Jake's Arbitrary IBC Spring Training Preview - AL Central

[Giants]

Kelly's little insight into his mind got me looking at lineups, and then it got me thinking about how there isn't any real analysis yet on the site for this season, and I thought it would be fun (at least for me to write, maybe for you to read too). I definitely don't want to rag on Kelly, though this post might sound like it (fair warning), I just wanted to put his theory of instant competitiveness to the test. I'll be doing writeups like this for the rest of the league over the next few days, expect analysis based more on gut reaction and personal prejudices than statistical analysis, its always more fun that way. I'm not touching prospects in this one, most of the league is far more qualified to talk on that score than I am. Also, I know ZIPs aren't gospel, thanks for reminding me, I'm using them because they are the easiest source of information. Your comments are encouraged.

Chicago:
Strengths - Adrian Gonzalez is a masher, letting him go sure bit me in the ass, as he's exactly what my lineup needs right now. Putz is lights out, plus his last name means penis in Yiddish (look it up), and Harang is the most underrated ace in baseball, look at the numbers he puts up in that bandbox. Couple that with a couple of top 100 prospects in Wood and Pearce and promising young arms in Volstad and Volquez and the other Brett looks like he has a group to build on to go with that massive scar. Also, with SS Ryan Theriot he is up there in the IBC in terms of scrappy.

Weaknesses - Depth, particularly in this year. The AL Central is going to be tough. The good news for the White Sox is that for the first time in awhile I like most of the players in his starting lineup, many of whom would find space or even supplant players in mine. The bad news is that the pitching depth just isn't there yet, and if Putz gets hurt the bullpen behind him is quite thin.

Last Word - The future is brighter in Chicago, but it won't quite get there this year.

Cleveland (Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a more expanded look at the IBC vs. IYFBL comments I'll be talking about, not trying to rag on Kelly at all I just really got into breaking this down. Preview is written assuming disputed trade is upheld)

Strengths - Power, and lots of it. If Kelly can find a way to get all those bats in the lineup the Indians should be among the league leaders in runs scored. The bullpen is also a strength, with Brad Lidge, Jason Frasor, Darren Oliver, Ron Mahay and Santiago Casilla are good bets to be useful, though losing Otsuka hurts. With that rotation, Cleveland will need all the bullpen depth it can get.

Weaknesses - Now just how exactly is he going to do that? It's unlikely that Thomas will even project a position and Giambi and Thome will only get 1B (and probably Poor at that). With Glaus locked in at 3B perhaps he intends to try one of them in LF, though Giambi only gains .035 OPS and Thome only .049 and Giambi and the defensive hit would likely account for the difference if not more. Alternately if Troy Glaus gets an SS projection again perhaps he moves Glaus to SS and tries one of them at 3B. That gets A-Gonz's weak bat out of the lineup but it adds (based on ZIPS and Kelly's hit first field never philosophy) Nolan Reimold's poor defense and .743 OPS, gaining about .011 on A-Gonz but again likely losing as much defensively with an inferior left side of the diamond. And we haven't even gotten to the pitching staff, which is a whole post unto itself (all you playoff contenders out there, any of you want Mike Mussina, J.P. Howell, Vicente Padilla, Daniel Cabrera, Livan Hernandez, Ricky Nolasco or Esteban Loaiza in the front end of your rotation for this year?).

Last Word - Are all these glaring weaknesses worth it? I suppose it all comes down to the powerful lineup, which has to be the best in the division for him to compete. It was in the IYFBL, but will it work in the IBC?

Detroit

Strengths: Perfect segue right here, for years it seemed like Brett P. wasn't the least bit interested in MLB players, and all of a sudden this happened. For comparison's sake, since so much of Cleveland's future is riding on this, and since I have arbitrarily decided that I like Detroit's lineup the best of any of the other teams in the division, let's do a side-by-side lineup comparison of Detroit and my most powerful guesstimation for Cleveland after the trade, OPS taken from ZIPS

Detroit Cleveland
2B Chase Utley (.896) RF Magglio Ordonez (.847)
CF JD Drew (.778) 3B Jim Thome (.865)
DH Miguel Cabrera (.942) 1B Jason Giambi (.880)
1B Prince Fielder (.951) SS Troy Glaus (.818)
LF Matt Holiday (.928) DH Frank Thomas
RF Jeremy Hermida (.796) C J.R. House (.794)
SS Mark De Rose (.752) LF Nolan Reimold (.774)
3B Alex Gordon (.792) CF Gary Matthews, Jr. (.754)
C Tyler Flowers (.589) 2B Luis Castillo (.720)

Which lineup looks more powerful? I'm leaning towards Detroit, though I imagine Brett will find a better catching solution than Flowers, who does at least project defense. On top of the lineup, the Tigers boast one of the top young staffs in the league, with the currently injured Gallardo, Hughes, and James Shields as perhaps the best young front of a rotation in the IBC.

Weaknesses - Well, catcher for one, injuries to starting pitchers for another. Both Gallardo and Curt Schilling are on the shelf, and Schilling may not pitch at all this year. The depth behind them is not great, so expect a trade. Another concern is the bullpen, where both Izzy and Weathers are past their primes. Ascanio is a nice arm, but this pen will likely rely on 1 year sim wonders, spit and glue while the youngsters develop in the minors.

Last Word - The Tigers have transformed from a prospect-laden punching bag to (in my arbitrary opinion) the favorites to win the AL Central if Gallardo (another former IBC A's castoff) returns by Opening Day as planned.

Kansas City

Strengths - The perennial bridesmaid of the AL Central, Z has shifted gears from his micromanaged platooning style to a more aggressive pitching laden approach with veteran bats manning positions rather than platoons. His rotation, featuring Chris Young, Fausto Carmona, and Rich Hill at the top, matches up with any lineup in the IBC. Offensively he's added big bats like Chipper Jones, Michael Young, and Victor Martinez to a potent offense. Right field looks like a platoon again with Hawpe and Kielty (why can't Hawpe hit lefties?) but its a stronger platoon than he's had in the past. The bullpen is also a strength, with rising star Brian Wilson closing, C.J. Wilson from the left side, and Aaron Heilman from the right.

Weaknesses - Centerfield (who the hell is Jason Pridie), Left Field (Andy Phillips? Really?) and defense, where four of his eight position players received FR grades from ZIPs and Martinez only has a FR throwing arm. Once the season starts for real if the ZIPS fielding projections carry over I expect to see Jeff Kent starting at 2B and Chone Figgins in one of the trouble OF spots, with another bat or platoon of projection types being picked up to fill the DH role. Age is also a factor, as arguably the two biggest hitters in the lineup (Kent and Jones) are pushing 40 and are thus greater injury liabilities, and the lineup doesn't have the depth to sustain an injury to more than one hitter long term.

The Last Word - There is definitely talent, and there are definitely holes, Z should be in the hunt for this division all year but if history is any guide he will come up just short again.

Minnesota

Strengths - Last but not least we have the defending American League Champion Twins. First of all the main strength the Twins have is the Metrodome, where funky stuff always seems to happen as I learned in last year's ALCS. The Twins offense is built around Matt Kemp and Adam LaRoche, and Jose Guillen (who was jobbed to the tune of 20 points below his 3 year split in the ZIPs) and Jhonny Peralta should be useful as well. On the mound we find another strong rotation, with Jered Weaver, Chad Billingsley, Jeff Francis and the artificially enhanced but genuinely honest Andy Pettite. Though not as sexy as either Detroit or Kansas City, Andrew has a solid rotation base and depth that should serve him well this season. The bullpen has 3 closers (arguably) in Billy Wagner, Alan Embree, and Rafael Betancourt, it may be the strongest in the division.

Weaknesses - There is very little offensive depth, and no true cleanup hitter in this lineup. Kemp has superstar potential, but it is unlikely that he will get a superstar projection this year. Even if he does, there is very little after him. In this division a lot of runs are going to be scored, and it doesn't seem like Andrew has the power to keep up. Also Michael Barrett sucks, I strongly and arbitrarily dislike him.


IYFBL - I told you it was coming. Since Kelly's track record has become an issue I was curious what that league looked like, so I thought it would be worth checking rosters out and comparing that league with the IBC to test the viability of Kelly's strategy. As I said in the Indians preview I believe that for the strategy to be viable the lineup needs to be clearly better than the rest of the division (as I learned with my team 1997 All-Stars in 2006 who were comparable but not better than Ropers' team that was featuring Nick Swisher, Carlos Delgado and Morgan Ensberg). We've already established my arbitrary opinion that the IBC Indians lineup is weaker than the IBC Tigers, but I was interested to compare the IYFBL Giants to their division and see what came out of it. I'm sharing the results with you because why the hell not. I'm not in the league, I don't know whose team is whose and I'm most guessing at lineups based on the stat sheets since no team in that division as a lineup posted. If I'm grossly wrong in my projected lineups I'm sure someone in this league will let me know. Also in this section information quoted is from the DMB 2007 Projection Disk

Giants Padres Dodgers
C David Ross C Jeff Bailey C Pudge Rodriguez
1B Ryan Howard 1B Conor Jackson 1B Jason Giambi
2B Jeff Kent 2B Adam Kennedy 2B Brian Roberts
3B Chipper Jones 3B Ryan Zimmerman 3B Wilson Betemit
SS Julio Lugo SS Jeff Keppinger SS Danny Klassen
LF Brian Giles LF Adam Lind LF Lance Berkman
CF Curtis Granderson CF Chris Young CF Kenny Lofton
RF John Mayberry RF Ichiro RF Brad Hawpe

Diamondbacks Rockies
C Orlando Mercado C Miguel Montero
1B Sean Casey 1B Albert Pujols
2B Marcus Giles 2B Craig Biggio
3B Eric Chavez 3B Troy Glaus
SS Juan Uribe SS Bobby Crosby
LF Travis Buck/Jerry Owens LF Adam Dunn
CF Torii Hunter CF Jason Repko/Juan Rivera
RF Alex Rios RF Shane Costa/John Rodriguez

First of all, if I knew I could have gotten that kind of production out of John Mayberry last year, we probably wouldn't even have had the Hunter Brown fiasco. But secondly a closer look at the lineups reveals some interesting facts. First of all, the IBC Indians lineup is much more powerful and has far fewer holes than the IYFBL Giants lineup. Secondly, none of the other lineups in this division look as strong top to bottom as either the IBC Indians or the IBC Tigers offensively. Compared to each other, the Giants, Rockies and Dodgers all seem to be in about the same ballpark projection-wise, which shoots a hole in my theory that the Giants were much better offensively. It is, however, worth noting that while the team wasn't exactly a defensive monster, Curtis Granderson had a VG rating in CF, Gary Bennett was VG behind the plate, and Jones, Giles and Lugo were rated AV, making 5 of 8 players acceptable defensively. Kent, Howard and Mayberry all received rating of FR, and were playable for their offense. This would be a huge step up defensively over what the IBC Indians are looking at.

One could certainly argue that the Giants have the best lineup here, but is it 9 games better than the Dodgers and 24 games better than the Rockies? Probably not, so it's worth exploring other factors. The Rockies squad was brutal defensively at two key positions (SS when Crosby was hurt, which was much of the season, and CF when Repko wasn't playing). The Dodgers were weak at several defensive spots, but are comparable to the Giants in that regard and were also probably hurt by losing Giambi for much of the season.

So defense appears to be in the Giants' favor here too, but again not enough to account for the massive gap in the standings. So what's left to account for the difference? Oh yeah, pitching. The Giants pitching staff featured veterans like Mussina, David Wells, Jamie Moyer, et al, and also featured a lights out bullpen with Dan Wheeler (3.51), Scott Linebrink (3.32), Taylor Tankersley (4.07 and no platoon split) and Edgar Gonzalez beating his projection as a starter very comfortably. This led the team all the way to a 4.50 ERA through 106 games.

The Dodgers actually beat the Giants ERA with a 4.45, but they fell behind in runs scored, down by more than 116. Hard to explain a lineup with A-Rod Giambi and Berkman falling behind by that much, batting stats are only available through 106 games on that site and I don't know the injury policy so I'm not really sure what happened. The Giants got a ludicrous season from David Ross behind the plate, and the Dodgers did not have a sim freak to match that, which perhaps was an issue. Through 106 games the Dodgers nearly matched the Giants OBP (.356 to .362) but lagged far behind in slugging (.441 to .481).

As for the Rockies they nearly matched the Giants offensively, but their pitching was shockingly bad, with the team posting a 5.67 ERA. They actually outscored the Giants by 18 (983-965) but they also gave up 1035 runs to the Giants 795.

So the conclusion I'm drawing is that as the Giants beat the Dodgers because of better hitting and the Rockies because of better pitching, and that basically they had a pretty good all around team. They hit a lot, could field some, could pitch pretty well (that 4.50 Team ERA would have been good for 10th in the IBC), and didn't embarrass themselves in the field. The deeper I dig the less I see the parallels between the IYFBL Giants and the IBC Indians, the Giants just don't have the same gaping holes. I hope you all enjoyed my long rant, I figured that since I wasted nearly 2 hours going through all of this that I should force it on all of you as well. See you soon with the NL Central.

[Nationals]

Nice review...I disagree with your analysis that I don't quite have enough to repeat, but that might just be me...

[Yankees]

I'd also like to point out, in a post I believe was deleted, that Kent will start the year at 2b, D.Young at DH, and Chris Duncan in LF. None of those guys has really played as much as my computer generated manager deems fit. With Dellucci, Patterson, and Phillips getting way too many AB's, I'm still the 2nd highest scoring team in the league.

My actual lineup:
1) Chone Figgins - cf
2) Brade Hawpe - rf
3) Todd Helton - 1b
4) Chipper Jones - 3b
5) Victor Martinez - c
6) Jeff Kent - 2b
7) Chris Duncan - lf
Dmitri Young - dh
9) Michael Young - ss

I've got guys off the bench who should help the D in the late innings...