Posted by Rob McQuown on Monday, July 20, 2009 at 11:36 am

We’ve had the Scoresheet team now for a couple weeks, and things have gone from bad (before we took over) to worse.  Part of that was the RJ injury to our already almost non-existant rotation.  First, the list of trades we made, along with my defense – er, um – explanation of them.

1. Theriot for Feliz, Infante, and Detwiler.

Somehow, the roster Brian and I inherited had only 35 names, and no extra draft picks.  My guess is that the previous owner abandoned the team early in the season, and missed the first in-season draft.  The Scoresheet staff apparently drafted for the team in the 2nd in-season draft, getting some plum players such as Strasburg, who just became available by virtue of his June selection in the Rule 4 draft.  Well, this adds two bodies.  Anyway, this added names, and I’m not sure Infante is any worse than Theriot in Scoresheet, assuming he plays full-time upon his return.  His range rating at shortstop (in the game system) is better than The Riot’s.  Feliz, predictably, is a standout defensive player at 3b.  The hope, sort of, is that someone will offer us a ton for Votto, and we can move Cantu to 1b.  That would weaken the offense a lot, and make it more right-handed, but with 3 LH OF’s, and a catcher who switch-hits, hitting RHP harder, we need the pitching a lot more than the first-base offense for now.

2. Traded a 25th-round pick next year for Bonifacio and a 30th-round pick.  Once Infante returns, this gives us two useful utility guys, and should spell the end of “AAA Infielder” and “AAA Outfielder” for this season (again, assuming Infante plays a lot).

3. Traded a 28th-round pick next year for Livan Hernandez anda  31st-round pick.

Here was my thinking on the 13 freezers, and Brian’s opinions are only slightly different, differences we should be able to resolve in the offseason without much trouble:

Grade “A” (10):

SP: Vazquez, Maholm

RP: Troncoso

Bats: Votto, Salty, McLouth, Cantu, Ethier, S.Smith, Dukes

Grade “B”:

SP: Randy Johnson (if he doesn’t retire), Medlen, Martis (if they exceed rookie status), Balester, Detwiler

RP: S.Burnett, Bray(?), Elbert (if he isn’t still a rookie)

Bats: Feliz, Infante, Bonifacio, Ruiz
Grade “C”:

SP: Rich Hill, Daniel Cabrera,Lowry, L.Hernandez

RP: S.Green, Logan

Bats: Adam Rosales?

Minors (don’t count toward 13): Strasburg, Drabek, Vitters, Lawrie, Martis?, Medlen?, Elbert?

The thought process in trading down in the draft to get mediocrities like Livan and Bonifacio is that I’ve never noticed much distinction in the late rounds of a draft, from one round to the next.  People all have their personal preferences at that point, and entire rounds can go by without anyone on my draft list being taken. Anyway, I’m already regretting the Livan deal, but Bonifacio’s value will be determined by is range ratings in Scoresheet next year.  If he can play multiple positions well, his OBP isn’t so low that we can’t use him.

So, right now I have offers of Zito and Oliver Perez.  They would probably represent upgrades in keeper status, but to what end? Do they get us closer to a Championship someday?  At least with Bonifacio, we have a useful spare part on a good team.

An oddity of this league is that there is one Mega-team.   Brian has talked about writing a narrative of his rise to dominance in the league.  At the risk of stealing the thunder from that story, one line in the email this owner sent us on the process is: “I got Lincecum, Gallardo, Braun, Hamilton, Billingsley, H. Ramirez just as their stars were ascending.”  That gives you an idea of the quality of his team.  He goes on to explain how he traded for Utley and Teixeira.  Anyway, the thing about having 30% of the great players (approximately) on one team is that it makes the rest of the competition softer by necessity.

Anyway, as with all team-building operations – which I enjoy a lot – the question to keep in the fore is, “which of these guys will be a part of the next contending team?”  Our Team Three is now 14 games out, after a 1-6 week using my “new and improved lineups” (in fairness, we had a lot of games where multiple AAA batters started, and multiple AAA pitchers pitched, and still didn’t get completely mauled):

Scoresheet provides lots of fun reports on your team’s progress, one quickie is a score summary for the week:

3 Rob McQuown 1-6: @8 4-6, @8 3-6, @8 1-5, @8 3-4, @9 4-0, @9 0-4, @9 4-7.

So, I had the pleasant experience of wanting to play 9 of our batters against LHP this week, when only 8 can bat.  That’s a new thing for this team.  Here are the lineups we’re using:

vsR: Ethier, Votto, Salty, Cantu, Smith, McLouth, Feliz, Bonifacio

vsL: Bonifacio, Votto, Infante, Cantu, Ethier, Feliz, McLouth, Ruiz

SP: Vazquez, Maholm, Livan, R.Hill, Medlen

RP: Troncoso, Moylan, Burnett, S.Green, Bray, Logan,  Elbert.

Smith is being rested vsL to insure he is able to start every game against RHP.  Not sure what the game will do for Infante, but I don’t want to miss any games from him vsL, if he comes back.  He’s just crushed LHP.  Disturbingly, this means Cantu at 2b vsR, but in my limited Scoresheet experience, guys miss enough games that it seems likely he’ll end up at 1b or 3b more often than not, with one of the other infielders (Infante when he returns, Frandsen, Rosales, AAA Infielder) filling in at 2b.  Bonifactio is no great shakes at ss defensively, but neither was Theriot.

Stay tuned, still a few more hours to make moves today before this week becomes official!