Any way you look at it, Wild Things simply fell short
Photos by Mark Marietta/For the Observer-Reporter
This season was difficult for the Wild Things, even for Wagner Lagrange, who batted .304 and hit 19 home runs. Here he takes a pitch off the batting helmet in a game against Ottawa.
Mark Marietta/For the Observer-Reporter
Mark Marietta/For the Observer-Reporter
The Wild Thing’ poor first half of the season caused them to miss the first Frontier League playoffs for the first time under manager Tom Vaeth.
Mark Marietta/For the Observer-Reporter
Andrew Czech acknowledgesthe crowd after being recognized as the Wild Things’ single-season walks leader prior to a game last week against Joliet. Czech also hit 21 home runs.
The record will show that the Wild Things finished the Frontier League season with a 47-49 showing and in fourth place in the eight-team West Division.
In some league locales, that record can be considered not half bad.
But 47-49 is not good enough to make the playoffs and that was the goal for Washington, which has been chasing that elusive first league championship for 21 seasons.
You won’t find any of the 14 players who spent the entire summer in Washington saying they saw a 47-49 record and missing the playoffs coming this year. They were blindsided by the results. They expected more.
So did other people.
Indy Ball Report, a podcast dedicated to independent baseball, recently dubbed the Wild Things as its “Total Underachiever” for 2023, saying that “Washington has not been good. There has not been a stretch when you said this is a good team, a dominant team. It’s been anywhere from this is a mediocre team to this is not a good team. … It’s a very underachieving year, a total underachieving year for Washington.”
“That was, more than anything, a reflection of the last two years,” said Washington manager Tom Vaeth, who completed his third year at the helm. “We set the standard high and from that aspect we underachieved a bit.”
Was this really an underachieving team? Or was it an overrated team? Or is 47-49 an accurate reflection of the talent at hand? It’s probably the latter.
Let’s examine how the Wild Things got to 47-49 after winning the West Division’s regular-season title last year and making the league championship series in 2021.
The Frontier League has three classifications of players – rookies, experienced and veterans, based on a player’s professional experience – and there is a minimum and maximum number of players from each classification allowed on a team. After last season, the Wild Things had a roster conundrum. They had too many players classified as experienced and not enough rookies. And their two former major league pitchers weren’t coming back, so no veterans were left on the roster.
Vaeth opted to rebuild his roster around the remaining experienced hitters and go with young pitchers. That’s a common approach in the Frontier League because young arms are easier to find than impact hitters who are rookies.
So Vaeth brought in seven new pitchers who opened the season on the roster, five of them rookies. Only one of them, Arrison Perez, remained with the team all year. Another wave of seven rookie pitchers were brought in near midseason. All seven were eventually released or traded.
That’s 14 pitchers, 12 of them rookies, and 13 of them struggled mightily before being dropped from the roster. Those 12 pitchers had a combined record of 7-20 with an 8.33 ERA.
Poor pitching is what caused the Wild Things to tumble after they bolted out of the gate with a 6-1 record. They lost 13 of the next 17 games and were never able to recover. They did get to .500 for one day in the final week of the season but never pushed above the break-even mark.
In other words, poor pitching early in the season dug a hole for the Wild Things and it was too deep to climb out.
“Our goal will always be to make the playoffs,” Vaeth said. “We had young pitching on our side to start the season, and we didn’t have the horses to run the race. We weren’t playing our best at the beginning of the season and didn’t have the right personnel. We maybe brought in young guys who didn’t know what the league was about and what the talent level is.
“We worked hard to restock. I’m proud of what we did in the second half of the season. We were on par with the better teams, especially those in our division.”
Washington went 19-14 over its final 33 games, but was never able to make a strong push for the playoffs, missing them by five games. One reason for that was an inability to sweep opponents. The Wild Things swept New York in the second series of the year (May 16-18) but didn’t have another sweep until the next-to-last series, against Joliet (Aug. 29-31).
When you can’t sweep opponents, you can’t go on an extended winning streak, which is what ultimately puts teams in the playoffs.
There were, for sure, some good individual performances, most of them on the hitting side. Right fielder Anthony Brocato had one of the best power-hitting seasons in Wild Things history. He batted .282 with 19 doubles, 28 home runs and 16 stolen bases. The 28 home runs ranks second on the Wild Things’ single-season list.
First baseman Andrew Czech broke the franchise record for walks in a season and also hit 21 home runs. Wagner Lagrange batted .304 with 25 doubles and 19 home runs. Outfielder Robert Chayka had a terrific rookie season, batting .293 with 23 stolen bases.
Lefty starting pitcher Kobe Foster (7-5, 2.66) battled injuries but was very good when healthy, and closer Lukas Young was rock solid again. Setup relievers Christian James and Justin Goossen-Brown were excellent over the second half of the season in that role, both having scoreless streaks that extended into double-digit innings.
And the best news is the Wild Things’ roster situation is better now than it was at this time last year. There is room to add a veteran or two. There are currently 11 players on the roster who will still be rookies next year, and adding some players with experience in affiliated ball is not only likely but a must.
“We’re in a better spot. I think we’ll see that in the spring it will again be hard to find good young players,” Vaeth said. “We were able to get some kids in late July and August who put us in a better position.”
Next year, it will have to be at least one position better in the standings.