Columbus Buckeyes Season Recap

Weena's recap of his Buckeye's season.

Here is something I put together on the Buckeyes. I think it pretty much covers the season. Feel free to edit or reject it entirely if it is not what you are looking for. I had fun with it anyway.

The Columbus Buckeyes - a season of chumps, lumps, bumps

I was initially very excited about the Columbus Buckeyes franchise. I thought the ML team might run away with the Big Ten division and possibly go all the way to the World Series. The trophies were just waiting to be engraved with my name. Then the 3 other division coaches signed up. Oh well, I knew they were coming. I figured a little competition is good for the soul anyway. Once the league filled and we got to reserve our spots and wait for the rollover. My anticipation was still very high at that point. Why couldn’t someone at WIS just throw the switch, turn the dial, press the button so our world could begin. The waiting was driving me crazy. I wondered how many Cy Young and MVP candidates I would have. I was wearing the lettering off of the F5 button checking to see if the world had rolled over.

Then there it was on the list of active franchises. I clicked. I looked. I died. What was this crap I was seeing. This wasn’t a championship team. It looked more like a roster of over the hill potbellied softball rejects. My vision blurred. I became lightheaded. My stomach was bubbling up volcano lava. I was sweating profusely. I couldn’t catch my breath. Slowly the nausea passed and all that remained was a sick headache. My dreams of a championship were dashed. Heck, my dreams of a winning season were dashed.

Well, I was locked into this thing so I decided to see what I could salvage of it. I quickly thought that maybe there were some gems hidden in the minors that I could bring up. I scanned the rosters but there was not much to help me there. I saw some potentially good players for future seasons but no immediate help. The reality of the situation was that this franchise stunk from top to bottom. There was one sliver of silver lining though. I found that I was listed as #3 in the amateur draft. There would be hope for the future after all.

I trimmed off as much dead weight as I could from the ML roster including a pitcher with a Control of 5 and the 40 year olds. Once trading began I made a few moves to both strengthen my rotation and build for the future. I had to trade away CF Charles Swindell, my only legitimate player. I got 3 solid players in return and Chuckie would have been a primo big mouth bass swimming in a lake of dead carp anyway. I eventually picked up a couple of SPs that allowed me to demote a couple of high priced slugs to AAA.

The season progressed about as well as expected. Our hitting was pathetic and the hodge podge bullpen cost me a bunch of wins. Then the emails from the medical staff started coming in. A good day was a day that someone didn’t get injured. At one point during the season I had 7 ML players on the 60 day DL including 6 pitchers. My minor league teams took similar hits. It seemed like every other day I was playing dominoes with the pitching. Move a guy up from Rookie League to Low A, move a Low A guy to High A, move a guy from High A to AA. Etc. I ended up with several players playing much higher levels than they should have. Hopefully, the experience at the higher level won’t cause them to miss their potentials.

The Buckeyes finished the season at 69-93. Surprisingly, 6 teams finished with worse records. I guess we weren’t the worst of the worse. The success of our amateur draft is documented elsewhere in this blog and hopefully I can trade one or two of the picks to continue to improve this team. I did sign a nice International starting pitcher who has ML potential. Unfortunately, he will not be able to help the big league club for several more seasons. Our goal for next season is .500. I don’t know if we will make it or not but I do know that it will never be worse than this season. Go Buckeyes.

Weena