Some preliminary thoughts near the end of the 2006 season

Since the last home game on Thursday, I have thought a bit about how to characterize this season. The first one that comes to mind is mobility. The Cats roster has had 63 players on it (including 27 batters and 36 pitchers - one of those being Keith Ginter who pitched two innings in the middle of the season). But of the 27 batters only six played more than 90 games. The core group was Clark(119), Espy(96), Ginter (112), McClain (137) Rouse (96) and Thomas (111) with Perry (87) possibly joining the group in the last three games. In a 144 game schedule that is a pretty slim core. We lost a couple to injury but a lot more to movement to the A's. That afterall is what these guys are playing for but it makes it a bit harder to meld a team.

Of the pitchers we had six who had more than 10 decisions. If you count the number of pitchers with more than 85 innings pitched, there are six. But with only four who were over 100. There were 13 with fewer than 10 innings pitched. Our best pitcher from an ERA point of view was Windsor (with 12-1) and had he not had the one game - the ERA would have been much lower.

Ron Flores, who did 25 total innings (I would have guessed more) bounced back to the A's on September 1 and there may be some more.

Three more games and the final stats will be in. We can hope that a core of players will be on the team next year and that that core will again bring us back to the playoffs.