The NEW Toronto Towers

[DavidJ]

When the Toronto Towers recently made some major changes in the front office, there were rumblings that the new ownership was planning to make a move and had already, in fact, secured an agreement to move the team to Indianapolis to resurrect an OTBA market from years ago. Much as we have enjoyed a lot of recent success in Akron, the Dandies were in a similar situation, new ownership and a desire to take things to another level with their investment. Immediately they began discussions with the league about moving their franchise to the soon-to-be-vacated Toronto market.

Both moves came about quickly as the new OTBA season approach in 2076. And we would like to thank the OTBA Commissioner for allowing this move as we feel the market presents us with a very unique opportunity.

The Dandies, while enjoying a decade of recent success and, as a result, having very strong support among fans in the community, would like to thank Akron and area for their outstanding support. That said, the opportunity to move into the Toronto market, which is 2.7M, and the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) which extends that to 6.4M simply means more fans on which to draw. And, frankly, Toronto, it could easily be argued, really has a market of 36M, being the entire population of Canada. That is simply something with which Akron will never be able to compete, so we see this as huge upside.

So with that, the Toronto Towers have both left and re-joined the Toronto market in OTBA in the space of a day. We will still operate in the Kuffrey League's Abramson division of OTBA and will still be very interested in a division title for our new followers. We also bring some great young talent to Toronto in the form of young slugger Bruce Hidalgo, recently signed to an extension that will see him in a Towers uniform for the next seven years.

We hope the entire market embraces this team and we also hope this relationship is a long and rewarding one for all parties.
We cannot wait for 2076!

[Bobbuttons]

I shall miss the uniforms.

[DavidJ]

The first season for the Toronto Towers under new management was a little disappointing. We ended the season with a 72-90 record and, despite being in a division where most were in it until the very end, we just could not muster enough to push for the division.

While we concentrated on our finances, in order to try and quickly turn this franchise into a money maker, yet also put a product on the field, we will have to continue that focus going forward. This team was rather hamstrung in the off-season as few players departed, the money was tight and a couple of rather impressive contracts (and not in a good way) may keep us from doing a lot more than tweaking and hoping for a few seasons. Because of that it is very important we continue to develop the revenue and see if we can offset some of the big paydays by being able to augment those players with some up-and-comers on much smaller deals.

Bruce Hidalgo will still be the key player for years. Because he is only 28, I am finding it very hard to relegate him to strictly DH but his outfield skill is certainly lacking. During this Spring Training we are going to try him out at 1B to see if he can handle that position while providing his same batting stats.

The pitching last season was a concern and unfortunately we couldn't do much to help out the rotation. In fact we lost our converted Closer Ramon Garcia to free agency, having to shed both his contract and his inflated demand after his All-Star season. Hopefully (there's that word again) someone else will step up?

Either way, cannot wait to start another OTBA season to see what we have!