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 32nd
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 14th 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 3rd 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 3rd
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 4th 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 4th in payroll now, but they are only spending 18
million more than the 12th-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.
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