Maple made a big splash in the ABL inaugural IFA bidding signing 7 prospects for a whopping $43,940,000 USD including $19,470,000 in tax penalty.
Maple said afterwards, "We were sitting there with ~$43M in projected profit and thought this would be the best opportunity for us to rebuild even if the risks were unknown".
Last year our owner took a lot of money from us with the maximum cash set at $20M and we really didn't want to go out and pick up anymore high dollar players on top of the recent acquisitions of Danny Burris SS and Jesse "Big Ticket" Clark 2B contracts. We felt we had a decent draft picking up 1B help with the picks of William "Cannon" Lee and Michael Knaus. We don't feel like Vic Jennings will be around next year so we will need a 1B developed soon to join the big club in Maple. We also feel very confident about our OF which appears to be a strong position in the ABL for most teams. Our young SP is having a rough year so just before the Allstar break it was decided to put a couple of the youngsters (Osborne & Blake) in the pen to build some momentum. Jesus Ramirez (University of Florida grad) will stay in the rotation though to work out some mechanics rather than being demoted. We are very happy with our bullpen and the future looks tremendous with Manny Palma and Zeus Hallman among a few others that will provide the depth. We are very pleased with the development of Dave Guenette, 3B since being called up from AAA Astoria. He is out of minor league options so if he wants to stick around Maple now is his time to shine or risk being waived. At catcher we are also very happy with the play of Billy Bishop who we acquired from Nottinghamshire. Billy was one of our top players on our Rule V draft list and we were very sad to miss out on him. Luckily we were able to work out a deal to bring him to Maple. We see no risk of him being returned to his original team this year as a Rule V roster player.
So who did we land in IFA?
#1 - Gabresilassie Cherono SP - South Africa
0.5/4.5* potential; 15/12/16 and 3 pitches 11/12/20
We love his very high work ethic and intelligence.
#2 - Felipe Moreno SP - Venezuela
0.5/4.5* potential, 16/16/12 and 4 pitches 16/9/18/7
He has normal work ethic and intelligence. My scout says he will compete for a #1 SP role.
#3 - Robinson Pedercini SP - Argentina
0.5/4.5* potential, 14/14/16 and 4 pitches 11/13/14/15
We love his high work ethic and intelligence.
#4 - Hayden Capel SP - England
0.5/4* potential, 15/13/14 and 4 pitches 12/18/13/10
He has normal work ethic and high intelligence.
#5 - Seung-Ryong Pak SP - Korea
0.5/4* potential, 13/11/18 and 4 pitches 9/15/6/9
He has high work ethic and intelligence. We have already moved him to the bullpen.
#6 - Masaaki Koike SP - Japan
0.5/3.5* potential, 16/13/10 and 3 pitches 12/2/13
He has high work ethic and very high intelligence. We also have moved him to the bullpen.
#7 - Flavio Mansi SP - Venezuela
0.5/3* potential, 8/16/17 and 4 pitches 11/12/10/14
He has normal work ethic and high intelligence. We also have moved him to the bullpen.
So it will be exciting watching these kids hopefully develop into something special at the ABL level.
We haven't had an injection of talent into our organization at any point in the past five seasons so, we feel this was our best shot to try to make things happen longer term for our organization.
Only time will tell!
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