Ol’ School Hardball, Nine On Nine
Posted by Steve L. on March 16th, 2010 · Comments (7)
So, if you had to pick one of these groups for 2010 – with the goal to pick the group with the better collective numbers at the end of this season – who would you pick?
Group A Group B Johnny Damon Curtis Granderson Melky Cabrera Randy Winn Hideki Matsui Nick Johnson Austin Jackson Marcus Thames Jose Molina Mike Rivera Chien-Ming Wang Javier Vazquez Ian Kennedy Dustin Moseley Phil Coke Boone Logan Brian Bruney Chan Ho Park
Right now, I’m thinking it could be a close call. How about you?
I think Javy Vazquez pushes Group B over the edge, in my opinion. It’s a close enough call if you take Javy out, but he is the only pitcher likely to pitch 200 innings of at least league average stuff.
I would have liked to keep CMW, but only in regards to the future, not this season. And IPK wouldn’t have seen much major league time this year in NY.
javy does make B a tad stronger but Damon and Matsui will be really hard to replace.
and to be fair, if you’re going to put Jose Molina in the out group, you need to and Franky Cervelli to the in. Plus, Melky’s absence opens up more playing time for Gardner, so he should be in the in group.
@ egghead71:
You’re missing the point of the exercise; he’s comparing players lost to players obtained.
@ egghead71:
I thought about Cervelli. But, he was on the team last year too. So, I figured that Posada would get the same PA this year as last, ditto Cervelli, and, if a third catcher was needed, like Molina last year, then it would be Rivera this season.
I’ll take group B. Defensively they are better, and though there are a lot of close ones, Park/Bruney, Javy/Wang, Grandy/Damon and Johnson/Matsui the defensive metrics favor B pretty strongly.
Offensively, you could argue that replacing Damon and Matsui is difficult, and I agree. I was especially fond of Matsui as a great Yankee and one of my favorites. But his production last year, unlike Damon’s is not a lock this year. The one wild card in A is A-Jax. If he progresses quickly he could be a difference maker in this comparison.
If the numbers really are a close call, then the Yanks are still a 95-103 win team, nicht wahr?