SWP by World Series Team 2016

I had resolved not to start earnest work on my SWP by Team project, my longest standing post-baseball-season tradition, until after the World Series. But, like the overeager kid on Christmas Eve, I've decided to open one present, which in this case is completing the entries for the two World Series participants, the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians. I'll present these below, but first a few guidelines. These lists do not represent a given team's most current roster, nor even necessarily its most efficient lineup construction; they represent a team's best fantasy baseball performers over the course of the whole season, as judged by the now-defunct Small World Points (SWP) system. In the case of these two clubs, the lists mostly resemble each team's current World Series roster... MOSTLY. It'll be the differences I'll focus on here, starting with the team that has home field advantage.

I arrange the offensive part of these lists based on where each player spent the most time in his team's batting order. The first 75+% of Cleveland's lineup at left is just about identical to the batting order that manager Terry Francona trots out against left-handed pitching. Against righties, power hitting DH Carlos Santana shifts to the leadoff spot, while Rajai Davis loses his lineup spot to midseason acquisition Coco Crisp, who doesn't show up on this list because he didn't accrue the requisite 200 plate appearances after coming to the Indians. Davis, who led the American League in stolen bases despite being heavily platooned throughout the season, has two positions associated with his line for the following reason: if you look at his personal tally of games played in 2016, he has more games in CF than in LF, but if you look at Cleveland's positional game log, Davis has more starts in LF than any other Indians player. Rookie Tyler Naquin got the majority of Indians starts in CF, but he too has been platooned during the postseason, ceding playing time against lefties to another midseason acquisition, Brandon Guyer. Yan Gomes was one of three Indians catchers to log 50 games at the position, but he's been replaced by Roberto Perez as the playoff starter.

Followers of the playoffs will note that the Indians have been using a three-man rotation of Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer, and Josh Tomlin throughout the postseason, with one exception: a Ryan Merritt start in Game 5 of the ALCS. The rotation above is organized by innings pitched, which means that Cleveland's three-man rotation is made up of their top three busiest pitchers in 2016, but not necessarily their top fantasy scorers. If you go by points per game, the Indians are using starters ranked one, four, and five. It's even more impressive considering that the Tribe has made it as far as they have with just starters one, four, and five (when going by points per game), since Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar both went down with injuries late in the year and have been deemed unable to start in the playoffs (although Salazar has come out of the bullpen for one inning so far in the World Series). All five relief pitchers listed (minimum 40 innings pitched or 40 appearances) appear on Francona's World Series roster, and curiously enough, all five are slated to go through the arbitration process prior to next season. However, you have to look all the way down at the bottom to see Cleveland's most valuable reliever Andrew Miller, whose line is different than all the others, for reasons I will explain later.

Now onto the Cubs roster, the offensive side of which is very nearly true to Joe Maddon's typical World Series lineup. One thing you'll notice right off the bat is the presence of a DH, despite this being Chicago's National League team. I've given NL teams access to a DH spot since I started doing this project (after the 2000 season) because it made it slightly more fair to compare offensive totals of teams across leagues if each team has nine offensive positions in the lineup. For NL teams, the "DH" is really shorthand for "most-used pinch hitter," or "small half of a platoon," or "someone who lost/gained regular playing time at some point during the year." Javier Baez is listed as Chicago's DH, despite having played all over the infield in 2016, pushing Ben Zobrist and Kris Bryant to the outfield when Baez needed playing time. During the playoffs, it's been Baez at 2B and Zobrist in LF, which would normally push Jorge Soler out of his lineup spot, except that he's been taking some starts away from Jason Heyward in RF due to the latter's total offensive futility this year.

They say pitching wins in the playoffs, and this Cubs team has one of the most impressive starting rotations, one through five, in recent memory, so it's not hard to see why pundits predicted this team making a deep run. Going back to the Indians and their injury woes for a bit, imagine how the Cubs would fare if their rotation options were limited to Jon Lester, John Lackey, and Jason Hammel (although all three did outscore CLE's three-man rotation). The bullpen is not nearly as impressive on paper, but remember that Hector Rondon's fantasy point totals were capped when he was replaced as primary save-earner with the acquisition of Aroldis Chapman (again, more on the italicized lines later on). Interestingly enough, Chicago's top middle reliever in terms of points per game (Trevor Cahill) was left off the playoff roster, even given that his past experience as a starter allows him to comfortably pitch multiple innings, which is definitely a trendy attribute for relievers this postseason. Filling the role of Cubs "long man" is another midseason acquisition, lefty Mike Montgomery.

And now a word about the two italicized relief pitchers at the bottom of each team's list. The "^" symbol in front of each one's name denotes that they were acquired during the season, which in these two players' cases kept them from reaching the requisite 40 IP / 40 G relevance-threshold necessary to appear in these lists. However, there are extenuating circumstances that merits the inclusion of each. As I mentioned above, when the Cubs acquired Aroldis Chapman, they immediately placed him in the closer role, resulting in him pitching in 18 of his new team's 53 total save opportunities (or 34%). Compare that to Hector Rondon's 23 SvOpps (43%), so this looks like a co-closer situation that needs to be reflected on the list. In Andrew Miller's case, he shows up in Baseball-Reference's list of top 12 Indians players by WAR, earning almost as many Wins Above Replacement in 29 innings pitched (1.6) as Josh Tomlin in 174 IP (1.7), so how could I NOT include a performance of that magnitude? Plus, the fact that both of these pitchers served as closers for the New York Yankees in 2016 links these two World Series participants in an intriguing way.