When I volunteered to help run the tournament this year, I didn’t initially think about how I’d have to build my teams early enough to be able to be one of the commissioners. I had a backup plan to have someone else fill the role, but I managed to get the teams together. What I didn’t have was the extra few weeks of tinkering I inevitably would have used. Whether that’s actually a good thing remains to be seen. I’ve only made it to Round 2 in 3 of the past 5 years, so I probably could benefit from the time. But instead I had to be among the first ready to go, and I can only hope I didn’t make too many dumb mistakes. It certainly won’t be fun if I’m running Round 2 and not participating in it.
Though I contributed to the discussions of the themes, I didn’t have any insight into how best to approach them. Heck, I didn’t even start building any of the teams until a couple days after we posted the themes, and I only discovered belatedly that some would prove a pain in the
tuchus. I feel like I researched all of baseball history to try to find good 100M teams. The Bingo cards intimidated me with so many permutations; in fact, I saved that for last and only had time to mess with a couple of them.
Overall, my biggest fear in this tournament is missing something in the theme that other people figure out and dominate with. Sometimes there’s an insight that eludes me and I feel silly for missing it. It’s less about trying to win than about trying not to stumble.
Buckle up, as I had more time than usual to keep adding to this writeup and included some bonus content and links to videos to keep things interesting. Enjoy!
70M: You’ve Got a Friend
The main question confronting me with this theme was whether or not there’s any use fighting the system. Basically, you have to use a pitching staff that’s at least moderately homer-prone, and you can’t have anyone who hits for average. So what does that leave to your control? On the pitching side, you can try to minimize walks and/or maximize strikeouts since it’s likely people will try to make up for the lack of singles with walks in their hitter choices. You can also try to minimize hits if you want, but the hitters will do a good enough job of that in their own right, so I focused on the low walks primarily in my pitching choices.
On the offensive side, you know power is going to play in this league, but it’s likely a lot of the homers will be solo shots. Stringing together a bunch of hits won’t be all that easy, especially with lead-legged sluggers in the lineup. So I made the decision to expand my run production options by aiming to boost my speed wherever feasible and see if I can run my way to some extra runs while still being able to poke the ball over the wall enough. One hit or walk plus a steal means you only need one more hit for the run, right? Waiting for
Earl Weaver’s three-run bombs might not be the optimal strategy here, I think.
I decided to put the team in Exposition Park (-2 for HR) to save some innings and make things harder on owners who went for straight-up power. I also paid more attention than usual to reducing errors rather than maximizing range, because there should be fewer balls in play in this league and I don’t want to give away free baserunners with errors. At this cap, it’s tough to find players who check all these boxes, but I’ve got 4 guys who can hit a good number of homers (2002
Aaron Boone, 2008
Carlos Pena, 1947
Bill Nicholson, and 2004
Mike Cameron) and 5 who can cause a little havoc on the bases (Boone, Cameron, 1982
Julio Cruz, 1978
Toby Harrah, and 2016
Keon Broxton).
Heading my pitching staff are 1960
Bob Friend (hence the team name), 1985
Bret Saberhagen, and 2006
Brandon Webb. I don’t know if I put quite as much thought into fine-tuning this group as I could have, but I looked for low walk rates among pitchers who met the HR/9 threshold but didn’t go way over it. Also, of course, guys whose HR rates normalize way down.
Digression: I couldn’t help but notice that
d_rock97 rostered a 200K player in this league who I wish I’d looked for. Not because he’ll make much impact, but for personal reasons. His name is
Jake Hager, and he’s a journeyman utilityman who didn’t hit the big leagues until he was 28. He was a 1st-round draft pick out of high school in 2011, and like so many guys like that just didn’t manage to develop into the star they imagined. After nearly 4000 minor-league plate appearances, a .701 OPS starts to look like a pretty good reflection of what kind of hitter you are. Anyway, Jake cracked the majors in 2021 (somehow he was in four organizations that year and got called up by two of them) and then got just enough ABs with Arizona in 2022 to make it into WIS. Why do I care at all? Well, I worked with his father for 7 years and heard an awful lot of stories about how hard it is to make the majors even with 1st-round talent. I know how immensely proud his dad was when Jake finally made The Show. It’s easy to forget there are some great stories surrounding guys who barely got a cup of coffee, and I’m happy I got to know this one.
Musical interlude: James Taylor (when he still had hair) and
Carole King (the songwriter) perform the track live on the BBC:
https://youtu.be/nEFfzHiEKHY
5,302 PA, .238/.347/.425, 223 2B, 24 3B, 187 HR, 177 SB
1,332 IP, 3.02 ERA, .247 OAV, 1.10 WHIP, 0.65 HR/9
$34.5M hitting/$35.5M pitching
80M: Torey, Torey, Hallelujah
In theory, you could build rosters for this theme all day and night and keep comparing them until you find one you like the best. It was so daunting to me just trying to figure out where to start that I saved this until the end. My approach was first to find a card with four corners or a row with years I knew could form a good 120M pitching staff. Then I tested out building that roster to see if I liked the results. Then I looked at the other two ways of building and tested out both to make an 80M roster from that card. I did this with just two cards, 5 and 8. Both landed solid 120M rosters I could be happy with, and then it was about seeing what I could do about a Round 1 combo. I didn’t really like the rosters I could build with Card 5, which led me to Card 8. Bingo!
The four corners jumped out as very workable for 120M with 1972 and 1985 as strong starting pitching seasons and 1931 and 1951 filled with hitting options. Then for the 80M version, I built a team from the top row which was OK but not my favorite. I then did one using each season once and was able to create a core I liked. Filling in the last 6-7 spots efficiently took many permutations, but I can live with the scrub collection I wound up with.
In my first version of this roster, I used my 2019 spot for a reliever, primarily because I had fairly few modern seasons. I needed to make sure I had a decent bullpen and the options are much thinner the further back you go. Then I remembered that the first rule of
Fight Club is to use 2019
Ketel Marte in your 80m league, whereupon I dumped a pretty solid 1994
Gary Sheffield from my outfield and began the shuffle until Marte fit, the bullpen was usable, and the math worked. I think I swapped out 11 players to make it work, but truth be told I like the lineup better with him on top so I’m going to accept conventional wisdom that he needs to be there. I do think most people use him at 2B, but his range really bothers me so I’ve got him in RF instead.
I usually like 1988
Kirk Gibson at this cap, as much for nostalgia as anything, so he brings speed and pop behind Marte. I have ample power throughout the lineup behind them with 1960
Harmon Hillebrew, 2008
Troy Glaus, 2002
Jorge Posada, and 2012
Bryce Harper, plus a middle infield of 2011
Jimmy Rollins and 1992
Robby Thompson.
I looked at all my available seasons for strong pitchers in the target cap range and basically locked those in early. My ace is 1947
Warren Spahn, followed by 1920
Babe Adams and 1982
Joe Niekro. I feel pretty good about that trio. I think I’ve used them all at this cap before. I’ve got 1972
Jim Kaat’s 120 IP as a 4th starter when needed.
Digression: This theme gave me the opportunity to tap into a piece of nostalgia. When I was in high school in West Los Angeles, my friend
Marc and I would occasionally go watch UCLA play baseball at Jackie Robinson Stadium. It’s nestled into the VA property right down the street from where I went to school. Our favorite player in those days was a second baseman with the lyrical name
Torey Lovullo. Marc’s family was from Detroit, so he was over the moon when the Tigers drafted Torey, and visions of him stepping in to fill the eternal void the Tigers had at third base were frequently discussed. Torey, alas, became a journeyman backup with barely any playing time, but he has shown himself to be a promising manager with an energetic Diamondbacks team that’s likely to be good the next few years (Update: Since I first drafted this, they've overtaken my Dodgers and taken a decent lead in the division, so their time is now). So at any rate, I’ve got 1994 Torey on my roster as a scrub MI reserve, but you’d better be sure I’ll cheer any big hits he might deliver.
Musical interlude: Really, you don’t want to miss this. It’s a super sweaty
Elvis live from Honolulu in 1973 in an awesome glitzy jumpsuit and massive diamond rings.
https://youtu.be/0FT3SmZ_zx0
5,255 PA, .276/.357/.472, 253 2B, 28 3B, 194 HR, 99 SB
1,364 IP, 2.36 ERA, .229 OAV, 1.05 WHIP, 0.42 HR/9
$38.8M hitting/$41.2M pitching
100M: 96 Tears
I think I looked at every season in MLB history trying to find groups of teams you could build a starting rotation with that met the cumulative record requirement. Ultimately, I wound up with four groups that formed rosters I liked enough:
1964 White Sox/Braves/KC A’s, 1985 Cardinals/Expos/Pirates, 1996 Braves/Marlins/Phillies, and 2015 Dodgers/Nationals/Reds. Then I built all my other teams and finally came back at the end of finalizing everything else to try to pick one of these.
The 1964 collection probably stood the least chance, with a rotation that tailed off a lot after
Joe Horlen, but it had good balance offensively and defensively. The 1985 team was my favorite for a long time, with a pile of switch hitters and great speed (
Raines/McGee at the top) and the best defense of the four, but the rotation isn’t too deep and the bullpen was by far the weakest of the four. The 2015 team has the best one-two lineup punch with
Bryce Harper and
Joey Votto and the best top two in the rotation with
Greinke and
Kershaw. The rest of that rotation wasn’t too shabby either with
Scherzer, Cueto, and
Strasburg, and the bullpen was solid. However, the offense really paled overall next to the other teams, and I would have been forced to play either Votto or
Adrian Gonzalez in the outfield. Offensively and defensively, it rated the lowest of the options. Also 2015 Kershaw just burned me in the last round of
thejuice6’s tournament, and I couldn’t pull the trigger.
So, I wound up with the 1996 team mostly by process of elimination. It has a deep lineup headed by
Chipper Jones and
Gary Sheffield, though alas both of them have terrible gloves.
Fred McGriff, Benito Santiago, Marquis Grissom, and
Mark Whiten also have good power. Team speed is solid, and a few guys can steal bases effectively. I’ll run out a couple imperfect platoons because it’s tough to get every spot filled the way you’d want it ideally.
Quilvio Veras is the much better half of a split with
Mickey Morandini at 2B, and
Jim Eisenreich will swap out in RF with Whiten.
The rotation of
Smoltz-Maddux-Brown-Schilling should be stingy with walks and generally pretty strong. The back of the bullpen is solid enough with
Robb Nen and
Ricky Bottalico, and I think I’ll drop the 28-inning
Rick Helling in at closer.
Digression: I am still not quite over the 1985 NLCS, nor can I say the name
Tom Niedenfuer without gagging. Thinking about the ‘85 Cardinals here dredges up memories of those two painful losses in Game 5 and Game 6. Both games were played during the day on weekdays, and I was in high school then. Though memory pulls a few tricks on me, I distinctly remember watching the
Ozzie homer that won Game 5 and I’m pretty sure I was in basically the same place to see
Clark’s homer in Game 6. I had a Sony Watchman with something like a 2-inch diagonal black-and-white screen, and I remember taking it to school those days. After school, I went straight to the cafeteria to watch what I could of the games while waiting for my carpool ride home. I can still recall the stunned silence after Ozzie’s homer. I’d like to think
Denkinger’s call in Game 6 of the World Series was nature’s way of evening things out for the Cardinals. I mean, c’mon: Ozzie hit 28 regular-season HR in 19 seasons and just that one in 42 playoff games. I still can’t believe it, really.
Musical interlude: Here’s a creepy version of "96 Tears" by
? and the Mysterians with some Barbie dolls for unknown reasons. But you’ve gotta love the unmistakable organ playing on this track.
https://youtu.be/XeolH-kzx4c
6,061 PA, .292/.371/.472, 276 2B, 41 3B, 201 HR, 151 SB
1,432 IP, 2.74 ERA, .222 OAV, 1.04 WHIP, 0.59 HR/9
$50.2M hitting/$49.7M pitching
110M: Here Comes Tim Raines Again
My initial approach to this was to find guys who played with a lot of good starting pitchers and work with those seasons as a kickstart, rather than use a single SP as the rotation or the bulk of it. Well-traveled relievers are a great place to find these possibilities, and I landed on a couple who provided several good options in
Don McMahon and
Hoyt Wilhelm. McMahon played on some great teams in the 1960s that included the likes of
Marichal, McLain, Horlen, and
Spahn atop the rotations. Also, he has several good seasons of his own. Wilhelm also bounced around and had a lot of great teammates, and he had even more good seasons to pick from. And that’s without being able to use any from pre-1961.
Wilhelm brought me 1972
Don Sutton, 1969
Phil Niekro, and 1964
Joe Horlen to top my rotation. With the 72 Dodgers, I also could add a lefty reliever in
Jim Brewer. From the 64 White Sox, I got the left side of my infield in
Ron Hansen and
Pete Ward, and from those 69 Braves I got my cleanup hitter in
Hank Aaron.
On the hitting side, outfielders are certainly an obvious place to start.
Rickey Henderson was the first one I tried, and he wasn’t lacking for options or great teammates. But I liked the 69 Aaron and didn’t want to wind up with too heavily a right-handed lineup. That led me to try
Tim Raines instead. I am only using Raines as two of my starting hitters (85 and 87) along with two bench versions just for their teammates (99 and 02). The 99 A’s brought the other half of the infield with
Jason Giambi and
Randy Velarde, and the 02 Marlins provided half a DH platoon in
Cliff Floyd (pairing with 69
Rico Carty). I couldn’t find a way to squeeze a Raines year that came with a good
Gary Carter, so my catching platoon is definitely a weak spot but also a money-saver. I think you can get away with one pretty unproductive lineup spot, honestly.
I certainly could have tinkered around with a bunch more combinations and found one I liked better. But time wasn’t exactly my friend, so once I had a squad I liked that had good power, speed, defense, starting and relief pitching, I just went with it.
Digression: What was with
Don Sutton’s perm in the 70s? My mom had naturally curly hair that looked like Sutton’s, and as a very young child this made me think Sutton might have been a woman out there on the mound. Not that there would have been anything wrong with that.
Musical interlude: A live version of
Eurythmics doing "Here Comes The Rain Again," in case you didn’t get the reference. Fun fact: My first concert was seeing them at the Greek Theater in LA in 1983, with
Howard Jones opening.
https://youtu.be/OojeUDY3iZE
6,318 PA, .294/.386/.481, 273 2B, 38 3B, 221 HR, 171 SB
1,403 IP, 2.41 ERA, .206 OAV, 1.00 WHIP
$58.6M hitting/$51.3M pitching
120M: Steppin’ Out
I tested out 5 or 6 franchises to build out rosters, or at least most of them, to see who had combinations that worked well within the salary range limitations. I had Dodgers and Red Sox teams I liked well enough, but neither worked out quite as well as the Cleveland group did for me. And you’ve got to know that for me not to use the Dodgers required some good convincing.
I was far from alone in landing on Cleveland, though. We have 8 of them in my league alone. Folks are going to get really sick of
Shane Bieber, Corey Kluber, and
Bill Bernhard.
I think the key to this league is making good use of the $1M+ backups you have to draft rather than wasting salary on your bench. With Cleveland, I found a way to create a 4-way platoon of left fielders (
Bruce Campbell, Joe Wood, Brian Giles, and
Bernie Neis) for about $6.7M. Collectively, they’re probably the 3rd or 4th best hitters on the team, too. They’ll mostly bat just behind
Tris Speaker and
Joe Jackson, who will hopefully spend a lot of time on base. Jackson’s namesake, the 80s musician, is the inspiration for the team name, too.
The lineup includes some high-range middle infielders in ‘03
Nap Lajoie and ‘22
Andres Gimenez, plus a doubles machine in switch-hitting ‘17
Jose Ramirez and a big bat in ‘30
Ed Morgan. It’s a group well-suited for League Park (II) with +2 singles and +3 doubles.
The Cleveland pitching options turned out to be so deep I didn’t even roster
Addie Joss ultimately. Of course, you have to take Bernhard, who is simply always good no matter what even if I can’t exactly explain it. Add on 2020 Bieber and 2017 Kluber, and you’ve got a nice rotation shaping up. I went with 1911
Vean Gregg in the 4th spot over Joss to get a lefty in there and because they’re awfully similar statistically anyway with a lower $/IP. The 2020
Zach Plesac is there as a spot starter/long man, too.
I really liked the Cleveland bullpen options, with a quartet of guys with sub 0.80 WHIPs in
Emmanuel Clase, Andrew Miller, Rafael Betancourt, and
Brad Hand. Plus I could throw in two studly low-inning guys in
Jeff Manship and
Oliver Perez. Of course, relievers being relievers, no doubt some of them will blow big leads anyway. But I think for the cost it’s as good a pen as you can get in this theme.
Digression: With good justification,
schwarze posts a lot of complaints about relievers in this game. I feel like this league will be a good test to see whether there’s any hope of building a really reliable one. I have 6 RP here with WHIPs between 0.69 and 0.77, no ERC# higher than 1.16, and OAV ranging from .155 to .183. On paper, you’d be hard-pressed to line up a pen much better than that, particularly limiting to only one franchise. So how many of those 6 do you think will actually even finish with an ERA above 4? I’d guess at least 3 of them will.
Musical interlude: More 80s music, courtesy of “that”
Joe Jackson.
https://youtu.be/PJwt2dxx9yg
5,578 PA, .339/.408/.527, 367 2B, 82 3B, 122 HR, 144 SB
1,448 IP, 1.85 ERA, .191 OAV, 0.88 WHIP, 0.47 HR/9
255M: Riding with the King
First off, let’s discuss the payroll question. Is it necessarily either good or bad to carry more or less total salary in this league? Sure, alignment is going to come from salary, but does it matter that much? Is there a distinct advantage to being in the more or less expensive league? Does salary total even correlate to team quality at this level, considering all the possible seasons at our disposal?
My conclusions may yet prove invalid, but I believe it is possible to underspend trying to get into the cheapest division and not build as good a team as others you’ll be facing. I also think it’s possible to overspend and carry a lot of unneeded innings and PA and wind up in an expensive division but not actually be putting your salary on the field. After building a few versions of possible teams, I came away thinking I’d more than likely end up in the lower salaried league but at the higher end of it, but I didn’t choose any players or seasons on the basis of what they cost either. I took the guys I wanted to put the money on the field while also not taking much risk of fatigue either. I do look forward to finding out how well salary correlates to wins. I am always concerned that I missed something obvious, and maybe this was it. Should I have tried to spend more or less intentionally? I didn’t load the bench with extra PA. It would be really easy to spend $200M+ here and not really have a better team, but my gut tells me some of the highest salaried teams might also be ones I wouldn’t want to be in a division with either.
As it turned out, $176M landed me as the 12th-highest salary, just enough to be in the league with the higher-salaried teams. If I’d spent just 500K less, I’d have been the top salary in the other league. I’m more concerned about the owner names in my division (cough, cough,
barracuda3, cough, cough) than the amount they spent, though. It’s going to be a big challenge.
Anyway, I started off using Group A building a team around
Babe Ruth, assuming that all he brings would be more valuable than anyone else. I wondered if it were even possible to build a really good pitching staff anyway. I think I had a solid one assembled (
Greinke, Horlen, Scott, and
Schmidt the top SP), but a few of the lineup picks felt like either poor uses of the options in their box or less likely to do all that well in this format.
That got me to tinkering and seeing if I could still build as good an offense without Ruth as I could with him. The answer is yes, in part by solving a different question: Which SP do I take in Box 1? You can make good arguments for any of them, to be sure. But I kept coming back to ol’
Silver King and thinking he needs to be at the top of the list. The innings alone are critical, because he fills half a rotation by himself, leaving me another choice box for a hitting upgrade. All I need are two other SP to either work as a tandem or A/B.
Anyway, once I had a favorite Group A squad built, I had to make a Group B team and compare them. I started off with
Cobb in that one and a rotation headed by
Koufax-Bieber-Guidry. It was a strong team, but I liked the A Team much better ultimately.
My goal for my offense was to find guys whose success could transcend homers for those games we play in Target/Astrodome types, enough speed to be helpful, solid defense wherever possible, and decent fits for one of the parks in Box 26. I didn’t love any of the other parks enough to miss out on a stronger player option, and a +3 doubles Sportsman’s Park suited us well. Here’s a box-by-box breakdown:
1. Silver King, 1888, SP. Though I don’t know how much stock to put in it precisely, I looked at the last 6-7 DEAL drafts just to see how the pitchers were being “ranked” by those owners. Granted I don’t know how those seasons turned out and whether those picks worked out well, but in something like 4 of the past 5 drafts the top overall pick was … Silver King. Ruth was occasionally like 4th even. I’m going to assume the owners who know that league and the rosters they’re likely to end up with (similar to ours here) made King a top choice for good reasons. My favorite thing about him is I can draft top hitters in the next few boxes without needing another SP for a while.
2. Stan Musial, 1948, LF. It’s always good to have some 1.100+ OPS hitters in there. If I’m trying to justify skipping Ruth, I need someone who hits a ton. A few someones, actually. Stan has to be a big Man here.
3. Pete Browning, 1887, CF. It definitely comes recommended to have a .400 hitter with 95 speed atop the lineup. There aren’t many. Playing him in CF worries me a tad because of his propensity for errors.
4. Chuck Klein, 1930, RF. The guy knocked out 112 extra-base hits, but what makes me laugh is he had 14 sacrifice bunts that season, too. I would have loved to ask
Earl Weaver his thoughts on that. Anyway, another monster bat. Need a lot of those, though it’s really starting to bother me that I went away from convention and loaded up early at what is usually the deepest position. Maybe I’ll regret that.
5. Larry Walker, 1997, DH. There are some great 3B options in this box as well as the very tempting
Gonsolin season, but I can get 3B production elsewhere. I can’t get another guy who slugged .720 and stole 33 bases.
6. Joe Mauer, 2009, C. I could have gone a lot of ways here, including a top shortstop or a better defender in CF like
Kauff. But then I’d have to remove Musial, Klein, or Walker, and I wanted all of them. There is no comparable offensive year for a catcher in this group, though, so Mauer won out.
7. Mike Scott, 1986, SP. With the lineup filling out very nicely, I grabbed Scott’s dominant 276 innings here. He’ll either be pitching in a tandem every other day or starting about 45 games. Pairing him with a lefty to catch a few platoons the wrong way seems appealing.
8. Joe Horlen, 1964, SP. I’m still unsure whether to use him as an alternate starter with Scott or to have him in long relief and occasionally working into the tandem when someone needs a rest.
9. Heinie Zimmerman, 1912, 3B. I originally had
Adrian Beltre at 3rd and
Jason Schmidt in this box, but I had a nagging feeling Beltre would underperform badly in this format due to overreliance on homers. So I swapped the SP and 3B in these two boxes to get a high-average, high-doubles hitter who fits better with my lineup. The downside is Zimmerman is much worse defensively than Beltre, but I think his offensive impact will be worth the difference in errors.
10. Jonathan Papelbon, 2006, RP. There are so many good relievers available in these boxes, so it’s not a big deal to start building the pen deeper into the group. I just know I need to stockpile 6 or 7 of them to take turns disappointing me with late-inning collapses.
11. Sean Doolittle, 2018, RP. His video-game stats earn him the Closer role for now anyway. Let’s see how he fares.
12. Cesar Valdez, 2020, RP. Truthfully, I’d never heard of him. But he has ridiculous 2020 stats, like many other relievers. Including another I’ll take later.
13. Robin Yount, 1982, SS. If you grew up in the 80s as I did, you couldn’t believe there was a shortstop putting up numbers like Yount did. Until
Ripken did it the next year. He’ll make a nice No. 8 hitter for me (12yo me would not believe that either).
14. Andrew Bailey, 2009, RP. Another fireman (or arsonist, depending on the day).
15. Arthur Rhodes, 2002, RP. Because I need a couple lefties down there, too.
16. Mark Teixeira, 2008, 1B. I almost took
Johnny Mize with Box 14, but I decided that Teixeira’s 234 PA partial could platoon with
Joey Votto’s 475 PA season and form a really fantastic 1B instead.
17. Roger Bresnahan, 1912, C. I needed a RH catcher to spell Mauer in some games. He’s not great offensively, but he hits for average and his A+ arm won’t hurt as a defensive replacement either.
18. Pop Corkhill, 1888, OF. Klein and Musial aren’t bad defensively, but you might as well have an A+ range guy for late innings who also hits .380 in case he needs to come up to bat here and there.
19. Blake Snell, 2018, SP. I feel like Snell is a high-value guy hiding down here in Box 19. His walks can be a concern, but I’d use him primarily as something of an opener and then hand the ball to Scott with a couple extra righties likely in the lineup. If he gets lit up, though, he could wind up just a long man.
20. Todd Haney, 1995, 2B. You haven’t met the starting 2B yet, but Haney can hit for him in close late games and be tolerable in the field if needed.
21. Mark Eichhorn, 1986, RP. Basically a long man and innings eater whenever needed, though he’s certainly good enough to pitch in key situations, too. I was going to take a lower-inning guy here, but an extra buffer against fatigue can’t hurt in a league where a lot of these pitchers will get rocked.
22. Joey Votto, 2012, 1B. He crushes a ton of doubles and draws heaps of walks. I’m pretty happy to have him in the middle of the order.
23. Livan Soto, 2022, SS. Another guy you’d never take if salary mattered, but sure why not have a .400 hitter to PH here and there?
24. Dee Gordon, 2015, 2B. Aha, here’s my second baseman hiding near the bottom of the pile. He hit .333, plays A/A+ defense, and has 91 speed. Really, could I ask for more out of a No. 9 hitter?
25. Shawn Armstrong, 2020, RP. (See Valdez, Cesar)
26. Sportsman Park III. It’s +3 for doubles, and everyone except Gordon in my lineup hits a ton of them. At least it’s playing to a strength.
Digression: It’s easy to overlook how impressive
Mark Eichhorn’s 1986 season was. It’s worth noting that he was a rookie (finished 3rd in voting behind
Jose Canseco and
Wally Joyner) who threw 157 innings, all in relief. He racked up 7.3 WAR, and though my search was not exhaustive I could find only one other true reliever with more in a season (1975
Gossage at 8.2, incidentally, not what I would have guessed). For comparison,
Roger Clemens won the CYA and MVP in ‘86 with an 8.8 WAR season across 254 innings, and
Mike Scott’s outstanding season (also on this roster) was only worth 8.2 in 276 innings. Here’s a fun article from The Ringer about best relief seasons year-by-year, if you need something else to read:
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2021/3/17/22335319/relief-pitcher-championship-belt-mariano-rivera-dennis-eckersley-rollie-fingers
Musical interlude: We’ll go with
John Hiatt and
Ry Cooder doing the track live. I was a big Hiatt fan there for a good while. Doesn’t get enough love, in my opinion.
https://youtu.be/PJwt2dxx9yg
6,589 PA, .365/.430/.596, 426 2B, 92 3B, 245 HR, 283 SB
1,875 IP, 1.78 ERA, .187 OAV, 0.89 WHIP, 0.37 HR/9
$92.4M hitting/$83.5M pitching