We’ve had the first 2008 regular season sim. Good to get the season going again.

After the first five days of action, there are three unbeaten teams left: the Miami Masters of Their Domain, the Stockholm Sluggers, and the New York Knights. They are all on pace for 162 wins. That would be a very impressive accomplishment.

We also have two winless teams: the Cairo Leveemen and the Maryland Poedamnedmonium. I really believe that this won’t last all season and they’ll get off the skid and win at least one game. (grin)

No transactions of note this sim.

Three injuries this sim. The defending champs sustained two of them, as ace Richard Ro is out 1-2 weeks and new starting catcher Karl Urick is out 5 weeks. Miami also lost starter Robert Mullen for 1-2 weeks.

Since it’s late, y’all will have to check the sim to get the rest of the story. League file is updated. I’ll do web pages tonight too.

Just starting this as a one-stop shopping site for 2008 season previews. Predictions, boasting, foreshadowing of doom? Drop it in here.

Who says you can’t come back home.  One of the key Starting Pitchers in the runs of the Brooklyn Bombers to the World Series Championships in 2002 and 2004 is back where he belongs in the Yellow and Green of Brooklyn as Seattle trades SP Trevor Canela back to Brooklyn for AAA SP Robert Bearden. 

Canela had 16 wins in each of the 2002 and 2003 seasons with an ERA around 4.30 both seasons.  He is not expected to get back to those levels, but he is hoping to be a solid #5 starter to compliment the top of rotation.  In his career Trevor is 50-43 with a 4.19 ERA.  Last season, Canela was 1-3 with a 5.14 ERA splitting time in the rotation and bullpen for Seattle.  He should be a good fill-in until SP Willie Carter comes back from the DL in a couple of months.

In return, Seattle gets AAA SP Robert Bearden.  There were high hopes for Bearden as a Bomber prospect, but he never lived up to those hopes.  “There is still potential there,” said Brooklyn GM Jeremy Goldman, “I hope he realizes that potential with the Pilots.”

The final Spring Training sim is behind us now and we stare forward into the vague uncertainties of the regular season.  Will the rookie live up to his promise or will he find himself riding busses in Iowa in two months?  Will the wily veteran see his ligament last one more season or will it, like his hopes, snap and send him home for good.

Only time will tell, gentlemen.  Only time.

On the final spring numbers front Pittsburgh ended the fake season with a leading 17-7 season.  Chasing them were two SL teams, Jersey City and Gainesville at 15-9 each.  The top home run hitter of the spring was Miami’s Richard Vuong with 8 and the top strike out pitcher was Jersey City’s Stein with 26 fans.

On the injury front there’s bad news for Jersey City.  Starting Pitcher Paul Valles was lost to a torn labrum for 12 months.  He’ll miss the entire season.  No other significant injuries were reported.

The next sim begins the regular season and will be by Mack for the standard five day period.  Enjoy the season, gentlemen.  Enjoy the season.

March 23, 2008 — PITTSBURGH — Apparently not content with their current haul of high draft picks, the Pittsburgh Pisces emptied their farm system in exchange for the Cairo Leveemen’s first-round pick, the #1 overall pick in this June’s draft. Pittsburgh is sending away AA 2B Gabriel Deleon, AAA SP Jose Leon, AAA SP David Abarca, and AAA 1B David Rosado as well as its fourth round pick (#48 in all).

“It’s a ton to give up to roll the dice at the top of the draft,” said Pisces Owner/GM Mack Shultz. “But, we have a very young major league roster, with only two position players older than 26, and an established starting rotation. We felt like we could give these guys up without hurting our long-term future.”

Gabriel Deleon may be the biggest prize in the package. The second baseman just turned 22 and has torn up rookie and short-season ball since his signing as an international prospect. “He plays great defense, runs well, and projects to be a tremendous hitter,” said Shultz. “But I’ve got this Jimenez kid playing second base in the majors who I’m pretty fond of already.” Deleon is the third-highest rated second base prospect in the game, according to the Baseball America rankings.

Jose Leon has been one of the Pisces’ top pitching prospects for years. He more than held his own in AAA last year at the tender age of 21 and has pitched well in Spring Training with the major league squad. “I don’t know if he’s ready this season for the majors or needs a few more months in the minors, but I expect Leon will start for a long time in the majors once he’s ready,” said Shultz.

David Abarca is another pitcher who threw well for AAA Imperial last year. The 24-year-old has a career ERA of just 3.09 in 150 innings in AAA. “David’s met every challenge we’ve thrown at him,” said Shultz. “At the very least, he’ll provide some starting pitching depth to Cairo, who is a bit thin in the upper minors.”

The final player, David Rosado, has been a source of dispute in the Pittsburgh organization over the years. “Rosado has steadily progressed through the system,” said Shultz. “He’s always been young for his level, but he held his own last year in AAA at 21. Some of our scouts love him, some aren’t as sure. In any case, we’re pretty deep in first basemen at the major league level, so we thought he could use a new home.”

Shultz refused to reveal who he intended to select with the top pick in the draft. “June’s a long way away and a lot of things can change between now and then. There’s one prospect in particular that we’ve had our eyes on for a couple years. We wouldn’t have made this trade if we didn’t really like his potential. But we have to see how the college and high school seasons play out and what other players declare for the draft on May 1.”

“The odd thing is,” said Shultz, “we aren’t as high on this draft as we were, for instance, on last season’s. But here we are staring at the possibility of five first-round picks. It’s funny how things turn out.”

We recently had a request from a team owner to make available the almanacs automatically generated by the game. The links below should enable you to download the zipped files. Each year’s almanac is between 35 and 60 MBs, so beware of that.

Here are the links:

2005 Almanac
2006 Almanac
2007 Almanac

Assuming for the moment that I actually managed to get the links to work correctly, you have to put the files in the right place in your game folder to get them to work. In your copy of the league folder, the unzipped folder needs to be in the following location:

OELv9.lg/news/almanac_200X

where X is either 5, 6, or 7 depending on the year at issue. Within that folder should be the contents of the zipped files (folders titled box_scores, coaches, game_logs, etc.) Be careful that you don’t inadvertently end up with an extra folder in the way while unzipping.

If it works correctly, then you should be able to access the almanacs in the Game / Almanacs menu. I think.

I need to move a pitcher to make room on my roster, so I am looking to make someone a smokin’ deal on SP Trevor Canela.  He missed most of last year with an injury, but my scout still has him at 2.5 stars.  He would look really nice on the back end of somebody’s rotation.  All offers will be considered.  Act now while supplies last!

The OEL players continued to get ready for the 2008 campaign. I’ve heard many players are in the best shapes of their lives, that several pitchers have developed a new offering, and that more than one hitter has worked hard with the coaches during the offseason to correct a flaw in their swing. Will these changes pay off? With only four spring training games left, we’ll all know soon.

In league transactional news there is … uh … not much news. Some minor league signings and that’s about it.

In league injury news, some big names have gone down this sim with three stars now expected to miss some of the regular season. Jersey City’s George Pullum went down first with a strained back and will miss the first month or so of the season. Stockholm then lost high-priced free agent third base acquisition Constantino Martinez until sometime in June with a torn calf muscle. Finally, Miami shortstop Ben Towell strained his hamstring, but “fortunately” will only miss the first ten days or so of April. Quite a collection of All-Stars to go down. Interestingly, all three major injuries occurred running the bases. League sources expect a movement to “ghost runners” in the league’s future, to avoid such injuries.

(Just joking, Jeremy.)

(Perhaps the Martinez injury will make Michael a little less likely to grin at news of some other team’s injury or suspension in the future though.)

No other significant league news that I noted. The league file is updated and posted to the server. I updated the web pages over the weekend, and probably won’t do so again until next weekend. Nate’s got the next sim on Wednesday and the regular season will start on Friday.

Finally, make sure to get your roster down to 25 by Friday, or else risk me doing it for you. “This 5* guy looks like a candidate for release, right?”

We’re halfway through Spring Training now and teams need to get serious about making those cuts and getting their key players the playing time necessary to start the season fresh and ready to win!

Our current batting leader is:

Gainesville’s Milton Blount at .516!

Our current pitcher leader is:

an infinite number of pitchers with an ERA of zero and 2 wins.  Let’s see some separation, people!

Two pieces of bad news this sim:

Miami has lost the services of Calle Bergstrom for at least this season and possibly the next with a torn calf muscle.  Tough break for the one time top prospect.

The other isn’t as serious.  From the chucklehead file comes Ramapaugh Mountain’s Carlos Lara.  Lara’s been suspended for 4 games for using the words ‘umpire’ and ‘three blind mice’ in proximity.  Keep your temper, my friend!

Next sim is Monday by Mack!  Get those updates in!

We’re playing baseball in 2008 and it’s sweet. The first week of spring training has been played and life is good.

In transactional news, not only did OF G. Fernandez return to Ramapough Mountain, but the Indians added a slew of free agents. They also signed SP J. Fortner, MR D. Lozano, and MR S. Hawn to major league contracts. Fortner and Hawn were Type A free agents and signed the same day. Normally, we use first-signed to determine the order or draft pick compensation, but that didn’t help here. So, Nate and I flipped a coin and the team that owned Fortner will get the first draft pick.

In addition, Miami added 2B J. Arant on a major league minimum deal.

Unfortunately, as games return, so do injuries. The most significant was Gainesville star outfielder Reinaldo Salerno, who will miss 3-4 weeks with a pinched nerve suffered in a collision at a base. All of the other injuries will definitely heal during Spring Training. The guys with boo boos include Brooklyn’s W. Thorn, New York’s E. Klingbeil, Gainesville’s S. Castaneda, and Maryland’s F. Wolford.

Next sim will be Friday by Nate. League file is updated. I’ll also try and get the web pages updated tonight