Carter Stenberg
Written by: Im A Gausman
Welcome back to Part 5 of the Saskatchewan Knights Chronicle. Sorry for delay in getting this particular episode posted as I have been fighting a bit of an illness during the editing process this week.
If you missed last weeks, catch up here!
Fan Interest has dropped down to 81. It’s been tipping the scales at Max 100 since the founding of the franchise. Every expansion team eventually falls out of the honeymoon period, seems we have reached that point. Keeping fan interest has become priority #1 for Mr. Zach Cone. He is still satisfied with our performance, but wants this handed ASAP.
We don’t get an increase in budget but we’ve got lots to do with Pivetta, Arraez, Torkelson, and Arenado deals expiring. We have the smallest payroll in MLB and I don’t plan to keep it that way. Expect this offseason section to be a bit larger than usual.
No Gold Gloves or Silver Sluggers for us this season – still waiting on first ever award winner.
Tarik Skubal wins his 4th Cy Young, this time unanimously. This career stretch might go down as one of the greatest of all time. Yamamoto beats out Sasaki to earn the 1st Cy Young of his career. Yamamoto also got 2 MVP votes, preventing Jefferson Quero from his animous victory. But alas, he wins his first of what might be many wins.
The AL MVP vote was WILD. I thought Judge had it in the bag again, but unlike his teammate Tarik Skubal, voter fatigue must’ve kicked in. 7 players got 1st place votes in this year’s competition. Christian Moore in his Sophomore season gets the job done, leading the league in hits and OPS. Absolutely crazy.
Free Agency comes and we have $53 million to play with after arbitration. Yeah – we gonna make it happen this year.
We have a decent free agency class this year of hitters and pitchers. The big fish are Crochet, Rutshman, and Clase… but I have my eyes in this boy out of the KBO. “Macho Man” Hyung-Cheol Kim looks like a STUD. That power and eye rating is crazy and I will do some scouting to make sure we get what’s promised on the tin, but I think we’ve got our first true superstar here.
We get the first big fish of this offseason in Garrett Crochet. It was much steeper of a cost than I was hoping to pay, but our club finally has a true ace playing in a stadium that best suits his game. His inflated HR/9 rate should lower his ERA playing in our stadium. Huge get for us here and hopefully we can keep onto him long term.
Lottery comes and we end up 3rd. I’d really like to go first one of these times.
I get an offer for Porter Hodge, I really didn’t want to move him, but we get a 19 year old 4-star prospect in return. It is very much an overpay by the Diamondbacks, so I feel compelled to take it given we have Crochet long term and slough of SP prospects ready to make debuts.
Rule 5 Draft comes as we are in an extremely tight bidding war for Kim and Rutshman. I expect to be taking A LOT of picks here to make up for our depth issues. I can release them all in Spring Training if we get enough prospects ready for the show. We take 4 players: LF Nate Narkil, SP Brady Basso, CF Slade Caldwell, and 2B Ty Southisene. They are all 2.5 star players that I’m hoping their defense and baserunning stats will make them easy to slot into a more tactical system in 2029.
The next day we make 2 big moves. To sway Hyung-Cheol Kim, we trade for CF Jung-Hoo Lee and Curtis Mead in exchange for the Jonah Bride contract and a few 3 star prospects. We are shoring up an incredible Korean outfield… except this is where I am going to get flak from the audience. This contract is gonna hurt:
Yes he will be earning $62 million in his age 37 season. Perhaps a steal for not paying the $40mil the other teams were after but we might be in a pickle if he don’t start winning or develop our drafted talent.
We get Miggy, Greinke, and CC making the HOF – in CC’s case a few years late but glad to him make it either way.
Adley Rutshman is the only fish we can’t reel in. Having to go to almost $45 million a year was just too much to ask after signing Crochet and Kim. The Phillies get him for 9 years. To make up for it though we go for some more tools – picking up an elder Kevin Gausman and Cade Smith. We also bring back Campusano to split reps with Amaya at Catcher again – this time a much more team friendly contract of $1.3 mil.
Torkelson and Mize come back on a $4.6mil and $2mil year respectively.
I went to see how the MLB Network rated our offseason, and saw just how insane the Dodgers offseason was, acquiring superstars via a series of absurd trades I can’t really capture in a screenshot other than this. Their farm has been emptied and this team has come to play.
Spring Training comes and we are starting to see some great development. Our 5th round pick of 2026, Matt Roemhildt has developed amazingly and we get this development update. Hopefully in a few months we can even call him up and hopefully make our owner happy seeing drafted talent.
Opening day arrives, and our collection of outfielders has made our Rule 5 pick Slade Caldwell and Nate Narkil expendable – so we send them back to their teams to get to our final 26 man roster.
Say hello to your 2028 Saskatchewan Knights. This team had better be a huge improvement over last year’s.
And your Portland Phantoms:
Garret Crochet gets the start on Opening Day. He pitches well but the bats just don’t show up in Milwaukee.
We have our best start in a long white, 9-15. We have a top 10 ERA in the league with Crochet, Hjelle, and Gausman all with ERAs under 2 and over 15 innings of work. Crochet is the way too early Cy Young which is such a relief.
This draft class is quite weak so far, only about 4 players with 5 star potential. Most interestingly is 4th ranked C Dave Payne… from Faro, Yukon.
The odds of this kid being a top MLB prospect is insane. Faro is one of the most remote places on earth let alone North America. He is a 4 hours mountain drive away from the closest McDonalds. Such a feel good story if this kid from a population of 440 can make an impact! He may not be the best option available, but he is the one I want.
April 23rd 2029. After winning 9 of their last 10, for the first time in franchise history (seriously) the Saskatchewan Knights are 16-16 and above .500
By the end May 1st we have the 3rd best pitching staff in the National League. The hitters haven’t lived up to expectations – Leody Taveras is batting .152 with a .440 OPS. He is one of the worst players in baseball right now. Hope he can steer the ship and put this first month behind him.
Our pitching staff has been incredible early, but the bats just haven’t been up to par. It’s hard to see us lost many of these games though we are still positive in one-run games. Hopefully this shines through in the later half od this season.
After sweeping the Reds, we are at 22-20 and tied for a wildcard spot. This is our year.
Come June, we are starting to tread water sticking around 38-43. We are struggling getting the bats going particularly with Torkelson not having the power we need him to… but then I looked in Free Agency.
The prodigal son returns. Year One hero Keston Hiura works his way back to the big leagues and hopefully in his age 32 season provides the spark to get this team back to competing before it’s too late.
42-56 at the All-Star break, I am going to try and make some moves to improve our hemorrhaging batting lineup. Torkelson, Espinoza, and Taveras have all generated -1 WAR at least and are all below Mendoza line in a ballpark that was supposed to increase average.
Fortunately for us though, Garrett Crochet is paying off for us big time and leading the league in pitching war, second in ERA and Strikeouts. He starts the all-star game and we actually have a SECOND player making it for the first time – former rule 5 pick 2B Kevin McGonigle. Honestly his stats aren’t that impressive so I was pleasantly surprised to see him here. I guess leading the league in At-Bats is enough to convince voters.
The draft rolls around and the St Louis Cardinals take SP Seth “Stony” Whitaker with the first overall pick. He has a pitching arsenal that is already near Major League level so look for him to Paul Skenes it up in the near future.
I overshoot and take C Dave Payne with the 3rd overall pick. With our second pick, we take CL Brian DiGiandomenico. Definitely a grab to go out and get a reliever this early, but the position players available didn’t inspire confidence and a potential HOF 100+ Fastball means I’m ready to take a shot on a bullpen guy like this.
Coming into July, we start seeing the batters pick up the slack. Games like this become more common after previously losing many game 2-1 or 1-0. Look at our starters current ERA’s
They are sensational yet can’t even get league average hitting to make it count. Seeing games like these definitely gets me excited though. Leody is also back above Mendoza.
Unfortunately as the trade deadline comes and goes, I am unable to make any moves to better our team. I really wanted to leverage our farm system now to pick up some pivotal pieces, but it just wasn’t in the cards for us. No deals wowed me – which was expected given the hard trade settings I had set when we started this journey. Alas, we will have to make moves in the offseason or hold onto the young talent we got.
Fortunately for us, we’ve got some pleasant surprises:
Our 5th round pick in 2026, Catcher Matt Roemhildt has been steadily progressing and moving up the prospect rankings ladder. He is now the #28 prospect in baseball and one of the best hitters in AAA this season. Will definitely be calling him up at Roster Expansion and seeing if he can keep the bat strong at the bigs.
This chart makes me want to cry. Everything exploded and fell apart in August in ways I just can’t put together. Dave “Big C” Dominey hasn’t found his groove and Bryan Bata fell off as well. Despite the fact Garret Crochet is now the best pitcher in the league, Max Meyer is also having career season along with rookie taken in the 13th round of 2025 Jonah Aase. Honestly such a shocker to see him performing as well as he is, but a welcome one nonetheless.
With Roster Expansion, I call up our top prospects SP Landon Harmon and C Matt Roemhildt. This improves our owner goals and they both have performed admirably at AAA this season with the now 73-67 Vancouver Black Wolves.
What. A. Debut.
The first ever pick in Franchise history pitches 6 innings of shutout baseball for a team that desperately needed it. Such a happy moment despite Roemhildt being held hitless. I know this season ended up being a wash as well, but we are on the cusp.
The next outing didn’t generate similar results.
We end off 65-97 in 2029. I worry for the future of this franchise as our budget is about to get a lot more difficult to deal with and we need our superstars to perform like they are superstars.
Not a single position player with a WAR over 2. Taveras and Torkelson saved their seasons – barely. Crochet was such a godsend and clearly a pitcher made for this park. Yamamoto leapfrogged him in ERA, but he still finished second in ERA and FIP as well as 3rd in WAR and Strikeouts. No idea how the voters will go as either Sasaki or Yamamoto both seem like odds on favorites to win it.
We need to get lucky and hope he doesn’t opt out after this season – but I don’t like our odds.
Playoffs arrive! Last year’s champion Royals don’t even make the playoffs – but the 77-85 White Sox do. Dear Lord the AL Central was awful this year. Portland would have made the playoffs with 78 wins in this division.
Yet against all odds they BEAT the Rays in the Wildcard round.
Let’s go Sox led by their rookie 1B Pat Perry. “D-Fark” as they call him is an absolute unit. BYU legend.
Literally how is this team winning. The Mariners had 94 wins, ranked 3rd in Runs Scored and 1st in Runs Against (the White Sox 7th and 15th respectively). The White Sox gave up 200 more runs in the regular season than the Mariners.
Well the luck ran out. It took all 7 games, but the Orioles pitching staff was too much to overcome. This series featured 5 straight shutouts to close it off which is pretty wild.
Across the league in the NL, the Braves finally make a return to the WS, their second time in this series. Let’s see if the AL East takes home yet another championship.
Unfortunately for O’s fans, the Braves get it done in 6. Trevor Larnarch in his first season as a Brave gets the WS MVP. He was a -0.1 WAR player during the regular season but showed up big in the playoffs, slugging over .700.
Congratulations Atlanta, we shall see you in 2030 and I have a feeling – maybe a hopeless hunch – that this will be the year the Knights breakthrough.
See you next time.
