I am in bed at home today trying to hasten my recovery from the cold that I caught from Ben. Ben was out of school all week last week, but I can ‘t afford that.
I ran across a Sporcle quiz challenging me to name the top 100 MLB player for 2015. It took me a bit to recognize that this was a quiz about the future. I got 81 of the top 100 — not bad considering my fuzzy snot-filled brain — but what really interested me about this was how we are doing as a league at grabbing these top-100s for ourselves. So I did a little study.
I should warn you: the source for this top-100 list is something called Bleacher Report, a site I have not frequented. So I cannot vouch for their accuracy in describing the future. On the other hand, they knew James Shields is a Padre.
So — I set up a spreadsheet. I listed all 100 players along the left side, and set up our teams along the top. Then I marked every EFL player under his EFL team, and then replaced those marks with a formula that scored the player according to his place in the top 100. Thus, Mike Trout is the best player of 2015. (Of course… someday someone else will be better. Probably Jose Altuve.) So Trout earned the Alleghenys 100 points. Lance Lynn was the 100th best player and would have earned one of us 1 point, except no EFL team owns him.
NOTES:
The EFL is 30% of the size of MLB, so we should have snagged 30 players. We snagged 38.
The average team should have 3.33 players worth a total of 168.32 points. We have an average of 4.22 players worth 204.22 points. The average top-100 player is worth 50.5 points. Our average top-100 player is worth 48.37 points.
Not too shabby! But wait — there are 10 players from the top 100 in the EFL draft:
* 5 rookies (Abreu, Springer, Soler, Betts, and Polanco) ranking 6th, 51st, 97th, 98th and 99th respectively for a total of 154 points.
* 5 veterans on the free agent list (Brantley #20, Posey #60, Samardzija #74, Shields #78, Cruz # 89) worth a total of 184 points.
Those last four are awfully spendy, and Brantley isn’t exactly cheap — but we can add 2o points on average to each team if we work together.
I have an even better idea than that, though. The top EFL 2015 team by this metric is… the Alleghenys (8 top 100 players worth 447 total points, averaging over 55 points per player). What else is new? Let’s leave them out of this plan to grab top – 100 players, ok? In fact, let’s give Pittsburg’s share to Portland, who only has two top-100 players (Starling Marte, worth 42 points; and Ryan Zimmerman, worth 9).
Finally — I will admit that the Wolverines come out ok on this with 7 players worth a total of 432 points, almost 62 points a player. On the other hand, 8 ex-Wolverines litter the top-100 list, worth a total of 462 points: an entire lost dynasty! And three of those Wolverine heroes grace current EFL teams, adding 143 points to their top-100 value.
Here is a copy of my spreadsheet.