DTBL News

Moonshiners relief pitcher Sergio Santos

Well into the second full day of the regular season, it appeared the early narrative of the 2012 season would be more of the same from 2011:  dominating pitching performances with runs being at a premium.  But by the time the first full week was in the books, a different pitching-themed story emerged.  Across the league, closers were blowing games like their jobs didn’t depend on it.  No one was immune.  Even the immortal Mariano Rivera blew his first save opportunity of the season.  But for the most part, these games were being blown by closers who had a less than firm grip on the ninth inning job as it was.  If this trend continues, expect bullpen changes to be made very soon.

Here are some numbers to illustrate the early struggles of relief pitchers.  Since we don’t keep track of blown saves in this league, I’m going to use ERA instead.  Last season, the cumulative league ERA was 3.39 for the full year.  That’s a very low number which goes to show just how good the pitching was in 2011.  But relief pitchers were even better.  The league ERA of all relief pitchers was 3.02.  In the first week of 2012, the total league ERA is up significantly, 45 points, to 3.84 and the bullpen ERA has increased even more, 53 points, to 3.55.  So relief pitchers are largely responsible for this early inflation.  I don’t have the stats to prove it, but usually the pitchers are ahead of the hitters this time of year.  So it’s possible we could see these numbers go up even more.

Since the only bullpen job that carries significant weight in a fantasy league is that of closer, it will be very interesting to see if some changes are on the way.  Most of the closers who have struggled were not on solid ground to begin with.  Alfredo Aceves was named the Red Sox closer the day before the opener, following the injury to Andrew Bailey.  He proceeded to blow his first two appearances (one save opp, one tied game) and had an infinity ERA/WHIP before picking up a save on Monday.  The other prime candidate, Mark Melancon, hasn’t been much better.  If neither of these two prove capable, will they move Daniel Bard back to the pen?  Sergio Santos also blew his first two save opportunities.  Although he was a bit more of an established closer than Aceves, he has to be looking over his shoulder with veteran closer Francisco Cordero in the Blue Jays bullpen as well.  Sticking in the AL East, Tampa Bay initially leaned on Joel Peralta to fill in for the injured Kyle Farnsworth, but he has already been replaced by Fernando Rodney.

There is another category of closers who are probably less likely to lose their job after a couple bad outings, but aren’t great bets to finish the year in that role either.  These are guys who are almost universally acknowledged to not be the best relief pitcher in their respective bullpens:  guys like Chris Perez, Joe Nathan and Jonathan Broxton.  Perez could be replaced by Vinnie Pestano at any moment, and that time may be sooner than later if he blows another three run lead like he did on Opening Day.  The Rangers bullpen is full of guys with dominating stuff, but at this stage of his career, Nathan is not one of those guys.  For a team that fancies itself as one of the World Series favorites, it remains to be seen if they will to continue to use their fourth or fifth best reliever as the closer.  Broxton was the obvious candidate to close for the Royals when they lost Joakim Soria to Tommy John surgery, since Broxton has closed before.  But on a young, up-and-coming team, it might make more sense to see if someone like Greg Holland or Aaron Crow can do the job.  Also, if Broxton does pitch well, he would be an ideal candidate to get traded to a contender later this summer.

Of course, an argument could be made that you don’t necessarily want to have your best relief pitcher as the closer.  Depending on how a bullpen is managed, it is quite possible that a set-up guy will pitch in a lot more pressure innings than a closer ever will.  The role of protecting a one run lead in the 8th is probably more important than trying to save a three run game in the 9th.  I highly recommend checking out this recent article by Jonah Keri where he argues that saves should be replaced by a more meaningful stat for relief pitchers.  I think he’s right, but I also think most MLB managers will continue to go with their pre-appointed closer whenever there is a three run game in the 9th inning.  So figuring out who that guy will be is still a crucial part of fantasy baseball.

Will Hunter Pence and the Astros be playing in the AL soon?

One of the hot topics in baseball the last couple weeks has been the suggestion of possible realignment to even out the leagues to 15 teams each.  Although I am a bit of a baseball purist and generally do not like change, I support this idea if it is done correctly.  Here is the plan I have come up with in my own head.

Ever since the expansion to 30 teams in 1998, the National League has had two more teams than the American League.  For a while, I considered this to be payback for the days of my childhood when it was the American League that had the two extra teams.  Obviously, the reason for the uneven balance between the two leagues is because interleague games would need to be scheduled throughout the entire season if each league had an odd number of teams.  But sine we are about 15 years into interleague play, and it appears to be a permanent fixture at this point, I don’t see it is a bad thing to spread these games throughout the entire season.  For me, the positives outweigh this one negative.

The primary reason for realignment would be to create a more balanced system and a leveling of the playing field.  With just four teams in the AL West, logic dictates that those teams have a better chance at winning their division each season than do the six teams in the NL Central.  Similarly, all American League teams have less competition when it comes to the Wild Card race.  The NL Central part of this story has been somewhat nullified by the fact that the Pirates pretty much don’t count when it comes to yearly contenders in that division.  So for me, the advantages of the AL West teams is the most unfair thing about the current system.

So what should be done?  Most of the realignment rumors have been focused on the Astros moving to the AL West.  The Diamondbacks have also been mentioned, but that would mean the Astros would need to shift to the NL West as well.  So the way to make this work with the least amount of change would be the Astros switching leagues.  Personally, I would prefer to see the Brewers move back to the AL Central and then ship the Royals to the West.  But as long as Bud Selig is around, there is no chance of that happening.  I would put the ball in the Astros court and give them the decision:  stay in the National League but move to the West where they would have no obvious division rival, or move to the AL West and create an intriguing division rivalry with the Rangers.  If they choose to stay in the NL, the Diamondbacks would move to the AL West.

Next is the matter of the schedule.  Interleague games would need to be scheduled throughout the entire season, but this is doable while keeping the number of interleague games the same as it is right now.  Some people have argued that it wouldn’t be good to have teams playing interleague games in September during pennant races.  While that may be true, there are always plenty of interleague games between likely non-contenders anyway, so why not shift a few of these to the last weeks of the season?  Does it really matter if the Pirates are playing the Orioles in the last week of the season instead of June?  It’s not going to be a compelling matchup at any point in the season, so why not have them play each other in meaningless September games?  Keep in mind that there would only need to be one team from each league playing an interleague series at any given time, so the number of teams that would need to play interleague games down the stretch would be minimal.  Also, I don’t think compelling interleague games in August or September would be a bad thing.  Can you imagine how big a Sox/Cubs or Yankees/Mets series in late August could be if one or both teams are in contention?

While I’m on the topic of interleague play, I would like to see one other change made.  I think the natural geographic rivalries should continue to be played every season, but I would scale it back to one series per year.  I think we have reached a point where these games aren’t nearly as big as they once were, and part of that is because of how often they play each other now.  Sure, they still draw big crowds, but the overall excitement and buzz about these games isn’t like it used to be.  I think scaling it back to one series a year could fix that.  Plus, it would reduce some of the current issues with teams benefiting from playing much easier interleague schedules than their division rivals.  The other problem with the current system is that these geographic rivals are playing as many games against each other as they are against some teams in their own league.  That has never seemed right to me.

With all six divisions having five teams, a system could be set up where each team plays one series against every team from one of the divisions in the other league, plus that one series against their natural rival.  So now teams would be playing almost the identical interleague schedule as their division rivals.  The division matchups would be rotated every year, so every team would be guaranteed to play every team in the other league every third year (and every six years at home).  In this system, the natural rivals could continue to play a pair of series against each other on those third years when their divisions are scheduled to meet up anyway.  But otherwise, it would be just one series per year.  I think this setup makes a lot more sense than the current interleague schedule, which seems to be completely random outside of the geographic rivalries.

Some more radical realignment plans have suggested the abolishing of divisions.  All 15 teams in the league would be grouped together with the top four (or five, or six) teams making the playoffs.  I do not support this idea.  First, I think division titles are meaningful accomplishments, so getting rid of them would just give teams one less thing to play for.  No, a division championship shouldn’t be a teams ultimate goal, but it is still a notable achievement.  But more importantly, getting rid of divisions would take away from a lot of existing rivalries and create travel nightmares for some teams who would have to make more frequent cross-country road trips in a balanced schedule scenario.  Having said that, I would be in favor of slightly reducing the number of games played against division teams in order to get a few more games against the other teams in the league.  My plan would call for 14 games against teams in the same division (down from the current 18) and eight or nine games against the other teams in the league.  The only significant imbalance here would be that each team would play three series against most of those intraleague, non-division teams, meaning that one of the teams would get to host two of the three series.  But this happens already in the current system, so I don’t think it is a big deal.  It would be easy enough to make sure the team with the extra home series rotates each year.  And of course, the total number of home/road games would remain at 81/81 for every team.

Finally, there is the matter of the playoffs.  It sounds like it is almost inevitable that the baseball playoffs will be expanded to at least 10 teams.  I do not support this.  I think this is where MLB stands above the rest of the major professional sports.  The more teams you include in the playoffs, the less significant the regular season becomes.  I find the NBA and NHL regular seasons to be almost meaningless since they play for six months to not even eliminate half the teams.  So my preference would be to keep things exactly as they are now:  4 playoff teams in each league.  I wouldn’t mind seeing the first round expanded to a best of seven series though.  But since it sounds like additional playoff teams is almost a done deal, my recommendation would be to have two wild card teams face off in as short of a series as possible.  Even a one game playoff to determine that wild card spot would be preferable to a longer series which would require the rest of the playoff teams to sit around for a week or longer.  Expanding to six playoff spots per league would be even messier.  So the fewer, the better in my book.

Thoughts?  Do you have your own plan in mind, or are you against all forms of realignment?

The new main page is here!  It was a long time coming and I still have a lot of work to do, but at least I have something to show you just in time for Opening Day.  A few notes about what you are seeing…

First of all, this main page is literally the only thing that has changed so far.  Every other page continues to use the same code, style and images.  Eventually, these pages will be replaced with something that looks similar to the main page, but I’ll be tackling them one at a time.

Next, several of the links in the menu either don’t work or are simply placeholders for pages that don’t exist yet.  Specifically, there are two sub-menus that list all 10 teams:  Team Pages and Stats.  Currently, these take you to the same place:  the old team stats pages.  Eventually, “Team Pages” will point to a brand new feature of the site, which will be pages for each team containing all sorts of information besides just rosters/stats.  This is the part of the site I will be working on next, so hopefully I’ll have something ready to go in the next couple weeks.

The content of the main page really isn’t much different than the old version, but I think it is more appealing and gives me a little more leeway to add new features in the future.  Even this main page isn’t really “done” because I have a few ideas in mind.  In particular, I have more things to add to the “DTBL Chatter” section, like the ability to add a quick reply, or even a new topic, straight from the main page.  I may add some more news feeds or widgets to the right hand column as well.

The image you see on the home page (currently Buster Posey) is set to automatically pull the most recent image from the DTBL News feed.  So I will try to include photos in most of my posts to keep this fresh.  Soon you will all have the ability to create blog posts too, at which time I will encourage you to upload photos when you post a new story.

You should be able to get to all of the old pages via the new menu system.  I should point out that the all important link to log in to the site is now in the upper right hand corner, along with links to the league’s Facebook group page, Twitter feed and RSS feed (DTBL News).

So why am I calling this DTBL v3.0?  I’ve never really used a numbering system for the different versions of the league web site over the years.  But essentially, I consider this to be the third major iteration of the site.  It started as a very simple text based site back in the late 90s.  At that time, I used a desktop software program to update the stats and generate reports which were then uploaded to a web site.  Version 2 was the dynamic, database driven web site that we’ve been using since 2003.  This is the first major change since then, so I’m calling it 3.0.  Not many software developers get away with going 8 years between major releases, but my annual Commissioner’s salary of $0 isn’t quite high enough to justify much more work with that.  I’m enjoying this project though, so I hope you like the results.

I don’t want to write a lengthy blog post every time I update a new page, so I’ll probably start a thread on the DTBL Forum to keep you updated on my progress.  Now that I have a main page tie-in to the DTBL Forum again, you might actually see these posts!  As always, I welcome your comments.  Feel free to post a comment on this post, or on the DTBL Forum.

Only about 12 hours until first pitch.  Welcome to the 2011 season!

The position changes and player adds/drops for 2011 have been posted on the DTBL Forum.  Please take a look at these and post any comments you may have.  The official roster will be posted on the web site later this week, so get those comments/suggestions in soon!

http://dreamteambaseball.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=107

Also, I’m still seeking opinions on the possible transaction deadline change.  So far, the consensus seems to be to leave it as is on Sundays, but there is still plenty of time to chime in.

Although it may not look much like spring where most of us live, the season has changed in Florida and Arizona as pitchers and catchers begin to report to MLB camps.   With that being the case, the DTBL season is right around the corner as well.

You may have seen my response to Nick’s post on the Facebook group page indicating that I am running a bit behind in my preparation for the upcoming season.  That is still the case, however I expect to get caught up this week.  My schedule is pretty wide open this week, so I intend to have the first draft of the DTBL player adds/drops/position changes posted before the weekend.  As usual, I’ll solicit input on the tentative rosters before posting the official draft roster sometime next week.

Next, I’m not even going to bother trying to find a date that will work for everyone for a live draft this year.  As a group, we seem to be busier and busier each year.  This year, we’ve got two members with newborn babies at home (Marc and Jay) and another in full wedding planning mode (Kelly).  I’d like to think I could use these “distractions” for others to my advantage, but that’s not likely.  Anyway, we will go with the same style draft we’ve been using for years.  However, we will need to get started a little earlier than usual since the MLB season starts on March 31 this year.  Tentatively pencil in Monday, March 7 as the draft start date.

Speaking of the early MLB start, this is due to a change in scheduling practices.  Please check out this post on the DTBL Forum where I am soliciting input on a potential change to the weekly transaction deadline.  I would appreciate a response from as many of you as possible.