IBC

And we're back. This is why we started so early, because life happens and shit. PS, it appears the board was dead for like 3 whole days, and not even on comment on the AL East preview, so ya'll quit yer bitching and pull your weight about the deadness here!

Braves

Strengths
First of all, does anyone else realize that Brandon named the blog he never posts in Brave Blue Ballers? What's the story with that? Fascinating. Certainly more fascinating than whatever goes on in this lineup. Mauer is cool, though I like him a lot less as a 1B than as a catcher, that's a difference of- 2.5 WAR on positional adjustment alone and I'm not sure he has the bat to anchor a lineup (please don't remind me I said this when the Giants inevitably move Posey to 1B in a few years). The rotation is a wee bit more interesting, or at least it was until Garcia had to revisit our old friend Dr. Andrews. Sale and Garza is a pretty legit 1-2 though.

Weaknesses
The spring training injuries to Garcia and Cameron Maybin sure make this team look a lot less interesting. After Mauer who is the second best hitter in this lineup? I guess Pelfrey is the 3rd starter with Garcia out, who fills out the rotation?

Bottom Line
There's a mix of prospect flameouts and guys on the way down, there's a little too much talent for this team to contend for the bottom, and who knows the NL is weird.

Marlins

Strengths
Scott Stapp didn't write and perform a song in his imitable style about any other team (does that also go in weaknesses?). The Marlins have been the class of the NL East for years, and there is no sign of that changing. Top to bottom the lineup is pretty sweet, going Kinsler, Myers, Tulo, Belt, Puig, (taken 1 pick after I took Andrew Heaney!), Aramis. Denard Span gets to play for some reason, and Ramos if his knee is healthy and he is not being held for ransom is a nice catcher. The rotation is strong top to bottom and Verlander-Price is a contender for the best 1-2 punch in the league (and credit to Vacek for selling Scherzer at roughly the top of his market value).

Weaknesses
The Marlins always seem to underperform and the NL East always seems to take longer to settle than it should. It's also worth noting that the pen is not that deep, there's no one from the left side who looks any good (sorry Jeremy Affeldt, it is no longer 2012), and that there isn't depth on the pitching staff in general so that injuries could be a real problem.

Bottom Line
If everyone stays healthy this is the team with the best shot to knock off JP.

M-e-t-s Mets Mets Mets (gonna try to make that a thing because I'm bored)

Strengths
As always, this team runs on David Wright. That's good, because the cupboard is relatively bare in the lineup after him. The pitching is decent, however. I'm a big fan of Tony Cingrani, who could really make a leap this ear in real life and has a decent sim projection regardless. The bullpen is deep though without a stud.

Weaknesses
After Wright who's the second best hitter? Cuddyer? Nava? Ryan Raburn? After Cingrani and Ian Kennedy who's number 3? What he's got should be good enough to eke out something close-ish to a .500 record but no more

Bottom Line
John has always eschewed a full rebuild in this league, which means that his teams are always pretty good but not great, and this year should be no exception. John's Met's are like a perennial 8 seed in the NBA Eastern conference, only we only get 4.5 playoff spots in baseball

Nationals

Strengths
Ha.

Weaknesses
Karma, which dictates this team getting roughly pick #2 in the draft next year

Bottom Line
I wish I was in the NL East...

Phillies

Strengths
For those of you wondering, yes I am going to dredge up the Joey Votto trade from 2010, which does still piss me off. It's worth revisiting here because Freddie Freeman (the centerpiece of that trade) just signed a monster extension in real life and is also anchoring this lineup. For those of you who don't remember that trade went like this:

Phillies Get:
Freddie Freeman
Lonnie Chisenhall
Jhoulys Chacin
Matt Hobgood (or Hobogod as he was referred to on Sickels' site IIRC)
Jordan Lyles

Cards Get:
Votto
Tim Hudson
Andres Torres
Joe Blanton

Anyway, I remember thinking that Freeman+Chisenhall+Chacin was a good haul for Votto who was in his prime and one of the 5 best hitters in baseball at that point, but that throwing in a #2 starter (as Hudson was), Andres Torres (he was good back then, remember?) and a mid rotation starter to add the other two marginal pitching prospects was insane (FWIW Stephen vehemently disagreed with me, which made me feel more confident in my convictions). What that trade did was signify a full rebuild, and we can now evaluate some results on that. Zips has Freeman at 3.6 WAR this year, and Votto at 5. Not an insignificant difference but not awful. I don't think Freeman has enough thunder in his bat to get to Votto's level and consistently be a 5 WAR player, but the real life Braves sure do. Chisenhall became Jed Lowrie and Jhoulys Chacin eventually became Josh Donaldson after a series of moves (would you believe that Yu Darvish was one of them?) The Cardinals obviously didn't get to the World Series that year (in fact IIRC I ended up getting Andres Torres' projection from Aaron that August), and now the Phillies lineup looks pretty sweet so at least he seems to have survived the trade. About that lineup: McCutchen, Werth, Donaldson, Cespedes at the heart of it, and Freddy Galvis as the only projected regular with an OPS+ below 100. Not bad. Pitching staff, fronted by Zimmermann and Bailey, also not bad.

Weaknesses
Freddy Galvis sucks. There should really be a way that one of my spare shortstops can extract Jed Lowrie from you Nick...

Bottom Line
The Verlander/Price 1-2 punch will make it really hard for Nick to win this division, but he has to be a strong favorite for a wild card spot, especially since he gets to spend 10% of his season beating up on the Nats

Projected Standings
1. Marlins - WS Contender
2. Phillies - WC
--
3. Mets - Top 20 pick
4. Braves - Top 15 Pick
--
5. Nationals - #2 Pick [not a typo]

When I made that trade it was essentially Votto and Hudson (2.3 WAR in 230 IP that year) for Freeman (BA #17), Chisenhall (BA #25), Lyles (BA #42), and Chacin (3.1 WAR in 137 IP that year (his rookie year)). That's 3 top 50 prospects and a clear upgrade at SP (especially since Hudson was 13 years older than Chacin).

I threw in Andres Torres who had one big (fraudulent) season and I got Brendan Ryan and Hobgood added in. Ryan was one of the best defensive SS in the game at the time, and I was hoping he'd improve with the bat. He didn't, oh well.

It's easy to look back and say it was a bad trade because I was way off on Lyles and Chisenhall. But at the time, value was there.

And stop with the "Joe Blanton mid rotation starter" stuff. Guy was and is a bum.

When I made that trade it was essentially Votto and Hudson (2.3 WAR in 230 IP that year) for Freeman (BA #17), Chisenhall (BA #25), Lyles (BA #42), and Chacin (3.1 WAR in 137 IP that year (his rookie year)). That's 3 top 50 prospects and a clear upgrade at SP (especially since Hudson was 13 years older than Chacin).

I threw in Andres Torres who had one big (fraudulent) season and I got Brendan Ryan and Hobgood added in. Ryan was one of the best defensive SS in the game at the time, and I was hoping he'd improve with the bat. He didn't, oh well.

It's easy to look back and say it was a bad trade because I was way off on Lyles and Chisenhall. But at the time, value was there.

And stop with the "Joe Blanton mid rotation starter" stuff. Guy was and is a bum.

As the NBA & MLB have so rightly proven, in today's day and age, mediocrity is a fool's effort.

Phillies wrote:When I made that trade it was essentially Votto and Hudson (2.3 WAR in 230 IP that year) for Freeman (BA #17), Chisenhall (BA #25), Lyles (BA #42), and Chacin (3.1 WAR in 137 IP that year (his rookie year)). That's 3 top 50 prospects and a clear upgrade at SP (especially since Hudson was 13 years older than Chacin).

I threw in Andres Torres who had one big (fraudulent) season and I got Brendan Ryan and Hobgood added in. Ryan was one of the best defensive SS in the game at the time, and I was hoping he'd improve with the bat. He didn't, oh well.

It's easy to look back and say it was a bad trade because I was way off on Lyles and Chisenhall. But at the time, value was there.

And stop with the "Joe Blanton mid rotation starter" stuff. Guy was and is a bum.

Well since I have time to burn on their potential breakouts you ended up with a decent bat (Lowrie) and a closer (Janssen). I still have faith in Lyles...though going to the Rockies likely will kill him. As for Chisenhall, if he could learn to hit both LHPs and RHPs, I think I got some decent value there as I wait on Cowart to rebound after a disappointing AA debut.

The thing that bothered me the most at the time was that I felt Chisenhall was crazy overvalued. At the time there was this thing in prospecting called the "polished high school player" with Pete Kozma as the poster child, and Chisenhall also fit that bill as a guy (who by that time) was considered such a good prospect because of his ostensibly high floor. The problem was that the ceiling was never there for him, but because he was so much more polished than his more talented high school peers people talked about him like he was a serious prospect. This is akin to the college senior who throws an 85 MPH fastball and that's about it beating up on Low-A before getting hammered against advanced bats. If Chisenhall had played those 3 years in college instead of in the minor leagues we'd have talked about him like any other middling utility infield prospect, and he still might have a nice career as a utility guy/second division starter, but he was never going to live up to his prospect billing.

In a vaccuum you're probably right that prospects #17 and #25 are a good value, this year's #17 and #25 are Maikel Franco and Nick Castellanos (two guys with much higher ceilings) and last year's was Zunino and Bradley (that would have been a slam dunk deal for you), while in 2012 you had a post breakout pre injury d'Arnaud and Bradley at 25 again. Point being I see your argument on a typical #25 prospect, but Chisenhall was never going to live up to that billing.

Incidentally, while I hated and still do hate that trade, all told the rebuild has been solid, hope you got that out of the piece too.

Edit - yes I know Chisenhall didn't sign after high school and played a year at community college. The point was that guys who start with low ceilings don't tend to increase them, and while it's nice to know with 100% certainty that a guy will be a decent utility guy, that doesn't have the same value as having a guy with a 50/50 chance of being a star or a scrub. If Lonnie's Zips is right and he graduates from being a replacement player to average player that'll be more than Kozma and his ilk, but I still never remember anyone talking about him as an impact player, which is what an elite prospect must have the potential to be.

Good assessment. I have an average team with average players. Problem for me is that I can't necessarily turn average players into top prospects for a rebuild - hence, the average prospects for the players I have dealt in the past year. My only hope is that Ian Kennedy goes back to 2012 version, Mejia continues to prove he's a starter and not a reliever with arm trouble, Michael Morse finding his 30-HR power in SF, Jose Ramirez (2B) to decide he wants to be the next Altuve, Kyle Drabek fulfilling his promise and Pierce Johnson continuing to step up to be a top-20 prospect.

So yep, pretty much an average team with average aspirations.

One week left...still three more divisions to rate...or are you going on the basis of DMB being out late you can take another month?

So, it appears Lonnie Chisenhall has arrived.

Phillies wrote:So, it appears Lonnie Chisenhall has arrived.

Fuck yeah, until he gets hurt.