Frontier League stats finder

Here's a link from Tim Perry's Frontier League History page. You can find the FL statistics, both season-by-season and career, for any player. Simply type in the player's last name.

If you haven't visisted Tim's site, you should give it a try. You can kill a lot of time looking at all the neat links on the site.

Check out the link here.

Sliders have a manager

I mentioned on this blog two days ago about the Midwest Sliders – the Frontier League's travel team for 2008 – did not have a manager. Well, that situation has changed. The Sliders have hired 37-year-old Eric Coleman to be their manager.

Coleman comes to the Sliders with no prior professional baseball managerial experience. He has, however, coached in the Northwoods League, a highly regarded collegiate summer league. Coleman also coached collegiately, mostly on the West Coast and in Canada. He told the Oakland (Mich.) Press that he plans to bring a West Coast-style of play to the Sliders, emphasizing bold baserunning, steals, bunts and hit-and-runs.

The Sliders will become the Oakland County Cruisers (http://www.cruisersbaseball.com) in 2009 and move into a 3,782-seat ballpark that is being built in Waterford Township (Mich.).

The Sliders played last year in Slippery Rock and were managed by Greg Jelks, who is the Wild Things' new manager.

Hot Stove: West Division

EVANSVILLE:
- Jason Verdugo is the new manger of the Otters. The 32-year-old Verdugo spent the last three years as the pitching coach for the St. Paul Saints of the independent American Association. Verdugo is more noted for being the backup quarterback to Jake Plummer at Arizona State on the Sun Devils' Rose Bowl team in 1996. I actually remember Verdugo, so at some point during his career he must have seen significant playing time in a game that was televised.
- The Otters hired Brendan Sagara as pitching coach. Sagara held the same job with the champion Windy City ThunderBolts last year.
- The Otters have re-acquired infielder Ryan Bethel from the Wild Things.

GATEWAY:
- Phil Warren returns for his second season as manager.
- The Grizzlies have re-signed two key hitters from last year, first baseman Mike Breyman (.331, 22 HR, 70 RBI) and outfielder Stephen Holdren (.311, 23 HR, 73 RBI).
- Former Wild Things pitcher Justin Staatz has re-signed.

RIVER CITY
- Toby Rumfield will be back for his second season as manager.
- The Rascals have hired former major league pitcher Jeff Bittiger as director of player procurement.
- The Rascals could hit last year but the pitching was a major problem as their 29 quality starts was the second-lowest total in the league (Chillicothe had 28). The Rascals look like they'll have another potent offense as they've re-acquired first baseman Bobby Mosby from Joliet of the Northern League. Mosby, if I recall correctly, was leading the Frontier League in home runs last year when traded to Joliet. The Rascals also re-signed outfielder Phil Laurent, who was signed by the Yankees late last season, and shortstop Brad Hough (.285, 10 HR, 18 SB).

ROCKFORD:
- Interesting coaching situation here. Bob Koopman, who managed the Riverhawks to the championship in 2004, returns as manager, replacing J.D. Arndt. The interesting thing here is that Arndt will be the Riverhawks' bench coach, a job Koopman held the last two years.

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS:
- Mike Pinto is back as manager for the Miners' second season in Marion.
- The Miners probably have signed more players than any team in the league. One player signed is first baseman Tim Dorn. The 6-7 right-hander hit 12 home runs in 32 games for the Miners last year (including a game-winner against the Wild Things in a doubleheader in Washington) before having his contract purchased by St. Louis.
- The Frontier League's tryout camp and player draft, which has been held in Washington three of the last four years, will be held in Marion, Ill., May 4-5.

WINDY CITY:
- Manager Andy Haines, who guided the ThunderBolts to their first championship last season, is gone. He's taken a job as a coach for the Marlins' Gulf Coast League affiliate. The new manager is Brian Nelson, who was the hitting coach of the Northern League's Gary SouthShore Railcats. That's the same job Haines held before going to Windy City.
- The ThunderBolts already have lost several key players from last year. They've traded outfielder Rob Marconi (leadoff HR in game 5 of the finals), pitcher Billy Phillips (winning pitcher in Game 3 of finals) and outfielder John McCarthy (perhaps the toughest player in the league to strike out) to Gary. Yes, it does appear that Windy City is a farm team for Gary.
- Former Wild Things pitcher Shawn Phillips, the winner in Game 5 of the finals, has signed with the Marlins.
- Windy City still has the potential to bring back its entire infield. Third baseman Josh Horn (.302) has re-signed.

Hot stove: East Division

With opening day in the Frontier League less than four months away, I thought it was time to get up to date on what has been happening during the offseason. Let's start with the East Division:

CHILLICOTHE:
- Mark Mason will return as manager.
- Paints officials have said much of last year's team will return, including all-star shortstop Travis Garica (.307, 19 HR, 70 RBI) and first baseman Jon Poterson (.231), a former first-round draft pick of the New York Yankees. Improving the offense is a must. The Paints were held to 2 runs or less 26 times last year, a number exceeded by only Slippery Rock and Evansville.
- Two key pitchers, Perry Cunningham (11-5, 3.98) and Eric Teall (2-5, 3.22, 16 saves), have opted to retire. Cunningham is second to the Wild Things' Aaron Ledbetter in career wins (37) and has started more games (78) than any pitcher in Frontier league history.
- For Waynesburg University pitcher Landon Sinclair (0-0, 6-75) has re-signed.
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FLORENCE:
- Jamie Keefe returns as manager.
- Florence has changed its logo and uniform colors. The new colors are black and red (remind you of another East Division team?).
- Former Florence manager and Pirates outfielder Mike Easler was named Monday as the hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers. That makes Easler the second person to go from Consol Engery Park to the majors, the first being San Diego relief pitcher Joe Thatcher (River City).
- Freedom general manager Kari Rumfield is the wife of River City manager Toby Rumfield (conflict of interest?).

KALAMAZOO:
- Fran Riordan is back as manager.
- Former Washington & Jefferson College pitcher Sam Mann (6-2, 3.65) has already re-signed.
- Third baseman Joe Ramos (.302, 34 2Bs, 32 SBs) has re-signed.
- Conventional wisdom suggests that marketing is the priority in the offseason after the Kings average attendance last year was only 1,169.

MIDWEST:
- The Frontier League's traveling road show has not hired a manager. Would you want to spend you entire summer packing up and riding on a bus every three days? Among those rumored to be the Sliders' manager is Jeff Pohl, who held the same job in Evansville last year and was the Otters' pitching coach for several years.

TRAVERSE CITY:
- Former Wild Things shortstop Jon Cahill will return as manager.
- The Beach Bums have replaced the grass surface at Wuerfel Park with an artificial field. Traverse City, Chillicothe and Southern Illinois now have fake grass.
- I like two of the offseason roster moves by the Beach Bums. Outfielder Jake Whitesides was brought in. He was one of the league's top hitters in 2003 with Mid-Missouri and spent the last four years in various independent leagues. Shortstop Tim Hutting played 111 games at Double-A in the Giants' system and hit .281 in the independent Northern League last year.

WASHINGTON:
- John Massarelli is out as manager and replaced by Greg Jelks (Slippery Rock and Evansville).
- The Wild Things have three first-round picks in the league draft. I believe they are picks No. 4 (from Florence for J.D. Foust), No. 7 (from Southern Illinois for Roy Irle and their own pick, which is No. 10.
- Washington traded outfielder Jarod Rine and left-handed pitchers Tom Cochran and Justin Mattison to Worcester of the independent Can-Am League. There was an interesting quote in the Worcester Telegram from Tornadoes general manager R.C. Reuteman about Cochran. He said the lefty was "probably the best pitcher in the Frontier League last season."
Maybe this was simply P.R. talk, or Reuteman was given a bad scouting report, or he was confused about which pitcher he was getting in the trade, but talk about the FL's best pitcher last year consisted of only Ledbetter and Rockford's Tanner Watson.

Friday: West Division.