The Season Ends
One good day never came.
All I needed was a couple of steals, or a couple of saves or a few
extra runs and I would have won the Tout Wars competition in just my
second year of playing in an AL-only league. But the numbers
never came and so my Tout team fell short of the title, finishing in
third place, 2 points away from victory.
In retrospect, there were several contributors to the shortfall that
were outside the realm of talent evaluation. But within the game,
injuries ended up the primary culprit. I tried to build this team
to be injury proof, and for the most part I was successful. Had
there only been or two season ending injuries, there's little doubt I
would have finished first. But after losing Doug Glanville,
Jeremy Giambi and Greg Colbrunn, the losses of Kevin Mench and Matt
Lawton for the final stretch run was the final undoing. That's
how close the race was.
Granted, neither of those guys light up the scoreboard, but the
available replacements I was left with offered this:
Name
At Bats Hits Home Runs
RBI Runs Steals Average
Magruder
21
5
1
1 2
0 .231
LaForest
27
5
0
3 0
0 .185
Riggs
32
6
0
1 4
2 .187
Delucci
36
5
1
4 3
2 .138
Total
116
21 2
9 9 4
.181
Even as poorly as Jeremy Giambi fared early in the season, his
production would have been a significant improvement over what I ended
up with. And before we bury Giambi too quickly, let's not forget
that despite the fact that he was announced as the Red Sox starting DH
to open the season, he did not actually start 3 games in a row until
mid June. It's hard to work oneself out of a slump with a tear in
one's shoulder, but it's only slightly harder than trying to get out of
one without getting consistent at bats. Giambi was asked to do
both.
But getting back to Mench and Lawton, only one needed to survive the
final month and a half and that would have been enough offense to win.
Name
At Bats Hits Home Runs
RBI Runs Steals Average
Mench
125
40
2 11
15 1
.320
Lawton
374
93 15 53
57 10 .248
A half point could have been made up with either 7 more home
runs, 11 more RBI, 5 more runs, 2 more steals or .0025 in batting
average. With either one getting 150 at bats, or roughly what
they would have gotten with regular playing time over a month and a
half...
Name
At Bats Hits Home Runs
RBI Runs Steals Average
Mench
150 48
2 13
18 1
.320
Lawton
150
37 6
21 23 4
.248
... my team would have finished at least one spot higher in runs, and
either one point higher in RBI (with Lawton) or one point higher in
batting average (Mench). And that would have been enough to
win.
Oh well.
One thing is certain - finding pitching isn't a problem. Last
year, despite my 9th place finish, my team boasted the 3rd best
pitching in Tout. This year, I had the best pitching staff in
both Tout Wars and Mixed Nuts. Early in the season,
I said that
Mike MacDougal
would hold on
to his closer's role for most, if not all of the season despite his
wildness, that
Esteban
Loaiza would finish with the best numbers of any of the White Sox
starters, that
Joe
Borowski would be a very good closer all year, and I named
Jason Stanford, Jeremy
Gonzales, Eric Dubose, Jerome Williams, Wilson Alvarez, Rich Harden and
Rafael Soriano as possible decent contributors to their teams as
the season wore on. I
also listed others who would do well, but most like Ryan Rupe, Jon
Rauch and Brian Falkenbourg were never given a legitimate chance.
Others, like Runelvys Hernandez, succumbed to injury and were unable to
fulfill their promise.
I wasn't quite as good with the hitting side of things, although I did
score some direct hits with
Hideki
Matsui,
Milton Bradley,
Kevin Millar and
Travis Lee (although this
one looks much more like a work in progress).
So what did I come away with this season? Besides a bad taste in
my mouth from not winning? Well, I know two things about fantasy
baseball. The first is that you get the most value out of
pitching. It's next to impossible to draft a $1 hitter and at the
end up with $30-$40 of production from him at the end of the
season. It's not an uncommon occurrence with pitching. This
year, Esteban Loaiza accomplished the feat in the AL. In
addition, there were half a dozen end-game plays in both leagues who
ended up producing $18-$25, including Brandon Webb, Livan Hernandez,
Dontrelle Willis, Tim Worrell, Gil Meche and Sidney Ponson. Pay
for your production with hitting, get your value from pitching.
The second thing I know is that after just my second time playing
AL-only, I'm ready to win. How do I know this? Because in
this year's draft, I left $7 on the table, spent $7 on Jesus Colome in
a late round bidding war to get rid of cash and spent $9 on Carlos
Febles because I had too much money left over and was running out of
second base options in the final rounds. I think I could get a
pretty decent middle fielder next year for that $23. This year,
that much would have been enough for Bret Boone, David Eckstein, Frank
Catalanotto, Jose Valentin or Jerry Hairston plus Brian Roberts with
money left over. Any one of them would have been enough to make
the difference. So the second thing I know is that I'll spend my
money next draft.
I will post a playoff preview tomorrow morning, but will be taking some
time off to work on some publishing projects that are not on the
web. One of them is the 2004 STATS Scouting Notebook, where I
will again be analyzing and summarizing the Padres and Expos for next
year, both at the major and minor league levels. However, I will
update here sporadically regarding the postseason, the Arizona Fall
League and the winter leagues, so check back every once in a while just
to see what's new. Thanks.