Massarelli out as T-Bones manager

Former Wild Things manager John Massarelli will not return in 2017 as manager of the Kansas City T-Bones of the independent American Association, the team announced Wednesday. Massarelli had been with the T-Bones for three years and had a 139-160 record, including a 42-58 mark this season.

http://wyandottedaily.com/t-bones-managers-contract-not-renewed/

Otters win it all

Here is the link to the story from the Evansville Courier-Press about the Evansville otters defeating River City 1-0 Monday night in the decisive Game 5 of the Frontier League championship series.

http://www.courierpress.com/story/sports/baseball/otters/2016/09/19/ackerman-wills-otters-frontier-league-title/90638888/

Not much has changed

Because not much has changed with the Wild Things, I've felt the need to break a basic journalistic rule and pull out a section of a blog post I made at the end of last season and include it in this post, almost word for word. I made a few changes to update facts. Here you go:

The upcoming offseason will be the most important one in Wild Things history. There are many topics that must be addressed, including getting a naming rights sponsor for the ballpark to replace Consol Energy. A good game plan for the future is desperately needed.

The first question to be asked in the offseason should be this: Is it really in ownership's best interest to run two teams, the Wild Things and the Pennsylvania Rebellion of the National Pro Fastpitch league? If you think things are bad with the Wild Things and the Frontier League, then you need to check out the Rebellion and the NPF. The Rebellion make the Wild Things look like the New York Yankees. The Frontier League's officials and business model make the NPF's look like the latter is being run by the kids who operate the neighborhood lemonade stand. The Rebellion missed the playoffs in a five-team league in 2015, then finished last in a six-team league this year. Four teams went to the postseason in 2015. One of those playoff teams was a first-year team that wasn't wasn't even allowed to acquire players through an expansion draft but still finished ahead of the Rebellion. This year, another expansion team finished ahead of the Rebellion and made the playoffs.

How any NPF team can remain in the financial black is beyond me. Judging by their poor attendance and the cost of having to fly to Florida, Texas and South Carolina to play games, the Rebellion have to be losing money.

A lot of money.

I have a feeling the Rebellion's financial losses are impacting the Wild Things. If that's the case, it's a very bad sign. One of financial trouble ahead. And the solution is not to raise ticket or parking or concession prices.

Operating two teams, with one front office staff, and neither team able to sell out a small ballpark (the Wild Things did have one sellout in 2016), makes no financial sense. The time to pull the plug on the softball team, if it is indeed a financial drain on the Wild Things, should have been before 2016, which happens to be the final year for Consol Energy's naming rights deal at the ballpark. A 10-year-contract was announced by Consol and the Wild Things in April of 2007. That means the deal ran through this summer. If another company doesn't step forward and put its name on the ballpark, it will be a big financial hit for the Wild Things.

There also has to be changes in the Wild Things' baseball operations. When you miss the playoffs eight times in nine years, there is something very wrong. The way you find players, the people you get recommendations from, where you're looking for players, the kind of players you sign, it all has to be re-evaluated and changed. Somebody needs to think outside the box.

Somebody in the front office or ownership needs to answer this: Why has a franchise that could pack the house almost every night fallen so far so fast that now it can't fill half the ballpark unless pyrotechnics are involved? If the answer is because the novelty of pro baseball in Washington has worn off, then that's too late to change. If it's the economy, then the Wild Things can't change that. But if it's because the front-office staff can only spend half its time selling tickets to Wild Things games because the other half is spent hawking Rebellion tickets, or if it's because the games have become boring, or the parking fee and ticket prices are too high, or the giveaway items have become either worthless or few and far between, or the team can't win, or the between-innings promotions are stupid or nobody in Pittsburgh/Westmoreland County/Fayette County hears/reads/knows about the Wild Things, or the customers are not treated with respect etc., then those things can and must be corrected. In other words, eliminated.

Now, back to this year and some new thoughts.

The Wild Things desperately need to improve their public image, especially in Washington. They have looked like the bully bad guys in the situation with the Trinity School District and how much it has cost the Hillers' baseball team to play at CEP. The Wild Things say they weren't overcharging Trinity for playing at CEP but rather they were getting a tax abatement. Call it what you want, a tax abatement or fleecing the local school district. It all semantics. The reality is the Wild Things need to charge Trinity and every other school that plays at CEP (or whatever it's called next year) the same fee, either a per-game rate or a per-hour rate. That shouldn't be a difficult thing to figure out.

The Wild Things also looked bad when they flexed their muscle and caused the Trinity/W&J deal that would have had the Hillers playing at Ross Memorial Park next year to fall through. Multiple sources have said the Wild Things threatened to put a fence around their parking lot if Trinity moved its games to CEP. That fence would make it impossible to park more than a few cars at Ross Memorial, so W&J pulled out of the deal. The Wild Things certainly have the right to fence in their parking lot, but this entire situation should have never reached the point where the team looks like the kid who says, “If I don't get my way, then I'm taking my marbles and going home.”

Playoffs? They went thatta way

For the eighth time in nine years, the Wild Things and the Frontier League playoffs went their separate ways.

In other words, not much has changed.

The Wild Things have gone 15 seasons without winning a championship, which is currently tied for the fourth-longest title drought in independent baseball history and the second-longest in the Frontier League. Chillicothe played 16 years without winning a title.

The Wild Things finished this season with a record of 46-49. That's an increase of four wins over last year, so there is some improvement going on. But in the Frontier League, you can go from expansion franchise to champion in less than a year, so improving the win total by a few is nothing to get excited about, especially when the team still has a losing record -- for the seventh time in eight years. In the Frontier League, one year usually doesn't have much impact on the next -- unless you're the Wild Things.

There has been only one postseason game played at Consol Energy Park since 2007.

One!

That's all. One night of playoff baseball in nine years.

That's pathetically sad.

You would think that by pure blind luck the Wild Things would fall into a season of making the finals.

The reasons the Wild Things missed the playoffs this season came down to two things: their offense was the worst in franchise history and they couldn't beat the league's best teams, going 8-22 against the four teams that made the playoffs. It also didn't help that their two best pitchers, Trevor Foss and Zac Grotz, had their contracts purchased by major league organizations in August, while the Wild Things were in the midst of a playoff race. You simply can't replace top-notch pitchers in August.

Washington was mostly terrific on the mound, OK in the field and woeful at the plate. The Wild Things gave up the fewest runs in the league yet had a losing record. That's almost impossible to do.

Foss' performance was the highlight of the season. A right-hander who was signed in the offseason out of the Los Angeles Angels' system, Foss had an 8-3 record and won the league's ERA title at 2.50. He threw eight complete games and was within one CG of the 16-year-old league record when he had his contract purchased in early August by the Cleveland Indians.

The pitching was good enough to get Washington to the postseason. The hitting, however, was what prevented that from happening.

With the exception of right fielder David Popkins (.281, 15 HR) and designated hitter Ricky Rodriguez (.289, 9 HR), Washington's offense sputtered badly. A few other players had some good stretches, but they lacked consistency.

Washington's situational hitting was abysmal. Two statistics show just how bad it was: the team batting average with two outs and a runner in scoring position was an anemic .199, and the Wild Things had only seven sacrifice bunts all season. Some of those sacrifices weren't by design. Several were attempted bunts for a hit that just happened to advance a baserunner.

Washington finished last in the league in batting average and runs, was tied for last in on-base percentage and was next to last in doubles.

The .235 team batting average and 356 runs each are franchise record lows. Oh, for the days of the 2005 Wild Things, who had a .298 batting average and scored 645 runs. It might have taken the 2016 Wild Things 200 games to score 645 runs.

During the last-month playoff push that fell three wins shy of a wild-card spot, Washington played every game with at least two hitters in the starting lineup who sported a batting average of less than .200. Sometimes it was more than two sub-.200 hitters in the lineup. It's hard to win with that kind of pop-gun offense.

The lack of offense has been a long-running problem for the Wild Things, and one that somebody needs to spend time analyzing and finding a way to correct. Washington has finished last in the league in team batting average four times in the last six years and hasn't finished higher than ninth in that span. It's hard to be that inept on offense for that long, but if Washington is last in offense again next year, then you can add another year to the championship drought.