Draft Review (Part IV)

Broken Angels
As the winningest team in league history (46-26, .639), there's not much more for the Broken Angels to accomplish. Except more winning, and specifically, winning in the playoffs, where they're the losingest team in league history (1-3, .250). This leads, of course, to the indisputable fact: No DCBA team with Paul Konerko has ever won the championship. Nevertheless, teams with Paul Konerko have always made the playoffs. So, the B.A. M.O. is consistent. Also signed up for a return trip with the Angels are Brad Penny, Aaron Rowand, Ubaldo Jiminez, Jose Valverde, and Chuck James. Is this the year that their theme song, "Don't Stop Believing," plays all the way through, or will it last right up until the playoffs, when the screen abruptly cuts to black?


Best Pick: Javier Vazquez
Worst Pick: Josh Fields
Steal: Kelly Johnson

All The Wrong Cubs
Having been denied a playoff entry by mere points in 2006, All The Wrong Cubs decided that playing for the wildcard slot wasn't anything to mess with, and promptly set out to claim the divisional crown. This year they tried yet another tack: auto-draft! How did that work out? Thus far, 6 of the draftees - a full 1/3 taken - have been reassigned to the free agent pool. Their mission? Hitch on to another team and bring them down. When man and machine combine forces, they're nearly unstoppable, and All The Wrong Cubs are geniuses.

Best Pick: Adrian Gonzalez
Worst Pick: See above
Steal: Gil Meche

Transaction Thursday

Welly, welly, welly, well. Viddy this: A new season of baseball, my little droogies.

Not content with the big player movement that was the draft, the DCBA'ers made 10 moves in the few days since Sunday's draft. Lucky me, I get to summarize it.

The big offender were All the Wrong Cubs. Hearing that Jarrod "Seasoned" Saltalamacchiavelli lost a roster spot to Gerald Laird and got sent to AAA OKC, ATC dropped him and got Bengie Molina. Tit for Tat, $1. RF Jeremy Hermida got replaced by SP Carlos Villanueva, $1. Villanueva might be the kinda pick up where ATC turns shit into watermelons. Else, he's just got some shit. By the way, Villanueva's one of those dudes that wears his hats all crooked. Chad Gaudin, SP, replaces Aaron "Hank" Hill. Hill will likely make it to a DCBA roster again this year. Shaun Marcum, another SP, replaces David DeJesus. Apparently, ATC realized they missed those middle rounds where everyone nabs pitchers. Longshot Bartolo Colon replaces Luke Scott who was only the third RF dropped by ATC. All players were acquired for a measly dollar.

Bolstering Da Prop Joes' bullpen will be Sweaty Joe Borowski who replaces SS Johnny "Powell" Peralta. $1.

The Slipstream Starlings dropped prospect Homer Bailey for some dutch or danish guy named Jair Jurrjens, a SP who just made my spellcheck go nuts. We'll see if the majick pitching water in Atlanta does its work on the already gifted Jurgens.

Manriques, which is french for anal balm, picked up two people: Micah Owings and Scott Baker. Consider those last round pickups. Owings could be serviceable.

Draft Review (Part III)

Festivus Miracles
After leading the league in steals last season, can they repeat? After three straight seasons of finishing 12-11, will they get over the hump? The answers: probably and maybe. Adding Carl Crawford, Brian Roberts, Jacoby Ellsbury and Shane Victorino, the Festivi are odds-on favorites to take home the SB crown. If you consider that getting on base in order to steal requires earning at least one point in the first place, and being on second in most instances after the theft gives them a better chance to nab another point with a run scored, then the Miracles are in good position to perhaps snag another win or two and steal a playoff berth. Verdict: Guilty of grand larceny.

Best Pick: Carl Crawford
Worst Pick: Trevor Hoffman
Steal: James Loney

Not So Fragile Flowers
The Notsos went into the final week last season with an opportunity to make the playoffs if they were able to knock off their long-time rivals All The Wrong Cubs. Alas, they were no unstoppable force and ceded the divisional title and playoff entry to ATWC. Is this the year that they can shed the notso label? That's more likely than them shedding the fragile tag, as they've already seen 2nd round pick Curtis Granderson hit the DL to open the season and 3b Adrian Beltre "probably will play the entire season with his left thumb wrapped in a bandage" (not as a political statement).

Confining it to the 3 picks manually selected -
Best Pick: Joe Blanton
Worst Pick: Scott Olsen
Steal: Chris Duncan

Draft Review (Part II)

Manriques

After winning the championship in 2006, the market corrected for the former Naps and they slid back into the bottom half of the standings. While trading away their first-round pick may not have been the best thing for them to have done, subsequently drafting B.J. Ryan and his 4.1 IP with their first pick in the 2nd round couldn't have helped matters much either. That's what leading analysts call sub-prime mortgaging the future. If they lose both Kerry Wood and Carlos Marmol this time around, that could only mean one of possibly a thousand things, but most likely: closing pitchers ain't their specialty.

Best Pick: Manny Ramirez

Worst Pick: Andrew Miller

Steal: Rich Harden

The Darned Sox
After a rookie season in which they inherited a roster filled with only 1 Red Sox and no less than 8 Brewers on the team - 33% of the roster - they nearly managed to flip that around, finishing the season with only 1 Brewer and 6 Red Sox. For that effort, they finished one game short of finishing over .500 for the first time in franchise history. This year, they seem to have split the difference - 0 Brewers and 3 Red Sox. At the very least, they have 3 of the starting pitchers from the Red Sox who won't start the season on the DL.

Best Pick: Derrek Lee
Worst Pick: Kevin Slowey
Steal: Tie - with ifs and buts. Already having solid corners in Lee and Atkins, a solid chance was taken with Carlos Delgado and/or Hank Blalock posting numbers as good as they've shown they're capable of producing in the past.

Draft Review - 2008 (Part I)

Once again, after finding another lovely late-March Sunday morning/afternoon to spoil by sitting in front of the dull glow of the computer screen, we've had ourselves a draft. The first pitch of the season has been thrown, so we're going to look at 2 teams each day in a review of the week that was leading to the weeks that will have been.


Da Prop Joes:
Following up on prior drafts which were managed from Baghdad and Washington, D.C., respectively, this year Da Prop Joes decided to make their picks from deep inside the heart of a top-secret experimental computer located underneath the fortified bunkers located in a mountain in a place that can't be named. (Disneyworld: Space Mountain.) It's highly unlikely that they could do worse than last year's historically awful 3-20 record, but no matter what happens on the field, they can consider themselves winners of the first round, having taken Mark Teixeira #1 overall; this forced The Bucketheads to take their second-choice (Lance Berkman), consequently making the Manriques to go to their second-choice (Manny Ramirez). Well-played, supercomputer.

Best Pick: Teixeira
Worst Pick: Huff
Steal: Bonds (if he finds a team)


The Bucketheads
As mentioned above, finding themselves forced to go down on their wishlist from the start, the Bucketheads nevertheless recovered to "settle" for a player who ranks 5th in OBP and 9th in SLG among active players. With their second pick they had to "settle" for a player who ranks 11th in OBP and 13th in SLG among active players. With their next two picks, they were only able to pick up a shortstop-eligible firstbaseman and a future Hall of Fame pitcher. That's some tough luck. Maybe they'll have to "settle" for Hideki Kuroda and Ian Kennedy being Rookies of the Year.


Best Pick: Berkman
Worst Pick: Burnett
Steal: Guillen