Umm, I made a glaring omission. Heh, Alex Rodriguez needs to go on my team!
:smack:
Alex Rodriguez goes into starting lineup. Derek Jeter goes to the bench. Michael Young gets sent to the practice squad.
Umm, I made a glaring omission. Heh, Alex Rodriguez needs to go on my team!
:smack:
Alex Rodriguez goes into starting lineup. Derek Jeter goes to the bench. Michael Young gets sent to the practice squad.
Well, the best system in my opinion is the one used in the NHL & NBA. Why not just award the home field advantage to the team with the best overall record? That way the advantage is definitely earned by the participating team, rather than simply being assigned or decided by the All Star teams. I never understood why baseball had the alternating home field system.
C - Ivan Rodriguez
1B - Albert Pujols
2B - Alfonso Soriano
SS - Miquel Tejada
3B - Mike Lowell
LF - Manny Ramirez
CF - Carlos Beltran
RF - Sammy Sosa
DH - Vlad Guerrero
Bench
C - Victor Martinez
IF - Raphael Palmeiro
IF - Aramis Ramirez
IF - Edgar Renteria
OF - Bobby Abreu
OF - Ichiro
Pitchers
Pedro Martinez
Javier Vazquez
Johan Santana
Carlos Zambrano
Estaban Loaiza
Eric Gagne (he’s mine, not yours)
Mariano Rivera
Juan Rincon
Armando Benitez
Francisco Cordero
Sorry, but I think I win everywhere except LF and 3B, as well a *very * slight lead in starting pitching. You’d get SS if you had put A-Rod there.
I did put A-Rod in [see my post above].
Heh, I didn’t realize Eric Gagne was Canadian!
Ok, so here is my updated roster:
C- Mike Piazza
1B- Jim Thome
2B- Brett Boone
SS- Alex Rodriguez
3B- Scott Rolen
LF- Barry Bonds
CF- Ken Griffey, Jr.
RF- Gary Sheffield
DH- Frank Thomas
Bench
C- Paul Lo Duca
IF- Todd Helton
IF- Derek Jeter
OF- Adam Dunn
OF- J.D. Drew
Pitchers
Randy Johnson
Curt Shilling
Roger Clemens
Jason Schmidt
Mark Mulder
Ben Sheets
Tom Glavine
Danny Graves
Joe Nathan
Keith Foulke
It’s dead even IMHO. No way we would “get our asses handed to us”. Sorry.
Dead even? I really don’t see it.
C: Rodriguez clearly has the advantage here over Piazza. Pudge may end up with the MVP if the Tigers do something dramatic like take the ALCentral. You: 7.5 Me: 9
1B: Pujols is in the top 3 of players in MLB. Thome isn’t. It’s close one. You: 8.5 Me: 9
2B: Boone sucks right now. Soriano is fantastic. Not even close. You: 6 Me: 8.5
3B: Rolen rocks, offensively and defensively. You win here, by about the same margin as my win in 1B. You: 9.5 Me: 8.5
SS: A-Rod v. Tejada. A classic matchup. 1 MVP v. 1 MVP. I suppose A-Rod wins. You: 10 Me: 8.5
LF: Bonds, hands down. You: 10 Me: 8.5
CF: Beltran, and it’s not even close. The gap here engulfs your SS and LF margins. You: 7 Me: 9.5
RF: I’m moving Vlad here. And he kicks Sheff’s ass. You: 8 Me: 9
DH: Big Hurt v. Sammy Sosa, the Windy City rivals. Seeing as Thomas may be done for the season, Sosa wins. You: 5 Me: 7.5
Bench: I’ll take Palmeiro off, to make this 5 to 5. And again, I come out smelling like a rose. The only truly solid player you have here is Helton. You: 7.5 Me: 8.5
Pitching: Here’s where it’s truly dead even. You have better starters, I have vastly better relievers. You (starters/relievers): 9.5/8 Me: 8/9.5
Totals
You: 96.5
Me: 104.0
Ultimately, my offense and relief is going to dominate.
Concession: Looking over the rosters, you do have a distinct defensive advantage. I’m not sure how much that would change my rankings.
Also, I’d love to see input from others here. A third-party perspective would be fantastic.
I’d do the American Lineup a little differently. Thinking about it it terms of a batting order I’d go with
I like Lawton more than Griffey, but the best American choice for CF/leadoff would be Podsednik.
Well, your final count is hardly a huge difference. I don’t see any ass whooping being done with a 7.5 point difference.
Plus, the numbers should be a little closer anyway (these are adjustments to Munch’s calculations):
.5 for me regarding relievers. No way you have “vastly better relievers”.
1.0 for me regarding CF. Griffey is a Hall of Famer lock, with over 500HR’s, and has one less HR than Beltran so far this year (21 to 20). Defensive equal. Advantage Griffey.
.5 for me regarding the bench. Cmon, the benches are equal. Dunn, Drew, Lo Duca are big time underrated. You should know that. Plus, I left off a bench player (24 players total, instead of 25). I’m adding Hank Blalock.
1.0 for me because of better overall defensive and experience (especially pitching).
So, we now have a 4.5 point overall difference.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeee, isn’t this fun? :dubious:
If you’re adding points to an injured Griffey based on career numbers, then I get to recruit Roberto Clemente. Besides Vlad, Beltran may be the best all-around player in baseball right now.
I’ll give you the bench points, but don’t say that LoDuca is underrated. Drew is underrated, LoDuca is a fluke (and if you use Griffey’s career numbers, then you have to use Drew and LoDuca’s career numbers!).
I’d also give you the relievers point, if you didn’t have Graves in there. Replace him with Kolb (what, 1 extra base hit all season?), and you’ve improved the bullpen. I’d also switch out Rincon with Francisco Rodriquez.
I’d also like to see an All-Star game where only relief pitchers are used. I wonder how many scoreless innings that would go into.
I don’t know Munch. All I know is, this would so awesome to see. I would donate a kidney and chew on a ball of tinfoil for a week if it would help make this happen.
Nice. Hey, what could a little tinfoil hurt?
I have to admit, I had a head start as I compiled a list last night for each team during the game. I built my teams for a 3 game series, and had 2 players for each position, instead of creating a bench. I think the World team came out much stronger with that format than it did here. (Though I forgot about Loaiza and had to set the clock to Lima Time!)
For the American team, I might take out Glavine and replace him with Tom Gordon or Brad Lidge for some set-up duty.
Soriano is not fantastic. He’s not within a mile of fantastic, dude. He’s hitting .289 with some power, but not a lot of power - .466 slugging percentage. He doesn’t walk, he’s not running the bases as much as he used to, and he is a poor defensive player. His numbers are pretty much the same as Juan Uribe’s or Omar Infante’s. Given defense, Orlando Hudson is just as good a player. Jose Vidro’s better. Soriano is the most overrated player in baseball. A 6, maybe.
Bret Boone is a dumb choice for the USA. Really, the US second baseman should be any one of a dozen other guys - Loretta, Kent, Hudson, Bellhorn. I’d pick Vidro for my World team over Soriano eight days a week. My backup would be Luis Castillo. Soriano wouldn’t even be on my 25-man roster.
Here your opponent just picked the wrong guy. A US team could play Brian Giles in CF, or Adam Dunn, or a dozen other guys who can handle center.
The lack of respect you guys are giving Griffey is shocking. The guy is a career .292 hitter with over 500 HR’s! He has won 10 Gold Gloves! He is on pace this year to hit over 40 HR’s and 120 RBI’s! His recent plague of injuries is a concern, but I’d take him in CF over anyone else in the ML’s in a New York minute.
Regarding Boone, his numbers are very close to Kent’s over the last 4 years. I think Boone is a better defensive player than Kent. Plus, I just don’t like Kent’s attitude. True, Boone is having an off year so far, but I stand by my pick.
Griffey (sorry, I cut off your Griffey comment) is certainly a Hall of Famer, but if I’m picking a team to win today, his winning the MVP Award in 1997 doesn’t have anything to do with it. He is not a very good defensive player anymore and he’s not the hitter he used to be. You cannot objectively explain why today, in 2004, Adam Dunn isn’t a better player. Or Brian Giles, or Vernon Wells, or lots of guys. I’m not criticizing him; he’s just worn down from injury and a long career, that’s all. I sometimes wonder if his starting as a regular at age 19 is one of the reasons he’s had so many injury problems in his early 30s.
As for Boone, he’s had a few amazing years, but they’re sort of out of the context of his whole career so at his age I’d bet against him. Just my guess though. I gotta admit that at this point there aren’t ANY obvious candidates among USA-born second basemen so who knows, Boone might be the man.
I just think your team was weighted a little strongly towards who was great three to six years ago, as opposed to today. Griffey over Wells isn’t helping Team USA’s chances.
Rule Question: Puerto Rican players are Americans. Logically should they not be on the U.S. squad?
I guess you missed the part where I said “He is on pace this year to hit over 40 HR’s and 120 RBI’s!”. :dubious:
There are lots of good American CF’s (Damon, Finley, Edmonds, Biggio, Jones, etc.), but I’m sorry, a healthy Griffey is the obvious choice.