Burrell FLB Preview 2023
Analysis of Jon's home league draft
Below is my analysis of my home league draft. It is intended for only my buddies and I to go over everybody’s team and then look back at and laugh at later.
Team Mitch
Big Mitch is looking for redemption after a 9th-place finish in 2022 after he had been held as one of the better team’s in the pre-season.
Keepers: Austin Riley, Kyle Tucker
Keeper Grade (all grades will be given on a 1-10 scale): 8
Hitters
Projection Ranks:
R: 1st
HR: 1st
RBI: 1st
SB: 7th
AVG: 5th
OBP: 2nd
Mitch ended up with the most projected homers, and he did without taking on many of those batting average clunkers. The high projections above are bolstered by a bench that has five hitters on it plus one IL guy, but it’s hard to poke any holes in the offense. Everybody is going to have a weak spot somewhere at the beginning of the season, and if I had to pick one it would be the middle infield for Mitch.
2B/SS: Ketel Marte, Willy Adames, CJ Abrams, Chris Taylor, Jorge Polanco
It would help Mitch’s team a lot to not have to start Abrams, but that would send him to 10th in steals.
This is a little nitpicky, and overall it’s a strong offense.
Offense Grade: 8
Pitchers
Projection Ranks
W: 10th
QS: 7th
SV: 10th
ERA: 4th
WHIP: 4th
K/9: 7th
Roster construction is a zero-sum game meaning that Mitch was heavy on offense and is then necessarily light at SP (no doubt taking my repeated advice about leaving slots open to add those early standouts!).
I cannot assign credit to teams who have 2-3 aces, because given the depth of the position at this point, every team absolutely should have 2-3 aces (looking at you, Lombardo!). The Woodruff + McClanahan start is strong, and Castillo is likely a third ace to add to it, but the back half of the rotation to me makes this a pretty weak staff at this point.
The good news is that the weak back half is made up of names with definite upside. I could see any one of Detmers/Flaherty/Bradish turning into a very strong pitcher this year, so I do like those picks for what they’re worth. You can see what happens early on and then ditch them for the next best thing.
The staff is far from irredeemable, I just think it would have been wise to draft one more SP in the top 120 or so. At one point Mitch’s draft went Yelich-[Tucker]-Bryant-[Riley]-Ward-Polanco, 70+ picks without an SP right when a lot of really good SPs were available. I may have taken Blake Snell instead of Kris Bryant, or something like that.
Pitching Grade: 3.5
Using 5 as “average”, Mitch is three points above average and two points below average on pitching. He’s also hurt by not having drafted good closers (Sewald and Floro, both of whom could easily end up as drops by May), but that actually makes a ton of sense to do in our league. If there’s one category to punt, it’s certainly saves.
Further, given the randomness of pitching as compared to hitting, I would rather come out of the draft with a strong offense and a weak pitching staff rather than the opposite (not true with my team, as we’ll see), so Mitch is certainly in the playoff/championship mix.
Mitch’s team is easily top half of the league, and I imagine he’ll be in my top 3.
Overall Grade: 7.5
Colin
Another disgraceful performance in 2022 awarded Colin the #1 overall pick, so let’s see if he can avoid completely screwing it up for the 17th straight year.
Hitters
After the first pick of the draft was made, Colin had three of the game’s best hitters on his team with Acuna, Judge, and Betts. He seemed to have thought that was good enough on offense because the rest of his hitter picks just didn’t do it for me or for the projections.
Projection Ranks:
R: 10th
HR: 10th
RBI: 10th
SB: 10th
AVG: 2nd
OBP: 1st
Note that Colin has no players on the IL, which hurts his counting stat projections quite a bit here.
But yes, when you draft Edman-Correa-Miranda-France-India-Yandy-Brantley, you’re going to have a good batting average and OBP, but it comes at the expense of almost everything else. There are a lot of starters for Colin that are below-average in both homers and steals, which just isn’t a winning approach in my book.
The only hitters on the squad that can reasonably hit 30+ homers are Judge, Acuna, and Cron - and Cron is banged up right now. He also just has two really good steals sources (Edman & Acuna), and he has a ton of guys projected in single-digits, which isn’t great.
Maybe the top three guys will all go nuts and keep Colin in most weekly matchups all by themselves, but yeah I would bet on Colin being a bottom-half offense this year, especially with his poor track record of finding the waiver-wire gems.
Offense grade: 4
Pitchers
Ignore that Will Smith line there, Python merged in Will Smith the reliever’s stats for Colin’s catcher - classic.
Projection Ranks:
W: 3rd
QS: 4th
SV: 6th
ERA: 5th
WHIP: 6th
K/9: 6th
Things are better on this front by the projections.
The staff is a lot like Mitch’s with two studs on top and then not a ton to fall in love with after that. I could be wrong AF, but I really don’t care for McKenzie or Wright, and those are his 3 and 4.
I don’t want to judge the last few starters too harshly since the SP7s and SP8s in this league are so often dropped for breakouts/streamers, it really doesn’t matter too much who you start your season with at the back of your rotation - but yeah I don’t like Sandoval/Manaea/E-Rod, although I suppose I could see some upside with Manaea and Rodriguez if they can find the consistency that they’ve never had.
Pitching grade: 3
I wanted to come here and give Colin a good grade for once cause I’m starting to feel guilty about just constantly trashing his team year in and year out (although he hasn’t proven me wrong basically since we were roommates…), but I can’t tell a lie - I don’t like Colin’s team once again.
Overall grade: 3
Lee
Lee had the 3 and visibly struggled through another draft. If you judge teams just by the confidence the drafter shows in Slack, Lee would be in the pits every single time. It’s a good thing fantasy sports aren’t a confidence game, or else Lee would never have a chance.
He also does this thing where he puts half of the player pool in his queue and then plays woe is me when someone gets snaked out of his queue, I always find that pleasurable.
The team started with Soto and Yordan, two bonafide top-15 picks. If you’re going to lose a third roundy for a player, it better be a guy that can be a complete gamebreaker, which Yordan is. If there’s another 60+ homer season coming sometime soon, my money is on Yordan (and Judge, of course).
Projection Ranks
R: 8th
HR: 6th
RBI: 6th
SB: 6th
AVG: 6th
OBP: 7th
The “middle son” offense! Nothing bad, but nothing good! Lee is another team getting no boosts from the IL spots right now, so maybe he should be up a slot or two in a couple of those catdaddies.
What I liked about Lee’s draft is how he swallowed his pride and came to the table with the Arozarena, Gunnar, and Gimenez picks. Those picks never really feel great, but Lee needed steals badly so it was good to see him swallow the pride shaft on fake-Mexican Arozarena and the G man.
As for Gunnar, it’s not a pick I wanted to make - but after Bregman was gone it was take the dive or die at 3B - and I certainly can’t say anything negative about Gunnar’s upside. Fine pick there.
There are no glaring weaknesses here, and there is plenty of pop - which I like. I mean A LOT OF POP. He’s probably the top HR team with Perez, Walker, Soto, Yordan, and Stanton (and Joc too, who is pretty nice in a league like ours with daily changes) all on this squad. Love that.
The problem is most of these studs are currently hurt. If he loses any significant amount of time from Soto/Yordan, there is big time trouble brewing, and I’m knocking him down a half point just because of that.
Offense Grade: 7
Pitching
Projection Ranks:
W: 4th
QS: 3rd
SV: 2nd
ERA: 7th
WHIP: 9th
K/9: 4th
Lee also took the approach of getting an ace early and then just going away for too long, although he did lose that third round pick for Yordan so it was a tough spot to be in.
If you’re going to be top-heavy, it makes sense to do with the Burnesinator. That’ll take him a long way most weeks.
Way too high of a percentage of this staff are players I could see being basically useless in the shallow league that is Burrell FLB.
Giolito and Morton are the 4 and 5 here, and they were both legitimately bad for stretches last year. To be fair, he took them at a discount there, but I don’t know - it’s not a great SP4-5 situation especially with just the one stud-ace at the top.
I like Heaney, Kelly, and Maeda for what they are - but I definitely would’ve liked to see Lee get into SP a little more heavily earlier in the draft. Maybe a trade is an order here.
Pitching Grade: 3.5
Overall Grade: 5.5
Paul
Ever since Paul joined the league, he and I have had a special relationship talking about FLUB in the private texts. Yes, that’s right, I am an infidel, cheating on the rest of you with private FLUB chatter. It never borders on collusion though, I can assure you. Paul is a police officer, and I am even more squeaky clean, nothing unsavory would ever go down.
Paul and Colin have done Waynesburg University a pitiful disservice over the last two years, leaving me as the lone Yellow Jacket representative in the yoff daddies. Man I hated Waynesburg.
Hitting
Projection Ranks
R: 6th
HR: 9th
RBI: 7th
SB: 3rd
AVG: 3rd
OBP: 4th
Paul went hitter-heavy with his first-round picks all being bats. Hard to scoff at any of the picks with JRod-Machado-Seager-Chisholm being a really nice core with huge upside.
What he did from there was take not one but two punt-homer hitters quite early in the draft (Kwan and Arraez). I wouldn’t have touched either guy, but I could understand why someone would pick one of them. I can’t understand why you would do that to yourself twice. I think Arraez could be a drop player this year. If the Marlins stink, he’s a two-category player and he absolutely murders you in homers and RBI.
I didn’t dislike the Varsho pick at the time, but in hindsight, it seems like that happened too early (same for me with Kirk, by the way). The catcher run was not kicked off by any of those early picks, so most likely Varsho would’ve lasted another couple of rounds - but what can you do.
All of that negativity aside, there’s no glaring weaknesses here, and there’s plenty of upside with the guys he picked at the top and then the later round Nootbaar/Castellanos/Laureano picks.
It’s a good offense, but not quite reaching Mitch at the top. It would go behind Lee if Soto & Yordan were healthy, but I’m going to just tie him with Lee right now. Paul, I just really want you to know that the Arraez pick cost you at least half of a point here, as well as lot of respect in my eyes. Good thing you have a kid, I’ll give you your half point back.
Offense grade: 7
Pitching
This is more what I’m talking about. Paul kept Strider and then went hitter heavy, but he caught up with Wheeler-Fried and then Snell with his bonus pick. That’s a strong top four, although not without risk (there’s still a decent amount of unknown about Strider, and we know how big of a disaster Snell can be at times). The Wheeler-Fried combo was really strong though, those two are pretty solid aces so it’s hard to complain about the top half of Paul’s staff.
The Sale and Mahle picks were good ones for the cost and upside, those are the kinds of picks I think are pretty attractive to make in this league with the replacement level being pretty high. I also liked the reach on Hunter Brown, there's a ton of talent there - but now there are injury concerns as well as pre-existing concerns about how many starts the Astros woulda actually let him make this year.
So right now we sit with Paul only having six semi-reliable starters, and two of them are named Sale and Snell - so things could rapidly fall apart in a hurry here. There could be some relief late in the year if Painter and Skubal can make it back, but that’s a bit too far off to comment on!
There is upside, and there is downside. Both factors cancel out resulting in an average grade.
Pitching Grade: 5
Overall Grade: 6.5
Jake
Jake surprised us with a solid sixth-place finish last year, beating a few long-time FLUB titans.
Hitters
Projection Ranks
R: 4th
HR: 7th
RBI: 4th
SB: 5th
AVG: 5th
OBP: 6th
Jake has a big bench of hitters, which helps the projections.
Jake was clearly drafting off of a “high upside young players F yeah!!!” list. Carroll, Vinnie P, Riley Greene, Yoshida, Peraza, Kelenic, oh my!
I can’t make myself completely trash any of those picks by themselves, but the collection of them means that Jake is almost certainly going to be hurting in parts of his lineup when we get into the season.
The steals should be fine for Jake. I think Carroll is a more than safe 30+ steal bet, and then he has Cruz, Lindor, Tatis, and more. If there is one thing young players are good for it’s steals - so he has that going for him.
The power is hard to believe though. It seems like the homers are going to have to come from Pasquantino, Devers, Cruz, Tatis, and Buxton. If all of those guys were to stay healthy there’s a ton of homers there, but Buxton is already banged up and we have no reason to feel super confident in Tatis’s health. I have a feeling this offense is going to just completely fall apart, and Jake isn’t known for his ability to patch-up a team on the fly. But hey, the upside is certainly there I can’t argue that!
Offense Grade: 3.5
Pitchers
Projection Ranks
W: 9th
QS: 8th
SV: 3rd
ERA: 9th
WHIP: 3rd
K/9: 10th
This is a bad pitching staff. Let’s look at it again
SP1: Scherzer
SP2: Urias
SP3: Greene
SP4: Singer
SP5: Roansy
SP6: Berrios
SP7: Mikolas
IL: McCullers
Scherzer can still be a Burnes/Cole if he stays on the field, and I suppose Urias is a reliable fantasy-ace at this point (although I’m still skeptical since he doesn’t get a ton of strikeouts). Hunter Greene has enough strikeout ability to be an ace even with the bad parts of his profile (walks, homers, Reds), and that’s the end of veiled good news.
The shift is gone, BABIPs are going to go way up, and steals are going to soar. That means it’s not good to have pitchers that allow a lot of balls in play. Jake has two pitchers with projected strikeout rates above 27% - it’s not going to go well.
Pitching Grade: 2
Overall Grade: 2.5
Nate
Natorade nearly sneaked into the playoffs in his first season, which would have practically been reason to delete the league - close one!
There is no higher IQ in the league than Nate, so I figured that if he applied himself to FLUB he would eventually be competitive. But there’s no substitute for experience, so it’s probably still an uphill battle.
Hitters
Nate has been dealt an early blow, losing Altuve for nearly half the season. The projection ranks aren’t even updated for that, so keep that in mind here:
Projection Ranks:
R: 5th
HR: 5th
RBI: 5th
SB: 1st
AVG: 9th
OBP: 10th
Already bad in AVG and OBP and he loses his second-best hitter. A very bad beat, but it’s good to see it happen to the new non-Burrell guy rather than one of the league’s original members. Can we all just agree that if we’re ever on a desert island for the draft and end up having to kill one of the league members so the wifi won’t go down - we pick Nate?
Credit to Nate that he mostly avoided the “do nothing” players. Without Altuve, he doesn’t have a single six-category contributor, which is tough, but he covers the categories pretty well distributively (not a word)
Power: Vlad, Garcia, Santander, Suarez
Speed: Realmuto, Garcia, Swanson(?), Rosario, Hayes, Rojas, Baez
AVG/OBP: Vlad, Realmuto, Rosario, Hayes, Gurriel, Gonzalez
I guess I didn’t really like the end of his draft, seems like some picks were wasted on players that are just sure to end up on waivers (Gurriel, Gonzalez, Hays). With so much roster turnover in FLUB, to me, it makes more sense to use your late-round picks on some lottery tickets. But we’ll see.
If not for the Altuve injury, I probably would’ve given this offense a grade of 6 or so, but as things currently stand I have to say it’s below average. I’m giving it the same grade as Jake, but it doesn’t have nearly the upside as Jake so he’ll get ranked below.
Offense grade: 3.5
Pitchers
Cease+Cole on top is a strong start, and then I can’t really criticize Webb+Kershaw+Cortes as your next three. That’s a strong starting five when they’re all healthy and rolling.
Projection Ranks:
W: 7th
QS: 10th
SV: 9th
ERA: 2nd
WHIP: 1st
K/9: 2nd
I have mixed feelings about the Glasnow pick. If he recovers from the injury on time and pitches how he has been pitching in recent years, it’s a fine pick in the 14th - he’ll be absolutely dominant for more than half the year, but that’s a big time question mark. The oblique injury is not one you want to see, so I’d have to be betting on sub-100 innings for Glasdaddy this year.
And then he did the thing where he bought Sonny Gray and Tyler Anderson as low-strikeout players to finish out his pitching staff, and he only is currently rostering 7 SPs.
Another case of starting the staff strong, but then neglecting it. Rookie stuff.
Pitching Grade: 6
Overall Grade: 4
Nick
One of the best all-time seasons in FLUB history last year, it’s easy to forget that happened since he crashed out so hard in the playoffs! But we should also remember that his roto score was only 3rd-best lmao loser!
Hitters
Nick kept two hitters and then started his draft with four more. He had six hitters and no pitchers in the 5th round, and yet his offense isn’t absolutely murdering us by the projections:
Projection Ranks
R: 9th
HR: 7th
RBI: 8th
SB: 8th
AVG: 1st
OBP: 8th
Three bench hitters and no IL, so he one or two hitters less than other people baked into this, but yeah I mean if you’re going 6 hitters and 0 pitchers I think you should probably be a top R+HR+RBI team even by the dumb projections.
But looking at the starters, Nick is pretty solid - there’s no weak spots and there’s plenty of upside. Every single starter has an easy 20+ HR projection, and there are several double-digit steal guys here too.
Offense Grade: 7.5
Pitchers
Projection Ranks
W: 6th
QS: 7th
SV: 7th
ERA: 8th
WHIP: 10th
K/9: 8th
No surprise, the pitching staff doesn’t project very well. He waited so long to take pitchers, and then he took two lower strikeout rate guys to start it off - that’s sinful to me.
He made up for a bit with Luzardo+Peralta+Ryan, but then he went back to the puke well with Cobb+Bassitt+Keller. This is a horrid WHIP pitching staff, just horrid. Shameful.
If Nick rolls a Yahtzee and gets full-ass dominant seasons from Luzardo+Peralta+Ryan, he might crack the top 8 pitching staffs. I have to rank this one dead ass last, but I’ll bump up his overall grade to a five cause Nick has two kids, a lot of free time on his hands, and he’s highly dedicated to FLUB.
Pitching Grade: 1.5
Overall Grade: 5
Jon
Hitters
I have a ton of players on my roster with my IL already filled up and the two-player Ohtani situation still happening. That helps me a ton with the counting stats projections.
Projection Ranks:
R: 3rd
HR: 3rd
RBI: 3rd
SB: 2nd
AVG: 8th
OBP: 3rd
I’m a little bit dependent on Trout for homers, I could certainly have some rough HR/RBI weeks if he’s not going right.
The fact that my first two hitters were Trout and Bregman left me behind in steals, so I had to kind of ditch my overall strategy and attack the high-steals players to catch up. I really didn’t want Marte, but it made the most sense at the time. And then I went with another no-steals guy in Muncy, which forced my hand onto Hoerner and Merrifield.
I don’t really believe that Mike Trout is truly injury-prone, no matter how ridiculous that might sound after what’s happened in his career. He’s healthy now, and he’s the best hitter in the league, so I’m not going to pick someone like Goldschmidt or Olson over him.
I have a feeling I’ll be able to improve the offense as the year goes on, but right now it’s certainly not a top-three unit, but I also don’t see any real glaring problems.
Offense Grade: 5.5
Pitchers
It is simply unfair to have Shohei Ohtani in this league, and I’m afraid of what might happen to me when I don’t have him any longer.
Projection Ranks
W: 1st
QS: 2nd
SV: 8th
ERA: 1st
WHIP: 2nd
K/9: 1st
I had no intention of taking deGrom when the draft started, but then kinda just said F it let’s just draft the best players and patch the leaks later. What did that do is force my hand on SP a bit. You don’t want to draft deGrom and then not hammer SP given the high probability of him needing several arm surgeries on any given day.
That led to me to be the first one to fill out my staff, and also encouraged me to take the RP cheat code strategy once again - jumping on those two names much earlier than I probably had to.
If things go even decently for me on the injury front, I not only have the best pitching staff in the league but it could very well be the greatest pitching staff ever assembled. My SP7 is better than a lot of the league’s SP4’s - so it’s going to be a fun year for me.
But of course, the whole thing is built on shaky ground. I could lose deGrom, Trout, and Rodon for most of the year - nobody would be surprised if that happened - and of course, that would send me to the bottom-half of the league very, very quickly. It will be a blast to see what happens though.
Pitching Grade: 9
Overall Grade: 7
Clint
Stupid ass Clint just keeps on doing it, I think he probably has the best regular season record over the last five years or so. I don’t actually want to look it up so let’s just say that it’s actually ME who has the best record, even though it’s not true.
Hitters
Projection Ranks:
R: 7th
HR: 6th
RBI: 6th
SB: 6th
AVG: 6th
OBP: 7th
Clint came in with solid keepers for a change, although he did lose an early pick for J-Ram which really does sting a bit.
Anyways, Clint seems to have played it pretty safe in the draft - which honestly is the best strategy in a league where 40% of the league makes the playoffs. He’s doing the right thing while I did the wrong thing. The downside is that his team isn’t nearly as fun to watch as one like mine, but yeah I’d certainly say Clint’s chances of making the playoffs are near the top of the league just because of the safe core he put together.
He dropped the bowling ball on the Vaughn Grissom pick, and he got completely away from the long ball after the first handful of hitters he took. Cronenworth, McCarthy, Grissom, LeMahieu, Casas, Stephenson - not a lot of pop there. Although when you look further you see Conforto, Jung, and Brown - three home run hitters, so that was a really nice adjustment there.
The sharpest pick of the whole draft was Harper. If Harper missing half of this season costs him a playoff spot, then I guess that really sucks - but he will quickly get over that knowing that he can keep Harper for the next several years, as he’ll be a 12th-round keeper next year. Incredible stuff, imagine if Clint makes the playoffs anyways - it will be one of the greatest draft picks in FLUB history and we all could’ve made it.
If Jake McCarthy loses the starting job (entirely possible), Clint might be in some trouble with steals, but we’re talking about “ifs” now. The offense is like a 4.5 or 5 right now, but Harper is worth at least a half of a point when gets back, so no real qualms on Clint’s hitter draft from me.
Offense Grade: 5
Pitchers
Projection Ranks:
W: 5th
QS: 5th
SV: 1st
ERA: 6th
WHIP: 5th
K/9: 9th
It’s more boring safety here. Alcantara, Verlander, and Gallen make his top three. Very hard to say bad things about those three but they are lower-strikeout guys as far as aces go. It’s quite possible that the guys like Alcantara will go for more strikeouts this year knowing there aren’t shifts going on behind them, so that will be interesting to see. I am sure Sandy could raise his strikeout rate 3-5 points if he wanted to, and that might be true with Gallen as well.
Severino-Gray-Montgomery is a nice middle of the rotation as well. I like all three of them, but again we’re probably looking at more like 25-27% K% rather than the 30% you really want - but I’m being picky here.
To close it out he went with Kopech and Taillon. Kopech has the stuff to perform well above where he got drafted, so that’s a good use of a late-round pick - and Taillon was solid enough already with the Yankees and I think he can be better getting out of Yankees Stadium.
The staff doesn’t knock your socks off, but it’s nice and deep - and I haven’t seen a lot of that. There’s no one here that I wouldn’t be comfortable starting right out of the gate, and Clint filled up all 8 SP slots - a real veteran move there.
Pitching Grade: 7
The “intangibles” favor Clint as so he gets that little bump in the overall rankings. The track record is there, so I’m making him a top-four team fo sho.
Overall grade: 6.5
Pish
Oh boy.
Hitters
Projection Ranks:
R: 2nd
HR: 2nd
RBI: 2nd
SB: 9th
AVG: 10th
OBP: 9th
Pish has a bajillion hitters rostered so that really helps out the R/HR/RBI there, don’t take that very seriously.
In Pish’s defense, I look at the offense and I can’t easily pick out where I’m going to attack. I could ram into him pretty hard for the Walker/Colas/Volpe/Mitchell picks. It’s looking more and more like Walker & Volpe won’t make the team, and more often than not these rookies struggle in their first go at it.
However, Pish currently has only one of these guys in his starting lineup, so it’s not like he’s reliant on them.
The rest of the offense has power and upside pretty much all through it. The one thing he doesn’t have is steals - but if any of those rookies break out they presumedly would steal a bunch of bases on their way to it.
I just think Pish was spooked by being at the end of the draft. I thought he reached way too much on Bogaerts, Diaz, Franco, and Lowe. Reaching is fine when you just want to make sure you get your guy - but those names (outside of Franco, I guess) aren’t really potential game-breakers. What exactly would have been the harm if you had waited on Diaz/Bogaerts/Lowe and not have gotten them? They are all pretty replaceable.. so that’s a criticism.
I can’t really give an offense with this much pop a bad grade, and he certainly has the lotto tickets to take the offense to the next level.
Hitting Grade: 6
Pitchers
Projection Ranks
W: 8th
QS: 9th
SV: 4th
ERA: 10th
WHIP: 7th
K/9: 3rd
Shane Bieber and Zack Wheeler were both available and Pish took freaking Edwin Diaz. I absolutely would have criticized that pick even if the injury hadn’t happened, and you all know I would have, so there’s no real hindsight criticism here - just poetic justice.
I also thought keeping Javier instead of Woodruff was foolishness, but we’ll see on that - I don’t want to talk too poorly of Javier cause he could end up winning the Cy Young - I just think he’s far from a safe pick right now.
He has all of Senga, Trevor Rogers, Edward Cabrera, and Nathan Eovaldi in his rotation. That’s four guys that could be absolutely terrible. There’s also no true ace on the team - and he’s the only team you can really say that about.
The staff could be fine if Javier, Darvish, and Gilbert reach the top of their potential and Senga ends up being good as well, but it’s much more likely that this is the worst staff in the league than the best.
Pitching Grade: 2
It’s not as bad of a team as we all have been saying, and we should give the reigning champ some grace - although screw that it’s FLUB.
Overall Grade: 3.5
Before we leave I’ll give you the projection ranks that don’t include IL players. Some of the teams (me and Pish for example) benefitted quite a bit above from having IL players stashed - and that’s not really fair.
Starting Lineup + Bench Hitter Projection Rankings
Mitch
Paul
Nate
Lee
Nick
Jake
Pish
Colin
Jon
Clint
Starting Lineup Pitcher Projection Rankings
Jon
Colin
Paul
Nate
Clint
Lee
Pish
Mitch
Nick
Jake
Final Hitter Ranks:
Mitch 8
Nick 7.5
Paul 7
Lee 7
Pish 6
Jon 5.5
Clint 5
Colin 4
Jake 3.5
Nate 3.5
Final Pitcher Ranks:
Jon 9
Clint 7
Nate 6
Paul 5
Mitch 3.5
Lee 3.5
Colin 3
Jake 2
Pish 2
Nick 1.5
Final Overall Ranks:
Mitch 7.5
Jon 7
Paul 6.5
Clint 6.5
Lee 5.5
Nick 5
Nate 4
Pish 3.5
Colin 3
Jake 2.5