What If Sports: Our New Addiction

Some of you may have seen this mentioned in Bill Simmons' articles previously, but if you haven't (or even if you have and didn't bother to check it out) I highly recomend going to the website whatifsports.com Basically it's a website that allows you to draft a team of players from any team on any year and play them against other teams that are similarly drafted in a 162 game simulation. The system uses a salary cap, and you can manage your players' pitch counts, likelihood for pinch running, etc. Anthony and I have done this already this year with limited success (our team is 54-60, well out of playoff contention at this point), although 1990 Ricky Henderson is 2nd in MVP balloting currently, which is nice.

Anyway, we caved before the first season ran out and just drafted another team. Not like any of you actually care, but here it is. (Sidenote: Our team name is "String Bream." Sadly, our idea of "Rollie Fingers Homer Bush" had too many letters to make it.)

Lineup:
LF - Vince Coleman ('85) - .267 BA, .320 OBP, .335 Slg, 110 SBs
SS - Ozzie Smith ('92) - .295 BA, .367 OBP, .342 Slg, 43 SBs
2B - Roberto Alomar ('99) - .323 BA, 24 HRs, .422 OBP, .533 Slg, 37 SBs
CF - Bernie Williams ('97) - .328 BA, 21 HRs, .408 OBP, .544 Slg
1B - Sid Bream ('86) - .268 BA, 16 HRs, .341 OBP, .450 Slg
3B - Eddie Yost ('56) - .231 BA, .412 OBP, .336 Slg
RF - Otis Nixon ('97) - .266 BA, .337 OBP, .318 Slg, 59 SBs
C - Mike Matheny ('05) - . 242 BA, 13 HRs , .295 OBP, .406 Slg

Key Bench Player: Russell Branyan ('06) - .228 BA, 18 HRs, .327 OBP, .498 Slg

Rotation:
Bob Gibson ('68) - 304.2 IP, 1.12 ERA, .184 Opp BA, .85 WHIP
Pete Schneider ('17) - 351 IP, 2.10 ERA, .255 Opp BA, 1.28 WHIP
Phil Niekro ('83) - 201.2 IP, 3.97 ERA, .276 Opp BA, 1.57 WHIP
Rookie to be named later called up from our computer provided AAA team

Key Bullpen Pitchers:
Setup guys: Rollie Fingers ('81) - 116 IP, 1.04 ERA, .198 Opp BA, .87 WHIP
Tom Knowlson ('15) - 107.1 IP, 3.50 ERA, .273 Opp BA, 1.58 WHIP
Closer: Mariano Rivera ('96) - 107.2 IP, 2.09 ERA, .189 Opp BA, .99 WHIP

Our ballpark that we play in is Petco Park, and it's pretty clear why if you look at our team. Not a whole lot of mashers in the lineup. Instead, we went with speed, on-base percentage, and fielding as prerogative for position players. Our pitching staff is pretty loaded, and most of our pitchers have very low HR/9 IP numbers. We're banking on our super fast outfield of Vince Coleman, Otis Nixon, and Bernie Williams shagging down a ton of flyballs in Petco's enormous outfield.