Draft Notes 2003
Prologue
These are my possibly meaningless observations. This isn't Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, a document preserving a journey whose meaning could have a resounding impact for all of mankind. Our journey through the 2003 Summer League seems so small in such a context. This isn't a seasonal Bill James Baseball Abstract, a research collection that can provide a distinctly unique and deep-level of understanding to the issues addressed ... and certainly not a Historical Baseball Abstract in terms of scope and understanding. Did my research time approximate Bill James's in his Abstract preparation? Hardly. And Bill and I do not share the same goal ... Bill asks the questions and tries to answer them through his research, whereas I don't think I care as much about the answer as much as I am concerned with chronicling our mindset and our processes. This isn't even necessarily a series of notes about the 2003 SL Draft, as most of the notes would be outdated and meaningless as soon as they hit the page, and because most of the content would say Steve drafted horribly and Greg made a lot of really good picks, and there's little point in my devoting any time to further discuss those subjects. It just is what it is, a chronicle of our league as we existed at this point, or what I found interesting about the league and about ourselves.
Intro
Bill says that "history shows nothing more clearly than that one cannot anticipate history." At the beginning of the year, I wouldn't have said it was "impossible" that Steve would win the President's Cup or that he nearly would win a record number of regular season games, but gosh, the odds I would have set for those probabilities would have been very, very long. Even after he was handing it to me during the season, I was thinking to myself that I still could and would own him the rest of the way. The best explanation I have for his success is that the Waiting were one of those teams that meshed well together. They probably are the poster child for a well-meshed team. Individually, even now, I could not look squarely at a pick, or a collection of picks, that propelled Steve over the edge and into history. I could try, and later I will to some extent, to analyze his picks, but as I continue to have little finite understanding of his success, I think that would do the Draft Notes reader a disservice. Same goes in regards to Dave's team and their success, Greg's team and his lack of success, to the ineffectiveness of Graham's pitching staff, and so on. So I am dismissing the Draft Notes concept of comparing and contrasting our selections by analyzing their SL performance, their MLB performance, and historical SL and MLB performances. Instead, this shall be more of a different kind of an Abstract. Heck, maybe it always was more of an abstract.
Who Played the Game
Bob, Chris, Dave, Graham, Greg, Keith, Ken, Matt, and Steve. No turnover since the 40 game mark of SL 2002. The most veteran lineup to date, with the average SL experience at season's start at 6.97 seasons.
How the Game was Played
The offensive talent faded slightly since the SL 2001 peak, but same long ball strategies persist. Stealing was not up as a whole, but more than in years past, the group of catchers was made up exclusively of guys who could hit or guys who could throw (some exceptions being J-3-type part-timers), meaning the stolen base was either a good strategy, or a poor strategy ... but not a consistent strategy. Hit and running is usually a dominant strategy for Greg, but he was saddled with poorer stealers among his regulars and awful contact hitters. Ken drafted a track team, with the idea of hitting and running. Steve had a fast team with a bunch of guys with good hit and run ratings, and he too hit and ran very effectively. As starting pitching ratings continued to climb, fewer teams went with an all-out pen strategy, though Bob drafted 7 of the better relievers to counteract a relatively weak starting staff.
Where the Game was Played
Chris hosted the most group games, generally hosting Steve's trips up north, Dave and Greg's trips east, and occasionally Bob. As with 2002, their were no carparking games to note. With a majority of the league not in the same playing area, more than in any other season, we played Net games, usually without incident. In late July, Graham and Ken played a 10-game Net series in less than 2 hours, I believe.
Key Race
Tempted to say the division race between Dave and Chris was the key race, but it may not have been. It was the closest division race for much of the year, and maybe in the end, but just before mid-season Chris took hold of the race, and minus a hiccup or two, it was always his to win. My personal feeling was that Dave was burning through his roster similar to what Joe did when he flamed out of the division race of 2001, giving way then to Dave and Ken late that season when he was forced to sit his best players and bat Mitch Meluskey clean-up. Dave's burn-through wasn't as much with his lineup, though Edmonds and Sosa and Alfonzo, even J-0 Jeter, were paced pretty far ahead of their limits, but it was with his bullpen. It looked like Groom and Holmes, Witasick in terms of games, and even supporting relievers like Guardado and Marte, were going to be struggling to be available to Dave near the end. So if he faltered and someone like a Graham or a Bob found a way to push toward or past .500, they would certainly have as good a chance as Dave to take the WC. Bob did make a strong push, but Dave had a enough to seal the wild-card.
Assorted Season Highlights
* KRK going 7-3 in the replay of the Dave-Ken final 10, about 2/3 of the way thru the season. This followed a 5-5 series with the actual org. Dave then went 2-8 against Steve, and Ken was looked at as more of a WC possibility than at anytime since the first few series of the season. Perhaps Ken's real highlight was his ability to overhaul his roster, and the hope it gave him that was never realized.
* 8-2 double shlitz by KHK against Chris on July 23rd, roughly 2/3 of the way into the season. The team was fairly strong most of the season, but just kind of middling along at that point. They hadn't won a day against against a plus .500 team since beating Chris 3-2 in the first 40 (had a 5-5 day against Dave, which was not all that inspiring). Especially inspiring because I thought Chris had the best team in the league, and I thought he would be able to murder my lefty starters. He didn't, and I got more and more confidence in my lefties, a definite key heading into the playoffs.
* If someone said Steve's highlight was the whole season, or the fast start, or a series shlitz of me 2/3 of the way into the season, after playing .500 ball for the last 60 games, which was followed by a double shlitz of Dave 10 days later, I wouldn't argue. Personally, I think it was his anti-Waterloo day against me and Ken and the others, in his first set of games after the 40 game mark. Steve handed it to Ken following Ken's series of fantastic trades, he chicoed me and so on ... all in the face of pre-game trash talk, started I believe by Greg, predicting that the day would be Steve's Waterloo. It wasn't. I'm not sure, but I think Steve's season-long 11 game win streak happened during his Waterloo.
* Bob chicoes Greg on the phone mid-July. Payback for '99 phone games?
Best Draft Pick Relative to Position
* Later-round bargains ... Todd Walker, Kevin Millar, Phelps, Bordick, Pratt, KGarcia, Matt Franco
* Early-round "inspired" selections ... Gagne, Klesko, Kent, Walker, Ordonez, Pujols, Hammond and Dotel*
* Solid-mid rounders ... Olerud, Jose Hernandez, Pineiro, Nomo, Huff, Fullmer, Posada, Lieberthal
Worst Draft Pick Relative to Position
Personally, I think Nomar (2, 17) was the worst pick relative to draft position, a player I thought resembled Miguel Tejada (7,55) more than anything. I'd mentioned to Steve that I thought Nomar and Tejada would end up remarkably close for just about all of their % numbers, in terms of on base %, stolen base %, batting ave, slugging ave, iso, secondary ave, fielding %, and runs created per ... and his counter was always either 1) "but Nomar has that 0 at 44" or 2) "I thought he was a great fit for you batting after Bonds". In fairness, Nomar didn't seem to "hurt" Steve too badly, and his numbers were generally higher (if only slightly) than Tejada, so maybe it wasn't so grievous a mistake. Some of the other players I think (and I heard mentioned by others) as poor to their relative draft position: Padilla (3), Pettitte (4), Ibanez (9), Dessens (9), Kielty (9), Jeremy Giambi (12), Mariano (16), Kendall (16), Dye (18), Mondesi (18), and Matheny (21).
Best Deal
Everyone of Ken's deals worked out better for him, I think. I don't think they were all weighted in his favor, but I think they all paid more dividends for him than his opponent. Possible exception was the Kendall-Pierzynski deal, which brings up the subject of whether a deal can help both teams simply with a change of scenery for the players involved. I believe some of that, but not necessarily in the context of that deal. I agree with something that I think was a part of Dave's thought process, that if he was resigned to start Charles Johnson a good deal the remainder of the year, Kendall would have been better for his team as a pinch-runner replacement -type than Pierzynski. In the mold of "Johnny Damon is best when he is not a starter," Kendall, as we know him now, will not help his team if he's getting too many at bats. But Pierzynski would be a better bat than Mondesi, Damian Jackson, maybe Mabry, and in some situations Marrero, and Dave presumably drafted Marrero in the 17th to handle some PR-for-the-catcher duties, the same duties Kendall should have been slated to fill after the trade. Anyhow, the best deal was either the Beltran-Winn for Abreu-Hunter deal (best for Ken in getting the latter), or the Sheffield-Ichiro for ShGreen-Floyd (again, best for Ken in getting Green and Floyd). It might not have been that close if not for Sheff continuing to get HBP injuries for Matt.
Organization of the League
As I mentioned earlier, this season provided many more Net play opportunities than ever before. There were a few games lost due to a missing ORG on the common yahoo email site, but I want to stress that this kind of crud happened all the time in the early years of Net play, and sometimes even before Net play in terms of PC screw-ups. We learned things then, and hopefully the 2003 ORG snafus will turn out to be our best learning experience yet.
Best Decision for the Long Haul
Maybe it wasn't the best move for SL 2003, but I would argue Matt's selection of Hammond, and then Dotel, was the move I saw in 2003 that could have the greatest impact for years to come. If he didn't improve season to season, the chances of getting into the playoffs for a new player like Matt would revolve around him 1) getting the top pick of the draft, 2) getting into a weak division, 3) or both. If it was him with the 1st pick in this season's draft and I was with the 7th, the division could easily have been his in 2003, as he would have had a much better offense and would have had the strongest team in the otherwise weakened division. But to win again in 2004, his only prayer would have been for both the top pick and a weak division again. If he can learn enough aspects of BBW and SL, though, he can go into the season thinking he has as good a chance as anyone. One of the best places to start learning in this league is to figure out the best way to manage a pen. Too often it seems, new managers will sit on a struggling starter (for whatever reason) two innings past when he should've given him the hook. First by getting Hammond, and then by using Hammond in the "SL Ace reliever mode," Matt gave himself a crash course in managing a relief stud. Was he most effective used in save situations? How often was he able to strand runners? Was he more effective starting innings or coming in during the middle of innings? When wasn't he effective? These and other questions were not asked by Dan Casper, because the one time he took a reliever early in the draft, he pitched him pretty much in the same manner that MLB managers now use closers ... a method that is not as effective as other methods and one that didn't come into play often enough for Dan. And Dan struggled throughout his managerial career because of his never taking a Hammond. Following up the pick with a Dotel, Matt assured himself that he would not be leaving his starters in two innings too long. Even if Dotel wasn't his first call out of the pen, knowing he had 80 games and a ton of relief innings available made Matt all the more cognizant of compartmentalizing the game. Yanking a starter before he blew the game in favor of a serie of better relievers is a tactic we've been employing for years in this league. The idea being that even if he did not have a ton of success with this method, he would be exposed to it first-hand, and if he chose not to employ this approach later on, chances are that others would still be doing it and he could better recognize a strategy to deploy against it, or even recognize it before it happened and figure out a way to jump on the fading starter.
Greg and I drew up a list one day in an email about what we think makes a scrub manager a scrub. We were talking in different contexts, so I can only fairly represent what I said about what about why scrubs are scrubs ... 1) handling a pen poorly, 2) poor use of a bench, 3) poor baserunning decisions (and the associated poor decisions about throwing to particular bases), and 4) poor stretch or hold decisions. We also discussed things like playing in, but just as a matter of managerial style, not necessarily related to scrubness. I would like to point out that being a scrub sometimes has nothing to do with your years in the league ... Greg and I continued our discussion and we both revealed that we thought we had given up too many steals of home in the past couple seasons, which may or may not be directly influenced by scrub decisions we were making.
The topic I think that this raises is managerial style. Bill James had some great insights in his "Managers" book, such as the effectiveness of playing for one-run in an inning vs. playing Earl Weaver ball, but what makes that book most enjoyable is his examination as a whole of different managers and their different styles. What would Bill say about the Summer League managers if we commissioned him to write a book? If he attended our games, who would he say was the Joe McCarthy and Whitey Herzog of the league, or the Preston Gomez and the Tony Muser of the league? If he was just looking at the stats, what facts would he study?
I ran a couple informal polls to gauge what the league (and whomever else might have voted) thought on the subject of who was aggressive and who was conservative. Aggressives may connote "good" and conservative may connote "bad," but sometimes carelessness creeps into aggressive managing, and conservative management can lead to a certain frugality that reaps it's own rewards ... so don't put too much into those labels. Anyway, in those polls, Greg and Steve were labeled the most aggressive, while Graham, Dave and Chris were consistently mentioned as the most conservative managers. Chris refers to himself as one of the most conservative managers, but I disagree. It's hard to quantify, but if you drew up several strategic factors that a manager has specific control over, you could gauge aggressive and conservative tendencies. The problem is that a lot of these measurements would be imprecise and based on hearsay. Just the same, if the league formed a common opinion about the matter, then it would mostly be true. So what would they be, these specific strategies or strategic factors that a manager has control over? Calling for the hit and run and the bunt on offense, and offensively on the base paths, basestealing and general baserunning. Defensively, this would include playing in, putting on (and taking off) the stretch, holding (and not holding) the runner, and throwing to bases. In terms of team management, when to pull a pitcher, when to make a defensive substitution, when to pinch-hit and when to pinch-run are these strategic situations. If I drew up some formula that said aggressiveness was a product of 1/3 of aggresive offensive decisions, 1/3 of aggressive defensive decisions, and 1/3 of aggressive managerial decisions, we might get a meaningful number. Maybe.
But I Digress
Enjoy the rest of the 2003 notes.
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