THE UNSUNG ANCHOR OF A CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM

Quick!  Name a few players on the Kansas City Tornadoes.  Ok, that’s our two-time defending champs, so it shouldn’t be hard, right?  Well, there’s Oliver North, of course.  (Naturally, you had to go their first.  Media whore!)  And of course their best hitter every year is Jesus Cruz.  (Nice.  Can you keep going?)  Umm, ok…  so there is that Turkey guy also.  (Right you are, Fernando “Turkey” Bautista)  Without thinking, you just named the best leadoff hitter in the ABL, and the 2017 TML MVP and 2018 TML Silver Slugger.  You might even come up with a few other names, like staff-ace Reynaldo Martinez, or slugger Akio Toyoda.  But even after listing all of these names, you have not begun to touch the true core and heart of this team.  The Anchor of the Tornadoes is not a prodigy like Oliver North, nor a big bat like Cruz or Bautista, or even the premier man in the rotation, Reynaldo Martinez.

As the curtain prepares to rise on an 8^th ABL campaign, the atmospheric conditions across the heartland point to yet another strong Tornado season.  The baseball club from Kansas City is coming off back-to-back World Series Championships so they are not about to sneak up on anyone in 2019.  Team officials believe this year’s Tornadoes are primed to field their best team yet, and there is certainly evidence to suggest that the Tornadoes are officially the team to beat in the ABL right now.  The offense is shaping up to be one of the league’s best this year, and the starting rotation has performed admirably and is young enough that additional development is likely.   But the team feels that the unsung hero of their recent Championship run, and the underrated anchor of the team, rests with their young arms coming out of the bullpen.

There was a time not too long ago when the Tornadoes bullpen was the Achilles heel of the team.  Year after year the relievers in KC would come in to put out the fires only to spread more gasoline than Exxon.   Just a couple years ago the closer in KC, Millard Moore, finished with a 6.75 ERA.  Guys like Tynan Gibson and Jorge Magana had been around since the inception of the team, but were still failing to fulfill on their promise and potential, and the Tornadoes had the worst bullpen in the league.  In response, the front office made a deliberate and bold paradigm shift in how to build a pitching staff.  “We spent the early years trying so hard to focus on starting pitching,” says owner Tim Ervin.  “But we eventually realized this strategy was backfiring because so many teams had the exact same focus on starters and so the market was soft.”  Because so many teams coveted starting pitching, you had to have a top five pick to get a sure thing in the draft, and teams would select marginal starters with promise in the early rounds over much stronger relief pitching prospects.  “We were one of those teams for many years,” Ervin said flatly, “trying desperately to drill for SP-gold against all the other teams in the league.”  The front office adapted by drafting bullpen arms early in the draft, and making significant trades that added quality young arms as well.  By acquiring relievers when the majority of the league was mining for starters, the Tornadoes were able to gather a lot of young talent that has been developing together in the system, and they have made several key trades for young bullpen arms as well.  The result is young corps of relief arms that has reached their peak development at the same time and now should be considered the best young bullpen in the ABL---  and at a bargain price to boot.  The entire projected 6-man bullpen for the Tornadoes this year is between the ages of 22 and 27 and despite leading the league last year in ERA from the bullpen, the entire combined cost for these 6 arms this year will be less than 8 million dollars.  All six of these relievers hit at least 98 on the radar gun and two of them throw the heater at 101 mph.  They are not fond of giving up the longball, as three of the arms have a GB% over 70, and the other three come in at 68, 66, and 62 mph.  Here is the projected Anchor for the Tornadoes in 2019:

Alan Buckley – Closer / Age 26.  Salary:  500k.  Acquired with 19^th pick in first round in 2015.  Last year was his first as the team closer, and Buckley saved 33 games and posted a 2.31 ERA with a WHIP of just 1.00.  In 70 innings he allowed just 48 hits and struck out 85. 

Jon Lewis – Setup / Age 27.  Salary:  4.6 million.  Acquired in trade with the Mustangs in 2015.  In four seasons with the KC bullpen, Lewis has a combined 2.81 ERA.  In the setup role last year, the southpaw allowed just 3 home runs and struck out 100 batters in 90 innings.

Michael Burton – MR / Age 25.  Salary:  500k.  Acquired with the 16^th pick in round two of the 2015 draft, Burton is a good example of how the Tornadoes grabbed a top flight young reliever in the draft when everyone was distracted by starters.  After some development, Burton burst on the ML club last year and was a big contributor with a 2.50 ERA and a 0.98 WHIP in 54 innings.

Ernesto Lopez – MR / Age 22.  Salary:  500k.  Acquired when he was just 17 years old when scouting found him in the Dominican back in 2014, he was immediately signed to ML contract.  This early contract forced Lopez onto the ML roster at the tender age of 20 two years ago, perhaps before he was ready.  But he has continued to develop, and last year he pitched 50.2 innings with a 2.66 ERA and zero homers allowed.  Lopez has allowed just 2 home runs in over 90 innings over the past two seasons.

Juan Lujuan – MR / Age 27.  Salary:   500k.  Acquired in the 2016 trade that sent former Staff Ace Antonio Gomez packing, Juan Lujuan is the middle innings eater on the team, with the 17-rated stamina by OSA.  Lujuan is coming off a season where he posted a 3.81 ERA in over 80 innings. 

Glenn Rush – MR / Age 27.  Salary:  1.25 million.  Acquired in the 2015 trade that sent former speedster Lawrence Fox packing, Glenn Rush missed most of last season with a serious injury that resulted in Tommy John surgery.  Still, in the last two seasons combined for KC, Rush has pitched 101.2 innings with a 2.66 ERA. 

The plan to stockpile relievers was so successful, in fact, that the Tornadoes even traded a 5-star relief prospect to the Seattle Sasquatch---  Andres Nevarez.  And the list above also doesn’t include another reliever acquired in trade, David Perez, who performed very well in 22 innings with the big league club last year, and will be first alternate promoted from Joplin this year if someone falls prey to an injury.  A bullpen with this type of depth and talent, allows the team to accentuate their strengths in the starting rotation and, to a degree, hide their weaknesses.  And a bullpen this young and inexpensive suggests that the Tornadoes will anchored by from the pen for many more years.

THE TORNADOES UNPREDICTABLE PATH: The Signing of Chris Collins

If one were to dig into the history of the Kansas City Tornadoes to search for a front office theme or a thesis by which the approach of player personnel management through the years could be described, it might go something like this:  A 100% commitment to staying young, and an absolute unwillingness to overspend in the Free Agent Market.  When the Free Agent Pool is announced each year, the Tornadoes Brass typically dive into their storm shelter and avoid the field like an F5 storm passing overhead.  In winning their back-to-back championships, the Tornadoes compiled their mix of talent without using the Free Agent Market for anything other than additional youth.  The only member of the two Championships teams that came to the organization via Free Agency was starting pitcher and staff-ace Reynaldo “Sluggo” Martinez.  Martinez was signed when he was just a teenager for the amazing price of 66.75 million over five years.  Some GM’s were highly critical of the decision to spend 66 million on a teenager with zero pro experience.  Whether you like the move or not, it showed that the front office was more than willing to spend money on a high priced youngster.  But the same team has never been willing to pay the big bucks for a high priced free agent in his golden years.  Even if an upgrade was available in free agency, the front office seemed content to stay with the youngsters and continue a commitment to their development.

                But this year turned out to be different, as the Tornadoes recently announced the free agent signing of outfielder Chris Collins to a monster 20 million per year deal.  Collins has been a consistent hitter in the ABL since the inaugural 2012 season.  In more than 3700 career AB’s, Collins has compiled a combined average of .338 and an OBP of .405, while averaging 29 homers every 162 games, and more than 100 runs and RBI’s.  He is coming off season where he hit .307 with an OBP of .389 and 25 homers.  And he has done all of this while playing respectable defense as a corner outfielder.  To say that he can make a contribution to the starting lineup of almost any team, would be an understatement.  But Collins is also 37 years old right now, and will be 38 before the year is over.  That’s not just old in terms of how the Tornadoes view player age, that’s old under any team view.  SS Stephen Everett will be 34 years old this year for KC and Jesus Cruz just had his 32^nd birthday.  Aside from these two players, every member of the active roster this year projects to be in their 20’s.  To say that Chris Collins doesn’t exactly “fit the mold” in Kansas City might be putting it mildly.  And it’s not like the team was exactly hurting in the outfield.  The Tornadoes have Oliver North in CF and Fernando Bautista in RF, and they shuffled a trio of players in LF last year – Claude Morin, John Byford, and Shunso Meshizuka.  All three of these players are young and have shown an ability to play at the ML level.  So why did the Tornadoes go out and clearly overpay for Chris Collins this offseason?

                “Simply put, because we could afford to,” says owner Tim Ervin.  “We had a real surplus of open budget room these next two years, and we felt we owed it to this group of players and to our fans to try and build on our success.”  Even after back-to-back Championships, the Tornadoes projected to have a payroll that ranked only 14^th among 24 teams prior to signing Collins.  “We had all this money to spare, and we just felt that Chris would be another top rate bat in the heart of the lineup,” Ervin said of his new slugger.  One of the reasons the team had so much money to spare was an owner that has been very generous once the team began winning.  After the team lost almost 100 games in 2016, the owner dropped the budget from 124 million to 120 million.  But after winning the Championship in 2017 the owner added 16 million to the budget, and when the team won again last year he added another 14 million.  That is a 30 million dollar increase in budget in just two years and has the Tornadoes ranking 3^rd in the league with a budget of 150 million.  Collins signed for an resounding 20 million per year over the next three years, with the third year being an unlikely team option.  That makes Collins the 3^rd highest paid player in the ABL right now, behind Tom Becker in Washington and Raul Perez in Cabo.  The Tornadoes jump all the way to 4^th in payroll now, at just over 102 million.  But it is important to note that the top three payrolls are all over 134 million, so the drop then to 102 million is vast canyon of 32 million dollars.  The Tornadoes may rank 4^th in payroll now, but they are only spending 18 million more than the 12^th-ranked Washington Federals.  So you can mark this signing down as a likely overpay for Collins, but it still leaves the Tornadoes near the pack in payroll commitment.    It was a big leap off script for the Tornadoes, but the risk was pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things.  And now the front office feels that their first six hitters in the lineup will be able to stand up against every team in the league, with the early projected lineup being:  Oliver North, Chris Collins, Fernando Bautista, Jesus Cruz, Akio Toyoda, and Curt Hall. 

                With Collins now slated as the clear starter in left field for the Tornadoes, this leaves a trio of outfielders from the Championship team a year ago scrambling for the final two reserve spots in the outfield.  Morin, Byford, and Meshizuka all have shown success at the ML level.  All are between 24 and 27 years old and are good enough to start in this league.  And it is not like the ownership of the Tornadoes to push one of them down to the minors to make room for a 38 year old veteran, but that’s exactly what is going to happen.  For the first time in history, the Kansas City Tornadoes are not following their usual path.  And that is one of the reasons that this team might be their most formidable yet.