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The Freedom were handed a couple of difficult pills to swallow this week with the loss of key players Geoff Scott and Orinosuke Takahashi to significant injuries. Scott will miss 3-4 weeks with a severely sprained ankle meaning he’ll miss the rest of the regular season. Takahashi will be out for the rest of the regular season and the playoffs (if the Freedom qualify) after suffering a back injury that will require 6 weeks of rest and rehab. Both players were in the top 10 in batting average at the time they were lost, while Scott was second only to former Freedom player Mel Woodbury in the convoluted statistic known as VORP (Value Over Replacement Player), a stat meant to evaluate how much more important a given player is over a league average player.
“Hey, this is baseball. Teams all across the league are dealing with injuries right now and it happens every year,” said Freedom GM Brad Zabel. “It’s a long season and people get dinged or worn down by this point of the year. The rest of the guys we have who are healthy and able to get in the lineup every day are just going to have to pick up the slack. There’s no way to replace the production of a player like Geoff Scott, but you just have to have faith in the rest of your veterans that they’re going to get the job done. The Takahashi injury is the one that really bothers me though. He’s out for the rest of the year and probably the playoffs, if we’re good enough to get there. Hopefully Scott would be back for any playoff series.”
When asked specifically how he thought they would be able to deal with the missing production Zabel said, “Now the Windley deal takes on even more importance. We were so close to just riding out the situation the way it was with a young, but improving, catcher in Victor Alveraz, but we wanted to bolster the lineup as much as we could and then use Alveraz off the bench. Windley gave us the opportunity to do that and now think where we’d be without that move.”
Zabel continued, “And, don’t forget we’re a team built around our pitching staff. Luckily to this point we haven’t suffered any significant injuries to any of those guys. Imagine what kind of shape we’d be in if two pitchers went down with injury instead of two position players. I’m not sure we’d be able survive that. All we can do is try to patch up the ship and not take on too much water. We have a 5 game lead with 19 games to go. A lot of those games are head-to-head matchups with the teams that are chasing us, so that 5 game lead isn’t quite as comfortable as one would hope for at this time of year, but we’d much rather be 5 games up than 5 games down at this point.”
A visit to the clubhouse yielded a surprisingly upbeat atmosphere in light of the recent setbacks.
“Well, I’m finally getting into a groove over here,” said Jeremy Windley when asked about his early struggles with his new team. “It was a shock when I was dealt, there weren’t really any rumors out there so I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t sulking or anything, it was really more of a shock and distraction thing. All of a sudden we have to make the decisions like, do we sell our house and move the family, or do I just live out of a hotel and not see my kids for the last 3 or so months of the season. It’s a tough adjustment to make and I didn’t have any warning so it made it all that much more difficult to deal with. I’m happy with where we’re at now and I think we’ve got a good last 3 weeks left in us. I’ll do my part to pitch in and pick up the slack that the injuries are causing.”
Windley heard from the initially excited fanbase after a couple of less than stellar weeks.
“Yeah, that made it tough too, but c’mon, this is Philly. Everyone knows the deal here” Windley said with a wry smile. “I didn’t have any equity here, you know? I didn’t have a history of producing in a Freedom uniform so they were quick to let me know I was struggling. They expected a lot and rightfully so. I’m a proud player and maybe I pressed a little bit after coming over. I think I’m finally comfortable here and the fans have come around.”
The Freedom schedule doesn’t do them many favors at this point either. There are 6 home games remaining on the schedule leaving 13 more road games that will take them to Wilmington, perennial powerhouse Washington and then the final week at Baltimore and California to end the season.
Clubhouse leader Joe Seagarra addressed the schedule by saing, “We’ve been pretty good on the road this year, so we’re not worried about it too much. Does it make it easier? No, of course not, but you play the schedule they give you, that’s all you can do.”
Asked about his missing teammates, Seagarra responded, “We’ll lean on our other guys, what else can you do? Newlin, Josey, Windley and myself will just have to carry the load. We can’t press or anything, we’ve all just got to keep doing what we’ve been doing. Then, a couple of young guys are going to have to step up and do their part and I think they will.”
You get the sense that the Freedom organization knows what lies in front of them and what it will take to get where they set out to go 6 months ago. The only question left to answer is, Will they be able to stay afloat long enough to make it to their desired destination or will the leaks that have sprung cause them to scuttle the work they’ve done to this point and fall short?
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“Hey, this is baseball. Teams all across the league are dealing with injuries right now and it happens every year,” said Freedom GM Brad Zabel. “It’s a long season and people get dinged or worn down by this point of the year. The rest of the guys we have who are healthy and able to get in the lineup every day are just going to have to pick up the slack. There’s no way to replace the production of a player like Geoff Scott, but you just have to have faith in the rest of your veterans that they’re going to get the job done. The Takahashi injury is the one that really bothers me though. He’s out for the rest of the year and probably the playoffs, if we’re good enough to get there. Hopefully Scott would be back for any playoff series.”
When asked specifically how he thought they would be able to deal with the missing production Zabel said, “Now the Windley deal takes on even more importance. We were so close to just riding out the situation the way it was with a young, but improving, catcher in Victor Alveraz, but we wanted to bolster the lineup as much as we could and then use Alveraz off the bench. Windley gave us the opportunity to do that and now think where we’d be without that move.”
Zabel continued, “And, don’t forget we’re a team built around our pitching staff. Luckily to this point we haven’t suffered any significant injuries to any of those guys. Imagine what kind of shape we’d be in if two pitchers went down with injury instead of two position players. I’m not sure we’d be able survive that. All we can do is try to patch up the ship and not take on too much water. We have a 5 game lead with 19 games to go. A lot of those games are head-to-head matchups with the teams that are chasing us, so that 5 game lead isn’t quite as comfortable as one would hope for at this time of year, but we’d much rather be 5 games up than 5 games down at this point.”
A visit to the clubhouse yielded a surprisingly upbeat atmosphere in light of the recent setbacks.
“Well, I’m finally getting into a groove over here,” said Jeremy Windley when asked about his early struggles with his new team. “It was a shock when I was dealt, there weren’t really any rumors out there so I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t sulking or anything, it was really more of a shock and distraction thing. All of a sudden we have to make the decisions like, do we sell our house and move the family, or do I just live out of a hotel and not see my kids for the last 3 or so months of the season. It’s a tough adjustment to make and I didn’t have any warning so it made it all that much more difficult to deal with. I’m happy with where we’re at now and I think we’ve got a good last 3 weeks left in us. I’ll do my part to pitch in and pick up the slack that the injuries are causing.”
Windley heard from the initially excited fanbase after a couple of less than stellar weeks.
“Yeah, that made it tough too, but c’mon, this is Philly. Everyone knows the deal here” Windley said with a wry smile. “I didn’t have any equity here, you know? I didn’t have a history of producing in a Freedom uniform so they were quick to let me know I was struggling. They expected a lot and rightfully so. I’m a proud player and maybe I pressed a little bit after coming over. I think I’m finally comfortable here and the fans have come around.”
The Freedom schedule doesn’t do them many favors at this point either. There are 6 home games remaining on the schedule leaving 13 more road games that will take them to Wilmington, perennial powerhouse Washington and then the final week at Baltimore and California to end the season.
Clubhouse leader Joe Seagarra addressed the schedule by saing, “We’ve been pretty good on the road this year, so we’re not worried about it too much. Does it make it easier? No, of course not, but you play the schedule they give you, that’s all you can do.”
Asked about his missing teammates, Seagarra responded, “We’ll lean on our other guys, what else can you do? Newlin, Josey, Windley and myself will just have to carry the load. We can’t press or anything, we’ve all just got to keep doing what we’ve been doing. Then, a couple of young guys are going to have to step up and do their part and I think they will.”
You get the sense that the Freedom organization knows what lies in front of them and what it will take to get where they set out to go 6 months ago. The only question left to answer is, Will they be able to stay afloat long enough to make it to their desired destination or will the leaks that have sprung cause them to scuttle the work they’ve done to this point and fall short?
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