All-Acquired Teams 2015

A writer named Susan Orlean once opined that (and I paraphrase) people care passionately about things because it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. Or at least her character said something like that in the movie Adaptation. Either way, I've always felt that way about my relationship with the sport of baseball. Also the relationships with, you know, my family and loved ones and all that. But baseball in particular as it affects this post. Then a music teacher I recently met suggested you should always make time to do the things you love. Again excluding family, one thing I love to do is construct fantasy MLB lineups/rosters out of players who have changed teams during the offseason.

In order to make the best of all possible versions of these rosters, I maintain a database with information on the stats of a great deal of baseball players. I won't say it includes every player who will make a meaningful contribution in 2015. But I will say that it's anyone who made a statistical contribution in 2014, anyone on a team's current 40-man roster, and anyone on a team's current list of non-roster invitees. Also any players caught in "DFA Limbo" at the time of the last update, which for the numbers I'm using now will be 2/18/15, the first day pitchers and catchers started reporting.

These particular rosters - let's call them the AL and NL All-Acquired 2015 Teams - take the form of 25-man (or Active) rosters, because that's how many players are on a baseball team. I created them by organizing all 550+ players who changed teams so far by league, position, and MLB.com fantasy rank, and picked what I thought would be the most effective lineups. A big part of this database is how it's color-coded, and my favorite color to see on these types of documents at this time of the year is yellow. That's because on my lists, a yellow highlight on a player's name means that player changed teams during the most recent/current offseason. By their natures, these rosters will be comprised only of "yellow" players.

But the first and last name of a player are only two of the 20+ columns on my list (only a sample of which are presented below). Seeing as it was built using the incomparable Microsoft Excel, making an abundance of sortable columns is pretty darn easy. You'll see them spelled out at the top of the screengrab below, and I'll say a little more about some of them after the list itself. Let me just say here, so you don't have to figure it out while reading, that the first chunk of players is a projected lineup, the second is starting rotation, the third is bullpen, and the fourth is bench (or offensive bullpen, as I might start calling it). AL on top, NL on bottom, arbitrarily.

For the first time, I've decided to try and color-code column number 1 - the text of which shows to which team and organizational level the player belongs. What you see is a work in progress, but the idea was to give each position its own color profile. I have starting pitchers (or SP or 1) in red with relief ptichers (RP, 1.2 in my terminology) in orange, keeping pitchers in hot colors and position players in earth tones - blue for catcher, green for infield, brown for outfield. It might need a little tweaking before it can be useful for fantasy evaluation.

There's another color not pictured above: a dark sad gray for DH, but primary DH's without a secondary position are rare. Even Nelson Cruz and Billy Butler qualify for OF and IF, respectively, because they each managed at least 20 games in the field last year. Another thing to keep in mind for these lineups: I'm building them as I would a fantasy lineup, so if I were handed the reins to this AL team, I would tell Evan Gattis to polish up his catching gear and Hanley Ramirez (pictured above) to find some stronger rubber bands to hold his body together, because to maximize fantasy value, you have to take advantage of positional eligibility.

The reason Ramirez and Gattis are ranked so high relative to their actual hard cold hard 2014 statistics - which are represented in the Points column - is because they will have the opportunity to hit like left fielders but occupy the roster spots of SS and C, respectively. The idea being that they are both packed with offensive talent, but their defensive limitations could have been holding them back. Maybe the reason MLB.com is particularly high on Ramirez - he was the highest ranked player to change teams so far, according to column #2 - is because they remember the out-of-this-world success by another famous Boston outfielder named Ramirez...

The next-highest ranked player to change teams was the recipient of one of the most ludicrous contracts given out this winter. I say "one of" the most ludicrous, because even though payment on Max Scherzer's seven year deal will be going on for twice the length of the actual contract, the Marlins might STILL control Giancarlo Stanton after the Nats are done paying Scherzer. Incidentally, that seven year deal is abbreviated 7yr deal in my Contract column, which keeps track of what kind of and how long of a deal to which each player is currently signed. Stanton's contract would say 13*^yr ext, the symbols representing two different wrinkles in an out-of-the-ordinary option structure, and the ext short for extension, signifying that he shouldn't be shaded yellow this year.

The heterochromatic wonder was just one of three top-100 fantasy starters signed by NL teams this winter, joining Jon Lester and James Shields. By contrast, Jeff Samardzija was the only double-digit-ranked starter to change teams in the AL, but the junior circuit did add a top-100 reliever in David Robertson. Interestingly enough, both pitchers landed with the White Sox, who are most certainly making a push for the AL Central crown. Meanwhile, two of the NL All-Acquired starters will pitch for the Cubs (Jason Hammel joins Lester), who are making a similar push across town.

Shields joins a group of new Padres acquisitions that could fill an entire outfield. Matt Kemp's presence in CF is clearly fantasy motivated. Justin Upton will play with a new team, but unlike his brother Melvin (nee B.J.), he won't be playing under a new name. Those two could have been joined by Wil Myers if Jason Heyward wasn't projected to hit more like he was projected to hit last year - yet he didn't hit well last year and my fantasy bench was the thinner for it. However, if Myers ends up spending significant time at first base, he would definitely join the lineup over the current Michael Morse/Adam Lind situation. 2014 All-Star catcher Derek Norris is also in town, proving that Padres GM A.J. "This Is Madness, This Is" Preller is giving new meaning to the word "push" (as in for the NL West title).

Another significant acquisition in San Diego is actually the NL team's top-ranked relief pitcher, even though Brandon Morrow has a good shot at making the starting rotation if healthy. The fact that he's the top RP is a glaring reminder that no NL club signed a player who has an inside track to racking up saves in 2015. This could change, since Francisco Rodriguez and Rafael Soriano are still unsigned as of this writing, and in any case, it doesn't really matter except in the fantasy world that's based on categories. But in the fantasy world that's based on POINTS, it's important to remember that that even mediocre starters stand to be more effective than most middle relievers, so it's always good to pay attention to utility pitchers (what I sometimes refer to as P) like Morrow and Anthony DeSclafani and noted Cancerian Marco Estrada. If I ever take a stab at altering the point system that I've used for a decade and a half, I would consider knocking down the value of wins, losses, and saves while also potentially adding holds to celebrate more types of pitchers. I would also try to separate RBI and Runs scored on the offensive side, because it feels like we're counting the same thing twice, but that's another story.

Most of the above analysis will have been done in the Pos(ition) and Points columns on the left hand side, but as we (fashion) move to the right, we get some trivia and more color-coding. The Free Agency column predictably shows when a player is scheduled to hit the open market. Only cases that will be resolved after the current season have a color. Every group in the Sign column has a color, one of 12 distinct astrological possibilities. This and Birthdate exist only to feed my astrology baseball project, whereas the next two went into a Hometown project I attempted at the midseason mark last year. In the document I work from, I usually put the Contract column next to Free Agency - there's also a Salary column that hasn't been updated yet, which will be a mirror image of Cot's Baseball Contracts. The Notes column is a reminder of any roster-altering moves in which the player was involved between the end of the last World Series and the present, with info gathered primarily from official transactions pages and MLB Trade Rumors.

So there you have it: my strategy for getting the most enjoyment/information that I possibly can out of  the sport of baseball. I might try to plug these lineups into MLB 2014: The Show and play a mock World Series between the two leagues, since this is really the last year where the players in that particular game will be relevant. Maybe if I scrimp and save enough cash for an Elgato gaming capture device, I could post a highlight reel on the Internet. Or I could just go back to burying my face in my database until Opening Day.