Chapter Five Additions

I wasn't planning to make another trade this season, but when the opportunity arose to add Jose Altuve to our lineup, I just couldn't resist pulling the trigger. We have been hemorrhaging offensive production all season long at one particular spot in our lineup. Against left-handers, that spot has been Jose Pirela's. Pirela carries an 800+ OPS against lefties on the disk, but has hit just .217/.225/.380 this season. Against right-handers, Yadiel Hernandez sports an 800+ OPS on the disk, but has hit just .239/.320/.417.

Altuve doesn't play left field, so when the offer was made, I assumed he wasn't a fit. Then I realized that Kolten Wong and Nick Senzel can both shift to the outfield, which opens up second base. With one move, we've replaced an entirely useless dead spot in our lineup with an all-star-caliber hitter.

Of course, no acquisition comes without sacrifice. I've gone back and forth on Nick Madrigal's value to our franchise over the years. At times, I regarded him as a foundational player, and grouped him in with Devers, Turner, Ohtani, and Rutschman. At other times, I thought he could best serve as trade bait. After watching him play for roughly half a season in the big leagues, I have a pretty good idea what he is and what he will become.

Initially, my plan was to trade for a high pick in the upcoming free agent draft, use that pick to select David Fletcher, and it would be as if we added Altuve for nothing. (Fletcher and Madrigal are nearly identical players.) However, the idea of keeping Altuve is growing on me. Ohtani, Turner, and Devers all rank among the top ten (seven, really) in WAR this season. Altuve gives us four players in the top fifteen. Brandon Crawford makes five out of the top twenty. That's a very nice foundation for 2022.

The only issue with keeping Altuve is his $12 million salary. That would leave us with around $8 million to fill several holes. Also, keeping him means there would be nowhere to put Crawford. These are both good problems to have. Worst-case scenario is that we trade either Altuve or Max Scherzer and plug some of those holes in the process. We have already had an inquiry about Altuve, so I'm sure that it wouldn't be difficult at all to trade him or Scherzer.

*** 

Unfortunately, we were only able to pick up two free agents this chapter, due to a lack of players that we could release. That said, we're happy to have the two that we got: Sergio Romo and Dominic Leone. We've managed to collect a pretty decent bullpen for 2022 if they all continue pitching as well as they have to date:

David Bednar: 40 IP, 28 H, 5 HR, 15 BB, 50 K, 2.70 ERA, 612/626 splits

Dominic Leone: 23 IP, 14 H, 2 HR, 10 BB, 27 K, 1.54 ERA, 450/546 splits

Sergio Romo: 38 IP, 28 H, 2 HR, 11 BB, 39 K, 3.52 ERA, 591/554 splits

Jake McGee: 42 IP, 27 H, 5 HR, 7 BB, 45 K, 2.34 ERA, 376/591 splits

Paul Sewald: 31 IP, 19 H, 2 HR, 12 BB, 54 K, 2.30 ERA, 563/491 splits

Gregory Soto: 43 IP, 32 H, 4 HR, 27 BB, 53 K, 2.95 ERA, 526/697 splits

Jeffrey Springs: 43 IP, 33 H, 9 HR, 14 BB, 61 K, 3.53 ERA, 838/758 splits

Ryan Tepera: 43 IP, 22 H, 3 HR, 12 BB, 50 K, 2.91 ERA, 387/512 splits

Matt Wisler: 40 IP, 34 H, 6 HR, 9 BB, 53 K, 4.05 ERA, 658/713 splits

The best part about those nine guys above is that they earn a combined salary of just $1.3 million. Bednar was acquired as a free agent last year, and is the only one with a salary above $100K. All of the others were picked up this year, either in the $100K rounds of the draft or via free agency. 

*** 

Okay, let's talk about the 800-pound gorilla in the room. The unwritten rule in any fantasy baseball league is that each owner makes decisions in good faith, with his franchise's best interests (both present and future) at heart, just as a real-life GM of a real-life baseball team would do. Part of that good faith practice is the idea that no GM who plans to keep his job would ever burn his franchise to the ground in order to win now at any and all costs. It would be foolish and counterproductive to do so -- unless that GM doesn't plan to keep his job.

Jim Doyle is acting very much like someone who doesn't plan to stick around after this season. If that is true, and he has no future in the BDBL, then it doesn't matter what decisions he makes that impact his franchise's future. He can -- and has -- throw caution to the wind, sell the entire farm, and throw all of his eggs into the win-now basket, because hey, what does he have to lose? That is exactly what he's done by trading the last few pieces of his franchise's future in exchange for Cody Bellinger and Corey Knebel.

I was involved in trade talks for both players this chapter, but ultimately decided that it wasn't worth the cost to our future. Doyle doesn't have to worry about that, evidently. As I wrote here many times before, it doesn't matter what the Joplin Miners do or don't do. All that matters is how the Salem Cowtippers perform on the field. When you play .500 ball over three chapters, it doesn't matter what your competitors do. You aren't going to win the division, regardless. We simply need to win. It's as simple as that.

This game has a way of rewarding bad behavior. See Paul Marazita's three straight trophies to kick off this league, or John Duel's championship season before he bailed, or Anthony Peburn's string of division titles. Those infamous villains of BDBL past may soon be joined by another.

Chapter Four Review

Welp.

At this point, four chapters into the 2021 season, it is safe to assume that the Cowtippers team that we all witnessed in Chapter One was an anomaly. That team, with its outstanding pitching, solid hitting, and passable defense, was a mirage. The real Cowtippers are the ones that we've seen in the three chapters since then. We played .643 baseball in Chapter One. We have played .500 ball since then. We are Team Mediocrity.

This pathetic team, with its starting rotation that includes four all-stars, and a lineup that includes Rafael Devers, Ramon Laureano, Trea Turner, Shohei Ohtani, and numerous other hitters with an 800+ OPS split, has been the very definition of mediocre since the end of Chapter One.

When you are four games behind in the standings, there are two things your team must do in order to gain ground in the race: 1) beat bad teams, and 2) capitalize on the opportunity when the first-place team stumbles. We did neither this chapter. We went 4-5 against the last-place Ravenswood Infidels and Lake Norman Monsters, and we finished with the same shitty 13-11 record as the hapless Joplin Miners.

To put things into perspective, the North Carolina Iron Spider Pigs, who own the fourth-worst record in the BDBL, SWEPT the Monsters in Chapter Four. We barely managed a split.

We lost one game to the Monsters because Dylan Bundy -- who came into the game with an ERA over 7.00 -- held us to just three runs in six innings, while our "all-star", Sonny Gray, was whacked around for five runs on ten hits in four innings. We lost another game to Lake Norman when Framber Valdez and Mike Clevinger, pitching in emergency relief, blew a 4-0 lead.

We lost three out of four games to Ravenswood, including two games where the Infidels started a pitcher with a 7.00+ ERA. Stephen Strasburg, the starting pitcher for the OL all-star team, blew a save in that series. Rafael Devers went 0-for-12. We managed to hit just .215 against a pitching staff that owns the 8th-best ERA in the Ozzie League.

We lost a game to Los Altos when Sonny Gray allowed TWELVE runs in five innings. We scored five runs against the Undertakers' starter...and lost. Looking back, it is impossible to believe that Sonny Gray actually tossed a perfect game this year. It's been all downhill for him since then.

We lost a game to the Akron Ryche when we called on Max Scherzer, all-star, to hold a 4-2 lead in the ninth inning. The very first batter of the inning hit a weak grounder back to the mound. Scherzer snagged it, jogged over to first, and underhanded it to the first baseman...who somehow dropped it. This led to a three-run inning. Another walk-off, one-run, loss. Scherzer failed to even record an out in that inning.

The Cowtippers pitching staff posted an ERA of 2.44 in Chapter One. Our ERA this past chapter was 4.11. Folks, this is the same pitching staff! The only changes to that staff since Chapter One were the additions of Mike Clevinger, Sean Doolittle, and Brandon Workman. We added three quality pitchers and our pitching staff somehow got WORSE!

Our offense has posted a below-average OPS (.722) this season. We currently rank #18 out of 24 teams in that category. The Myrtle Beach Hitmen have a higher team OPS than Salem. So do the Darien Blue Wave. Robinson Chirinos, David Freese, Nick Madrigal, Jose Pirela, and Rafael Devers all own an OPS that is 100+ points lower than the one on the projection disk.

On the plus side (there's a plus side??), Devers' bat finally -- FINALLY! -- heated up in Chapter Four. He managed to hit .338/.424/.525 for the chapter, with three homers in 80 at-bats. Of course, most of that came from the bottom of the lineup, so he managed to drive in only 11 runs. Still, his performance was perhaps the only highlight of the chapter.

So...what now? We only have two chapters remaining to gain four games in the standings. Hell, we've overcome an eight-game deficit in only one chapter in the past. The difference is that we had a decent team back then. This is not a decent team. It should be, but clearly, it isn't.