Cottage Blog

Hope for the Cheese

Cheese fans knew that this would be a tough year, a rebuilding year. Their team continues to suffer from the effects of the World’s Most Terrible Draft Pick, Danny Duffy for nearly $16M. Their #2 pitcher, Sean Manaea, came down with some sort of shoulder injury last year and was supposed to be out for all of 2019. Some questioned as to whether he should be kept at all, with a contract expiration date of 2020, but Cheese ownership, well-known for honoring their commitments, decided to keep him.

Then, just as the season was about to start, disaster struck in the form of an injury to the ace pitcher, Luis Severino. In one terrible spring day, the Cheese went from having two opening day starters (Severino and Duffy) to zero. But both starters were expected to be back in a month or so. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen in Severino’s case; he has yet to pitch this year. Maybe in August?

Cheese fans across the land were aghast at the Head Cheese’ profligate spending during the rookie draft. Still stuck with Duffy’s contract, ownership went ahead with TWO first-round picks, costing another $26M. Worse yet, they didn’t get anybody who can pitch. Spending all that money, they got Shohei Ohtani, but he’s limited to DH duty this year, and an unknown Met utility player named McNeil that nobody had ever heard of.

The pitchers that were actually able to pitch didn’t do much better. Drew Smyly (admittedly an experiment) was a disaster and was let go by his MLB team. We traded two good outfielders for Tyler Skaggs, who was injured for a while, and is now gone forever. Everyone in the bullpen has been either injured or ineffective all year, except for Brad Hand, who (of course) got traded away to Portland. So Cheese fans have had to endure the worst pitching in the EFL for most of the year.

But there’s hope! Smyly has been benched. Duffy has been decent, sometimes, and so has Chase Anderson. Yonny Chirinos has been our one bright spot all year. Manaea is coming back, and so is Severino (eventually). Our phenom, Dylan Cease, has been called up. And our brilliant ownership team grabbed three new rookie pitchers in the last draft. At least one of them will be decent, right?

Cheese fans have been enjoying the best-hitting Cottage team ever. In June the Cheese led the EFL in almost every hitting category, with an EFL-adjusted team OPS of .941. McNeil, the unknown Met, leads the league in batting average, and made the all-star team.

So – if the hitting continues, and the pitching improves as expected, Cheese fans should have much to look forward to in the second half of the season.

1 Comment

  • Great thoughts/hopes, Dave! Pitching seems to be the achilles heel for many teams this year. It makes me wonder why – is it more difficult for Rookie pitchers we draft to make a strong impact right away than it is for position players? Are good pitchers getting paid more and therefore we can’t afford them? It would be interesting for someone to study the percentage of SPs on MLB teams vs. SPs on EFL teams. That might help give a sense for the dreadful pitching so many of us are experiencing on our teams!