All-Selected Team 2015

Did you ever get the feeling of blog-related deja vu, as if you're reading something on the internet that you've read before? Well, if you were reading this very blog a year ago tomorrow, that feeling would be justified. Because that's when I published my overview of players who were added to their teams' 40 man rosters during the 2013-14 offseason. Sadly, the first player featured in that article was the late Oscar Taveras of the Cardinals, a tragic reminder of the effect that loss - both personal and professional - can have both on and off the field. With that in mind, let me just start this year's article off with a concept: the All-Selected Team 2015.

The name of this team comes from the official name of the transaction: to select a player's contract, i.e. add them to the 40-man roster. Teams do a lot of selecting in late November because of the Rule 5 Draft, which I explained thusly last year:

there are a couple of important stipulations: 1) Any player taken in the Rule 5 Draft has to remain on his new team's active (i.e. 25-man) roster for the entirety of the upcoming season or risk being returned to his original team. 2) Only players NOT on a team's expanded (i.e. 40-man) roster are eligible to be drafted in the proceedings. It's this second stipulation that led to more than 100 players being added to their team's respective 40-man rosters prior to last week's November 20 deadline to protect them from the Rule 5 Draft.

In point of fact, this year (called the 2015 offseason, because it affects 2015 season) there were 104 players called up (i.e. had their contracts selected) since the conclusion of the 2014 World Series, most occurring on or around November 20, 2014. Coincidence? The truth is out there! Keep watching the skiis!

But first, watch this full lineup projection of the most impressive minor league players from this year's All-Selected pool.

Granted, viewing players in this light is a bit one-sided, prospect-wise, since a lot of the monster numbers come from the lower levels of the minors, and it's generally the more seasoned players who immediately make an impact on their teams' rosters. For example, the pack leader in terms of minor league swp - Washington middle infielder Wilmer Difo - put up his video game numbers (14 HR, 49 SB, .315 AVG) in Class A South Atlantic League at age 22. Let's just say it will be a while before Ian Desmond has to worry about his job. Not far behind Difo in points per game (but two years behind him in age and two levels his senior in minor league progression) Jose Peraza has the makings of a prototypical contact-and-speed leadoff hitter (.339 AVG, 60 SB, only 2 HR) and his presence at the top of the Braves farm makes a 2017 rebuild not seem so bad.

Joc Pederson is the Dodgers outfielder that everyone is talking about, but the organization's #15 prospect Scott Schebler has steadily dominated advanced A and AA in two consecutive seasons, showing tremendous skill with the bat and fine athleticism (each season featured an OPS over .900 and double digits in each type of extra base hit plus stolen bases). The runner-up in total min swp, Brandon Drury showed good traditional power (23 HR, 42 2B) and could give fellow rookie Jake Lamb (who Drury trailed by just one place on the organizational prospect list going into 2014) a run for his money for the Diamondbacks' third base job. The All-Selected team's leader in home runs (Renato Nunez with 29) has shown some promise, but third base and DH are two spots the Oakland Athletics have pretty well covered with fan favorite Josh Donaldson and newly signed country breakfast enthusiast Billy Butler.

The only member of the All-Selected team to make an appearance on MLB.com's top 100 prospects list going into 2014 was Marlins lefty starter Justin Nicolino, and when the hype corresponds to the production, there's a better chance for major league talent to emerge. Interestingly enough, of the 13 other 2014 top 100 prospects among all 104 players called up this offseason, Nicolino's 81 was the lowest. Of the three players in the top 20 - Twins infielder Miguel Sano (4), Mets starter Noah Syndergaard (11), and Pirates pitcher Jameson Taillon (16), only Syndie managed to get on the field in 2014 due to injuries (I'm unofficially shortening that now in the event he becomes a star. I'm also considering Syndo or the Syndicate). Going back to the stats, keep in mind that the only one of the top five starting pitchers on this list made it as high as AAA, and that's unranked Tyler Wilson of the Orioles. The most advanced newly-selected pitchers that I could see having the best opportunity to thrive in 2015 are Alex Meyer, who pitched decently in AAA for the Twins, A.J. Cole, who could get a spot in Washington's rotation if they trade a big name pitcher as is kind of expected, and Eduardo Rodriguez, who hasn't pitched above AA, but Boston may have spent all its resources on its offense, and they didn't acquire Rodriguez from the Orioles for nothing (except they kind of did acquire him in exchange for nothing, giving up only a half season before free agency - same with Yoenis Cespedes... what I mean is they didn't acquire him for the PURPOSE of nothing).

The moral of the story is, I don't know which of these players are going to make the most impact in the major leagues next season or even many seasons from now. More than half of the players called up (58) appeared on their team's top 20 prospect list prior to 2014, so most of these are names that people are aware of. Perhaps if we look back to a similar type of lineup, taking players from the 2014 All-Selected pool but using their actual 2014 MLB production, it will tell us what we might expect.

This team actually had standouts at most positions. First the rotation: Arguably no rookie had more impressive 2014 production than NL Rookie of the Year Jacob deGrom, who got all the first place votes except for the 4 that went to Billy Hamilton. Jesse Hahn seems to have flashed ace potential in San Diego at times (he was averaging 79 points per game at the All-Star Break). And both Tyler Matzek and Shane Greene have developed into solid workhorses. Aaron Barrett spent the majority of the year in Washington's bullpen, Pedro Baez was asked to shoulder some high-leverage innings for the Dodgers, and San Francisco's world championship run would have looked very different without Hunter Strickland's nasty fastball/slider combo.

Not to imply that deGrom had any competition for his RoY hardware, but Arizona leadoff hitter Ender "Wiggin" Inciarte has to at least be in the conversation. He should also be in the following conversation: where will he play in the outfield given the addition of the Cuban sensation Yasmany Tomas and the presence of Mark Trumbo and A.J. Pollock. Gregory Polanco has looked like he could be a star in Pittsburgh. The story of Kennys Vargas reminds me a little of a young, switch-hitting David Ortiz, which is kind of scary. Arismendy Alcantara will still be eligible at 2B next year, which fantasy owners should know, because he'll likely play more center field with all the former A's prospects clogging up the Cubs' infield picture. Speaking of infield, Detroit's Eugenio Suarez was one half of a starting shortstop for a playoff team.

These are some of the dynamic new players we enjoyed last year. Will this year's crop be at all similar? Find out in: the 2015 Baseball Season!

Thoughts About The Walking Dead and Magic

Sometimes when you're experiencing any form of entertainment, you experience something that instantly reminds you of another form of entertainment. They can be similar types, for example when you hear Hans Zimmer's haunting music from Interstellar, you might recall an amped up version of Philip Glass's haunting music from Koyaanisqatsi. Or fundamentally different types, like when the imagery from an episode of Game of Thrones recalls imagery from the popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering (or vice versa). But other times, the similarities go beyond just imagery, penetrating deep down to the subject matter itself. For example, when I (finally) watched the season finale for Season 4 of The Walking Dead last night, one of the early climactic moments of the show brought to mind a specific Magic card, a black card, from the Mirrodin block. I don't like to give away spoilers, but it's been more than seven months since the episode (entitled "A") first aired on AMC, so I have no qualms about giving away the card I'm talking about. I even went through the trouble of using MTG Cardsmith to create an alternate art reprint that could easily go into a Walking Dead themed expansion set (marketing hint).

I've said it before and I'll say it again (probably): The scene where Rick zombies-up and tears the throat out of his would-be Deliverance-esque assaulter with his fucken teeth was one of the more satisfying moments in the series so far. It was not only the pure gore factor, though that was not unimpressive, but also the philosophical and tactical implications of using the strategy. We've seen countless walkers take out humans by biting them in the throat, so it obviously works, even with decayed teeth and undead jaw muscles. But it requires you to abandon your humanity, to become like your common enemy in order to best destroy a fellow living creature.

The parallel to the Magic card Go for the Throat (if not to its vampiric art by David Rapoza), in that it doesn't work against artifact creatures, is shocking: not that constructs or golems exist in the Walking Dead universe, but if they did, Rick would never have been able to effectively execute the same move against them. Come to think of it, the move wouldn't have worked on a walker either. Or a dragon or a hydra or an elephant, which are just some of the standard creature types that a Go for the Throat reprint would be able to target. So maybe the card is a little overpowered when taken out of context of the show, but the flavor is just too spot on to ignore.

Another reason that scene is so powerful is because it tells the story of how Rick, a high level series regular (to use a Dungeons and Dragons term) was able to transform a situation where he was on his knees, at gunpoint and surrounded, to an absolute bloodbath in his team's favor. Rick ends the season in a similar way to how he started that scene: trapped inside a train car, surrounded by armed foes. But this time his team's a little bit bigger and he is fully in control of his confidence that this show cannot exist without him. As someone who is about to dive into Season 5, however possible, I hope that Rick's confidence extends not just to his survival, but also to the entertainment value of his existence. Because we've seen first hand what can happen to the pace of this show when all the regulars are bound up together in an enclosed space. And this time the group doesn't even have their weapons to help them.

At least Cutty and Carol are still on the loose, so we'll have a B Story to cut back to. Or maybe they'll pull a Book 4 of A Song of Ice and Fire (only nine years late on that one) and leave out half the characters entirely. Who can know? All I can say is that I'm especially excited for this new season of Walking Dead, not only to find out what happens, but because Ozzy Man is doing episode reviews on YouTube, and it was only his brilliant comedy dub Eddie Stark: Australian Dad that got me through a long and arduous baseball postseason.

SWP 2014, part 3: The Winning Teams

Every year, with only 10 playoff spots, there are bound to be some good teams that accumulate winning records, but that don't make it into the postseason tournament. Let's take a look at the five teams with winning records who were left out of the October party.

Seattle Mariners
Lineup: 7/9
Rotation: 3/5
Bullpen: 2/2

The Mariners defied a lot of expectations this year, mostly because their actual team was very different than their projected team, which was named just 11th best in the league. Actually, both the discrepancies between the actual 2014 roster and Sports Illustrated projections (Corey Hart and Justin Smoak) show up in my SWP project in a bench capacity. The SI folks thought that Hart would actually be healthy enough to play right field with Smoak at first, Logan Morrison the DH, and Michael Saunders patrolling center field. As you can see by the ^'s on the lineup at left, Seattle GM Jack Zduriencik replaced his underperforming parts by shifting some positions around and making some timely trades. Kendrys Morales and Austin Jackson ended up also underperforming, but as it happens, any team with a 3,000 point all-star has a pretty good chance of doing well. You can't fault SI for missing the two pitchers they did because Roenis Elias was a rookie and Chris Young ended up winning the comeback player of the year award (read: nobody could see his resurgent season coming). Also because James Paxton and Taijuan Walker would have been rotation mainstays had they been healthy enough for the whole year. I took a bit of liberty giving SI a 2/2 in the relief pitcher department since Tom Wilhelmsen actually had more points than Danny Farquhar, but he pitched in fewer games and would have had fewer innings if he wasn't called upon to make two spot starts late in the year.



Cleveland Indians
Lineup: 9/9
Rotation: 3/5
Bullpen: 2/2

Take a good look: the Cleveland Indians lineup is what total, 100% lineup predictive success looks like. The batting order is a little different, Swisher and Santana swapped projected positions, and nobody saw Michael Brantley coming (Rotowire.com projected him to hit 8 home runs and hit .280) but all the pieces are there. The pitching was also a bit of a mess due to Justin Masterson's injury issues (which eventually got him traded to a playoff team, yet left off the playoff roster) and Zach McAllister's ineffectiveness: both pitchers still show up on the SWP project because they eclipsed 10 starts and 60 innings, but neither were in the top five. Another player no one saw coming: Corey Kluber, who could very well steal the AL Cy Young award from King Felix just for novelty's sake, because as you can see, the more experienced pitcher clearly had the better numbers. The bullpen situation is very similar to San Francisco's in that both projected relievers served as the closer at some point in the season, but while Sergio Romo was simply demoted, John Axford was demoted and traded to the Pirates.



New York Yankees
Lineup: 7/9
Rotation: 2/5
Bullpen: 1/2

Seven out of nine is actually a pretty decent ratio, especially when both discrepancies show up on the bench. Basically Carlos Beltran was supposed to start in right field with Alfonso Soriano the DH and Ichiro on the bench, but Soriano was eventually granted his release, Beltran wasn't healthy enough to stick in the outfield full time, so Ichiro had to step up. Kelly Johnson was supposed to hold it down at third base in A-Rod's absence, but he had to spend significant time at first when Mark Teixeira went down, opening the door for rookie Yangervis Solarte, who was eventually traded for another third baseman who doesn't show up here: Chase Headley of the Padres, now a free agent. The pitching is a different story. You can't blame SI too much for missing everyone but the two Japanese starters (Kuroda and Tanaka) since this rotation was veritably ravaged by injuries. CC Sabathia was supposed to be the staff ace before his season ended in early May. Ivan Nova succumbed to the Tommy John epidemic after just four starts. Michael Pineda did technically qualify as a starter by my standards, but he wasn't anywhere near the top five. If they re-sign Kuroda and McCarthy (who thrived after being traded to New York), if Pineda has a good deal more luck with injuries than he's had for his whole career, and if Masahiro Tanaka's torn elbow ligament miraculously doesn't continue to tear, the Yankees should be alright next year. But that is indeed a lot of if's. Another piece they'll have to replace is their #1 relief pitcher David Robertson, who will test the free agent waters. Projected RP2 Matt Thornton was already shipped out to Washington after the deadline last year.


Toronto Blue Jays
Lineup: 8/9
Rotation: 3/5
Bullpen: 1/2

The top four out of the five non-playoff teams with winning records are from the AL. I wonder if this means we'll finally see some consistency across the leagues with the DH rule. The only missed projection for the offense was at second base, where rookie Ryan Goins was in fact given the job to start the year (with Brett Lawrie at third) but who ended up spending most of the season in the minors. Lawrie did in fact play most of his games at third, but he did qualify at second, so I shifted him over on my list to make room for the more offensively talented Juan Francisco (who I definitely streamed into my fantasy lineup during his hot first half). In the rotation, Drew Hutchison and rookie Marcus Stroman were the ones SI didn't predict, placing reliever Esmil Rogers and oft-injured Brandon Morrow in their places. I myself thought that Todd Redmond would blossom into a starter, but instead he served as their top setup man, beating out projected RP2 Steve Delabar, who only managed 30 innings on the year.

Milwaukee Brewers
Lineup: 8/8
Rotation: 4/5
Bullpen: 1/2

Finally a non-playoff NL team with a winning record! The Brewers improved over their 2013 showing, but were eclipsed in a strong Central division by the Cardinals and the Pirates (although they did finish well ahead of the disappointing Reds). Their offense was clicking on all cylinders with the superhuman feats of Carlos Gomez and Jonathan Lucroy making up for Ryan Braun's regression to a non-performance enhanced statistical realm. The pitching was also remarkably consistent, with the only wrong guess being Marco Estrada, who was in fact a starter for a lot of the year before he was demoted to the bullpen. SI apparently didn't get the memo that projected closer Jim Henderson had lost his job to projected RP2 Francisco Rodriguez before this magazine was published - but neither did I, if you check my projected lineups on the subject.

Atlanta Braves
Lineup: 7/8
Rotation: 4/5
Bullpen: 1/2

Alright, I know I said there were only five non-playoff winning teams, and that's true, but the Braves and the Mets tied for second place in the NL East division, and they would have made it to .500 with two more wins apiece, and there are two leagues, no matter how one-sided the talent level might be, so I've decided analyzing a couple of bonus teams. Hooray! The only discrepancy in the lineup is at second base, where SI incorrectly assumed that opening day starter Dan Uggla would be the starter beyond July, where he was unceremoniously dumped and later signed (and dumped) by the Giants. Aaron Harang was a late signing, so it makes sense that he wouldn't appear in this issue, but you're going to laugh when you see that SI predicted Freddy Garcia to do significant fill-in work for the injured Brandon Beachy and Kris Medlen. Bullpens are super hard to predict, so I don't fault SI at all for assuming fireballing former closer Jordan Walden would serve as the primary setup man rather than David Carpenter. I would fault them if they somehow left out Craig Kimbrel as the guy for whom they'd be setting up.



New York Mets
Lineup: 6/8
Rotation: 4/5
Bullpen: 0/2

The Mets did overperform in order to achieve such a decent winning percentage, but in the grand scheme of things, they finished about where expected: SI has them ranked 12th in the NL... with just the Phillies, Marlins, and Cubs behind them, two of whom they did beat in their division. The offensive discrepancies exist mostly due to trades: SI thought that Ike Davis would beat Lucas Duda for the first base job, and I guess he ostensibly did until he was traded to the Pirates giving Duda the job by default. While Chris Young does show up on my list in the "NL DH" spot (read: most-used bench guy), he didn't get a chance to eclipse the speedy Juan Lagares in center field due to his trade to the Yankees. The only pitcher missing from SI's projected rotation is rookie Jacob deGrom, as they thought Japanese veteran Daisuke Matsuzaka would be the primary fill-in for Matt Harvey. On a side note, this rotation is going to be absolutely terrifying when Harvey returns from his Tommy John procedure. Projected closer Bobby Parnell missed basically the whole season due to injury and Vic Black underperformed, causing swingman Jenrry Mejia and little-known reliever Jeuris Familia to take over closing duties, with Carlos Torres quietly serving as one of the most capable long relievers in the league.

There were many more teams who took the field in 2014, but none of them performed all that impressively. If there are teams any that anyone would like to see in greater detail, let me know in the comments section or shout out on Twitter @Hunter_S_Batman and perhaps I'll factor them into a future post. Until then, keep your eyes (but not your hands) on the Hot Stove and try to stay warm through the offseason!

SWP 2014, part 2: The Rest of the Playoffs

Having analyzed the final four teams last post, it's time to take a look at the other six teams who made the postseason, comparing their aggregate 2014 lineups to the projected lineups from this year's Sports Illustrated preview issue. Again, this is not to pick on SI for the roster spots that they got wrong - since it's no fun to be petty and they're pretty accurate overall - but rather just to have a benchmark for comparison to track some of the interesting changes that took place throughout the season.

Los Angeles Angels
Lineup: 8/9
Rotation: 4/5
Bullpen: 1/2

Much like Kansas City, the Angels had a plan offensively and they stuck with it, making this team very easy to predict. The only batter that the folks at SI got wrong wasn't even a position player, as they thought veteran Raul Ibanez would hold down the DH spot. Even with youngster C.J. Cron getting the most time here, DH was still the weakest link for this team with guys like Efren Navarro and Brennan Boesch getting far too many at-bats there. Although to be fair, they didn't stop the team from winning the most games in baseball (despite being ranked 9th in the league by SI). SI wasn't wrong by assuming that Hector Santiago and Tyler Skaggs would occupy the 4th and 5th spots of the rotation, and it's unclear that Matt Shoemaker would have gotten a shot had Skaggs not gone down with an injury. The same is true for putting Ernesto Frieri as the projected closer, as he did indeed start the season in that role, but lost it fairly quickly and was later shipped to Pittsburgh for their ex-closer Jason Grilli. You'll notice that Huston Street's name is in italics here - that's because he failed to reach 40 innings with the Angels, but I left him in because of his important role and ludicrously high swp/g totals.

Washington Nationals
Lineup: 7/8
Rotation: 4/5
Bullpen: 2/2

I could very easily haven given the SI crew an 8/8 here, since Ryan Zimmerman (projected as the starting 3B with Rendon at 2B, where he did also qualify), but I decided to ding them since Zim a) missed a lot of time due to injury and b) had to effectively abandon third base for left field. I could also have dinged SI in the relief pitcher department since they named Tyler Clippard as the RP2 - the job that technically went to Drew Storen points-wise - but that's only because he won the closer's job towards the end of the season, whereas Clippard was consistently a quality setup man. Keep in mind this team that was supposed to win the World Series, according to the cover of the magazine, and they did do exceptionally well this year, so it makes sense that their projections were mostly accurate. The only one that was just unabashedly wrong was assuming that Taylor Jordan would hold down the fifth starter spot over Tanner Roark, but maybe the SI analysts weren't paying attention at the end of 2013.

Los Angeles Dodgers
Lineup: 7/8
Rotation: 5/5
Bullpen: 1/2

SI pegged the Dodgers as the best team in the NL this year, and they were very good, and they put their team together pretty much as SI predicted. The only discrepancy was at second base where Cuban import (and 2014 minor leaguer) Alex Guerrero was projected to start, leaving All-Star Dee Gordon on the bench. Josh Beckett succumbed to an injury that effectively ended his career (he retired at season's end), but he did serve as the team's fifth starter when active. I feel bad giving SI a wrong answer in the bullpen since Brian Wilson was utilized as an RP2 setup man type even through the playoffs, despite his complete ineffectiveness, but there were just so many pitchers in this curiously weak bullpen who did better than the Beard that I just couldn't justify giving it to him.






Detroit Tigers
Lineup: 7/9
Rotation: 5/5
Bullpen: 2/2

Again, this team mostly stuck to the plan except for where injuries and trades were concerned. Before the breakout of J.D. Martinez caused Austin Jackson to be expendable, Jackson/Rajai Davis was the CF/LF plan as projected. Jackson actually had more games in CF, but I gave the nod to Rajai since he logged more overall games in the outfield. Detroit was left scrambling at shortstop when Jose Iglesias went down for the year with shin splints and projected starter Alex Gonzalez did get a handful of games towards the beginning of the season, but it was a Suarez/Romine combo for the vast majority of the year. In terms of innings pitched for the starters, SI got one thru five correct, even though David Price was obviously a much higher upside pitcher after he was acquired from the Rays in the biggest three-team blockbuster of the year. Even though Al Alburquerque wasn't the second-most-used relief pitcher (remember how Joba Chamberlain in key sitiuations basically cost them any shot they might have had at winning the ALDS?), he did score the most points of all Tigers setup men, so I consider that a correct prediction for SI.




Oakland Athletics
Lineup: 7/9
Rotation: 3/5
Bullpen: 0/2

Pandemonium is the best way to describe how this A's roster was put together throughout the season. The batting order predictions were actually quite accurate: SI had John Jaso behind the plate (which was his primary position until a concussion ended his season) with Derek Norris on the bench and *shudder* Daric Barton listed as the primary DH. And although I listed Alberto Callaspo at second base ahead of Eric Sogard, that was really just a ploy to get more offensive prowess into the starting 9 (although I justify my decision because Callaspo played a bunch of games at other positions as well). In the rotation, three out of five is pretty generous, considering Tommy Milone only barely sneaks by Jon Lester into the top five (by innings pitched) when the traded lefty was not nearly as impactful as the acquired lefty. Sonny Gray and Scott Kazmir were the only other two starters correctly projected to be in the rotation: the other two spots went to Dan Straily (who did start the season there, but was subsequently traded) and A.J. Griffin (obviously before it was learned that his injuries would keep him out for the season). The two projected relievers did qualify for inclusion on my swp list, but at the very bottom of the barrel, as Jim Johnson lost his closer's job almost immediately and Ryan Cook wasn't used nearly as much as high leverage setup men Luke Gregerson or Dan Otero. Oh well, you can't get them all right!


Pittsburgh Pirates
Lineup: 6/8
Rotation: 4/5
Bullpen: 1/2

As is the case with most teams that did surprisingly better than anticipated, some of the key players came out of nowhere. Or in this case, the Mets, as Ike Davis was acquired early in the season as the left-handed (read: primary) part of a first base platoon with Gaby Sanchez, the SI projected starter. Jose Tabata was projected to start in right field, but he was demoted early on, leaving two lefties - Travis Snider and Gregory Polanco - to take charge of the role. But the main story here that nobody saw coming was Josh Harrison, a projected bench player who very nearly won the batting title while filling in at both corner outfield spots and third base, making July 8th birthdays everywhere proud. The one starting pitcher SI got wrong was Wandy Rodriguez, in that they thought he would play a role on this team commensurate with the salary Pittsburgh was paying him, when that was in fact not the case. Jason Grilli did start the season in the closer role but obviously flamed out rather quick (see the Angels section above), ceding the job to his primary setup man Mark Melancon, so having those two as the top projected relievers was not an unreasonable pick at all.


Of the 20 teams who didn't make the playoffs, five managed to finish above .500 on the season. I'll probably continue this feature with those teams next time, and then see what happens from there.

SWP 2014, part 1: The Final Four

Well, another baseball season is officially in the books and the San Francisco Giants are officially making a habit of winning the championship every even-numbered year. While it would have been nice to see some new blood hoist the trophy over their heads this year, it is slightly gratifying that at least half of my prediction came true: the Giants did indeed win, but they by no means trounced their opposition, as the Royals battled till the bitter end and it was only the double-MVP-worthy awesomeness of the MadBum that put them down. So I'd like to congratulate San Francisco on an exciting, hard-fought World Series and a well-deserved victory. You made a lot of fans everywhere very happy.

So now, with a few days left before the free agent feeding frenzy begins, it seems like a good time to look back on the season that was in an overall big picture type way. And as it happens, I just finished my age-old SWP lineups project that I've done for the past decade and a half. This differs from the projected playoff lineups I posted in that those had the current lineup that I thought was most likely to play in the tournament, whereas the SWP project shows the overall composition of a team over the course of the whole year. Plus it comes with a cool team logo.

I use the same fantasy point system that I have been using since the start of this blog, which is called SWP after the Small World fantasy client where I first saw it implemented. This was a format without draft or auction - rather each player had a dollar value attached to them and each team owner had a salary cap with which to build their team. I don't remember the exact year I started playing, but one of my earliest memories was windmill slamming Ichiro Suzuki as a rookie for cheap and feeling really great about it.

The documents have evolved over the years - they started with just the lineup listed in positional order, rotation, and bullpen listed by games played. But as my favorite website baseball-reference.com started putting up more information such as batting orders, my lists reflected that as well. I also added bench players and adopted a somewhat complex qualifying system (shown at right) mostly to determine which pitchers fit in which category. Suffice it to say, any batter that logged more than 200 at bats and any pitcher with 40 innings/appearances are now represented.

Based on their most recent football preview, Sports Illustrated's projected lineups may be a thing of the past, but thankfully we still have them from the 2014 baseball preview to serve as a point of comparison. So as I go through the teams (starting in playoff finish order and then we'll see where it goes from there) I'll be keeping a running total of what SI got right, not to maliciously point out errors, but as a way to keep track of what unforeseen changes took place over the course of the season.

San Francisco Giants

Lineup: 7/8

Rotation: 5/5

Bullpen: 2/2

As you can't see, cuz I'm not posting pics of the projections, SI predicted the makeup of the world champions impressively well. The only discrepancy stems from their optimism that veteran Marco Scutaro would return from his injuries to play a significant role for this club, which of course he did not, allowing rookie Joe Panik to lock down this spot, possibly for years to come. While they technically did predict the team's top 5 starters listed in terms of innings pitched, Matt Cain was absent for most of the second half with injuries and Tim Lincecum was a non-factor pitching out of the bullpen. There is of course no way they could have predicted the acquisition of Jake Peavy, who actually equalled the production of Bumgarner in his brief sample size. Both the too two relievers listed ended up serving as the closer for part of this year, so that has to feel gratifying.

Kansas City Royals

Lineup: 9/9

Rotation: 4/5

Bullpen: 1/2

Turns out both participants in this year's World Series were pretty easy to predict. The folks at SI got the Royals offense down even to the batting order... that is until manager Ned Yost went rogue and switched things up late in the final month. The only thing they got wrong was assuming Bruce Chen would stick as the fifth starter, a job he ceded to Danny Duffy early on. I know that bullpens are hard to predict (which is probably why SI hedges their bets by only naming two relievers) but it is worth noting that there was no mention of Wade Davis in the magazine, making his historical season all the more impressive.

St. Louis Cardinals

Lineup: 8/8

Rotation: 4/5

Bullpen: 2/2

The only offensive player SI missed for the Cardinals was Jon Jay, who curiously didn't show up at all in the preview article, not even on the bench, despite the fact that he ended up leading the team in outfield appearances. There was again of course no way for them to predict that projected #5 starter Joe Kelly would have been traded for actual #5 starter John Lackey. There was also no reason to predict the emergence of Pat Neshek as an All-Star middle reliever, which they didn't, but I gave them a perfect bullpen score because their projected setup man Seth Maness logged more innings.

Baltimore Orioles

Lineup: 6/9

Rotation: 5/5

Bullpen: 1/2

The Orioles definitely went through some changes as the 2014 season progressed, which resulted in some wonky predictions. To be fair, Matt Wieters and Jemile Weeks did start the season at catcher and second base, respectively. But Wieters saw his season end due to injury before the All-Star Break and Weeks was demoted to the minors and found himself traded for a relief pitcher for the second time this year. Projected left fielder David Lough did log a lot of games in the field, but mostly as a defensive replacement. While a run prevented is technically worth as much as a run scored, this team was all about the long ball, so more often than not, LF at bats went to home run threats like Nelson Cruz (when not DH-ing), Delmon Young, and Steve Pearce (when not filling in for Chris Davis at first, or indeed pushing him over to third base).

The rotation situation is similar to the Giants, with the non-factor being utterly disappointing Ubaldo Jimenez, but unlike in San Francisco, his replacement Kevin Gausman did not come via trade but rather through the prospect pipeline. As with the offense, SI's bullpen projections match how Baltimore filled out the card at the start of the season, but while Darren O'Day remained a top flight setup man, they did not project that Tommy Hunter would lose the closer job to lefty Zach Britton. (And neither did I, based on my fantasy draft. That's why you never pay for saves...)


So that's the first round of charts. Next will be the rest of the playoff teams and then depending on how exciting the hot stove season gets, I'll likely continue with the rest of the teams.