2077 Moose Jaw Diamond Dogs Preview

[TheGobOne]

Guess who's back.....back again. Pretty much the whole gang. Also, since the OOTP gods smiled upon my team when I posted a preview, you damn sure know I'm going to do it again.

THE BREAD
C - Aguirre/E. Sanchez platoon
1B - F. Sanchez
2B - Bowman (for now)
SS - Munoz
3B - Torres
LF - Clark
CF - Bray/Delaney platoon
RF - Van der Bas
---------------------------
IF - C. Sanchez
IF - Dan Newman
OF - Joseph Hawkins

THE BUTTER
ROTATION - Ruiz, Huang, Williams, Garcia, Rich
BULLPEN - Patterson, Benitez, Colon, Thomas, McCoy, B. Sanchez, Holder

POTENT POTABLES
The Diamond Dogs bring back essentially the same team. The only new addition to the lineup is young CF Andrew Yates. Anchored by a strong rotation - including Angel Ruiz who will start opening day for the 4th consecutive year - and an above average bullpen, the DiamondDogs look to take the AL Central again.

LOL JK that's last year's summary but it holds the same basically. Ruiz will start opening day for the 5th straight year. Pitching and defense is still the name of the game. The bullpen is arguably better and the lineup only lost Armando Torres because of money. The "Aruban Allstar" Take van der Bas will take over in RF this year. We lost Danny Thomas but he was taking hits on all his ratings and wanted too much money. Hopefully he does well in LA because they aren't in my divison.

Jack Patterson takes over as full time closer as he's just ready. No knocks on Cisco Benitez who carried the pen for years but Patterson took over the role last year and it seemed to work out decent for us.

Everyone else is basically status quo. The only other interesting piece to watch is Hawkins who hit 50 HR in AA last year. He's taking over the pinch hitter role essentially so it'll be exciting to see if he has more HR's or K's by the end of the season.

COMING ATTRACTIONS
Danny Russell (who I have considerably better than OSA but not a single person has asked about so /shrug) will be up likely before the end of April - just gotta manipulate that service time - unless one of the placeholder platoons goes ham.

Todorovic should be right behind him but the Dogs need to make a spot for him. Bowman has been asked about by ~10 teams but no one wants to pull the trigger. The most common complaint is he just turned 29, yet we have guys like Nonaka and Luis Perez smashing the ball into their late 30s. This guy could, and probably will, rake for another 6-8 years but the Dogs cannot afford him as the pitching staff all need to be paid.

Future of the corner OF looks great with Ruben Herrera about a year away. RF may be a concern but Don Sims or Nate Lee could fill in their nicely as cheap options for a long time.

The bullpen is going to be scary in a couple years. Like stupid scary. Wiley will make the jump this year. Roman could if he lights up AA and Bill Smith ain't far behind. It's almost overkill honestly as my rotation is so solid that the pen gets used so little but no one seems to give a shit about RP specs so I'll shake what my momma gave me and see how it works.

Some super far off specs to watch are Chavez (just traded for and my scout has a low POT but I really like his bars). Guao (thank you 50% INTL scouting budget....finally) who was found during the playoffs at that. Castro (who better fucking work out since I traded perennial Allstar Timmy Riley for him). Santos (signed as an OF from IAFA but realized he can play IF and slowly climbing every few months).

If you've read this far then thank you and I have two things for you. I want you to know I have four players with the last name Sanchez on my team. And also to hopefully help immersion I will trade you any prospect in my system that both OSA and my scout have at 45 or lower potential for free for taking the time to read all this. Just quote this paragraph and take your free lottery ticket. First quote only.

THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK

[Cnasty]

Awesome looking squad again.

Going back to back would be impressive.

[wdoupis]

Really fun read mixing up the preview. Good luck to the fighting Sanchez's