Four Canes Enter Transfer Portal

Mike Kaffee

Hurricanes Baseball Reporter
[email protected]

Break out the life rafts, the good ship Lollipop is sinking and taking down with it 4 of our mighty muscles who decided to look towards greener pastures. Alex Toral, Raymond Gil, Gabe Rivera, and Jordan Lala decided to enter the transfer portal leaving a tremendous void in slugging power for next year. Whether being disgruntled with lack of playing time or just unhappy on the direction the program is heading is not to be spoken of. This wasn’t a particularly a banner year for either of these players maybe be with the exception of Raymond. however for the rest they experiencd a drop in their numbers particularly Jordan Lala who batting average in ’19 was 276 and this year plummeted to 229. Blame it on the hiatus caused by COVID or the coaching staff not getting on top of these drop in numbers, but whatever we are seeing is something not seen before. We are looking at half of our possible starting team for next year turning their backs and looking elsewhere.I Would hope that free agency is still available as an option, but are we seeing only the beginning of possibly others leaving a sinking ship. There has to be a reason and someone should definitely be looking into why there has been a loss of heart from these players. Understandable, if these were just freshman and did not produce and were asked to leave the team, but that is not the case with these four of what were once star talent to take us to the next level. They are not exactly dead weight and with the proper coaching, 2022 should have been a turn around year for those not electing towards free agency. We were rich in talent last year and with the new arrivals, maybe these four saw the handwriting on the wall.

Bottom line something smells rotten and needs looking into. This was a year of underachievement right across the board and with the fans returning to the stands, they will not put up with another year of marginal performance right across the board.