In 1999, I dabbled in an AL-only Rotisserie baseball team. During the draft, my partner and I agreed that the best values would leverage positional scarcity, not pure performance. We set our sights on drafting one of the three transcendent shortstops (ARod, Nomar, Jeter), the only plus-hitting catcher (Pudge), a couple of valuable second-basemen and a key DH asset.
Selecting at the end of a snake draft, we nabbed Nomar and Pudge with our first two picks, much to the consternation of our opponents, who were googly-eyes over big boppers like Carlos Delgado and Ken Griffey, Jr. We shocked the crowd again in the next two rounds, plucking Robby Alomar and Edgar Martinez from among a coterie of slugging first basemen and corner outfielders.
Not until the 9th round did we finally get around to staffing first. David Segui hit .305 with 19 dingers and 84 RBIs the year prior, certainly not the equal of guys like Mo Vaughn, but within shouting distance. We captured an entire infield of all-stars in exchange for the 20 homers and 40 RBI lost at first base. (We had the best offense in the league, a weak pitching staff and finished second overall.)
What made that strategy work was a pile of outfield (and first base, but that’s not so much the point here) bodies in MLB that year. Consider some of the outfield names of the day: Juan Gonzalez, Ken Griffey, Jr., Manny Ramirez, Bernie Williams, Albert Belle, Paul O’Neill, Tim Salmon, Shawn Green, Sammy Sosa, Moises Alou, Greg Vaughn, Barry Bonds, Vlad Guerrero, Tony Gwynn, Larry Walker. Every one of them had a Hall of Fame year in 1998. The best hitters of the day patrolled the distances or made the stretch on 6-4-3s.
Now, name the best outfielder in baseball today.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
(Whistles Jeopardy theme...)
Stuck on Ryan Braun? Jeff Kemp? Grady Sizemore? The remnants of Ichiro perhaps?
A list of the top 10 hitters by OPS last year includes just two deep-fly catchers -- Joey Votto and Derrek Lee. You have to reach down to #6 on the list in the AL today to find an outfielder – Alex Rios of Chicago. Not exactly Sammy Sosa. In the NL, Andre Ethier and Colby Rasmus are 1-2 in OPS. Today. Check back in September. Neither has this kind of pedigree. (To be fair, they may turn out to. Rasmus is a sophomore; Ethier has a four-year record of accomplishment, though this would represent a quantum leap.)
That's heads; tails is where all the batsmen have gone. Today, shake a tree and a middle infielder with a good stick will fall out. Cano, Zobrist, Mauer, McCann, Jeter, Posada, Furcal, Escobar, Tulowitzki, Uggla, Utley, Pedroia, and Rollins jump to mind. Pivotmen and backstops, all. There are no 5’8” 160-pound slapsters filling the infield positions anymore. If Adonis can handle the position defensively, his team will gladly leave him at short.
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