September 16: All Things Considered, It Was a Great Year

OK, let’s not pull any punches here, a failure to win it all hurt. The 2009 Winnipeg Goldeyes had a team that was good enough to win the Northern League championship and had every opportunity to win, but it failed in its quest. You can’t lie about that, nor can you sugar coat it.

But all things considered, for the Winnipeg Goldeyes Baseball Club of the Northern League of Professional Baseball, 2009 was a very, very good year.

Let’s review:

1) Juan Diaz hit 29 home runs, tying him with Sean Hearn for the most hit by a Goldeyes player in a single season and he also drove in 90 runs, exceeding Terry Lee’s 1996 franchise mark. Juan liked Winnipeg so much, he’s already declared he’d like to be back next season.

2) Ace Walker (12-6 with a 3.32 earned run average) was named Northern League pitcher of the year.

3) Shortstop Adam Frost, who did a remarkable job filling in for the injured Wes Long, hit .280 with two game-winning, walk-off home runs and was named the Northern League Rookie of the Year.

4) Walker, Diaz and second baseman Josh Asanovich were all named to the post-season Northern League all-star team.

5) For the fifth time in eight years, Andrew Collier was named executive of the year in the Northern League.

6) For the fourth time in the seven years since the award has been bestowed, the Winnipeg Goldeyes were named the Northern League’s Organization of the Year.

Interestingly, Collier himself was less impressed with his own success as he was about his organization’s success.

“Even with some terrible weather this summer, we still managed to lead all of independent baseball in average attendance (6,180 per game),” Collier pointed out. “And we had 55 wins, the most in Rick’s (manager Forney) tenure as manager and finished second overall in the standings. We have the best organization around and there are many positive things to take out of this season.”

None of this will soothe the pain felt by everyone in the organization when the team fell in five gut-wrenching games in the opening round of the playoffs to the eventual Northern League-champion Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks.

But it certainly gave everyone the incentive to come back next year, better than ever before.

While we will have plenty of news right here at The Nibble in the off-season, we don’t know what that news will bring. However, one thing is certain: See you all back at the ballpark in May 2010!