Bruce on baseball

Matt sent me this comment after the widget blew up on him:
>>>>>>>
I'd actually been meaning to e-mail you about this. Then you set up comments
- even better!

What I noticed from the player list sorted by 2002 point totals was just how
many people came out with a positive score. Basically, unless you're a very
good player, you're going to be a net "plus" for a suck team. A corollary to
this is that to the extent that stats scale, the more you play, the more of a
net plus you'll be.

(That last statement could become even stronger accounting for the idea that
most generic roster-filler players will put up worse rate stats if they play
full-time than if they play only part-time.)

What sets my team (and a couple others) apart from a lot of teams in this
league is that nearly all of my sucky players do play full-time. The worst
hitter in the major leagues (rumored to be Neifi Perez) still won't help you
enough in this league if he spends most of his time on the bench.

For what it's worth (for non-DEK readers), my roster, position by position:
C- Brandon Inge and Mike Matheny (one fills the "Util" spot, which in a
league like this will nearly always be where you want to stick a C or SS,
since those guys hit markedly worse than other positions). I think these
guys offer a unique combination of suck with PT, the latter coming from their
teams' lack of alternatives. Joe Girardi's injury was a godsend to anyone
who benefits from Matheny out-making, although so far he's killed me.

1B - Wes Helms. Kind of opportunistic here, exploiting his position
qualifying (in the opposite direction of what you'd usually do in a fantasy
league!). I'd have to look this up but Helms was probably the first
1B-eligible player drafted. Yeah, there's PT risk here, if Milwaukee finally
realized that Keith Ginter's better, but it's the Brewers so they won't.

2B - Alex Cora; Joe Thurston; John McDonald. McDonald was the first of these
guys I drafted. He's a Neifi-caliber hitter but suffers from the PT problem
(unless Brandon Phillips had sucked early). Took the rookie Thurston a
couple rounds later, only to see him not even make the Dodgers after all.
His unexpected lost PT was Cora's unexpected gained PT.

3B - Pedro Feliz; Mark Loretta. Feliz is a much worse hitter than Loretta
but Loretta has a full-time job. During a computer crash/reboot, I had
Aramis Ramirez autodrafted but he's right at the threshold where players
start costing you points instead of giving you points.

SS - Rafael Furcal; Alex Gonzalez (Marlins). (One of them fills my "IF"
spot.) Where catchers have a few truly sucktastic options and then some
genericness, SS has a lot of interchangeable guys who can put up pretty good
second-banana suckitude. These are the ones I got. I thought that the
downside of Furcal was he'd suddenly be good and the downside of Gonzalez was
PT. Instead it's the other way around, though I fully expect Gonzalez to
regress to his established level.

OF - Carl Crawford; Alex Sanchez; Juan Pierre; Todd Hollandsworth. OF, like
1B, have the risk of killing your team if a player suddenly has a breakout
year. Then again, overrated speed demons are good for a suck league, both
because their worst-case scenario isn't so bad for you and because their
overratedness keeps them in the lineup longer than otherwise. Hollandsworth
always struck me as a guy who'd make bushels of outs if a team ever gave him
600 plate appearances, which the Marlins might actually do.

SP - Kirk Rueter; Miguel Asencio; Jimmy Haynes; C.C. Sabathia; Josh Fogg;
Ismael Valdes; Sidney Ponson; Darren Oliver. Ponson and Haynes are the
perfect innings-eaters, both just bad enough to be useful to their real team
but also useful to a suck team. Rueter is there because his peripheral stats
have never supported his results (and also as a hedge: I don't want
him to suck). Sabathia is a big-time gamble. I think at some point this
year he'll have a half-dozen putrid starts before the Indians suddenly
announce a season-ending injury but overuse is something you can never count
on either way.

RP - Joe Beimel; Jay Powell; Kevin Gryboski. For relievers it's almost as
important that guys be overrated as that they be bad. If you're bad but not
overrated, you just won't make the roster period (happened to me w/Mike
Porzio). Gryboski was lucky last year; Beimel will benefit from wishful
thinking as Pirates brass remember his 2002 first half rather than his second half.
>>>>>>>>>>>

I responded with the following thoughts (some other thoughts have been added):
The two things that absolutely rule in this league are PA and IP. Get those, and everything else follows. You can survive in pitching with innings eaters but not necessarily with guys who suddenly blow up in an inning and get pulled. At best you're going to get five, six innings, maybe 2 or 3 runs before they get pulled. Ideally you want the back of the rotation guys, 3 or 4 starters, not end of the rotation guys. Personally, I don't care about relievers, as long as they score as RP. My perfect plan for the league is guys who are both RP,SP, for the RP slots and the rest SP. Typically, these are long reliever/spot starter types, or the guys who are veteran presence/fourth starter types. Lots of innings, and not really expected to do anything other than get shelled.

With hitters this year, I think that PA is still the main key stat, but where last year the third best stat was pitcher's HRs given up, this year I think the stat valuations make hitter K's more useful. Otherwise Josh Bard and Rocco Baldelli shouldn't be of roughly equal value to my team. Incidentally, Rocco looks to be an even bigger fantasy conundrum than Mike Cameron. You know he's going to cool off eventually, but when he does, he could be anything from still valuable to utter crap.

The other fun part of this league is the seeming pinata effect of your pitchers. Monday, I had both starters in the Brewers-Cardinals game. And both worked perfectly, about 5IP, 5ER, 3HR between them. I jump from the low 900's to the high 1000's. Only problem, one got the win.