IVE CREATED A MONSTER!!

[amitdoc2b]

Being an Angels fan in real life, I am so sick of their anemic offense that I decided to make my own version of a powerful offensive team. I guess you can say its a team like the Yankees: a horrible pitching staff, an amazing offensive lineup, and a great bullpen. They seem to make it to the playoffs every year, so I thought "heck, why not try it out!"...

I need some opinions on how to set the lefty and right lineups, and what you think the chances are of this team to win its division. I play at minute-maid park (right-handed friendly for homeruns). Other team in my division play at kaufmann, bank one, and us cellular.

My starters are:
(1b) Richie Sexson
(2b) Jeff Kent
(3b) Troy Glaus
(Ss) Alex Rodriguez
(Rf) Vladimir Guerrero
(Cf) Johnny Damon
(Lf) Pat Burrell
(C) Jorge Posada
(DH) Alfonso Soriano

According to their 2005 stats, they have combined to hit 282 homeruns + 928 RBIs (roughly about 5.8 runs per game). This is without taking into account that the #s should be stronger at a righty-friendly park. Plus my starters and bullpen are more strong against righties (except one lefty specialist in Brian Fuentes just in case!) so should help defend the dimensions of my park.

What do y'all think? I considered defense too and it seems to be OK?

Here's the link:
http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2006/team/team_other.html?user_id=7082

[visick]

The problem with this team is there are no "tablesetters". ie. guys that get on base, at the top.

There is no true lead-off guy vs. RH's. I guess Damon can lead-off vs. lefties though he really doesn't have enough OB to do it.

Plus, with this lineup, you "should" see a fair share of RHSP. There is only 1 lefty bat in your lineup.

[amitdoc2b]

hi..thanx for ur response. ive considered those things that u suggested:

-u said therez hardly any lefties in my lineup so ill see more righty pitching. well, 5 of these 9 guys hit righties better according to their card so it shouldnt be a prob should it? plus at minute-maid the lefty power hitters would have a big disadvantage, which is why i went with righties.

-as far as table setters, i looked at on base percentage more than anything else. does it really matter if they get on base by walks or singles or doubles or even hit a homerun? i mean even if a few of them leadoff with solo homeruns, the whole lineup is capable of hitting them. wouldnt it be better to have a guy who can hit a solo homerun leading off, rather than just walk and wait for the next guy to hit it? whats the diff if they both can hit it? im just asking becuase i have a few days to fix up the team and im fairly new to this game so if there's something im not realizing its better i find out now :)

[visick]

Traditionally in baseball...

If you are going to face alot of RHSP, you would want more lefties in your lineup. Visa-versa for LHSP. Lefties tend to hit RH's better as do righties vs. LH's.

[cummings2]

I don't think you need Davanon. I'd move that .63 to the pitching staff, probably get another starter that let's you spot better and try to max individual matchups.

Just a suggestion though.

[Mean Dean]

If you look at it mathematically, you see that something like the "law of diminishing returns" applies to offense; in other words, between OBP and SLG, you're better off getting the thing you have less of, instead of the one you have more of. A very easy, yet surprisingly accurate, formula to predict how many runs a team will score is OBP * SLG * AB. Let's make it easy and set AB to 32, which is about how many you'd expect in a game. If you start off with an OBP of .350 and a SLG of .500, then you'd expect to score 5.6 runs a game. Now which should you add: the thing you have less of (OBP), or the thing you have more of (SLG)?

The answer is the thing you have less of, OBP. If you add, let's say, .025 to OBP, now you've got .375 OBP, times .500 SLG, times 32 -- 6 runs per game. But if you add that same .025 amount to SLG instead, you've got .350 OBP, times .525 SLG, times 32 -- 5.9 runs a game. The extra OBP helped you more than the extra SLG.

You can do the same math and see that if you somehow had a team with more OBP than SLG (the Frank Menechino '03 All-Stars?), the opposite would be true. Let's start off instead with a team OBP of .400 and SLG of .300. Multiply those by each other and then by 32, and you get an expected 3.8 runs a game. Now if we add .025 to OBP, we get .425 * .300 * 32 = 4.1 runs a game. But if we add .025 to SLG instead, we get .400 * .325 * 32 = 4.2 runs a game. Again, adding the thing you had less of helped the offense more than adding the thing you had more of.

So mathematically, that's why you want a balanced offense, rather than either a bunch of power hitters or a bunch of leadoff hitters.

[rgimbel]

although the yanks have their problems with starting pitching i dont think a staff with mussina wang and johnson(yes even this version) should be called horrible.

actually yanks biggest problem this year besides injuries is not their starting staff but their middle relief

[amitdoc2b]

well i was referring to the 2004-5 yanks :) they had a ton of offense but had to dig pitchers thru scraps ...this year its still to be determined what their fate is ...and this year they lack some key offense (sheffield, matsui).

[durantjerry]

You could solve your leadoff issue by grabbing B Clark to DH if he is available.