Perfect Petco Lineup

[brooklaw]

This all gets so complicated. Put together a high OBP with natural hits for Petco, but then I'm weak against LH, adress that, but now I open myself to hard lefties or reverse righties. I guess there is no perfect lineup.

So now I'm left with $3.5M and could use some help figuring where to spend it.

[JdEarly]

Is Brian Roberts available? I think he would be a serious upgrade over Adam Kennedy at 2B for about half a million - and he hits a ton of doubles, which would play well in Petco (I think).

If you're hanging onto Chris Gomez, maybe you could grab Joe Randa to play third base. I've seen him play decently well, he's got a solid glove, and he hits right handed all the time. You would cut down on errors and get a right handed bat that no one game plans for, but might be able to catch a few people off guard.

I don't like Javier Vazquez in your rotation. If you're going with a five man rotation, you could get the same production out of somebody a little cheaper who can't go on four days rest. And Pettite, with his S5 rating, is going to kill your bullpen eventually. Maybe not, but it makes me nerous.

I think you have enough speed in your lineup that you don't need Dave Roberts. You could get by with a pinch runner in his spot, like Kerry Robinson, Scott Podsednik, or even Willie Bloomquist.

One more lefty in your bullpen might be nice, and I think a cheapy would work. Aaron Fultz, John Franco maybe? Just a specialist to get tough lefties out in the late innings would be a huge help to your pitching staff.

That's about all I've got for ya. Sorry, didn't mean to rip your team apart.

[The Turtle]

Ok here's what i would do with the left over money....revamp your pitching!!! your hitting will be fine in PETCO but your team will not pitch well enough for a PETCO team to win it all. You have a weak starting staff and a weak bullpen. I would upgrade your pen by dropping Roberts for Escobar the 3(-3) will be your def replacement for Newhan in LF. and then upgrade Madesn to Gagne OR


you could go with a a 4 man staff of

Webb
Vazquez
Trachsel
Lidle

which should give you the same results of the staff you have now

and use the extra money to upgrade your pen even more say upgrade Madsen to Benetiz and Telemaco to Yan and use the extra cash to upgrade Graves to the best reliever you can

[hugedude24]

Brooklaw, you have a great lineup there. No complaints from this guy, and yes, with a lineup like that with YA you are going to have less money for pitching. That can work in Petco true, (and with that lineup I think it can work most places too) but I agree that you should use that money to upgrade your pen to some studs vs. middle of the road guys. You need some pitcher who is going to shut the other team down, and its not going to be a starter. I suggest a great R2 like Gagne, Benitez, etc. But what do I know?

Oh yea, question...can somebody explain why we call Bonds "YA" here in the chatroom? I never caught on to that one.

[brooklaw]

Thanks for all the advice. I will definately put some more money into the Pen. As far as the starting staff goes, I've used the exact same staff at Petco in the past and they had a combined 1.25 whip (very little run support kept that team from doing better). I'm going to hope I get similar rolls with the pitchers and just score more runs this time.

Oh, and he's called YA because thats what he gets listed as in Box Scores and Individual stats.