It begins! Here is your draft order.
Philospher
Algonad
Mike
SoCalTwinsFan
Freealonzo
sean
bhiggum
Nibbish
brianS
CarterHayes
Beau
TheDreadPirate
cheaptoy
hungryjoe
rowsdower (who will also have the first pick in round 2)
Here are our loosey goosey rules for this draft:
1. When you draft a player, please write something about why you drafted them. Doesn't have to be long; this will just be more fun if people talk about their process or their affection for the players.
2. On the flip side, please don't heavily critique others' picks. I mean if SoCal drafts Cody Bellinger with his first pick we can give him the side-eye, but this should be fun for everybody.
3. If you want your team to have a DH that's fine. If you don't, that's fine too.
4. Draft players at positions they played at least for a reasonable amount of time or could easily transition to. For example, totally fine to draft Cesar Tovar in any outfield position or infield position, just not at catcher (which he did for one inning). If you want to put Rickey Henderson at first base you could, but no putting Jim Thome in left field. Starting pitchers can relieve, so you don't have to draft a relief pitcher if you don't want to.
5. Draft a team that could reasonably play through a season. In other words, at least two catchers, a few bench players, and at least five starters. If it's getting late in the draft and you appear to be short in an area, I'll remind you.
Philosopher, no pressure. Just 28 more players will go off the board before you get to pick again.
Aw, man... who was the genius that pushed for a snake draft?
Still thinking about this or are you on the phone with Beau to see what kind of palace you could get to move down?
Package not palace.
Still thinking. Will post tonight. Want to write a little something too.
Hey Beau, i was wondering if it made sense to create a google document that had all the players off the board. As we get deeper into the draft, it's going to be harder to keep track of who has been picked. Might even be nice to migrate everyone's line-ups to a google doc as well. Just some thoughts.
My plan was to create a google doc before the first round is over so you can see everyone's picks at a glance.
Are we actually scoring anything here? Is someone gonna run a simulation?
I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that many of the all-time WAR leaders and JAWS leaders are from the pre-WWII period. I would be all over drafting a Wagner or Hornsby or Cobb or the like, but not sure how well they would actually compete against modern players.
I might run a simulation, but it would likely require a lot of work and not sure I'm up for it. Besides, someone might take someone like Satchel Paige and simming him would be tough.
In a sim those old players would normalize fine. In reality Trevor May would just destroy Babe Ruth.
Just draft a team you like.
I think that's part of the fun. Some of them, you plop them into the modern game, they'd be left in the dust. Others would pick up all the modern advances and be better off. Not much way of knowing which are what. I'm just hoping to get a team I like the look of at the end.
This is a good point. Undoubtedly some old timers wouldn’t make the leap and be MLB quality, but I suspect anyone who has inner-circle great WAR totals would still be at least a major league regular, assuming they adjusted their personal habits to modern norms for elite athletes. You can’t really take away elite hand-eye coordination & eyesight Ruth must’ve possessed to be able to hit baseballs that were literally filthy by modern standards (not to mention their level of structural tampering). Ruth seems like he could reasonably approximate say, Kyle Schwarber or even Sanó at the plate, while pitching like Mark Buehrle or John Lackey. Even if he didn't apply himself and only pitched, would Ruth be that much worse than late-career Sabathia or Colón?
Likewise, how hard would Walter Johnson throw if he pitched 200 innings a season instead of 320+? His command & control isn't going to get worse, and mechanical tweaks, training, & workload management seem like huge performance enhancers if he were to embrace them.
I think the old-timers can't compete with new players gets overstated. For one, prior to the 70s, the best athletes in the U.S. went for baseball first far more than they've done since. Plus, pre-expansion, players faced the best of the best far more often and there was no mystery among veteran players. Give the old-time players today's pristine field conditions, modern equipment, modern training rooms, modern travel methods, days off, no doubleheaders and they would probably thrive more than most expect. I certainly wouldn't expect Babe Ruth to hit more home runs than entire teams these days, but I wouldn't expect him to be overmatched either. And if Walter Johnson knew he wasn't going to throw much more than 100 pitches, how much harder could he throw. Plus, we really don't know how hard he threw, just harder than pretty much everyone in his era.
I think the fun is seeing how you and others construct a team, not so much how that teams matches up against the other citizens. I've got a mix of High WAR, and "I just want that guy on my team" populating my Board.
Since I'm the first pick here, I'm going to try to create a little format that helps others, so we can all see a bit more clearly. Feel free to copy or ignore my approach.
First, my pick:
Rationale:
First, Willie Mays is probably the most well-rounded, true 5-tool talent the game ever saw. He hit for power and average. He was fast, stealing bases and racking up extra base hits. He covered so much ground in the outfield and he could throw. That defense... for me, when you can combine the amazing defense and the offense at once. That's a value that goes beyond just statistical significance, since so few players are really so well rounded. And obviously he's still one of the highest ranking career WAR leaders. Indeed, the only knock on him, that I can think of, is that he isn't Babe Ruth. And even then, really only in terms of HRs. Mays played at one of the high points of the game, against great competition. He also lost a year to military service.
And given that many of the authors I respect most put Mays at the top... well, I think if you're making any team in history, this is the guy you want to make it around.
I strongly considered 2 other players here, and I'm confident they'll be 2 of the next 3 or 4 taken, so, I'll discuss. First, Ruth. His career WAR is so impressive. His 20+ WAR as a pitcher (and those FIPs!) too. But if I were drafting a team today, I can't imagine that he'd pitch at all. He didn't for the majority of his career, obviously. And, indeed, when he was pitching, he wasn't hitting nearly as much, so those two things worked against each other. Throw in the fact that he played before the color barrier was broken, and I'm forced to think that he would probably have done a little worse against a little better competition, and his numbers are slightly inflated. Second, I looked at Trout. He's the best player at the time when the game is filled with its best ever players. And it's not close. He's on pace to beat everyone else in history in WAR, except Ruth. But I just couldn't quite pull the trigger on Trout over Mays because Mays proved himself for so long, and Trout is still only in the middle of his career. But that's a ridiculously close call for me.
Lineup
I think I would have taken him, too, and for the reasons you stated. Thanks for the format!
Second pick.
I've decided to judge players based on their peers instead of how they could compete against current players. I also like looking at a player's peak more than their overall accumulation of stats over a career. How many years were they truly dominant.
He's the #1 player in WAR7 by far. There's a huge gap between him and the next best right fielder. I had considered Rogers Hornsby just due to the huge drop off at second base after him, but I just can't pass up one of the most dominant players of all time.
I also have some personal reasons to draft him. I did a book report on a Babe Ruth biography in fifth grade. I used it as a speech in seventh grade, sophomore year of high school, and sophomore year of college. It was the best grade I received in each one of those speech classes. Probably due to how well I knew the story.
One other thing, my first dog was named "Babe" and my second dog is named "Ruth."
Lineup
It is certainly worth saying again just how nearly I went Ruth, and I think those personal reasons are a very real thing in an fun activity like this. How cool to draft Babe Ruth, right?
Actually, on that note, Philosofette encouraged me to draft Mauer first. Because how cool, right? I thought about it very briefly.
I think I would tend towards an up and coming prospect, like Trout for instance.
I had considered only drafting players that played during my lifetime but decided against it.
Number 3, that's me!
My Pick:
Rationale:
I'm also planning on basing most of this on how they played vs. their peers, perhaps with some bonus points for more recent players. Picking mostly on how they played compared to their own competition to me means including everything of their era. Some players played in a segregated league, but if they dominated that league, then they deserve a spot in my mind. Same is true to me of the steroid era. Even if you see it as cheating, it's hard to argue Barry Bonds didn't dominate his era. Some of that could be he just cheated better than everyone else, but his numbers are truly exceptional. Plus, I've always kind of had a soft spot for the jerks of the sporting world.
He is number 4 all time in WAR, just behind Walter Johnson and Cy Young (and a mile behind Babe Ruth). He had 8 seasons with WAR of 9 or higher, plus another 4 with WAR between 8 and 9. Titles like “Most Feared Hitter” usually seem lame to me, but it certainly fits here. I mean, he was intentionally walked with the bases loaded.
Of course, there's the home runs; all-time leader, and holds single-season record. Plus, all-time leader in walks and intentional walks. And, not all of that was steroid-aided. In his pre-juicing years, he led the NL in OBP 4 times, and OPS 5 times. He led the NL in homeruns in 1993, too, well before the steroids time. He was also a good defensive player in his early career, with consecutive years of 3.6, 2.5, 1.5 dWAR before sliding in later years.
He was named MVP seven times, including 4 in a row. And, if it weren’t for Terry Pendleton winning as a feel-good member of the worst-to-first Braves (despite trailing Bonds by almost 2 WAR), would have won four in a row TWICE! And that's in spite of being a notorious jerk, giving sportswriters every reason to be biased against him.
As soon as I saw I was third, I figured I'd be in this spot, with those exact same one and two taken in some order. I briefly considered Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Honus Wagner, and Rogers Hornsby, but taking Bonds over any of them was a pretty easy choice. I was thinking strictly old-timers (or at least retired players) at first, but the Mike Trout discussion above gave me pause. Mike Trout is awesome, but Barry Bonds had three seasons with more WAR than Mike Trout's best year. To me, this was a pretty easy pick, but I'm curious of who others would have taken if they were picking here instead of me.
Lineup:
Fourth Pick
Most of my success, what there is of it, from fantasy drafts comes from positional drafting, meaning, I don't necessarily take the best player available but the best player at a position that is weak or that the player is far better than anyone else at that position, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I went with a shortstop, which is probably the second weakest position to catcher and there were no catchers nearly as dominant as Wagner. I will focus on players relative to their leagues because I don't think there's a reasonable way to do otherwise that can be somewhat objective. I will probably focus more on dominant players instead of ones with long careers that accrued a lot of WAR.
I took Wagner as my first pick because he was dominant and had a long career despite starting a little late for a Hall of Famer at an elite defensive position. If you consider only players that played at least half their career games at shortstop, no one is really close to Wagner. I did consider A-Rod, since he would appear to qualify as a SS under the rules despite playing more games at third base, but Wagner still had more career rWAR and a better OPS+. He was truly a great all-around player. He played in the Dead Ball Era, so he never had more than 10 HRs in a season, but he led the NL in slugging 6 times and led the NL in stolen bases 5 times. Surprisingly, for a guy that has a reasonable claim for greatest shortstop in MLB history, he didn't play a single game at the position until his fourth full season in his age 27 season, and he didn't play more than half of his games at the position until age 29. Surprisingly, he played more games at shortstop in his age 42 season (92) than his age 28 season (61).
As far as dominance, his best 7-year peak was insanely great with a 180 OPS+. In those 7 years, he won the "Slash Stat Triple Crown" (batting avg., OBP & slugging) 4 times. He never led the NL in HRs, so he never won a traditional triple crown, but he did lead the NL in batting average, doubles and RBIs twice. His 1908 season was insane. He led the NL in hits, doubles, triples, RBIs, stolen bases, batting average, OBP, slugging, OPS, OPS+ and total bases while playing 151 games, all at shortstop. That was his best rWAR season at 11.5. His worst season of rWAR in his 7-year peak was 7.6.
Fun Facts: Wagner started his career with the Louisville Colonels. After 3 seasons, he went to the Pirates after the Colonels were contracted. The former Colonels owner bought a share of the Pirates and took most of his best players to Pittsburgh.
"Bowlegged, barrel-chested, long-limbed ... he was often likened to an octopus. When he fielded grounders, his huge hands also collected large scoops of infield dirt, which accompanied his throws to first like the tail of a comet."
"while Honus was the best third baseman in the league, he was also the best first baseman, the best second baseman, the best shortstop, and the best outfielder. That was in fielding. And since he led the league in batting eight times between 1900 and 1911, you know that he was the best hitter, too. As well as the best base runner." -- former teammate Tommy Leach, as told to Lawrence Ritter.
Bill James cites Wagner's 1908 season as the greatest single season for any player in baseball history. He notes that the league ERA of 2.35 was the lowest of the dead ball era and about half of the ERAs of modern baseball. Since Wagner hit .354 with 109 RBI in an environment when half as many runs were scored as today, he asks, "if you had a Gold Glove shortstop, like Wagner, who drove in 218 runs, what would he be worth?"
This is an underrated pick. I really wanted Honus to fall to me at #10.
I wanted to get a shutdown starting pitcher right out of the gate and why not the one with the highest WAR, plus a legacy Twin as a bonus.
With the sixth pick in the first round, I select
Before checking the rWAR leaderboards to see who was left at the top, I had considered taking him. When reading about The Frenchman, there's a section about his rivalry with Cobb. There's a quote from a baseball historian that ends with "Cobb's ambition and overriding interest in his individual numbers." In today's deluge of data and teams' interest in tweaking and improving players, I think Cobb would do very well. He might get ejected in a record number of games in today's era but his performance in the other games will make up for it. It's like automatic rest days.
Six picks in and six of the top 7 in WAR selected. I sense a trend.
I have read that his nastiness and racism were overstated.
Contemporaries didn't like him either. My read was he's the early 20th century version of Trevor Bauer.
Not so sure about that.
"Ty Cobb wanted to play...but none of us could stand the son-of-a-bitch when we were alive, so we told him to stick it!" - Shoeless Joe Jackson, 1989.
Yep, I thought about that line; didn't say he was mean-spirited or racist.
Seventh Pick!
I like free's plan of starting off with the rotation, and plus, his first name is my middle name!
Durable, tenacious and ornery- just a player I always thought would be fun to cheer for.
from jugssports-
He holds the single-season strikeout record with 383, breaking the prior record, held by Sandy Koufax, by one.
He led the league in strikeouts 11 times (seven out of eight times from ’72-’79).
He led the league in Ks when he was 40 years old….and 41, 42, and 43.
He struck out more than 300 in a season six times, tying him with Randy Johnson.
At the age of 42 in 1989, he struck out 301 hitters.
My friends and I would always schedule our annual Minneapolis trips when the Rangers were in town. Unfortunately, we never saw Nolan pitch. We were able to see many Juan Gonzalez home runs.
He could touch 100 in RBI Baseball. Only reason to play with the Astros
Also the all-time leader in strikeouts, walks allowed and hits allowed per 9 innings (6.6).
Eighth Pick!
He once hit .401 in a season while also mashing 42 home runs. There is a case to be made that that was his FIFTH best season.
He has the third highest 7 year peak for a position player.
His career didn't dare so we'll into his thirties, but man, in his twenties....
Second base has some excellent players, but this ill tempered sumbitch has all of them beat, imo.
Could we get a recurring LTE with the draft-to-date?
I am in transit, at Heathrow for a couple hours. My pick might be bare bones, with witty commentary farmed out to others. Or supplied later.
You're just fishing for compliments.
Fly-fishing
Ninth pick:
I took the biggest fish on the board.
Through 8 seasons and a cuppa, he has the third-highest WAR7 all-time for CFs. Next year is his age-28 season, so he still has plenty of time to move up. He would need two monster seasons to catch Cobb and Mays, since his bottom two are a 6.6 and a 7.6, respectively. But it is pretty hard to argue that he is NOT the best player the game has seen since Bonds in his prime.
Ah man, thought he might fall to me.
I'll get a spreadsheet up this weekend that anyone can edit
I am genuinely shocked that he fell this far. I was probably closer to taking him #1 overall than I was Ruth. That said, every pick so far has made sense to me, and has been explained well, so I was more second guessing myself than anything else.
Yeah, nobody has lost in this round. If I had the first pick I was debating between Mays and Trout.
Trout has more upside than Mays.
they do swim upstream
Hard to lose when there so many great players to choose from. We could randomly swap 1st round rosters with everyone and no one would be too sad. Now in 2023 when we are filling out the bottom of our rosters, there’s going to be some head scratcher picks.
I strongly considered taking Trout. He was next on the WAR7 list after Cobb with effectively no gap. I think I would still pick Mays over Trout but only because we know the entire career of Mays. That could easily change a decade from now.
We won't know Mays' entire career a decade from now?
The decision on who I would pick first could easily change a decade from now when Trout's career is closer to the end.
Yup. That was the difference between the two of them for me.
was joke
Tenth pick:
I agonized over this one. My inclination is to pick the best up-the-middle players I can, but the guys I most wanted in those spots are already off the board. Doc picked Mike Trout, who probably has the most upside. So, where does one find hidden value? Well, how about picking a two-time MVP who effectively lost five seasons, including three from his prime that came after consecutive years of runner-up MVP finishes?
Rationale:
I mentioned above that I think inner-circle players from earlier eras have skills that would make them stars in pretty much any era. Well, a guy with the vision & coordination to be a fighter pilot in two separate wars and wingman to an inner-circle astronaut seems like a pretty safe bet to play in any era. I'm not going to speculate on whether a three year break cost him any development; I'll simply pro-rate his missing seasons based on averages of his seasons immediately prior to & following his lost seasons:
Did he really lose something like (Hall of Famer) Chuck Klein’s career rWAR total to service in WWII & Korea? We'll never know. But you bet I'll take that upside. Even if he was an indifferent outfielder, restoring 43.8 rWAR to his career would make him the second-best player of all time, and without question the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived.
I very, very nearly took Williams. He seems weirdly underrated sometimes, when discussing the greatest hitters.
I was also considering him for my pick.
My brother said I should pick Williams 1st overall. I factored defense into my decision, so that didn't quite work out, but I agree with the Greatest Hitter assessment.
Given how depleted the majors were during the war, I would have to imagine Williams would have had top-ten all-time WAR seasons had he played in 1943 and maybe 1945.
I am mildly surprised that this person hasn't been taken yet, but I also have no argument with those taken already
Lot of good outfielders over the past 12 decades.
I only remember Aaron near the end of his career. His "flaw" as an early pick in this draft is that he only had one top-100 rWAR season (and one more in the top 175).
Buuuuut his WAR7 pencils out to an 8.6 average despite having only two 9+ seasons. 8 seasons between 9.4 and 8.0 and another five between 7.9 and 7.2. A total of 18 seasons with 5+. By comparison, the Babe had "only" 15. (Bonds had 17, Hornsby 13).
So, he lacked the extreme top end of the bluest of blue chips, but damn.
11th pick!
When I looked at the leaderboards there appears to be a pretty big drop-off at shortstop after the top two. And I believe that his career WAR would have been even higher if the owner of the Marlins would have allowed him to play shortstop, where he was average, which is way more than you could say for the owner of the Marlins. He stole 329 bases at an 81% clip, including going 13/14 in his age 36 season. In his career he's 4th all-time with the power/speed metric. He finished first in position player WAR six times, and second twice. He finished first in offensive WAR nine times.
I'll never forget his at-bat against Joe Nathan, one of the best closers of all-time, and how he made it seem like batting practice.
I really hope you end up drafting Jetes and moving A-Rod to 3b.
You have been kicked out of the draft. Mags, do you want to take his place?
I'll take it. Has Canseco been selected yet?
I'm good.
Maybe I'll slap together something with the leavings.
There's a Colin Wolfson in every game...
Thank you for removing this temptation.
Eh, I like A-Rod. He's been kind of douchey at times and generally is socially awkward (and he cheated, but I don't assume hardly anyone is/was clean) but he sincerely loves baseball and as far as I know he has never assaulted anybody.
He was an amazing baseball player.
And yet, I will always think of this image first when I think about his career.
Likewise, and I also remember the infield fly shouting incident.
I would’ve considered picking A-Rod, in spite of my dislike for him. Even considering his PED use and his employer after 2003, I’ll say this in his favor: A-Rod was clearly the better shortstop when he was traded to the Yankmes, but despite his selfish reputation, he was the one who put his team before his ego and moved to another position.
Didn't somebody...Braden maybe...get mad at him for stepping on his precious mound on the way back to first?
Yup!
A-Rod seems kind of like the jerk who was clearly better than any other kid on the field/court, but couldn’t resist playing dirty or bending the rules.
I do like how Braden is able to kick the stack of cups and they rebound off his noggin.
12th pick:
My phone suggested his last name after I entered his first. In fact, outside of Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, he might be the player whose name most casual Americans know. Plus, it's a pretty fantastic last name. (Full disclosure: I tried to trade up and draft him yesterday.)
Oh, third all-time in career WAR isn't too shabby either.
To Rowsdower: When it comes to you, only make one pick and then wait until a Round 2 post is up to make your second one.
Okay will do. Gives me more time to second guess myself!
At the end of this, might it be fun to draft a manager for our squads? And a home ballpark?
why not
Because Bandbox.
With the 13th pick:
In honor of what the Twins did last season, I though I'd start off with dingers.
Mags already selected Henry, but his kid brother Tommie is available.
I think we're going to need to see the list of 19,364 player names at the top of the post, with a strikethrough on each one selected.
I agree we will need some sort of list showing players drafted, at least after each round because it would be impossibly long to check if players were drafted in the later rounds.
Coming soon
Mags isn't part of the draft doh.
Well, derp. I read his post as a selection.
Mags isn't listed in the draft order.
Spreadsheet with draft order and teams now linked in post. Anyone can edit.
I now have that number on lockdown.
I didn't really think he'd make it back to me, but I was hoping.
My favorite of the old time players have always been Walter Johnson & Lou Gehrig. Drafting last in the first round pretty much assured me that the Big Train would be gone by now, sort of a bad break. However, today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
If you have to take a 1B, he's probably the one to take. Poo holes and Foxx are both a whole season behind in WAR7.
One of my favorites too. I have a poster of him giving his luckiest man speech on my wall. What a story.