2023 Recap: Disappointment all too familiar for Swine fans
Part one of four on the offseason of the London Imperial Swine baseball team

Last season marked the fourth straight playoff appearance and sixth in the past eight seasons for the London Imperial Swine, and it ended in all-too-familiar fashion: without a championship. London will head into 2024 seeking its 11th-straight winning season, having posted a winning percentage above .500 every season in franchise history except for the first two seasons following the team’s creation in the league expansion of 2011. More importantly, though, it will be seeking its first OTBA championship.

It’s not that the team hasn’t come close. The 2017 team won the KL championship before losing to South Carolina in the OTBA championship series. In 2020, London won the HL championship series and then watched as Stockholm rolled to victory in the finals. In several other years, including last season, London went deep into the league championship series before falling short.

“It’s tough,” said GM sebastian. “You know that the playoffs are a bit of a crapshoot, a small sample size. We have a goal to get to the playoffs every year, then we try to have the firepower at the top of the rotation and in the lineup to at least give us a good chance to win it all every time. There was a year or two when I believe we had the best team overall but couldn’t get hot in the playoffs.”

Still, just getting to the playoffs isn’t enough for some fans, who are impatiently waiting for the day the team comes home from the playoffs to a victory parade instead of a solemn press conference.

“It’s hard to complain too much when you have a really good club out there every year,” said fan George Welch, who writes a blog on the team. “But on the other hand, at some point you just have to win it all. It gets frustrating, and it makes you wonder if it’s just chance that the team hasn’t gotten it done in the playoffs, or if there is some other problem going on there that isn’t being addressed.”

One problem for London since the team’s inception has been the lack of a star first baseman, the most hitting-oriented position on the field. Louis Sutherland played there for nearly a decade, providing a merely respectable output for the position. Prior to last season, the Swine signed Lee Larson to a blockbuster deal in hopes of acquiring a middle-of-the-order bat to play first base. Larson played well for most of the season, but he slumped heavily late and eventually was released after hitting coach Kevin Bey lost confidence in Larson’s ability and willingness to make the adjustments necessary to be an impact player in the pitching-rich Heinsohn League Estrogen Division.

Heading into 2024, London faces a familiar problem in finding a first baseman who can make an impact. It also faces increased expectations. It faces the problem of not only getting to the playoffs, but finally winning it all.

Winter Blues Series
Part One: 2023 Recap
Part Two: Offseason Transactions
Part Three: The 2024 Lineup
Part Four: The 2024 Pitching Staff