The First Ever Competitive Balance Expansion Draft is (Almost) Complete

I accurately predicted ONE outcome in the CBED.  Well, actually, three things, but two of them were baked into place when we turned in our protected lists. 

Every team had to lose a player, but two teams only had to list one player. So we knew some time ago that Yu Darvish was about to depart Flint Hill for flatter pastures, and Mike Moustakas was on his way out of Pittsburgh.

My one correct prediction once I saw how the ballot shaped up was which player would get the most votes in the entire EFL CBED (other than the two automatic picks):

 

JP Crawford, OD (6 votes)

Crawford ran away with it for the Wolverines.  Making Crawford available was a mistake. It suggests I did not understand this process. The rest of the draft confirmed the suggestion. None of the players I voted for won, although two tied. 

 

The second-highest vote getter was:

James Kaprielian, DC (5 votes).  

Before we submitted our lists, I thought we would have consensus, or near-consensus, on most of the teams’ most-valuable unprotected player. I thought there would be several players with 9 or 10 votes.  But Kaprielian is the last player to escape getting a minority of votes.  

 

The third highest: 

A J  Puk,  HD  (4 votes)

The only other Dragons to get votes were Amed Rosario (3) and Gio Urshela (2). Thank you, Mark J, for joining me on Urshela so I didn’t feel quite so dumb.

 

We had three players who won with only 3 votes: Carter Kieboom (CK), Adrian Morejon (CC), and Tyler Alexander (PR). 

I told Ryan late last night about Kieboom.  He was “stunned” by the pick. He thought we’d deprive  him of Javier Baez; he feared we’d snag Caleb Smith.  Smith got no votes, Baez got only 2, as did Jake Odorizzi. We split our Kangaroo votes 6 ways. 

We split our Cheese votes 7 ways. 

We split our Rosebud votes 7 ways, too. In fact, the first 7 votes submitted were all for different players. Alexander won by getting the 8th and 9th votes submitted (by John and Mark W). I will remind you that those two gentlemen account for 10 of our 18 EFL championships. The rest of us may not know what we are doing. 

 

Seven other players got 3 votes, only to end in ties:

Peshastin: Genesis Cabrera and Huascar Ynoa.  At least there’s a theme here: promising young pitchers with three more seasons on their rookie contracts.

Drive: Michael Chavis and Danelson Lamet. Every Drive left unprotected got votes, so this one went 3 – 3- 2 – 1. 

Cascades: Brendan McKay, Ljay Newsome, Michael Wacha. There were also only 4 Cascades on offer. At least I wasn’t the lone Marcell Ozuna vote. Someone has some ‘splaining to do. 

 

Phil, Tom, and Andre need to tell us which of the tied players they will let go of.  How about if you make that choice by Thursday evening 9 pm?

Ryan was stunned by the Kieboom choice.  I was stunned by the diversity of our opinions, and my own apparent cluelessness.  Of course, we clueless people are prone to being surprised about our cluelessness. That’s how cluelessness works.

(I’m not saying Ryan was clueless.  On the other hand, I would expect it to be an inherited trait. On the other other hand, we’ve already established my cluelessness, so what do I know?)

Of the 6 cases we’ve decided, here is how each of us did at voting for the “right” (ie, winning) players:

FH-  5

PA – 4

PP, CK, HD – 3

DC – 2

CC, KD, PR, BC – 1 

OD – 0

 

What does it mean when the top two finishers in the 2021 pennant race finish last and 1st, respectively, in voting for the right players to lop off other teams’ rosters?  

I’m afraid it might mean this exercise was maybe no better than throwing dice. Either that, or the pennant race was.  Or maybe both.

We had nine choices to make, and voted for 43 different players.  We are not Ted Lasso playing darts. 

Maybe someone who knows some math can explain why it’s so hard to discern who the 15th best player is on rosters of 20 or more players. And maybe do it in a way that rescues our egos?

 

Here is the final tally: