1961 Off Season
Black & Herriage are gone as is Bob Conley. Aaron gets a nice bump in arbitration then we lock him up for 6 years at a decent price. O'Toole & Bill Smith also get long term deals just because I can't afford to rebuild my entire pitching staff again. Gale Wade, our starting CF for the past five years wants starter money when he's on the downside a career that was never that great to begin with so we ship him off to Washington for a minor league pitcher.
We seriously need some bullpen help so we make trades for 22 year old Ron Taylor from Cleveland, 23 year old Jim Lehew from the Yankees and 21 year old Ted Davidson from Cincinnati. We traded away a bunch of decent guys to make these deals but I can't pussyfoot around anymore. What's the point in stocking a system if you aren't gonna use it to your advantage.
We also add starter Jack Kralick from Washington, he'll go into our rotation and O'Toole will go to our pen.
The Washington Senators have moved to Baltimore and been rebranded as the Orioles & the A's have moved to Oakland.
The Minnesota Twins and Los Angeles Angels have joined the AL as expansion franchises.
In the expansion draft we lost C Bob Oldis, SP Jim O'Toole, RP Marshall Renfro & LF Jimmy Stewart. Only O'Toole bums me out.
Vada Pinson will start the season in CF, pretty much completing the ascension of all our best hitting prospects. Our lineup should be better with a year of maturity under it's belt. But our staff is where I'm really hanging my hat. I think we're 5 strong with a real solid young bullpen and a few live arms in the minors yet. I've gone through a lot of crappy seasons to get here but I really think this team can contend.