Posted by contrarian23 on 4/14/2016 9:41:00 PM (view original):
1.) Best Pick - 1918 Carl Mays (Round 2). After grabbing 1917 Babe Ruth in round 1, I picked up Mays in round 2, which gave me 750+ inning of HR-killing deadball pitching...these guys should combine to pitch more than half of my innings, a pretty good L-R combo in the rotation. Given that I picked too late to get the stud Pedro Martinez seasons, I like my 1-2 as much as any in the league.
2.) Worst Pick - 1903 Bill Dinneen (Round 3). One of the heroes of the Sox first World Series champion, but I really should have used this pick on a stud bat in retrospect.
3.) Biggest Steal - 1956 Mickey Vernon and 1925 Joe Harris (rounds 18-19). That's a pretty sweet platoon combination at first base...Vernon hit .310/.403/.511 and Harris hit .313/.424/.564. I expect them combine to hit about as well as any 1B in this league not named Foxx. But I think it's too little too late.
4.) Prediction for my team - Should be among the best teams in the league in run prevention; should be among the worst in runs scored. Playing .500 ball would be nice, but against the caliber of owners in this league I'm guessing 75-87.
Well, the Mays-Ruth tandem was great, as expected. They combined to win 48 games and finished 3rd and 5th in the AL Cy Young award voting. And the Mickey Vernon (.300/.369/.448) and Joe Harris (.313/.403/.527) platoon was terrific. They combined for 19 HR, 132 RBI.
Pretty much everything else was mediocre or worse. As predicted, we did very well in run prevention, allowing just 832 runs, the fewest in the league. Unfortunately, our offense was even more anemic than our pitchers were stingy, as we scored just 830 runs, by far the lowest total. So pitching is definitely not everything.
As I wrote in the original post, drafting Dinneen in the 3rd round was a disaster. We really should have grabbed a big bat in that slot, and to make matters worse, Dinneen was horrible: 12-25, 6.66 ERA. You don't need to be Bill James to know that it's bad when your ERA is the number of the beast.
Other noteworthy performances --
The Good:
2001 Pedro Martinez - moved to the bullpen given his limited innings, but he was terrific: 6-2, 2.89
1991 Jeff Gray - 34 saves, 0.94 WHIP as the closer.
2003 Bill Mueller - .314/.389/.432
2003 Trot Nixon - .321/.404/.509 with 15 HR, 80 RBI
1987 Dwight Evans - .284/.358/.426 with 16 HR, 91 RBI
1948 Dom DiMaggio on defense: 29 plus plays, probably the best defensive CF in the league other than 1915 Tris Speaker
The Bad:
1938 Ben Chapman - .280/.332/.381, compared to actual totals of .340/.418/.494. That 200 points of OPS killed us.
1986 Jim Rice and 1956 Jackie Jensen - In 300 plate appearances they combined for 4 home runs and a slugging percentage of about .330.
1948 Dom DiMaggio on offense - .255/.332/.326. A .658 OPS, with the most plate appearances of anyone on the team
1951 Ellis Kinder - the league hit .336 and slugged .522 against Ellis. His WHIP was 2.11 and his ERA was 8.17. Ouch.