Maple finished the opening month of the 8th season of ABL baseball in winning fashion going 14-13. Maple after finishing .500 in the 2015 season has had 78, 68 and 58 wins seasons. Currently Maple is at 17-15 after the 1st week in May and looks poised to return to their glory years in the ABL (2012-2014) when they won divisional titles in the first three seasons of the ABL.
Starting in 2015, Maple has had some decent success building through the draft as the team has drafted current 40 man roster players; Jesus Ramirez SP/RP, George Evans DH/OF, John Jones CL and Brad Thomas OF. The immediate future looks promising too with Zeus Hallman CL, William Lee 1B and Ramu Pavi SP waiting in the ABL wings to make a mark in the league.
Maple is scoring 5.4 R/G this season which is their all time high pace. The previous best was 5.2 R/G in 2015. Pitching wise the team is giving up 4.8 R/G which is their best mark since 2016 (4.7 R/G).
Leading the way for Maple so far has been; Garrett Bennet 3B, .302 bavg, 9 HR, 30 RBI. Garrett was acquired from Las Vegas in 2017 in a trade for MR Pancho Romero. Pancho is currently in the AAA farm system of Las Vegas after a short successful stint at the ABL last year.
In the rotation, the waiver claims of SP Luis Lopez from SoCal and Diogo Negreiros from Jacksonville have been stabilizing as the Starters ERA has improved to 8th overall in the TML. John Jones the CL from the University of South Carolina who pitches with a chip on his shoulder after divisional rival GM Gary Altman refused to put the Gamecocks in their draft pipeline; has been effective with 5 saves and a ERA of 0.55 / WHIP 1.22. How does Gary sleep at night knowing his team is in South Carolina?
The minors are all playing very well especially in Single A where the Kingwood Knights the defending league champions are off to a torrid 25-7 start and 1st place in their division! AA Sandy Springs is in 1st place in the division at 20-12 and AAA Astoria is in 3rd place in the division sitting 4 games back at .500, 16-16.
The Maple minor league system has moved up again ranking 3rd overall with 126 points and the following players on the list: Ramu Pavi SP (A) - 9th, William Lee 1B (AA) - 25th, Pedro Perez SP (AA) - 37th, Yoshiago Ueno SP (AAA) - 46th and Jeff Kimball SP (AA) - 50th. The potential is no doubt there but, statistically speaking these players are off to very slow starts and it will be something to watch moving forward. William "CANNON" Lee has already been demoted to AA after starting the season at AAA.
In the International Complex, we have trimmed our prospects to 20 players after nearly reaching 50 last year. The reasoning being that Maple management agreed to pour much more money into player development and scouting this year. We are hoping to find higher initial raw talent than before. Our best prospect is Hayden Capel SP ($4.1M) signing bonus. He should make the ABL as a 4/5th type starter. The other higher ranked prospects have been called up to Single A Kingwood starting this season. We don't expect to be very active in the International Free Agent signing period this year so we will have to count on our scouting department to get it done.
Maple with the 16th highest payroll and some cash available and a ton of specs could be an interesting team to watch come trade deadline if they are hanging around in the Billy Martin division in late July!
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