Sundoro Boog Alous Season Review

***Prologue***

One thing that irked me about the end of 2003 was not my playoff loss to Chris (though Ugueth Urbina, Brian Schneider and Garrett Anderson soundly outperforming Jason Giambi should have irked me), but it was that the undertaking of organizing my Draft Notes kept me from writing an Oman review. That proved especially profound when Greg wrote in his Honest Tunes write-up that he had offended the APBA gods by not doing a write-up following his previous season. Of course, that's not the only reason for Greg's substandard season, but I totally buy into what he was saying.

The name Sundoro comes from the largest volcano on the island of Java, and Java is an object-oriented programming language that borrowed it's name from the island. At least that's one story Boog and the other owners of the now-defunct Sundoro Development told me when Greg and I worked there in 1997 and 1998. Sundoro was a great place to work, for about a year, then things went south, but the work I did and the relationships I made there were invaluable to my professional growth. Not exactly a mentor as much as the best boss I had who never parked a car, Steve Laurencell, aka Boog, has been a friend for 8 years now, and has deserved a team named after him for at least that long.

***Personnel***

Only 1 of my first 6 picks was a regular, and he wasn't a big bopper, so I understood Steve when he bought me lunch and sat me down to share his musings that I was going to struggle to score runs. I was able to concentrate on hitting in the 7th through 15th (or so), so I do think I got above average "lineup depth," at least.

My lineup might have looked like:

                    AVE  OBP  SLG  PRO (MLB) Steals
1. DLee      1B-5  .243 .357 .466 .822 (.891) 23-36
2. Loretta   SS-8  .275 .332 .386 .718 (.816)  7-11
3. Berkman   LF-2  .219 .323 .423 .747 (.929)  8-12
4. Posada     C-8  .234 .336 .462 .798 (.925)
5. MGiles    2B-8  .275 .339 .503 .842 (.919) 21-27
6. Blalock   3B-4  .272 .320 .514 .834 (.873)
7. EMartinez DH    .229 .348 .390 .738 (.900)
8. Mondesi   RF-3  .247 .306 .439 .745 (.829) 10-19
9. Finley    CF-3  .207 .295 .350 .645 (.864) 14-20

With a bench of:

                PA  AVE  OBP  SLG  PRO (MLB) Steals
JDDrew  OF     384 .271 .345 .560 .904 (.886)
Baerga INF     319 .317 .377 .425 .802 (.865)  2-3
GMyers   C     234 .226 .273 .387 .660 (.879)
Rollins SS     126 .252 .304 .417 .721 (.708)  6-7
Inge     C     100 .169 .216 .258 .475 (.607)
JDamon  CF      55 .298 .389 .404 .793 (.753) 41-51

I say my lineup may have looked like that, though honestly, I maybe never actually had that specific lineup in there. Drew played OF half the time, with Myers and Baerga getting a good share of starts at DH and on the infield. Berkman was my regular leadoff man to start the season, with Drew spelling him there. But neither were giving me what I wanted from that spot, so Lee ended up getting the bulk of my leadoff PAs, though he was more effective as a 6th hitter for me.

Defense was an issue, as my outfield arms were weak when Mondesi did not play, my catching corps couldn't throw unless Inge was behind the plate, and Posada made an inordinate number of errors. Rollins was on the team for improved baserunning speed and defense compared to Loretta. I thought Damon would be good for the same reasons, but though I wasn't afraid of his 28 outfield arm on draft day, it wasn't worth to use him as a defensive replacement.

Relative to the league, my starting staff was pretty average. I probably had the worst number 1 starter, but I tried to make up for that by plugging in better than average 2-5 starters.

My staff was:

                        W-L    ERA  BR/9
LHernandez 13 Z        13-16  4.09  11.1
Oswalt     13 Z  +3    10-10  4.84  12.4
Zito       13       G   7-13  4.85  13.2
KWells     12          12- 8  4.49  12.2
Hampton     8    +3 G   7-10  5.63  14.4

With a pen of:

                         W-L   ERA  BR/9
Gagne      25 Z     H   14-4  2.11   8.2  3 sv
Smoltz     23 ZZ    H   11-4  1.21   6.2 27 sv
Mercker    19 W          2-5  2.51   9.3  2 sv
Kershner   14            0-2  3.48   9.9
Kolb       16       H    3-3  3.81  12.1  1 sv
Cressend   15 Z +3  H    2-1  5.62  13.6  

Johan Santana, 12, was my 6th starter ... and he stunk it up in his 6 starts replacing J-4 Oswalt to the tune of 1-4 with an ERA of 8.90. I actually needed Oswalt to get hurt for a long stretch once, to give my limited games/IP relief staff a break. In retrospect, I didn't gain anything by getting one of the 6th starters that I perceived to be good.

***Season***

I think I made a medium-risk, low-reward decision by going with Smoltz and Gagne in Rounds 1 and 2 (I know I took Gagne 1st, but in my mind, Smoltz was always going to be the higher impact pitcher). Immediately after taking Gagne, I decided I'd rather have taken Helton, but Steve was all too happy not to make a trade with me that early in the process. Gagne and Smoltz were guys I didn't expect to be there, at least in most of my pre-draft scenarios, and I felt I still had 25 rounds available to balance out my team. Personally, I don't think I reached that balance, or at least didn't balance things well enough.

Speed was an area I neglected too much. Much too much. Middle of the order power, for the most part, was compromised. Relief innings were slighted in favor of so-called "quality" relievers. These were what I think were my biggest balancing failures.

Just the same, all I really had to do was play .500 ball, or close to it, for the last half of the season to get into the playoffs. I was 10 games over for most of the first half (not sure what my peak was), and 52-42 with 68 to play. Among my struggles in the latter part of the season, I went 4-10 vs. Ken, and though I thought I matched up well with him, Matt dominated me. Greg also handed me I believe 6 straight losses in one stretch. But while I regrouped to the point of still being in the playoff hunt, I fell 3-1 to Steve in a pivotal intra-divisional matchup, going 4-4 on a night where I needed a 5-3.

Ken asked me near the end of the season who my underachievers were. Berkman was one of the most pivotal underachiever, but my overall expectations of him were tempered after I saw his stats in a bunch of the pre-plays I ran. The same was more or less true of Posada. Finley underperformed, but so did all the regular CFs, and as my regular 9th hitter, the impact of his underachievement was lesser than all the other regulars. And to be honest, most everyone else was where they should have been, with some positive exceptions, so in my mind, offensive underperformance was a non-issue. Regarding the performance of my staff, I expected that Oswalt, Zito, and Santana would pitch better, but collectively they weren't atrocious. Cressend was atrocious at times, as was Kolb, but Kolb really only had 3, maybe 4, bad games, and Cressend actually had a decent holds to blown saves ratio.

I think the biggest underachiever was me. On draft day, I think I made about 8 to 10 "small" decisions I later rued (such as Damon, Myers, Loretta, Cressend), "small" meaning that even if a guy doesn't perform well, in years past when I'm rethinking those decisions, I'm confident enough in how I went about the process that I'm not second-guessing myself. Throughout the season, I got very little production from my lead-off man, be it Berkman, DLee or Drew (the latter 2 were much more productive in other spots in the order, thus they still had decent seasons on the whole), but I never did anything to remedy it, even though Loretta's only benefit as a second hitter was to bat behind someone who was on base a lot ... meanwhile division-mate Swinea was doing everything he could to jump start his lineup. And when Cressend was continually turning manageable middle-inning 2-run deficits into 5-run blowouts, I did nothing about it and continued to run him out there in these situations.

And I can't put my finger on specific games, but there were 20 (give or take) situations in different games where I thought later that I botched some strategy, and it cost me a game. I'm not saying I should have won 102 games instead of 82, but if I went 5-15 in games that came down to one specific decision, instead of, say, 10-10, then I cost myself a playoff spot.

It's funny to me that Matt was in disbelief that I did not receive more support in the MOY voting. In an email to me, he told me he thought I had a bunch of guys underperform offensively, and I think his thinking was that I put myself in position to make the playoffs despite that. From my narrow perspective, it was the total opposite, and I think my tie with Graham for 2nd place in runs scored points to the fact that my offense could not have underachieved too much. Also in the email, he told me how well he thought I managed "in the game," which gets me again as he dominated me the latter half of the season. I won't disagree too much with Matt, as I think the guiding issue in his analysis was toward the concept of offensive flow.

Using the expression Chris and I like, I think the "Least Valuable Player" for the Boog Alous was me, just like Dusty was the LVP on the Cubs in 2004.

End of Year Awards

My MVP ballot was:

1. Albert Pujols
2. Barry Bonds
3. Gary Sheffield
4. Todd Helton
5. Trot Nixon
6. Mientky
7. Javy Lopez
8. Alex Rodriguez
9. Richie Sexson
10. Reggie Sanders

My Cy ballot:

1. Jason Schmidt
2. Kevin Brown
3. Mark Mulder
4. Mariano Rivera
5. Brandon Donnelly

My Benevolent Yellow Tumbler (aka MOY) ballot:

1. Steve Swinea

2. Ken Klein

3. Matt Klein

Trot killed me, for Matt and then for Steve. He didn't make anyone else's ballot despite pretty good numbers, so my thinking is that he didn't make much of an impression against anyone else, and therefore, (without looking them up) his numbers must have been killer against me. On the opposite side of the same coin, I know Javy and Sexson did some things against me, but their impact was slight compared to what Trot did, so despite them having superior numbers, Trot got the better vote from me.

Again I had the pleasure of watching Steve work his magic in person several times in 2004. He's a maestro. Ken earned a lot of respect from for how well he played against me, even in the situations when he rested personnel (especially in his final 4 vs. Graham, when us wild card hopefuls were desperate for a good showing from Ken). I think Ken drafted the best offense, so if it was a GM and MOY combined award, I would have put him #1, but I like to just base my vote on managing (i.e., Steve the manager was much more positively impactful on his team than Steve the GM).

Gagne/Smoltz

In a bunch of my pre-draft scenarios, I had both of these guys gone by the 8th pick. But that was just me putting my spin on what their impact could be, I realized later. Their prodcution wasn't up to par with my wildest dreams ... Gagne didn't stop XBH like I expected, and Smoltz actually started and finished a little shaky ... but they were otherwise as good as I had hoped. Their intentional walk totals made some of their totals look a bit skewed, but they were lights out. What can I say? I would do it again if I had the chance.

Postscript

2005 was long. Too long. I hope we can get better focus earlier in the season during 2005. I want a Fall Party and a Winter Meeting. And while it wouldn't bother me if we don't play any games over July 4th weekend, it would be great if we could ... envisioning an old carparker office night, circa '95A.

Good Luck in SL 2005 . . .