Pickled Pecklers, Meat League Version

The Meat League is a different animal. There are nine teams. All players in both leagues are available to be drafted. Each team takes 1 player at each hitting position, plus a DH (any hitter), plus 3 starting pitchers (identified as first, second and third pitcher) and a relief pitcher. That’s it. It is, essentially, an all-star league.

Stats are not combined. Each position is evaluated against each other and ranked. So the catchers are ranked in each hitting category and earn points based on how they did against the other catchers. Each first pitcher (the first one drafted by each team) is ranked against only each first pitcher. And so on. So the highest draft picks are not necessarily the best players, but the players with the biggest margin at their position against the other players.

One more thing: there is limited ability to fix your team. At the all-star break you can make 3 changes, which are retroactive to the beginning of the year. If you have 4 injured players, you are screwed. So you have to be careful drafting players with histories of being injured a lot.

Here is the Pickled Pecklers for 2005:

C – Jason Varitek
1B – Mike Sweeney
2B – Craig Biggio
3B – Edgardo Alfonso
SS – Miguel Tejada
1st OF – Manny Ramirez
2nd OF – Jose Guillen
3rd OF – Milton Bradley
DH – David Ortiz
1st P – Rich Harden
2nd P – AJ Beckett
3rd P – Mark Prior
RP – Jason Isringhausen

We picked 4th, and we took Tejada over A-Rod (who went 5th) because we thought he was way better than the other shortstops in a category that was not deep. We think A-Rod is a better hitter, but there are more 3rd basemen available.

We took Varitek with our 3rd pick because we thought there was a big drop off after I-Rod and Lopez and Varitek. We did like Ramon Hernandez as a sleeper, and when he went undrafted we were sorry we took Varitek there because we could have gotten a better 1st pitcher at that point. We also could have taken Brian Roberts here, but we just didn’t quite believe.

We threw away 1st pitcher, taking Harden when we preferred Burnett. Randy Johnson and Clemens had just been taken, and we decided to take Burnett in the next round as a 2nd pitcher, because no matter who we took, he would be no good as 1st pitcher. Harden has a couple of categories he’s good in, so he’ll get some points, but that may be a position we fix at the all-star break.

We got Mark Prior as the 26th pitcher (out of 27 taken) very late in the draft. It’s an incredible bargain, particularly if Dusty doesn’t burn out his arm. And we’re very happy with the wackiest outfield in history – Ramirez, Guillen and Bradley. That’s going to be some clubhouse atmosphere.

With the first accounting out, we’re in first place. No special stars, but good numbers across the board. We probably should have taken A-Rod.