Catherine Trammell - Contributing Reporter
Overall Cobbfather is a fantastic league will little turnover from season to season., the owners are GREAT and the commish, even though he owns a team in Canada; does an awesome job too. That said, we have an additional team for sale this season.
- Colorado Springs From My Lions
The LONG time owner will be missed, topoftheworl took over a 4th place team back in S13 and has gone on two different chases the grand prize; winning it all in S20 and more recently S48. He last won the division in S50 but since has gone a run of 4 straight 2nd place finishes, and only made the playoffs the first time. This past season he missed it by a mere 8 games. Just know it was much closer but a late string of bad luck during the last 3 series put him further back.
- We'll look further at their current roster in a bit but let's look at the competition. Helena Hot Dogs won the division last year and seem to be coming out of a 6 season rebuild. They have a young team with nobody over 5 years of ML experience and all but two players under the age of 30. Majority of their current ML roster are in the Arbitration years. Salt Lake City, who recently relocated from Seoul and Colorado the year before that have just started a rebuilding process of their own; selling off numerous parts last season to save payroll. Anaheim, whose owner took over the team in S48 is still working through a rebuild. I'd expect at least another couple of years of their rebuild after finishing below 65 wins last season.
- Last season Records
- ML: 83-79 (2nd)
- AAA: 39-105 (4th)
- AA: 67-77 (4th)
- A+: 39-105 (4th)
- A-: 41-103 (4th)
- R: 29-47 (4th)
- This is an aged team ready for a rebuild. Majority of their roster is split with players who have 10+ years of experience and others who have less than 3. That's 8 players who are 35+ years old. The previous owner loved his homegrown talent and pushed them to as many games as he could. His thought was, a record is a record; doesn't matter if it's most strikeouts for a batter, most walks for a pitcher, or most runs against as a pitcher. If you are an experienced owner, you might compete this year but it would take the right special owner to do so.
- (ages are listed as of the upcoming season)
- Guaranteed Salary
- Last season's payroll: $136M
- S55: $85.3M
- S56: $72.3M
- S57: $29.5M
- S58: $0M
- Arbitration Class
- Garabez Belliard (26 yr old - SS) - Arb1
- Belliard owns the top 3 single season records for most K. My suggestion is to cut ties as soon as possible.
- Grayson Lowry (28 yr old - 3B) - Arb2
- Injury after being acquired limited his ABs last season, but he hit 53 HRs the season before in Huntington. Has trade value if you are looking to come in and rebuild.
- Contract Renewals
- Francisco Martinez (27 yr old SS)
- Defensive player, below .200 hitter.
- Marshall Banks (28 yr old - SS)
- Defensive gem, but will only hit .200 with some luck.
- Taylor Clifton (28 yr old - RP)
- Career: 5.46 ERA, 1.57 WHIP over 61 innings and 96 appearances.
- Ted Evans (33 yr old - RP)
- Career: 4.07 ERA, 1.21 WHIP over 130 IP and 75 appearances.
- Reid Small (39 yr old - RP)
- Career: 8.27 ERA, 1.98 WHIP over 30 IP and 16 appearances
- Existing Contracts (listed by length of contract)
- Louie Cubillan (30 yr old - RF) - expires after S55 - 1/$4.4M remains
- Tony Lim (30 yr old - P) - expires after S55 - $9M remains
- Magglio Exposito (41 yr old - RP) - expires after S56 - 2/$8.2M remains
- Carlos Concepcion (35 yr old - SP) - expires after S56 - 2/$11.9M remains
- Nick Zoltan (33 yr old - 3B) - expires after S56 - 2/$13M remains
- Sergei Griggs (37 yr old - RP) - expires after S56 - 2/$13.6M remains
- Arismendy Costilla (33 yr old - SP) - expires after S56 - 2/$40M remains
- S54 Cy Young winner
- Jorge Johnson (37 yr old - RF) - expires after S57 - 3/$19.5M remains
- Previous owner loved to keep his players around. This one is chasing 3000 hits, but might fall just short due to age.
- Koyie Ward (38 yr old - P) - expires after S57 - $3/$43M
- The last year of this contract is $17M, that's tough to swallow at age 40.
- Upcoming Free Agents
- Dane Javier (34 yr old - SS)
- S54: 22 HR, .0 SB, 258 AVG
- Vic Nova (35 yr old - RF)
- S54: 9 HR, 28 SB, .257 AVG
- Prospects
- None known to the block (editor note - just rolled over, and not easy to review)