improving defensive positioning). Donahue never took her seriously, dismissing her as an overenthusiastic fan girl. But in the greater baseball world, she was now considered one of the top analytics experts in the game, and was the envy of several rival BBA clubs.

The Nashville Bluebirds' Chad Nason even called a couple times and asked about her in a trade. Donahue was confused by this, and told Nason to get a life.

Once all four were in the room, Jorge began. "Our first mission: find a capable center fielder. Who are our options?"

Brady spoke up. "Looking at free agency, there's The Toad," he said, referring to Amphibian Johnson. "He's got good talent, but he's lost some on his first step the last couple years."

Brady was an old-school scout, the kind who liked to use meaningless terms like "good makeup" and "intangibles" when he really liked a player. He was in his sixties, and didn't care to learn about any new player evaluation techniques. Most of his opinions were based on a gut feeling from a lifetime in baseball. But he was usually correct in his assumptions.

Jewels checked some reports, and confirmed Johnson's declining range. "He had a +8 zone rating last year, down from +17 just a couple seasons ago."

Brady chimed in again. "And he's got a bad ankle. Not sure we want to risk it with a ticking time bomb like that. He makes one bad slide, and we're back to playing Huerta in center."

Jorge nodded. "Who else have we got?"

"We could ask about Bob Park," Jewels offered. "He's younger, and Statcast has him with better range than Johnson."

"Looks like we were late on that one," Kathleen chimed in from the corner. "I'm just browsing the news sites, and apparently he was just traded to Valencia."

Kathleen was an expert on brand marketing, but knew very little about baseball. To her credit, she took her job very seriously, and offered to join the group tonight to give her insight on which players would make the best bobblehead giveaways.

Jorge groaned. "Okay, Park's out. And that means Cobble Hill won't trade Rooney, either. Come on, team. Who else is out there?"

"Dan Morris?" Brady said. "He just won a Zimmer in the Frick."

Jewels consulted a couple tabs. "He's 29, but he just put up the best defensive year of his career, at least by Zone Rating. And Chicago's not an easy center field. There's a lot of ground to cover."

"He's like a coach on the field," said Brady, with fatherly pride. "Real captain material. In high school, I used to see him shift the entire outfield using hand signals. Never used alignment cards. Just intuition."

"And he's from Georgia, which is a geo we've been trying to get a foothold in," Kathleen added. "It could help us attract some of those fans."

Jorge put his hand up to silence the group. "Well, he'll command a big salary, but that's even less money for the boss to spend on home run hitters," said Jorge. "Let's get him on the phone."

[ae37jr]

Morris is one of my favorite BBA players. Such a team first guy.

-Maybe the best defensive CF in the game. Helps all your pitchers become better.
-10 Eye. Works counts and tires opposing pitchers so your big bats can rake third time through.
-Captain. Helps keep entire team morale up and develops younger players.

So even though he is "just a 45", he is much more impactful than that.

[woods]

-10 Eye. Works counts and tires opposing pitchers so your big bats can rake third time through.

Lol, he's only the third best eye in my lineup, behind Sato and Huerta. It's my goal this season to make sure no opposing starter makes it out of the fifth inning.