The AL East Cannot Be Stopped (Out Of The Park Baseball 26 Sim Year 7)

Big news…

Ohtani calls it quits 6 years into his contract – retiring at 36. I have absolutely no idea how this would work out in real life given the nature of that contract, but I can say that he has every right to given how his last 2 years played out.

2029 was ruthless and he missed the entirety of 2030. It figures given how many people imagine this is how Shohei’s career will play out in real life given the demand of his two-way skills on his body. In either case, we shall see you in Cooperstown son. Disappointing to say the least you only got 1 Ring out of the greatest career in pro baseball history.

To start the offseason, Garret Crochet opts out of his contract. This really sucks to see happen after 2 great years as the teams Ace, but he wants to move into greener pastures. Ultimately he is expandable of our stars as we finally have our prospect core developed into MLB level starters – we just need to develop them to perform. But Aase, Harmon, Watson, Dominey, and O’Hare are all under 25 and ready to take on a full time rotation role in this team.

We aren’t losing much in arbitration it seems other than Crochet. Depending on money remaining after, and if we can possibly trade Quero who is about to get a huge payday in Arbitration, I still might try and resign our ace.

Our owner is satisfied with the season result but he is going to want to see improvements soon. I didn’t start this series for you all to watch us become the new Athletics.

He gave us the goal of acquiring a new Power Hitter. He is right as defense and power are the biggest things we need to address after this miserable season. The boys are hitting for average, and that’s what we want in this stadium, but elite outfield defenders might be in order to make the cavernous depths of our outfield useful for us.

Chris Sale and Alex Bregman retire. Notably, Jacob Degrom and Aaron Judge do not. Degrom is coming back for his age 43 season which is nuts but you love to see. I might go for him when Crochet falls through to be our 5th man.

Judge is only 9 HR from 600, here is hoping he becomes the 10th man to join that elite club this season.

No Gloves for us yet, Bobby Witt and Parker Meadows keep hoarding them in the AL. Lucas Erceg and 44 Year old Chris Martin win Reliever of the year. 2030 was apparently the year of the old guy.

Julio Rodriguez wins his 6th Silver Slugger. How he has never won MVP yet is beyond me.

By some baffling metric, Rene Markwell didn’t even win Rookie of the Year – losing to his own teammate Lucas Franco. Absolutely bizarre stuff but he did have slightly more WAR and a higher Slugging %. But still – wild to lead a league in every stat except that in your rookie year and LOSE.

Zazueta wins his 2nd straight Cy Young, beating out his teammate and AL ERA leader Li Zhao for the crown.

Sasaki wins his first career Cy Young as a Dodge-

What the hell is that hat?

HE WHAT

Trade deadline was boring, the first week of offseason sure wasn’t. This deal features 5 star prospect pitcher Chris Thomas along with several 3-Star prospects only a few years from the show. A crazy return as Sasaki’s contract was just set to expire. Dodgers lost their ace and found a potential new one. Insane.

It didn’t stop there either! Yamamoto got traded to the 110 win Mariners for a series of 3-4 star prospects. Looks like the team is getting torn down now that Ohtani is gone. They did not get another ring for the 6 years they had all of these guys together.

I spoke it into existence a few sentences ago, but Julio finally gets his flowers. Meanwhile Michael Harris gets his 2nd consecutive MVP award.

I went to check how last year’s two-way superstar did this year and was disappointed to see he suffered the dreaded “Partially Torn Labrum” back in August. It was a down year already for him, but a disappointing way to end his follow up to 2029.

Well, I made a decision – and got Garrett back before touching free agency. He will be getting $30 mil until the end of his age 36 season if he so chooses to stick around after 2032. The important bit here is that we’ve got him returning to lead this rotation for at least another 2 years.

We have some interesting people coming up in this year’s international free agent pool including Cuban defect SP Cesar Gutierrez who is about as league ready of a pitcher the league has seen since Fernandez. Not in the cards for us, but I will definitely be interested to see where he lands.

This year’s free agency is actually quite stacked. All of these names here put on incredible seasons in 2030 and most of them still quite young. Jackson Merrill was 7th in MVP voting and is still only 27 years old. If only we weren’t paying Leody Taveras…

We don’t have much to play with this offseason unfortunately, but I will still do my best to improve our outfield defense as well as move Quero for some quality pieces. He definitely can’t be our 5th highest salaried player while being a backup catcher.

I get this great offer from the Cubs after shopping packages with some of our prospects. Billy Barlow hasn’t progressed much as an 8th round pick, but this return is honestly fine given his position. I wish him and Edgar the best in Chicago.

With the added cap and some financial maneuvering, I got us $9mil this offseason. I really hesitate to put together another deal like the Taveras one for another outfielder as we already are overpaying Kim and Leody. I will send a few offers out and I think I’ve found the piece I’m looking for…

The Draft Lottery arrives and we FINALLY get the #1 pick. I can’t wait to see what the top prospects list will be come next season as we get full choice to find the next superstar.

There are some interesting signings early on. Merrill becomes the highest paid Blue Jay in history and DeGrom joins a Tigers team that won 68 games last year. An interesting choice for sure.

Rule 5 Draft arrives again and I am hoping we do as well as last year as Justin Lawson ended up becoming out Closer posting 29 saves in a sub-70 win season. This year I am hoping to find another quality bullpen arm and possibly a outfield defender specialist to use at home… Konnor Griffin is that man.

I also take Bryce Blaser from the Blue Jays as they won’t be needing his services given the signing of Mr. Merrill.

A few days after the draft a couple signings happen and I jump for joy as I got our guy. Parked Meadows joins our outfield. The dominant defensive center fielder is coming off a career year in Tampa and is the exact combo of speed and defense we need to improve our game. He isn’t the power bat we need yet but he shores up a few holes that we’ve had with Leody.

Carroll joins Minnesota on a monster deal,band the Dodgers sign another of our bullpen arms. So bizarre how they just pick up what we can’t bring back in Saskatchewan. Guess there is a novelty to play in a city with 3x the population as our province.

We don’t get Manoah but he does sign a pretty big minor deal with the Guardians who look to want to use him in their rotation this year. If he flounders, maybe we can make a trade.

Justin Verlander is almost unanimously added to the HOF. Braun is just a couple votes short in his 6th year. Hoping that Waino, Kimbrel, and Price are able to put together campaigns to get elected before the 10 years is up.

As Spring Training starts, the few remaining free agencts start taking minor league deals. These won’t count towards our payroll so it’s something we need to rely on as we wait out some of these enormous contracts.

Luckily we get to bring back an old face and the second longest tenured Knight of all-time, Miguel Amaya. He will slot into Quero’s role behind Roemhildt. Hopefully he can have a big season like Edgar did!

Speaking of that, before we start this season I actually wanted to review what these first 6 years have looked like in the Knights history. Obviously it is a bit disappointing how things played out, but there is lots of good in there. Bo Bichette has been our star along with a consistent pitching staff that’s ready to break the doors open on a 2031 season.

It is slightly embarrassing though that both Roemhildt and Grand are Top 10 in team history for WAR given they played one season last year.

I should have been watching the waiver wire. Manoah got sent down and now the Phantoms claimed him. Definitely something I gotta pay more attention to.

Opening day arrives and MLB Network predicts we will win 72 games! Let’s see if we can do even better. They also predict Cesar Gutierrez is going to win Cy Young as a rookie for the Padres, I’ll be interested to see how our first game against him goes if we get the chance this season.

I’m also happy to report Palmer Carriere and Anson Laviolette have made the roster this season. Let’s see if the Wadena, SK product can make the most of his time as the first ever hometown player for the Saskatchewan Knights.

Every time I write something like this it happens.

We lose the opening series against Arizona 0-3. Ugh.

Just a road bump though. We open up at home against Milwaukee with Landon Harmon getting the start.

And look at that! A killer performance against a perennial playoff team.

We also got our taste of Cesar Gutierrez early, with Jonah Aase getting the better of him in a 1-0 route.

Parker Meadows is out for six weeks while the team starts off slow already at 6-15. Our bullpen has blown so many games at this point. Every competitive game we have, someone in the bullpen blows the whole thing. It’s hard to watch and honestly makes me horrified if this team can ever truly compete.

We get the draft rankings and on first glance it doesn’t appear like any particular player jumps off the page. I’m hoping as we begin to scout these guys we start finding a clear #1. Right now we are projected to take Jim Worse first overall.

We finally got the best way to win a ballgame. Kevin McGonigle comes in clutch with a bases loaded HBP with 2 outs to win the ballgame.

Drey Jameson threw one pitch in relief and it plunked Mr McGonigle for the W.

By April 19th, the team is 10-20 and drastic changes need to be made for the bullpen. I change up our sub strategy to leave our starters in as long as we can. They aren’t the highest stamina guys, but we need to eat innings that don’t go to this bullpen.

11 IP might be all she wrote for Mr Laviolette on the bigs. Hoping Tommy John doesn’t hurt him too much in his development but horrible news on a rough season. Grand gets back spasms and is out a month or more. I’ve almost lost complete control of this season and it is April 23rd.

But then a miracle happens. We sweep the 1st place Rockies and shut down the bats of their stacked young core.

Then we beat the Dodgers…

Then we lose our best player for a month.

It is May 3rd and I want off this roller coaster.

Despite all this, the team is actually winning games. Our bullpen is figuring it out as we’ve called up and down a bunch of people just trying to strike a balance that we can close out ball games. A healthy batting lineup, and this team might get there.

Shoot me.

We struggle alone to a 27-40 record which is just the worst. Fortunately, we’ve had big production from a surprise source. I got International FA Mitsuhito Oka on a minor league deal, and he has been smashing bombs in the majors. He hasn’t got a very good avg or hit for contact but he is becoming our own little Kyle Schwarber. Hopefully with the right finessing we can get him in position to drive home lots of runs.

All-star Break: we are 41-56. Actually not bad given the injury report. We actually are 7-3 in our last 10, including a 6 game win streak. Perhaps being closer to healthy after the break we can put together a run, only 12 games back of the last wildcard spot.

Garret Crochet again is our sole representative at this year’s game, despite Jonah Aase having a better season all around. Had our position players remained healthy, it is likely Roemhildt or Bichette could have joined him this season as they both are having very productive seasons.

We have a 4 game win-streak after the break bringing up to 46-57. We are 3rd place in our division for what feels like the first time ever. We win a 12-9 route of the New York Mets in which Konnor Griffin hit for the cycle, the first in team history. He has a .168 avg going into this game which shows that anything can happen at any time! Congratulations Konnor!

This brings us to the draft. The rankings have shifted a bit since first being revealed, now High School SS Yasutomo “Burnsey” Isono is the top ranked player in this year’s draft. Given his high contact and gap power potential, I am excited to see what this guy can do for us as the first #1 Overall Pick in franchise history.

The Tigers take SP Jamie “Sac” Holcomb 2nd overall, he is the closest to MLB ready prospect with a 4 ½ star potential. There was no 5 star recruits this draft except one reliever so definitely not expecting this draft to shake up the top prospects board too much.

Jim Wiese, who was originally projected to go #1, falls all the way to #14 and is picked up by the San Diego Padres.

After Crochet shuts out the Mets on draft day for our 5th consecutive win, the Knights find themselves 2nd place in the NL Central. What an incredible turnaround. It took a lot of maneuvering, but it seems we finally found a bullpen that works and closes out games for our talented pitching staff. Our bats still need to string hits together, but for now the arms are winning us games.

We are 56-65 at the trade deadline. I wish we had a bit more money to play with but unfortunately we do not. Granted if we keep this pace up, we can potentially make wildcard. We are only 5 ½ games back at this point.

The trade deadline had some interesting developments. Jacob DeGrom will be joining the NL Central leading Cubs as the Detroit Tigers flounder 11 games back of the wildcard. This is Degrom’s 9th team in 6 years.

We don’t make many moves here. I was actually hoping to angle a huge deal for Detroit’s superstar Bryce Rainer but op-

He is hurt again. Scary prospects given the similarities to Ohtani. Missing almost the entirety of the 2031 season. He just hasn’t been able to get it together since his incredible 2029 MVP campaign. Still he is only 26 and under team control for a few campaigns yet. I’m definitely going to keep my eye on him for this offseason if I can swing it.

Alek Manoah also tore his flexor tendon. Only gets 91 innings for the Phantoms before his career there (probably) ends.

Embarrassingly a few days after the deadline, this happens –

Carlos Rodon, who was a trade deadline acquisition for the Cubs, no hits us in his second game in a Chicago uniform. Tough pill to swallow probably rougher for the White Sox fans reading this.

I want to imagine where this team would be at if not for the injury addled months of April and May.

The next game we smash the Dodgers at home with 3 round-trippers from Kim.

By the time Roster Expansion comes by in September, we are at 71-80, already the best team Saskatchewan has ever fielded. Wild Card is still 6 games away, a tall task, but we are one of the hotter teams in baseball and maybe – just maybe luck goes our way.

It starts off hot with Oka hitting bombs 30 and 31 against the giants – the first Knight to ever surpass 30 in a season.

Crochet gives up 6 in the first 3 innings, but the team powers back and walks off the 1st place Giants – we are coming.

Unfortunately… things don’t go out way in the next few games. We lose a series to the last place Cardinals and Miami squeaks out some close victories and we get the news we are eliminated from this year’s playoffs.

We end the season 75-87 with a 4-5 lose to the Cincinnati Reds.

After the season I immediately look to replace our assistant GM, the season ended with our clubhouse feuding and we needed to get that squared away. I haven’t mentioned it much on the series but players have different personality traits and affect certain variables of team performance – this goes for coaches as well. Since we needed to cut down on coaches who were too personable, I found Saskatchewan baseball legend Andrew Albers looking for a job. His personality type meshes with our locker room and I’m hoping he can provide a bit of guidance for a talented, but irritable front office.

Before we get too far into that, lets see how we did this season.

Most interesting of our graphic here is that we were 44-37 at home, and 31-50 on the road. Clearly the strategy has worked in building a team around our ballpark, but having them even perform close to the same on the road is paramount. This is actually the largest home field advantage discrepancy I have EVER seen.

Our defense didn’t improve much, though Parker Meadows did perform in the games he did play. I still want to work on this but priority will still be for improving bats and bullpen. Oka was a great find in a Three True Outcomes game, but 206 Ks is a hard pill to swallow for his 33 Homers. At least he brought the average above Mendoza by the end and slugged nearly .500.

Matt Roemhildt was the team’s best player, and incredibly so given he only started 96 games as catcher. Miguel Amaya generating 1.2 WAR I’m the other 57 games is also amazing – that’s almost a 4 WAR full season.

Rhylan Thomas was a late call up after being a minor league signing. His .338 avg over only 161 plate appearances was still good enough to be the team’s most productive hitter. Not sure if I will be able to get him back next season, but contributions like that were huge for us.

The biggest surprise was Thomas Saggese who quite honestly was an after thought in the Edgar Quero deal this offseason. I didn’t even expect him to be on the starting lineup this year but he found the spot and stayed in it to play the most games for the team, and even putting up over 20 Home Runs. Him and Chris Clarke both were making huge contributions that we got for only our backup Catcher, who’s replacement was as productive if not more so in Amaya. This is how you Moneyball.

Portland finished dead last at 65-97. Gaby Helmreich regressed this year and Braxton Garrett never became “ace material”. Still, they’ve got the pieces in the lineup to build around so hopefully they turn it around soon.

The Yankees are back in the playoffs after missing last season. The Marlins and Orioles won their respective divisions and are looking to repeat. Most shocking is the Rockies missing the postseason by a SINGLE GAME. Despite Rene Markwell putting together one of the best hitting seasons of the past decade. Dare I say – video game numbers?

Both him and Gutierrez put up insane seasons and their stats are just as ridiculous to boot. Look at all that Blue!

Guttierez leading the league in ERA and Innings is a rare combo in our times of baseball – particularly 5 complete games when the next closest NL pitcher has ONE. Considering he is a sidearmer throwing 96, it is a nice to see against all the 100+ MPH heaters.

Let’s see how these first rounds of playoffs shake out.

Sorry Mets fans. Soto is gonna be ring chasing for another year. The AL East continues to dominate these playoffs. The Mariners look to get the monkey off their back and overcome these surging yanks. It looks like Aaron Judge is on the IL for another 7 days, that should give Mariners fans hope as their star studded rotation might get some relief.

Yamamoto dominated the Yankees in game 3. Meanwhile the surging Giants prevent any hope Miami Marlins had of seeing a repeat WS appearance.

The Cubs bulldoze the Padres with new ace, 28 year old Carlos Rodon (again, sorry White Sox fans).

Before we sim here I have got to make note of these Giants. In a ballpark that has worse HR avg than ours does now, they had this rogues gallery launching bombs every night. You honestly love to see it.

Let’s see how the LCS shape up:

Chicago Cubs legend Jacob Degrom will not be repeating as WS champion. It is a shame, but this Giants team looks unstoppable.

Though the Red Sox just completed a major coup over in the AL. They were down 3-2 in the series and came back with a 1-0 victory in game 7 to return to the WS. Yamamoto gave up just 4 hits, but one run in the 8th was enough. Former MVP Christian Moore and the crew of current Red Sox top prospects Anthony, Mayer, and Campbell look to repeat their 2027 success story.

Scary looking Boston team hungry for a WS crown:

The AL East stranglehold on professional baseball continues. Absolutely insane for the Sox to respond to 10-0 loss in Game 2 with 4 straight wins to take home the World Series Championship.