THE SEASON THAT WAS

Time for a wrapup(something we'd rather forget except for our survival courtesy of the commissioner.) First the World Serious. We hear through the grapevine that Syracuse dethroned Indy so there is a God. We only hear rumors down here as the clouds and dust are so thick we can't see such high altitudes. 
As usual,we are left shaking our heads and wondering what happened. We do know we were plagued by inconsistency. A few winning streaks inspired some hope,only to be dashed by even longer and more frequent losing streaks. When we hit,we couldn't pitch. When the pitching prevailed,we lost our bats. Vinny Chen(and others)took forever to get on track Mid season acquisitions and promotions(Ismail Fuentes,Zachary Day,Glen Looper and Johnny Corino) may give us a boost with a full season.Then there was the emergence of Doug Pavlik and Desi Flores on the mound after blowing several previous opportunities. As expected,Angel Jose and Tom Melo
(who was a bargain at $4.2 mil) delivered. We need 68 wins next season to meet the requirement and that's a pretty steep hill to climb. We are guardedly optimistic that we will have a better season but are very unsure it will be good enough. We will stay the course,continuing to spend money on free agents and developing our minor league talent. The past two drafts have produced center fielder Herm Stein and pitcher Chili Baker.  Both are progressing but not near ready yet.
Stein will start the season  in High A;he showed he wasn't ready for AA yet but,hopefully,will be early in the season. Baker logged a 2.75 ERA in Rookie ball and has been promoted to Low A. If ready,he could be in line for early promotion. To sum up-just give me another beer try to "foggetabutit."