So what’s the story with your team on the eve of Opening Day? I am curious what we are telling ourselves about our teams. I am curious because I am a fellow human being with warm feelings for my comrades in the EFL. I am curious because I am a ruthless competitor who wants to compare my team to yours. I am curious because the season is about to begin and I’m going to need story lines for those updates. I am curious because the more we know about each other the more trades can happen — and I have a principled ethical belief in the market as a providential tool for the maximizing of human happiness.
Here are my hopes, fears, grace received, and grace given for Opening Day, 2017:
Hopes: I hope I’ve found some players underestimated by MLB in general and by you guys in particular. I believe Matt Moore is still an ace waiting to blossom. I hope Dan Vogelbach will come back from Tacoma and be the other of my Twin Towers with Kyle Schwarber — ok, Twin Friendly Monsters, then. I hope Austin Hedges will end up being what Carlos Santana was supposed to be. Any day now. I believe all three of my outfielders can keep getting better right through their tenures with the Wolverines (2018, 2018, and 2019, respectively) — and Mallex Smith will be a worthy replacement for one of them by 2019. I hope Shane Greene is salvageable.
Fears: Kolten Wong will complete his meltdown and disappear from the Cardinal lineup. Josh Bell will never remember how to hit. All of my .500 OPS spring training hitters (most of my roster), and my 7 ERA spring training pitchers (most of my pitching staff), will stay that way starting tomorrow, and the W’s will truly be Woeverines for years to come. The Cheese will steal Manny Machado from me next year.
Grace Received: My plan for the FA draft was simple –
- Plan A: Draft Rizzo at $10,000,000, Moore at $7,000,000, Straily at $2,000,000, and fill in the cracks with cheap relievers and utility players.
- Plan B: Draft Moore and Straily, and use Rizzo’s money to get Todd Frazier and Steve Pearce. Accept whatever the White Sox get in trade for Frazier, or keep him to be my 3b next year when the Cheese steal Machado, or drop him when his CWS contract expires if he continues to decline.
But Rizzo went for too much (boo Dragons) and Moore went for too much (boo me) and I couldn’t afford both Frazier and Pearce. In the heat of the moment I chose Pearce because he was $500,000 cheaper, but almost immediately regretted it. After the draft I tried to talk Flint Hill into trading me Frazier for Pearce and a pitcher. He declined. Since then I realized Jamie saved me: Vogelabach’s voyage to Tacoma, along with Bell’s flailing and Wong’s wailing, means I have crises at both 1b and 2b. And guess who is the perfect guy to play Dad to young people in turmoil at those two positions? Steve Pearce. (Assuming he hits this year.)
Thank you, Flint Hill. I owe you one.
Grace Given: I let Flint Hill choose a pitcher to take in return for Nate Jones. (I put half of my pitching staff in a lockbox so he couldn’t choose them, of course.) He took Straily. Afterwards I noticed that Straily has pitched 17.2 innings this spring, striking out 17 and walking 1. I should have put him in my lockbox, too.
Oh well. We’re even now, Tornados.
My Hope: is to win the league. As I confessed in an earlier column, I’ve been working up to this year for a long time. And this may be the only year in which I have a chance, so things have to come together. My Cheese have to stay on the field.
Specific Hopes:
– Bryce Harper brings his 2015 game
– Dylan Bundy fulfills the potential that motivated me to trade for him
– Alex Cobb recovers from his TJ
– Mike Trout stays healthy
– Young prospects Greg Bird, Addison Russell, Max Kepler improve
My Fears are that one of Harper/Trout/Archer will get some sort of horrible injury, that Sonny Gray will never get his arm working again, that Jorge Soler’s abilities will continue to shrink.
Grace Received: John didn’t bid for Trout! My free agent draft strategy all winter long was simple: trade my rookie pick for Machado or Harper, draft Trout for $35M and Altuve for $20M. I was pretty sure I could get that done. But a week before the draft I got nervous about my pitching – can’t have too many pitchers – so I decided to get Archer instead of Altuve. As it turned out, since John didn’t bid me up, I might have got both Archer and Altuve. But Altuve’s name got put up before I could snag Archer, and I didn’t want to risk losing Archer by overspending on Altuve. So my net benefit from Grace Received is that I can outbid nearly everyone at the end-of-April free agent/debutant draft.
Grace Given: I let Ron have Moore. Didn’t want to have to listen to pickles.
My hope is to win the league. Of course, I often hope for that, but this year winning the league requires fewer miracles than other years.
I have become a Mitch Hanniger fan. I hope he scores 2/3 as much WAR as Mike Trout. If he does, the Cheese/Pears pennant race will be fun to watch.
Grace received: everybody let me get Hanniger.
Grace given: I gave up on Archer and got Carlos Carrasco instead. This may have been the undoing of the Pears.
If Mitch Haniger is going to be the Cinderella of your Cinderella season, you should probably spell his name correctly.
Actually, if Haniger is the Cinderella of your Cinderella season, he’ll probably also be Seattle’s Cinderella. I could live with that, as an alternative to another Wolverine championship if that is going to be denied me.
Would others like to share their Hopes, Fears, and Graces Received and Given?
I also note the Pears are going into 2017 with no Fears. Especially notable, given how Pears and Fears are only a single jot or tittle apart.
Hopes: A Gonzaga – Oregon Final.
Fear: the other guys
My hope is the Balk will be less horrendous than last season, maybe even finishing above .500 and not in last place. I’m always ridiculously optimistic at the beginning of the season, but do believe that we might do better than the pundits project.
My fears are that Seager, Benintendi, Samardzija or Jeremy Hellickson will get hurt.
I have spent the last two years hoping for the upside in my young players to be realized. With names like Joc and Young Buc you would think their games would match even a modicum of what the pundits projected for them 2-3 years ago. So, my hope is that my young guys start producing, so that my younger guys can be inspired to perform earlier than 2 or 3 years into their EFL contract, since that is needed for a team to consistently compete in our league. I also hope that my old guys will not start to act too old too soon. Old guys playing baseball can be fun to watch (Bartolo, anyone?!?) but dreadful to own in the EFL. That’s my main fear – old guy syndrome overtakes the Tornado clubhouse and they start collecting paychecks without producing anything of value.
Grace received: EFL owners who overpaid for SP so that I didn’t. I won’t name any, though, so that later you’ll be inclined to trade with me when I need SP at a lower cost. (Oh, wait. I need SP at a lower cost right now. Shoot.)
Grace given: allowing OD to draft Moore. I hope (oh, look! Another hope) that I was right in letting him win the bid.
All I can say at this point is that it looks as though the Tornadoes will be very offensive this year. Which is fitting for a tornado. They can make some noise, but leave the cleaning up (defense/pitching) for others. I hope you are all offended this year but this whirling dirvish.
So two owners say the “grace” they gave was “letting” the Wolverines have Matt Moore? At $9,250,000 a year? $2,250,000 over budget?
I don’t want to appear to be ungrateful… Let’s just say it definitely wasn’t cheap grace.
How about a grace received is that P stats don’t include their ABs since MadBum is 2-2 with 2 HR today!?!?
Hmmm… If he keeps that up I may have another Other Hitter on my team.
At the moment, my active players have gone 4 for 4 with a homer and a walk. And I’ll get credit for 1.33 for 1.33 with 1.33 singles.
In an act of epic magnanimity I just rooted for Dragon Anthony Rizzo to hit a single.
Of course, had he done so, two earned runs would have scored. Charged to Dragon Carlos Martinez. …
Oh, well, Willson Contreras fixed everything for the Wolverines.
Wolverine pitching line today: 7 ip, 3 er
For active hitters: 10 AB, 5 h, 1 2b, 1 hr, 1 walk: .500, .545, .900
For inactive hitters: 6 AB, 3 h, 2 hr, 1 walk: .500, .571, 1.500
For all hitters: 16 AB, 8 h, 1 2b, 3 hr, 2 walks: .500, .556, 1.125.
The Wolverines went easy on the league today. Another grace given, I guess.
Hope: better than last year, except every EFL team is better than they were last year. Sometimes getting a bunch of fresh new players seems like rearranging freshly painted chairs on the Titanic.
Fear: that sinking feeling you get when none of the WAR rating services think your pitching staff is very good. Maybe they are figuring in Collin McHugh’s dead arm. But it is scheduled to “rise again” about April 16 (Oh, that’s Easter!).