May in Review

An 11-18 month in May has shifted the focus of top management from playoff contender to pretender.  We might have enough to win the division at .500 but, this will not be enough to win a championship this year.  We have Cabo San Lucas, Las Vegas, Nottinghamshire, Montreal, Seattle and yes Boston and many others all with better teams this year at the ABL level.  We have decided to be a seller right now and based on this decision we sent Robert Martinez our ace SP packing to Nottinghamshire for a couple of pitching prospects.  In return Maple acquired Robert Osborne SP and Manny Palma CL.  Osborne will start his Maple career in AAA Astoria and Palma will start in A ball Kingwood.

Rumors also swirling that Pat Super Sellers last years Allstar representative for the TML is on the block.  At 34 years old, this SP can still get the job done for a contender.  At $12M next year plus a pro-rated remaining contract value this year it will be interesting to see if a contender jumps at the opportunity to pick up a veteran down the stretch for this rotation.  Sellers has always rated higher than his potential in his ABL career.

Anthony "Big Stick" Shelton has continued his hot ways.  He leads the ABL in HRs with 19 and 30 of his 42 hits have gone for extra bases.  Anthony who is not hitting his weight at .211 vs. 226 lbs is crushing south-paws this year at .328 bavg with a OPS 1.296.  Shelton has always shown amazing flashes of POWER in the ABL and he can be very streaky when he is healthy.  Original on the trade block, this latest power burst has management thinking he can stick with Maple and his team friendly $800K for the next two seasons.

Down on the farm nothing spectacular in terms of W/L records is happening however;  there are some bright stars waiting in the wings to make the ABL.

Astoria AAA:
Billy Greer OF and Clay Wadden SS have been called up to the ABL.

Sandy Springs AA:
Oliver Davis OF and Antonio Paz 1B have been pounding the baseball all season long.

Kingwood A:
Jose Medina 1B is tearing up pitchers in A Ball.

Minor League Systems is currently ranked #14 overall.   Watch out for Tee Wilson OF in AAA he is a couple of years away from being at the big dance.

Financial Watch:
Attendance is down -2.7%, Budget is #11 and payroll is #10 so the move of Robert Martinez puts us in line to help re-sign our FA eligible players such as Eric McSwan DH if desired.

At 20-32 we are still in the hunt for the division title strangely enough.  We are sitting 5.5 games back of SF after recently being swept by them last sim.  Keith K Thompson moves into the rotation for Martinez and Dan Wilder receives the long awaited call up back to the ABL at MR to take Thompson's spot in the pen.  Dave Guenette 3B was demoted in order to not rush him.  He has been struggling at the ABL level.  Jeff Morgan UTIL has been called up to fill his active roster spot.

In June we face Texas, Jacksonville and Georgia with 2 games also with SF.  It will be interesting to see if we can "hang around" the TML Billy Martin division a bit longer to make things interesting.