(Contributed by Mike Carpenter of the Blue Ridge Mountain Menace #1)

2006 Money Draft Analysis and Grades

These grades aren’t meant to offend anyone – just one guy’s opinions
on the recently concluded money draft.

Blue Ridge - Didn’t get any immediate help after missing out on Gomes.
Hometown prospects Zimmerman (Nats) and Markakis’ (O’s) major-league
teams are always on TV in Blue Ridge, so the front office needed a
reason to watch. GRADE: B-
Fairhaven - Landed Gomes but was outbid on uber-prospect Brandon Wood.
Missed his three other bids. GRADE: C
Cape - Got two role players for next year in Fultz and Graffanino, but 
was outbid for his two prospects. GRADE: C
Phoenix - Brought Ryan Shealy to the desert, and put good money on Mark
Ellis and Derrick Turnbow, but came up short. Having extra money for next
year isn’t a bad thing. GRADE: D
Clare – One of just three teams to get all five players bid on, and only had
149K to spend. Adds World Series hero Bobby Jenks – but will the big boy
live up to the hype? GRADE: B
Walt Disney – Maybe the big winner Saturday with 302K well spent on
minor-league masher Brandon Wood and nice pitchers Saarloos and Wong along
with innings-eater Elarton. GRADE: A
Cherry Hill- Added some real nice bullpen help with under 200K to spend by
getting Politte, Hensley and Thompson. GRADE: B
Lynchburg- Maybe Richie wanted to just keep that 128K under the mattress
until the economy recovered? GRADE: F
Virginia Beach- Missed on nice arms Turnbow and Heilman, but added youngster
Volquez and Langerhans/Valentin to fill roles. GRADE: C
Wisconsin - Spread his bids around this year pretty equally and got some
interesting pieces. The Dairymen stayed away from the big names in order to
add depth, but Helling and Wheeler can help staff now. GRADE: B+
Bucks County - Another team to net all five of its bids, including Boston
prospect Papelbon. Bob also added four other young arms that he desperately
needed. GRADE - B+
San Francisco - Won out on much-bid after Robinson Tejeda and also got
hometown prospect Lester. GRADE: C
Sassaquin - Got a solid OF in Emil Brown and maybe a sleeper in John
Rodriguez? Any draft has to be considered a success when you get a pitcher
named GASS-ner. GRADE: C
Milwaukee - Another big winner on Saturday, Bart spent his
loads of cash well on Turnbow and Clark for over 600K combined.
And his stranglehold on Brewers prospects continues with Rogers and
Braun joining the fold. GRADE: A –
Slippery Rock - Drafted a major-league ready arm in Vargas and somehow
managed to sneak through Johjima, LaRoche and Young for a total of 33K.
Being lucky and good is disgusting! GRADE: A-
Pacific - Made the biggest bid in the draft on Mark Ellis (401K) and got some
cheap bullpen help with the rest of his funds. Whether Ellis hits like last
year (.861 OPS) or 2003 (.684 - before missing 2004) will decide this draft.
GRADE: B-
Midwest - Added two real good set-up men to his bullpen in Carrasco and Reyes
on the cheap and added prospects Cruz and Martin. GRADE: B
Montreal - Went young on Saturday, taking Romero, the top pitcher taken in
the 2005 ML draft, with just 5K. Also added Pirate youngsters Doumit and
Maholm and possible Marlins starting 1B Jacobs. GRADE: B-
Sharon Hill - Had to be disappointed on the same day as the un-veiling of
his new name to land just one bid, the ageless Counsell. Ray got unlucky
that none of the four arms he bid on slid through. GRADE: D
Lake Superior - Had money to throw around and ‘the lean’ was felt, as he
spent a combined 460K on nice young pitchers Liriano and Heilman. Also added
good prospect backstop Jarrod Salt@#%#maccia. GRADE: A-

(Number Crunch and Editorial Opinions contributed by Jim Walsh of Team #10)

Every year we get Strat's Preview of the Fielding Ratings in mid-December.
While seeing this may not entirely spoil our holiday seasons, they
do anger many. 
I've always been pretty good at predicting players' fielding ratings.
The main thing I go by is whatever Strat rated them in the past.
Other factors such as Gold Glove Awards and the media's view on the
player's defensive prowess...or lack there-of also play a role in 
Strat's fielding ratings.
So when I would see the ratings I was rarely surprised, or at least it
was that way until recent years.

There are a variety of issues that arise in the matter of Strat's 
fielding ratings. Last year I did a "Number Crunch" expecting the average
rating for some positions to be closer to "4" than "3", which should
be the actual average rating. I ended up surprising myself when I 
found that after charting the ratings for regular players at their
primary position that they did indeed average right about a 3. And
when looking at all positions together, they came out at exactly 3.
I wasn't expecting that result and gave a slight shrug of the shoulders
apology to the Strat Fielding Preview before me.

This year I originally planned to address the issue of Strat "seeming"
to have given out so many "5"s this season. At first glance it seemed
they were everywhere. So I did investigate this with the Number Crunch
included below.
But along the way, another nagging question arose: "Just what are the
Fielding Ratings based on"? 
Strat included a letter from former Major League OF Doug Glanville.
Perhaps many of you have read it already and nodded in agreement
with him. If not, check it out on the SOM website.
The letter was supposed to be in support of Strat's mysterious
system for assigning Range Ratings. Primarly it was to agree with
their decision to not give Bobby Abreu a "1" even though he did win
the Gold Glove this year. But Mr. Glanville brought up other details
as well, and this opened up "a whole nuther can of worms" in my mind. 
So I also will address this issue as well in an editorial following
the Number Crunch: 5 Ranges. 
And I'd like to note that I did have the Number Crunch completed
before even reading the Glanville letter, so the research was in
no way prejudiced by the feelings brought on by that letter.

I hope you enjoy reading both, and if you have any other ideas of
Number Crunches you'd like to see or comments of your own regarding
Strat Fiedling ratings, feel free to let me know.
Jim Walsh

NUMBER CRUNCH: 5 RANGES

There appeared to be a surprising number of 5 ranges when viewing
Strat Fielding Preview in December.
THE METHOD
For this research, I used the following criteria:
* Players listed as "REG" only were used to prevent inclusion of
  those with few ABs or from using the same player more than once.
* I looked at the ratings by position going "down" the chart.
  If a player had more than one position listed, I then noted if
  the rating was for a primary position or secondary position. 
  Sometimes I looked at how many games the player played at these
  positions, but more often used personal knowledge.
* Some players have more than one primary position. For those whose
  primary position is at ANY of the OF positions, ALL OF positions
  were considered as primary positions. (a RF rated at another OF
  position had all OF ratings counted as primary, while a 2B rated
  in the OF would count the OF rating as their secondary position.)
  Also, since the purpose was to investigae the "5" Ratings given,
  the secondary position notation was only applied to the 5 ratings.
  Therefore many 4's listed in the totals were also secondary positions.
* The Rating numbers were plotted, counted, added, and divided to
  come up with the simple charts appearing below.

THE NUMBERS
POSITION     REG PLAYERS    AVG RATING     TOTAL 5's   SEC   PRI     
CATCHERS    -   66             3.00           1         1     0
FIRSTBASE   -  133             3.65          20        12     8    
SECONDBASE  -  107             3.32           3         1     2 
THIRDBASE   -  117             3.41           6         3     3          
SHORTSTOP   -   94             3.33           1         0     1 
LEFTFIELD   -  150             3.40          12         7     5
CENTERFIELD -  108             3.15           4         2     2  
RIGHTFIELD  -  137             3.27           8         6     2 
TOTAL                                        55        32    23

THE ANALYSIS:
The numbers show pretty much what I expected to find.
There were far less catchers than any other position. Catching is a
specialty skill, so few would play there that are not catchers. Shortstop
has the next fewest REG players, again we would expect this due to
the difficulty of the position.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have leftfield with the
most players, followed by firstbase. All outfielders can play left, but
not all leftfielders can play elsewhere. Also non-outfielders are going
to normally play leftfield if they are going to play in the outfield.
And firstbase? Well, that's one position that can be manned by anyone
on the team. Considering that there are 3 outfield positions and most
of those players are rated in left, firstbase is actually the position
utilizing the most players.
While this project wasn't concerned with the overall AVG RATING, which
was done last year, what you find here is also expected, and tie in 
greatly with the number of players used at that position. Since there
were fewer catchers used overall, it's less likely that non-catchers
played there, and thus the better fielding rating. Likewise you can
see that the outfield ratings are best moving from CF to RF to LF.
Again, this is in direct correlation with the number rated at the
position.
Because as I prevously noted, I only tracked the secondary positions
for those with 5's, there are numerous 4's in the groups that are
actually ratings for secondary positions. Had I not included them,
this would probably, as I found last year, bring the AVG RATING near 3.0
But now looking at all these 5's, what do we discover?
Comparisons to last year are neccessary since one of the main factors
used in estimating fielding ratings is the previous season's ratings.
Last year there were more 5's than I remembered...43 of them.
That's still 22% less than this year. 
But the really amazing thing is that there were only 7 with 5 ratings
at their primary positions...this year 23! Now that's a 304% increase.
I personally believe that 5's should be reserved for those playing
out of position. Or perhaps there needs to be a "6" rating for those
playing somewhere that they weren't rated for?

CONCLUSION 
It's not our imagination, there are more 5's this year than in the
past - a whole lot more.


THE GLANVILLE LETTER

On the STRAT website, they've posted a letter submitted by former
Major League outfielder Doug Glanville. The purpose of the letter was
in response to Bobby Abreu winning a Gold Glove Award for his fielding
excellence. Nobody, not even former teammate Glanville was buying into
that hogwash.
Glanville, a fine fielder who himself was regularly rated a 2 by Strat,
supports Strat's decision to not give Abreu a 1, which is what Gold
Glove winners are normally rated in the game.
In summary, Glanville says how he appreciates Strat's getting away
from the "fashion show and politics" to arrive at their "near
unbiased evaluators" in rating players. Glanville goes on to say:
"Most Gold Glove winners are excellent defenders overall, however,
they can also gain points by being offensively dominant, acrobatic,
popular, or because they are the incumbant."
While he goes on to say more about the attributes of a good defender,
he does point out how important it is to look at fielding stats.
Glanville points out that it's impossible to go from a 4 defender
to a Gold Glove winning "1" in one year because fielding is largely
a matter of instincts, and a player's instincts are not going to change
that dractically.
In closing, Glanville says:
"It was time to be bold in saying that defense is not to be voted
in. Strat-O-Matic is trying to set that statistical tone."
Say What????
Okay, because of instincts, you don't change a player from a 4 to a 1
in one season. How about from a 1 to a 4 then? That's the case with
Brett Boone. Could there be a tie in to his no longer being "offensively
dominant"? Nah, Strat doesn't base their ratings on that stuff, do
they Doug? It's all straight fielding stats, right? 
Ya know, the argument made for not giving a 1 to Abreu and his GG
is an argument that nobody is gonna argue with you about. But you seem
to have ignored that there were 2 other GG winners that also were not
given 1 ratings: Derek Jeter and Omar Vizquel. Some aren't sold on
Jeter, I'll grant you that. But it's certainly not the same case as
Abreu's not getting the 1. And what about Vizquel? Here's a player
that got the 1 seven times, wins the Gold Glove, and still doesn't
get a well deserved 1?
Glanville also mentions the infamous Raffie Palmeiro goofiness
where he won a Gold Glove while playing just 23 games at 1B.
Everyone will agree this was stupid. But did this also mean that
Strat shouldn't have given him the 1 that season based on his 
hardly playing there? He had been getting 2's before that so it wouldn't
have been such a drastic improvement. But they wrote about how they
weren't going to give a 1 to a 1B with just 23 games there. No, instead
they gave a 1 to Doug Mientkiewicz. He had 3 games there.
As for basing the ratings on fielding stats and setting the "statistical 
tone", how do you explain Jeter's 4.76 range and Vizquel's 4.60 range
not earning 1's while Adam Everett's 4.38 did? Brady Clark ranked 5th
in Range for CF's yet got a 4. The 1's went to those ranked 13th, 16th
17th, 18th and 23rd.
Alright, I could go on and on with examples showing that Strat does
not use fielding stats to determine their ratings.
And this isn't neccesarily a bad thing.
The problem I have, after reading the Glanville letter, and assuming
that Strat agrees with the message therein, is that Strat is every bit
as goofy when it comes to their ratings as the Gold Gloves are.
They say it's not about the fasion show and politics. It's not about
the offensive dominance, popularity or the fact that they were good
the year before. Well, then what are the ratings based on? 
Certainly not on fielding statistics as is very clear.
Strat bases their fielding ratings on subjective opinion. Period.
The 1's go to who they think should get them. Often this coincides
with the same players that won the Gold Gloves.
So just admit this, and don't try to sell us some story about how
you use stats and are superior to those awarding the Gold Gloves.

One more thing that ties into this which should be of concern to all
us Strat gamers:
Assuming that the "Player Cards" use the same formulas each year
to determine their Batting and Pitching Cards, how does Strat account
for the changing number of 1's and 5's in the field? There will
continue to be the same number of X Plays.
For those not familiar with the "Cards", the fielding ratings 
determine the result of X Plays. In the past USPBL season, the
number of Team X Plays ranged from 825 to 942 and we averaged
5.3 per team per game. So they occur often. "1"s prevent hits and turn
many DPs. "5"s give up many hits and prevent DPs.
So by decreasing the number of 1 Ratings while increasing the 5 
Ratings by 300%, isn't this going to affect the game? Aren't there 
going to be more hits and runs in the game? Aren't the pitchers going
to take beatings even worse than they do now?  
If the CARD formulas are going to remain the same each year, then
the nubmer of 1 ratings, 2 ratings, 3 ratings, 4 ratings and 5 ratings
should also remain the same each year.

(Contributed by Jim Walsh of the Wisconsin Dairymen Team #10)


DAIRYMEN BOAST LONGTIME USPBL VETERANS


The Wisconsin Dairymen have been around the longest of any USPBL franchise
having been around since 1983.
One of the best things about "Keeper" leagues is that we can stick with
players as long as we want. Being a manager that has personal favorites
among Major League players, it's not that difficult to keep players around
for extended periods of time. Some have even been around longer than
most USPBL franchises have been in existence.
(Those that are not expected to make the '06 Final Roster and those
acquired this year are not included).

While you would expect the year with the most players to have been
acquired would be the most recent one, it's actually the one from
2 seasons ago. There are 11 from '05 around, but 13 from '04 still
on the roster. 
There's only 1 acquired in '03 remaining.
None at all from '02. What happened to me that year?
There are only 2 left from the "01 season, but they are good ones.
That was the year I made the draft's highest bid on Ben Sheets - 356K,
and kept him of coarse. I also picked up Wade Miller that year for
just 57K. These are the Dairymen's senior pitchers with Graves,
signed in '99, slated to be cut this year.
In 2000, I picked up Rich Aurilla and JT Snow in trade and they've
been mainstays of the Dairymen lineup ever since. 
Geoff Jenkins was signed after his rookie season in the Money Draft
for 15K after hitting just .223 with9 homers. He hit .313 w/20HRs
the following year, and has spent his entire career with the Dairymen.
Nobody from '98 is still with the team.
Jeromy Burnitz and Scott Rolen, again a nice pair of Money Draft 
purchases, were signed in '97 for 27K and 51K respectively. While
Burnitz had played 4 partial seasons in the Majors before I got him,
he's been with the Dairymen for the bulk of his career. Rolen had
only 130 ABs in 1 season before I signed him. His .254 BAVG w/4 homers
didn't offer a clue as to the great player the Dairymen had signed.
Again, nobody stuck on the team from the '96 and '95 seasons.
In '94 Jose Valentin was purchased in the Money Draft for only 6K.
When signed, Jose had just 35 ML games in. Now he has nearly 1500.
He's given the Dairymen 12 great years of service, though it's 
unlikely he will be asked back in '06. 
But a player who will be coming back for his 14 season with the
Dairymen is Moises Alou. Acquired in the Money Draft for 30K back
in 1993, Alou has been on many teams around the Major Leagues, but
only 1 in the USPBL...the Wisconsin Dairymen! 

(Contributed by Craig Hale of the Montreal Monsters Team #18)

Montreal Expos South?
 
Many know my point of view when it comes to Jeff Loria, current owner
of the Florida Marlins, and former owner of the Montreal Expos.  This
gentleman, must have friends in high places within Major League 
Baseball, or at least some very interesting video tapes of them.
 
When the Montreal Expos were unable to reach a deal for a new downtown
stadium, Loria ran.  He did not seek any media coverage for his club. 
They were on TV for less than 30 games a season, combined French and 
English language broadcasts, they did not have a contract to have 
their games carried on the local radio stations for even a half 
season's worth of games.  Attendance dropped, he dealt away star 
players for "prospects", and attendance still dropped.  Finally he 
claimed that baseball could not work in Montreal.  He then sold the 
Expos to MLB, who to this day do not have any takers on the club, even 
after moving them to Washington.

In 2004, Loria had the money to sign 1B Carlos Delgado to the largest 
deal in club history.  He signed Al Leiter to big bucks.  Claiming 
that all will be recouped when the new retractable roof stadium is 
built in downtown Miami.
 
Fast forward to December 2005.  There is no new stadium on the
horizon.  Did anyone really expect one?  Do you realize how much money 
it costs to build a retractable roof stadium in the middle of hurrican e
country?  This was not going to happen.

Now Loria has dictated a "market correction" for his club.  He has 
mandated his team cut salaries from $60 million to $30 million.  That 
is less than what MLB allowed the Expos to have!  He has been given 
permssion to seek relocation.  Anyone else see a pattern?

The Marlins have dealt away close to $20 million in payroll already 
moving the likes of Carlso Delgado, Mike Lowell, Mota, Josh Beckett 
and Castillo.  They received only 1 player MLB experience in Mike 
Jacobs...that is if you consider 100abs experience. 

Prospects...you can claim building for the future to your current 
fans...while you look for new fans to replace them.

Hmmm how does the Portland Marlins sound???