The format in each year has been slightly different, but what gave me the most consistent tsuris was figuring out how to place players who changed teams (or, more specifically, divisions) mid-season. I've tried it where a player belongs to the division in which he received the most plate appearances or scored the most fantasy points. But this year, seeing as I spent so much time keeping up to date 40 man rosters this season, I'd just have each player belong to the team with which he finished the season. That might be a blatant bias towards the AL West, who gets two top of the line starting pitchers and an elite closer while losing just Yoenis Cespedes. But we'll see how it works, and if it's terribly overpowered, we can always try another pass. It's not baseball blogging unless you have to do it twice!
Since I was just talking about the AL West, that seems like a perfect place to start:
Starting your lineup with the AL batting champion and following that up with the universally-agreed-upon best player in baseball is not a bad place to be as far as this little thought experiment is concerned. Second string second baseman Cano performed just a tick below the next couple people in the lineup, but I thought it was important to get a lefty in there (if only so we could have someone to pinch hit Jonny Gomes for in a crucial situation), plus I've heard that lineup construction doesn't matter much anyway. Second base was obviously deep in this division - Howie Kendrick had a great season but remains on the bench - but third base was even deeper, with both Adrian Beltre and Kyle Seager showing up on the AL Wild Card team (see below).
The presence of Brandon Moss in the outfield is a good reason to say a word about positional eligibility: in order to be play at a certain position, a player needed at least 20 games at that position during the regular season, with the exception of corner outfielders (who I allow to play either corner outfield spot) and center fielders (who I allow to play any outfield spot). Moss qualified in both right and left field, as he filled in for the injured Josh Reddick and the departed Yoenis Cespedes, respectively. It's interesting that Moss scored higher than his nearest competition (Dustin Ackley) by nearly 200 points despite his abysmal second half, which was caused by either the departure of his beloved lineup protector Cespedes or the torn cartilage in his hip that required offseason surgery... YOU DECIDE!
I mentioned that Lester and Samardzija would not have belonged to this team if I had used the formula from years past, but this starting staff would still have been pretty darned impressive without them: Jered Weaver would have taken the fourth slot with one of either Dallas Keuchel or Hisashi Iwakuma to follow. As it stands, all three of them ended up on the Wild Card team. The same goes for the closer position: Wild Card stopper Fernando Rodney did almost as well as Street in his first season with the Mariners, while David Robertson of the Yankees would easily finish games for the best-of-the-rest. Just for a minute, look at Otero's numbers vs. Gregerson's (even not accounting for the blown saves) and tell me who you think should have been pitching in late and close situations.
Remember the days when Victor Martinez qualified as a catcher? Or when Miguel Cabrera was a third baseman? If either of those was still the case, this team could have had those two plus rookie sensation Jose Abreu holding down the 3-4-5 spots in the batting order. I feel like it's a little ironic that the reason Carlos Santana no longer qualifies behind the plate is the emergence of Yan Gomes, who is no slouch, but at least the Santana at third base experiment worked well enough to avoid having Trevor Plouffe start at the hot corner. Meanwhile, if breakout star Michael Brantley hadn't qualified in center field, this team would have had to put up with Rajai Davis instead of Torii Hunter. Speaking of Hunter, I made a somewhat sentimental decision to start him rather than his teammate who had another breakout year, J.D. Martinez (1,592 points / 12.9 PPG) because a) Hunter has a stronger track record of success than one partial season and b) it might be his last year if he decides to retire.
There's no doubt that this squad has the strongest starting rotation out of all the Divisional All-Star teams, and it wouldn't even have been close if David Price were disqualified and replaced with Phil Hughes, the Wild Card's staff ace. I don't believe that Corey Kluber should win the Cy Young over Felix Hernandez, but he did have a season for the ages, Chris Sale was dominant, even having missed time in the beginning of the year, and both Max Scherzer and James Shields likely pitched themselves into supermassive free agent contracts. The bullpen is basically the same thing that Royals fans got to watch all season long with a couple guys from Cleveland thrown in. I also fudged the numbers to get Phil Coke in there instead of Al Alburquerque, because studies have shown that it's good to have at least one lefty in the pen for those tough matchups.
At first glance, it isn't hard to tell that this team is all about the Dominican Republic: the first five spots in the lineup are filled with guys who the Dominicans would LOVE to trot out there in the next World Baseball Classic. But cultural solidarity was not the only reason for arranging the lineup thus: even though a guy like Zobrist profiles more as a prototypical #2 hitter while Bautista would normally hit in a middle of the order power position, I took a page out of the Mike Scioscia/Sabermetrics book and bat the team's strongest hitter second (he actually started 21 games at that spot in the batting order this year, enough to qualify there if I used the same system as defensive positions).
The rotation definitely looks a little weak, especially considering the other two divisions we've seen so far. Tanaka obviously has lights-out stuff, but the status of his partially torn UCL has got to be troubling to the Yankees, even though his long term doesn't necessarily enter into this project. In the meantime, it feels like none of these other four guys would be aces on the majority of contending teams. The bullpen is rock solid though, with a first year closer who's really blossomed in the role, three well-publicized middle relief aces, and a rookie who totally flew under everybody's radar to put up an awesome season. It looks like this team's strategy would be to out-slug its opponents early while holding on for dear life in the late game.
With the Wild Card team, I like to start off with a quick breakdown of what divisions were deep enough to supply an overflow. In this case, we have five from the central, six from the east, and a whopping 10 from the west. Most of those western folks are pitchers, as I mentioned earlier. Most of the central folks are batters, including the two top offensive scorers Dozier and Abreu. And the east fills in the outfield and bullpen cracks. It's interesting to see that almost all these starters outmatch the starters on the AL East team, but where this team is at a huge disadvantage is in the bullpen, where none of the ace setup men are available. There seems to be a good mix of impact power hitters and scrappy contact/speed guys in the lineup, which could prove for some frustrating matchups for opposing clubs.
Next time I'll come back with the NL teams. Until then, go back to watching the actual playoffs.
No comments:
Post a Comment