Minty Fresh: Kansas City Breath Mints Dream Team
By: Finn
The Breath Mints. A team with but a singular championship to our name, despite some of the best Will discipline in the League. We even pulled off the Plasma Pinch— perhaps the greatest play of all time (I promise I’m not biased). But according to some, our ensmallened team isn’t so much a team as it is a Horse and some players that get in her way. Well, I’m ready to prove everyone wrong, with my take on the freshest, mintiest roster of fourteen imaginable:
Lineup:
Winnie Hess I
Winnie Hess II
Winnie Hess III
Winnie Hess IV
Winnie Hess V
Winnie Hess VI
Winnie Hess VII
Winnie Hess VIII
Winnie Hess IX
Rotation:
Winnie Hess X
Winnie Hess XI
Winnie Hess XII
Winnie Hess XIII
Winnie Hess XIV
… Hold on. I’ve been informed by Panda that despite Winnie being in the Vault now, we have banned replicas to prevent this exact situation. Rats. The “rules” are as follows:
- Team sizes will be standard. 9 Line-up and 5 Rotation Players. Players cannot be considered Elsewhere or Shelled.
- The Selection must represent a single season played with that team.
- The player must have played for at least one full season with that team.
- A player can only be selected once across all 14 slots.
- No Replicas are allowed.
With that in mind, here’s my second take on a Mints team.
Lineup:
Boyfriend Monreal (S5)— BA 0.308 – OPS 0.877
Hewitt Best (S3) — BA 0.325 – OPS 0.860
Mooney Doctor II (S20) — BA 0.277 – OPS 0.847
Jessica Telephone (S11) — BA 0.324 – OPS 1.124
Marco Stink (S10) — BA 0.272 – OPS 1.004
Jode Preston (S16) — BA 0.318 – OPS 0.951
Eizabeth Guerra (S3) — BA 0.354 – OPS 1.030
Rodriguez Internet (S10) — BA 0.357 – OPS 1.020
Jacob Haynes (S19) — BA 0.313 – OPS 0.866
Rotation:
Leach Ingram (S16) — ERA 2.90 – WHIP 1.068
Uncle Plasma (S20) — ERA 2.40 – WHIP 0.798
Winnie Hess (S18) — ERA 1.41 – WHIP 0.529
Michelle Sportsman (S21) — ERA -0.35 (not a typo) – WHIP 1.248
PolkaDot Zavala (S14) — ERA 2.41 – WHIP 0.860
Behold! Fourteen separate players, only one of which is a thirty-star horse, all of whom have played at least one full season for the Mints.
Likely the first thing you’ve noticed is that the Mints produce a lot of good pitchers. Graduates of the Breath Mints Pitching Academy include the players above and also Polkadot Patterson on the Moist Talkers, the Released Axel Trololol, Lucas Petty on the Tacos, and Sandie Carver on the Millennials. The Dot and Axel likely need no introduction, but for those less familiar with King Petty and Scarver, Petty ended Season 24 with a respectable 3.35 ERA, and Sandie’s Literal Arm Cannon helped them finish Season 24 with an ERA of only 1.69! We have a knack for creating superb pitchers and passing them off to other teams.
Thankfully, even without these players, our Rotation is terrifying. Leach Ingram was a master of the tactical walk, filling up bases to set up for the double play that was definitely necessary and not merely a way of toying with their fans. They’re the weakest part of the Rotation, and in fact both Axel Trololol and Oscar Vaughan (a dentist who chose to eat a peanut before retiring) have superior career-best ERAs/WHIPs, but quite frankly a Mints all-stars team would not be complete without Leach. As for the rest:
• Uncle Plasma was a terrifying force of pitching that plot had to intervene and steal them from us, presumably out of fear for what we could do with them.
• 9.4-star pitcher Winnie Hess was the biggest horse ever to exist and surpassed even the Cactus (Castillo Turner) in pitching prowess.
• Michelle Sportsman comes with their own run support in the form of Underhanded– their negative ERA is a data crime of beauty.
• PolkaDot Zavala was a lesser-known Mints original, well-suited for the pitching meta of Season 14 before a stray peanut forced an early retirement to the Shadows.
When it comes to our Lineup, the first three Lineup players were fantastic at crime. Boyfriend Monreal stole not only hearts but also bases. They were renowned for walking to first base and stealing the rest, for a career-best of 48 bases in Season 7 before an untimely incineration. Base stealing was a skill known also to Hewitt Best, who had no issues seizing the means of run-scoring. Their record was 79 bases in Season 17, putting them at number 2 in the league for that season. And famously, Earth laws don’t apply in space, which was convenient for Mooney Doctor II and the 68 bases they stole in Season 20. Their Magnified Modification also helps with the clean-up, doubling the value of any runs scored, provided they’re not stolen before they can bat them in.
The famed Jessica Telephone leads the next section of our Lineup, ringing in any stranded players (and since this is the Mints, there’ll be a lot). After them comes Marco Stink! They hit dingers! What! Marco was also a famous base stealer, with a career-best of 70 in a season– clearly, it is not illegal for bugs. Finally, Jode Preston will hopefully go sicko Jode and hit a dinger, as they did for 25.7% of ther hits in Season 18. Their BA/RISP reached a high of 0.408 in season 16– an adept at cleaning up when bases are Joded. And their Reload Modification makes any grand slam reload the bases, ready for the closers to clean up with!
Eizabeth Guerra, the triples queen, leads the way into the final part of our Lineup. Izzie, pre-peanut, had a frankly ridiculous stat line that caused them to hit more triples than doubles– in Season 3, out of 127 hits, 30 were triples and only 7 were doubles. Rodriguez Internet is next, who churns out the singles needed to get Izzie their fourth base. Their funny little Modification boxes help considerably with their job, most notably Cluttered, which has only improved their performance as we fought to make our Ballpark as filthy as possible. Finally, totally normal guy Jacob Haynes is here to round us out– when you look at Haynes’s stats it’s very easy to see why the Flowers took them back as soon as possible, with a Season 24 BA of 0.384 and OPS of 1.151.
I hope this article has served to inform fans new and old of some of the success stories to come out of the Mints! There are some truly wonderful stories out there that didn’t make it here, such as Winnie’s base-stealing career, 0-star leadoff batter Marquez Clark stealing home twice in the same inning, and the epic highs and lows of Pudge Nakamoto. I hope that whatever shape the next era takes, there continues to be space for stories and personalities within the game itself.
This article is part of the Dream Team Series, in which our writers look back on the Discipline and Expansion Eras to create the strongest version of our beloved teams. Read the first in the series here.
