Shackamaxon and London trade

The Shackamaxon Lenape, finishing up their offseason improvements, announced a trade with the London Dragons late last night.

The Lenape, who had a disappointing 76-86 record a season after their first playoff spot in 15 years, reïnforced their outfield by acquiring Tomas Kalakay from the Dragons.

Heading to the Dragons is a bounty featuring catcher Miguel Angel Ramirez (until recently the top prospect in the game, and a Rule 5 selection this season), outfielder Cheung Ying, infielder Qi-Zhen Huang, and shortstop prospect Roy Nickerson.

"We had two areas of interest in our lineup to improve this offseason, third base and right field," Lenape GM Michael Weintraub stated. "John Hukill, the best in the game, will improve us at the hot corner, and now Kalakay will complete our outfield, along with veterans Sherman Evanoff and Steve Keo."

The Lenape also acquired stud outfield prospect Duncan Swanson and a sixth round pick in the upcoming amateur draft.

"Our AAA OF is now full of top prospects, and we could afford to deal Ying and Huang since we got their replacements," Weintraub said. "It hurts to lose a good prospect like Nickerson, as well as Ramirez, but we have faith in our team to perform well and return to postseason glory this upcoming season."

Sim's Done -- Welcome To The Preseason

Game Date: 2/5/2024

Signings:
London:
RF Juan Lobo (Houston), minor league contract
C Brett Corbett (Houston), minor league contract
C Jorge Clemente (Shackamaxon), 1 yr/$1m
P Victor Valles (re-signed), 1 yr/$780k
3B John Lebouf (Shackamaxon), 2 yr/$2.1m
2B Man-chae Chong (Houston), minor league contract

Shackamaxon:
CF Jerry Head (Brick), minor league contract
P Gary Coleman (Brooklyn), minor league contract
P Mark Massey (Brooklyn), minor league contract
CF Brent Brown (Brick), minor league contract

Houston:
P Oscar Avendano (London), 1 yr/ $690k

Maui:
P Kyle Fike (re-signed), 2 yrs/$18m
P Joseph Curry (re-signed), 2 yrs/$1.7m

Injuries:
Seattle P Ichizo Sakamoto suffered a setback in recovering from his torn rotator cuff and will miss the start of the season.

Next sim:  Wednesday evening.

Dragons, Barracudas announce trade

The London Dragons and Brick Barracudas announced today that the Dragons were sending popular slugger Raul Ortega to the Barracudas in return for outfielders Ignacio Lopez and Luis Ramon, as well as Brick's 2nd round pick in the upcoming draft. 

Barracudas GM Goldfarb shrugged off concerns over Ortega's age - the right fielder turns 35 this season - noting, "Raul gives us an upgrade in power, an area where we've been lacking in recent years, and his veteran presence should be a great asset to our clubhouse". The GM noted that Ortega, with 318 career home runs, had played at least 155 games in eight of his nine seasons in the big leagues. 

London Dragons GM Urista acknowledged that the trade was part of the team's ongoing rebuilding process. "More than anything, we believe we need to get back to fundamental baseball: Catching, throwing, and fielding", he said, noting that the Dragons committed the most errors in the league last year. "Ramon is an outstanding outfielder, and Lopez will get a chance to show us he's closer to the player that batted .275 in 2021-22 vs the .219 hitter in 2023".

Hall of Fame Standards -- Catchers

I recently put up a post evaluating all of our pitchers using Bill James's Hall of Fame Standards Metric. 

Today, we'll discuss catchers.

The Hall of Fame Standards attempts to assign all players a score to determine whether or not they deserve to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame.  The score (for non-pitchers) is determined as follows:

• One point for each 150 hits above 1500, limit 10.
• One point for each .005 of batting average above .275, limit 9
• One point for batting over .300
• One point for each 100 runs over 900, limit 8.
• One point for scoring more than .500 runs per game.
• One point for scoring more than .644 runs per game.
• One point for each 100 rbi's over 800, limit 8.
• One point for driving in more than .500 runs per game.
• One point for driving in more than .600 runs per game.
• One point for each .025 of slugging percentage above .300, limit 10
• One point for each .010 of on-base percentage above .300, limit 10
• One point for each 200 home runs.
• One point if home runs are more than 10% of hits.
• One point if home runs are more than 20% of hits.
• One point for each 200 extra base hits over 300, limit 5.
• One point for each 200 walks over 300, limit 5.
• One point for each 100 stolen bases, limit 5.
• Defensive value: 20 points for catcher, 16 - shortstop, 14 - second base, 13 - third base, 12 - center fielder, 6 - right fielder, 3 - left fielder, 1 - first baseman, 0 - designated hitter

The average Hall of Famer should have a score of 50.

There are a total of a dozen catchers (both active and retired) who have played in the majors in at least ten different seasons. Their scores are:

Herman Gossard 43 RETIRED
Beau Manning 40 RETIRED
Alberto Granado 39 ACTIVE
Thomas Geter 36 RETIRED
Richard Bilbrey 35 RETIRED
Willy Guzman 34 RETIRED
Willie Kenna 33 RETIRED
Carlos Guerra 32 RETIRED
Zachary Whipkey 28 RETIRED
James Hardman 25 RETIRED
Gerardo Herrera 25 ACTIVE
Stephen Herbert 24 RETIRED
 
 It is interesting to note that, even with the 20 point adjustment for catchers, no one reaches the level of an average Hall of Famer.  The top 3 on the list, Gossard, Manning and Granado all fall a bit short.

Gossard is carried by the strength of his batting average.  Among all the catchers listed, only he and Willie Kenna managed a career batting average over .300.  His 2095 hits leads all other catchers by at least a two seasons' work.

Manning gets on the list by dint of his home runs.  No other catcher except Bilbery (288) approaches is 368 home runs.  His 1127 RBI is also tops among catchers.  However, his career average of .254 hurts his cause.

Granado   takes a middle approach.  His lifetime batting average is .289 and he hit 182 home runs.  Maybe not enough for a hall of famer, but certainly enough for a well-respected player.  Of course, Granado is still active and if he manages to get his career back on track, he could surpass Gossard and Manning.

It should be noted that there is a group of young, active catchers who could well be on their way to the Hall.  Of course, it's still far too early to make any definite statements about them, but from what we've seen so far, they certainly look like they're headed in the right direction.  They are:
 Steve Jones (4 years/ 48 HOFS), Seattle
Aaron Hampton (3 years/ 44 HOFS), Hickory
Brian Walker (4 years/ 43 HOFS), Houston
Barney Maxon (5 years/ 41 HOFS)

Zev

Sim's Done

Game Date:  1/29/2024

Signings:
Brick signed MR Keith Thompson (no prev team) to a minor league contract.

Next sim:  Monday night. 

Happy New Year!

Hi guys, sorry for the long radio silence. What was supposed to be a short business trip to Tokyo in October ended up being three months of constant travel, away from my main PC (man, I wish they'd let us sync PC versions of OOTP with the iPad version...). I might be moving back to Tokyo full-time later this year, but no final decision has been made yet.

Anyway, the London Dragons are back to having a full-time GM, and we're still heavy in rebuild mode, so just letting everyone know most of my established players are available:

Ken Lea is a decent 2B with some pop (50 HRs combined last two years) and he hit .290 in 2021 and 2022.

Raul Ortega is an average RF but is good for .280/25+ HRs

Riojas is a relatively cheap veteran left-hander; he'd make a very solid 5th starter or long-reliever.

And we'll consider any other offers for other players if anyone else is of interest. Ideally we'd like to get some draft picks or reasonably promising A / AA prospects.

Finally, a question for the other managers - how does the draft process work?

Sim's Done

Game Date: 1/22/2024

The preseason's getting closer...

Signings:
Shackamaxon: CF Orlando Beltran (Maui), minor league contract
Maui:  P Thomas Brasfield (re-signed), 1 yr/$850k
Atlanta: P Toby Thornton (Houston), 2 yrs/$1.15m

Next sim:  Sunday