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Kissimmee
Cardinals
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Personnel History Brian Potrafka tried to compete with an expansion team and won 94 and 87 games his first two years, but ran out of assets and picks and paid for it the next two campaigns. Along with expansion draftee Edgar Martinez, the Cossacks added a number of players at the expense of youth and draft picks. Chipper Jones cost a lot of youth; Tom Glavine cost two good picks. Jeff Kent cost a #1 pick a year later, and A.J.Pierzynski cost the #2 pick that year. By the time year three came around the cupboard was bare. A 52 win season ensued in year three, and year four featured progress back to .500. Drafting was steady: Johan Santana, Miguel Cabrera, and Bobby Crosby have all been solid picks. Cabrera was sent to Seoul for Adam Dunn, and Crosby was sent to Cambridge for Raffy Furcal, which accelerated the maturing process and brought the Cossacks a World Series appearance, where they were just outmatched by Nashua in 5 games. A restocking got them Nick Johnson and Jon Lieber to go along with existing talent, and got them the Conference's best record in 2005, but they were tripped up in a rematch of the previous year's first round series with Seoul. With the same cast in 2006 the Cards couldn't repeat.
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2006 Johan Santana's 19-11 3.33 season led a top notch pitching staff that also got good performances by Randy Johnson and Jon Lieber, but the offense was way too inconsistent for the Cardinals to repeat. Adam Dunn and Craig Monroe each drove in 110 runs but Dunn struck out over 200 times and often sat against lefties and Monroe had a .312 ob%. The high water mark was 17 over in late July, which was good for a 3 1/2 game lead in the division. In late August a 0-7 road swing to Duluth and Rosehaven (scoring only 15 runs over the week) moved them from 1st to 4th in the division. With September featuring 19 road games in 22 days, it wasn't going to be easy to recover, and a 7-12 record in those games doomed the Cardinals to also ran status. 2005 In late July following 3 losses at Cambridge and 2 at Dresden, Kissimmee beat the Blacks 6-3 in the series finale and went on a 26-4 run that ended any drama in the division race. The momentum carried into playoffs games 1 and 2, but Seoul then found their bats and mashed the Cards' staff for 12 homers in the four straight losses that ended the Cardinals' season. The offense, which was fairly weak past Dunn and arrival Nick Johnson, was exposed in the playoffs. The pitching was the conference's strongest. The top four starters won 67 games: Johan Santana 20-6, Randy Johnson 16-10, 3.12, Jon Lieber 14-10, and Jason Johnson 17-10. Reliever Scott Linebrink 0.56, 34 saves won Relief Man of the year. 2004 The Cossacks started well, going to 20 games over by the All-Star break, and then coasted into a playoff spot. Along the way, they got passed by Madiba (permanently) and then by Maui (temporarily), but because the Crosley Division was in such disarray, a playoff spot was never really in doubt. The team was still 20 games over .500 towards the end of August, and then a 7 game winning streak helped pad the final record at 96-66. Offensively, the team was Adam Dunn's as he put up big numbers: 53 HRs and 148 RBIs. There wasn't much else. Outside of Woody Williams, the Cossacks only started portsiders all year, and Randy Johnson and Johan Santana won a combined 34 games with matching 2.99 ERAs. In the first round, the Cossacks drew Seoul, the 84-78 winners of the Crosley Division, and fell behind 3 games to 2 when Travis Hafner's pinchhit 3RHR won game 5. But Santana won game 6 on the road and Williams won game 7 to advance. In the Conference Finals, the Cossacks again fell behind 3 games to 2 to Maui, but Williams and Santana came through again for the team to advance to the finals. Alas, Nashua was too strong. Santana pitched a shutout in game 3, but the Nonames scored double figures in three of the other 4 games. 2003 At the end of July, the Cossacks sported a 60-48 record, which wasn't too far removed from the best record in the division at that point. Then the schedule got serious. The Cossacks faced Sycamore, Antioch, Dresden, and Nashua and 11 losses in 14 games later, the boat was filling with water. In late August, the Cossacks won 3 of 4 at Rosehaven, and pulled to 3 1/2 of Portland for the final wild card spot. Kiev went 9-22 the rest of the way and had to settle for a 78 win 4th place finish. A league average offense papered over a weak pitching staff. Marcus Giles, the team's best player, was sent away in mid-June for Jose Vidro, who picked up the slack. Darren Oliver was the beneficiary of all of this, gathering up 16 wins despite a poor ERA. 2002 The Cossacks mortgaged the future over the last two years and had to pay for it in 2002. The team had 4 decent players going into the season, but had to trade them all to achieve some depth and potential. As a result, Kiev was a truly bad team in all respects: 23rd in offense and 26th (dead last) in pitching. The team ERA was 2/3 of a run higher than the 25th placed team. Nobody had more than 13 homers, only Ruben Sierra hit better than .300, and Kerry Wood was the only reasonable pitcher. Things didn’t even start out that bad, as Kiev went 31-35 over their first 66 games. But then, the team wore out and the Cossacks managed only 17 wins in their next 92 games, for a .184 winning percentage. |
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