2020, mark it down as the year that the New Jersey Athletics as we know them moved in a significant new direction. It wasn't just the age of the team, but the continual inability of the team to make the AFBL Championship Series, despite being in the playoffs every year of the AFBL existence.
The team had the players, but didn't just have the nerve to get it done, with just one championship from 8 straight visits to the playoffs and the veterans still of value to those teams wanting to make a push the decision was made to significantly break up the team.
The original plan was to keep a couple of veterans in SP Sepulveda and LF/1B Tim Mayfield, probably our best pitcher and hitter respectively over the life of the franchise. But all that changed when a crazy man from Iowa said he wanted to form a championship winning team with no less than 11, half our roster, Athletics. At first it sounded like a silly idea, but this guy from Iowa had major plans and most importantly he was willing to pay with youth and draft picks.
Despite giving up Sepulveda, Pratt, Houston and Boyer, four mainstays of our rotation, plus Geboyan, Mayfield and Warren, three of our best hitters and Newbold and Hynes, awesome relievers who had been a major component of the best pen in baseball the new Athletics still look capable of playing baseball and won't be heading for a top 5 draft pick.
Our rotation will be spear headed by Juan Martinez and the new additions of Cliff Ball, Jeff Flowers and Bandit Hatfield whiel Bobby Brown will continue after his heroics from the #5 spot last season.
In the pen we have kept Bob Jones, who has to be considered one of the best closers around, while Cisco Castro remains and moves into a setup position, a perfect spot for him and his strike out ability. On paper Gilmore, Gonzalez and Cantrell don't look a scary proposition from the pen, but we know they'll deliver solid performances as a unit.
On the hitting side we have kept Neilsen at catcher, Kang in the outfield and out middle infield of Simmons and Taylor giving us a very solid spine to our defence. The big addition has been 3B Jake White, he looks major league ready despite coming straight from the draft and was our selection with one of the draft picks we got from Iowa in the Sepulveda deal. Xavier Harris will start at 1B, he has the potential to hit the ball a long way and now he gets to show what he can do day after day. The rest of our outfield will be filled by a combination of Martinez, Brant, Ayala and Banks as the situation arises.
What we have now as an organisation is some talented youth, yes many came across in the draft class, but we also added some from Iowa, and even West Virginia in a deal that saw Schroeder & Fowler move to our Patriot League rivals.
The big coup is that we currently have 16 picks in the next draft, 2 in every round having acquired Iowa's entire draft class, this gives us negotiating power for current talent or prospects or we can just hold tight and add 16 youngsters to our organisation next year.
All in all now seemed like the right time to make these moves, but only time will tell if the decision was correct, if Iowa pulls off a ring I'll know we gave it up too early, but if they stumble and our ex-players don't hold up these major moves will go down in the history of the Athletics as a masterstroke by the craftiest tactician this organisation will ever see.
