The game calendar sits at Saturday April 5th, 1924. The regular season begins on Monday, 7 April. I've had a bit of a tradition of having teams play one of their minor-league affiliates (or a nearby team if the affiliates are too far) on the Saturday before the regular season starts, and so the Maple Leafs will host the Yankees as soon as this post is finished. I've put these games on the calendar as exhibition games before, and they have drawn terribly low attendance. That doesn't actually matter, but trying to keep a somewhat in-game character it's not clear why teams would keep doing this if the attendance is so low. This year I'm bookkeeping them as Spring Training games, we'll see if the attendance is more like what those games typically get. If only ~300 folks show up in Toronto again rather than 3000 I might revisit this and let the whole thing go.
But this is all a sidelight to the main business of looking ahead to this season. The Yankees sputtered their way through Spring Training, as seems to be an annual experience. At least a few of the offensive stars are just fine--Heilmann and Williams tore it up with OPS > 1.000, and Cobb and Goslin weren't too far behind. Charleston and Santop were dreadful, though, and Charleston in particular is worrisome. His batting ratings have tanked (though his defensive ones are through the roof) just as he should be making history. Algorithm-wise, the game considers his real-life team to have been at AA level so maybe it's docking him for that? Still, he hit .393 with an OPS near 1.200 so you think he'd get some credit for that. In-universe, it could be seen as him still trying to get over the broken hand he suffered in 1923. In any case, it's cause for concern. Arlett may also be turning into a pumpkin. The pitchers were basically fine, though it felt like the games were a repeated scenario of most pitchers doing well and then someone giving up 3-4 runs in an inning (and the Yankees losing 5-2 or something like that). Fitzsimmons really pushed (as the kids say) and earned a spot in the bigs. Luque got hurt and I put him on the IL, where he's stay until mid-April. It's mostly a way to buy time, though, because I have some roster decisions to make about two players who've been with me since I started playing.
The first is Frank Baker, who was the first splashy acquisition of my tenure (and also the very first one of any kind). In real life he retired at the end of 1922, and he arguably should have done so in this game, too--he would have gone out on a championship team in a year where he was clearly declining but still the starting third baseman, and it would have looked (in-universe) like he was going out on his own terms. Instead, he hung around and lost his starting job, and then the Giants beat them in the series (though Baker played decently in limited appearances). His spring was pretty bad (though hopefully he had a nice 38th birthday), and he batted under .200. His fielding has deteriorated to the point that the game thinks he should be a catcher now, and he got hurt with a (mild) back injury with about a week to go in ST. Needless to say, we don't need him as our 4th-string catcher and there's no way demoting him makes sense vs. releasing him. So, I think with all of that I'm just going to have him retire after the first home game. That seems reasonably in-keeping with a storyline of him seeing the writing on the wall and the team wanting to have a Frank Baker Day, and is also consistent with how Birdie Cree went out.
The second is Ray Caldwell, and he's a much stickier problem. His arrival on the Yankees predates me, and he's been a steady member of the pitching staff since 1911. He won 20 games for our 1918 pennant winners, but has been down at the 30 IP per year level for the last few years. He's still passable, but I'd just as soon give those 30 IP to someone else who's better than passable (and who might end up earning more than 30 IP). He also refused to be demoted (not a surprise I guess), so we're at a bit of a fork in the road. I could have him retire as well as Baker, but while he was out of MLB after 1921 in real life, he kept playing at lower and lower levels until age 45 in 1933. So, I feel like I should maybe see if I can shop him around and release him if nobody offers anyone useful. It'd be a tough way to end his tenure (and the fans won't be happy), but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
As for the team itself, despite the uninspiring spring, there's not a lot for Yankee haters to hang their hats on. The Yankees should be able to withstand off-years from a few regulars, given who's on the bench and who's down in Toronto. We still have the top farm system, and a few ranks of reinforcements there. The Yankees had such a big lead over KC, Cleveland, and the A's last season that even if that gap was halved we'd cruise to a comfortable pennant. Babe Ruth looks to be back in form based on his Spring Training, but the Red Sox were a last-place team in 1923 and the Babe alone won't be able to solve all their problems. But, as they say, this is why they play the games...
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