How'd He Do That?

I was reviewing the 2009 BABI auction, and was struck by the following question:

How the hell did the Pounders finish 2nd?

I really have no idea. Coolio kept only 7 players from 2008 season, with a Rotolab/Baseball HQ projected profit of +18. This was tied for the lowest profit of any team in the league. (We won't mention which team the Pounders tied.)

One of the seven was a true, premier keeper: Chris Carpenter at $4. Carpenter just missed winning the Cy Young, with 17 wins, an ERA of 2.24 and a WHIP of 1.007. He had to be #1 in profits among any player in BABI in 2009. The Pounders resisted the many entreaties to trade Carp.

Joe Cool had two other members of his precious Cardinal team - Big Al Pujols at $45 and Little Yadier Molina at $5. Both performed very well, and both threw in a bonus - Big Al stole 16 bags and Bengie's kid brother stole 9. There were definitely profits earned by both.

Brandon Phillips is on a 2011 contract at $16. His numbers were down from his 30-30 season in 2007, but he still hit a respectable 20-98-25-.276. Phillips was traded to Mr. Leaguer for an unkeepable Jimmy Rollins and Roy Oswalt. Oswalt only won 3 games for the Pounders, and had an ERA of 4.63, suggesting his 2nd half wasn't as good as I had thought. Rollins replaced Phillips' production.

The other guys kept were Jeff Baker (the utility guy) at a buck, Edinson Volquez at $5 and Kyle Lohse at $3. They didn't stink, but they were disappointing. Well, maybe Lohse bordered on stinky with that 4.74 ERA. Oh, and Volquez only pitched 1 inning after May 16, so that's pretty bad too. At least Baker earned his dollar.

Here are the guys the Pounders bought in the auction:

Emanuel Burriss, $15. Wow, he was bad. From starter to minor leaguer to injured minor leaguer. On the other hand, though, here is a stat that may surprise you: Burriss stole 11 bags before being sent down. His other stats were horrid, but he did one thing well.

Brad Hawpe, $28. Hawpe didn't stink, but he was immediately traded to the Bums for Jake Peavy. Now Peavy didn't stink, but he was hurt for so, so long. He only had 7 wins for the Pounders in 81 innings. His ERA and WHIP were good, but the innings were so low that it didn't help all that much.

Raul Ibanez, $28. Ibanez had a career year with the Phillies, 34-93-4-.272. He was traded in the last trade of the BABI season to Any 9 for Francisco Rodriguez and Chase Utley. Rodriguez had a 6.55 ERA and Utley hit .225 for the Pounders. Not a bad trade by Any 9, even if they toss Ibanez back in 2010.

Cody Ross, $16. Ross was one of the hot concepts, and he finished the season 24-90-5-.270. Ross was a 2nd half hitter last year - he was only batting .213 on May 16 with 5 homers. See his trade below along with Soriano.

Yunel Escobar, $14. I have to say, I never would have bid anything like this on Escobar, who is turning into a nice middle infield piece who does a little of everything. See Prado below.

Jerry Hairston, $11. He hit .326 in 2008, but followed it with only .251 in 2009. He did hit 10 homers and steal 7 bags, but this wasn't exactly a good use of $11.

There were a couple of nice, inexpensive picks:

Martin Prado, $3, who finished the year with 450 at bats, qualified at 3 infield positions and hit over .300. He was packaged with Escobar and sent to the Pecklers for Cliff Lee, Aramis Ramirez and the surprisingly useful Angel Pagan (who hit over .300, had 6 homers and stole 14 bags last year).

Willie Harris, $5. Harris didn't really have a very good season, certainly not good enough for anyone to want to trade for him. But in the end he provided good value to the Pounders, hitting 7 homers and stealing 11 bases. You can do a lot worse for $5.

The other hitting purchases did little: Mike Rivera hit .228 and Jack Wilson hit .255, and now both are in the AL.

On the pitching side, I wouldn't call these purchases brilliant:

Matt Capps, $26. He got 27 saves, but it was ugly. ERA - 5.80, WHIP - 1.656. Yikes! Of course, we should remember that Capps was his BEST closer for 2009 because the Pickled Pecklers suckered him in to buying:

Jason Motte, $21. Motte got ZERO saves. On the other hand, his ERA and WHIP were better than Capps - slightly.

Rafael Soriano, $10. This turned out pretty good, as Soriano held the Braves' closer job long enough to get 27 saves with good numbers. Co Co Cool traded him off to the Old Rips along with Ross to get Lance Berkman (sounds good, but Berkman only hit 7 homers for the Pounders) and Jose Valverde for replacement saves.

His other two purchased starting pitchers were Sean Marshall, $9, who started 9 games and won 3, and Oliver Perez, $2, whose numbers make Capps look like the Cy Young winner. His other bullpen spots went to Cla Meredith, $6, who was mediocre, and Dennys Reyes, who wasn't lousy, but did nothing, no wins and 1 save, though for a buck, that's actually a good result.

The Pounders hoarded their FAAB pennies and bought Matt Holliday (another Cardinal) for $95, who had a great stretch drive. And they picked up Barry Zito on waivers after being dropped by the Cartel. Zito's numbers for the Pounders: 10 wins, 3.87 ERA, 1.350 WHIP. No other free agents helped all that much.

How did this team come in 2nd? Did we all stink even worse? Well, the Pecklers certainly did, but we didn't think so on draft day. Somehow the Pounders became the team to dump to. People didn't want to trade with the 1st place runaway Cartel, and the Lickers ran out of trading chips pretty early. Any 9 decided early they couldn't win and shut down, and everyone else was playing for 2010. So the Pounders were able to get value in trades somehow by default, and had just enough pieces to keep people interested.

It doesn't leave much for this year, though they didn't have much to start last year - in fact, they have pretty much the same stuff - those 3 Cardinals. But careful - don't underestimate the Coolest guy in the league.

The Champs

They kicked our butts last year, and this year, they remain the favorites. Check out this keeper list:

They have the core of their hitters:

Matt Kemp - 20-11C
Hunter Pence - 20-11C (what the hell were we thinking?)
Justin Upton - 20-11C

That's three guys for this year AND next year, the oldest of whom is 26. Yowzaa! And let's throw in 25 year old Ryan Zimmerman, 25-11.

That's 110 homers, 365 RBIs, 70 steals (about twice the entire Pickled Pecklers team last year) and a BA over .290 for $85.

They'll almost certainly keep Adam Dunn (31-11) and his 38 homers and 105 RBIs.

They've got a $1 closer, Ryan Franklin and a couple of solid starters: Joe Blanton at 2-11 (just signed for 3 years with the Phillies today) and Wandy Rodriguez (18-11), who had a break through year in 2009. Wandy had 14 wins with an ERA of 3.02 and a WHIP of 1.24.

The remaining keepers are less clear. They could keep Francisco Cordero at 26-11 assuming he's still the Reds closer. They are hiding Jeff Francis at a buck (1-11). Maybe Ryan Hanigan is a keepable catcher at a buck (1-11). And they are threatening to consider Will Venable at 8-11X. Venable had 12 homers and 6 steals in 293 ABs.

Notice all of those 2011 contracts.

Back to back to back?

Naahhh. Let the injuries begin.

A Taste of Irony

With all of the media discussion about the upset by Scott P. Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race this week, I have yet to see anyone make mention of the irony it produced.

Brown now takes over Ted Kennedy's seat, which he had held since 1962. Ted Kennedy's professional passion, "the cause of my life" was for Congress to pass a universal health care bill. By dying, he also killed the chance for a significant change.

Brown's upset victory has brought the opposition party its 41st seat in the senate, and an endless fillibuster by the Republicans. Serious health care reform is now DOA, just like Teddy.

Had Kennedy resigned from the Senate last year while he was still alive, it is more likely a Democrat would have won, and the Dems would still hold a fillibuster-proof majority. So as his last act, he killed the reform he loved. And maybe if he had crappier health insurance, he would have died earlier, thereby preserving his seat for his party.

That's how I like my irony buttered.

Banning the Spitter

The guy I stumped for, Andre "The Hawk" Dawson, got into the Hall of Fame this year. The case is simple - he's 25th all time in total bases, combined with over 300 steals and 8 gold gloves. He did it all, despite 12 knee surguries.

Bert Blyleven came oh-so-close, 5 votes short. You would think he'll make it next year, but he's only got 2 more years to do it. Over 3700 freaking strikeouts. Duh. As I have said before, anyone with more strikeouts than Walter Johnson should be in.

The guy who was the one sure thing this year was Roberto Alomar. He came up 8 votes short. You've got to think 8 guys penalized him for this umpire spitting incident. That was one expensive luggie.

I was always a big fan of Roberto Alomar. He came up at the age of 20, and was a starting player right away. He got 145 hits at the age of 20, and jumped to 184 in his second season. I speculated that if he had a long career, he'd have a chance at Rose's hit record. In his first 10 seasons he had 1,659 hits, and he was only 29. After 15 seasons, at age 34, he had 2,546. He faded, and only played 2 more seasons, picking up only another 178 hits. So he didn't even make it to 3,000 (2,724), no less 4,000.

His career was an even .300 BA, stole 474 bases, and slugged .443, with a career OPS of .814. Nice numbers, but an automatic first year player? He is considered possibly the greatest fielding 2nd baseman ever (though that might not be good enough for Omar Visquel). It's a nice package, and he'll get there next year.

Barry Larkin got a lot less votes than Alomar and I'm not sure why. His career BA was .295, he slugged .444, he stole 379 bases and had an OPS of .815. That's awfully similar to Alomar, though he did have only 2,340 hits less. Of course, he was injured all of the time, so this hurt all of his hitting totals. He won 3 gold gloves. And one thing he won that Alomar never even sniffed was an MVP, in 1995. He and Alomar are closer than you'd have thought. And he played for one and only one team his entire career, while Alomar's longest tenure was 5 years with Toronto.

Meanwhile, Rock Raines' numbers are pretty comparable too: .294 BA, .425 slugging, OPS of .810 and he finished with 2,605 hits. Furthermore, Raines stole 808 bases, which is 5th all time behind Henderson, Brock, Billy Hamilton and Cobb. (Guess who's 6th with 752. Answer below.) He was not known for his glove, only his legs.

I saw an interesting comparison of Raines to Lou Brock, who got in on his first try. Brock's numbers were .293 BA, .410 slugging, OPS of .753. He did get to over 3,000 hits, and stole 938 bases. The stats are closer than you'd think. However, Brock had 3 phenomenal World Series, in which he had 34 hits, batted .391, stole 14 bases (7 in 1967 and 7 in 1968) and slugged .655 with 4 homers, 7 doubles and 2 triples. All three went to 7 games, with the Cardinals winning in 1964 and against the Yankees and 1967 against the Red Sox before losing in 1968 to the Tigers. Signature moments. Jack Morris moments. Bill Mazeroski moments. Lou Brock moments.

Answer from above - Vince Coleman was 6th all-time in steals.

Finally, here's the list of guys who won't make the ballot next year: Andres Galarraga, Robin Ventura, Ellis Burks, Eric Karros, Kevin Appier, Pat Hentgen, David Segui, Mike Jackson, Ray Lankford, Shane Reynolds and Todd Zeile. Zero votes for the last 4 guys.

Somebody voted for David Segui? Are you kidding? Segui finished with 684 RBIs. Hell, Joe Pepitone had 721.