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EHCC Fact or Fiction: Off-Season
A debate over the preseason EHCC issues
By Pedro Gammo and Jayson Snark / EHSPN.com
Fact or Fiction: The Las Vegas Doggs have made themselves the "team to beat" in 2006.
Gammo: Fiction
They have made some moves during the off-season to help them beat the "team to beat,” but not make them the team to beat. As the cliché goes, the champs are the "team to beat". Plus, it doesn't hurt that they've also been making significant moves to help their team. With two of the top 5 picks in the major league draft, Alfonso Soriano back manning second base, and the core of their young, talented pitching staff coming back for 2006 they'll be one of, if not the, strongest teams in the EHCC going into the draft. The Doggs have significantly upgraded their 2006 (and beyond) roster, but until they beat the champs in 2006 they'll still be chasing, and not the ones being chased.
Snark: Fact
The Doggs have established themselves as the contender. Last I checked everything gets wiped clean with a new season. Everyone starts out 0-0. So Rakeville was the dominant team in the regular season in 2005? So Weymouth won the title again last year? Big deal. That and $1.50 will buy you a cup of coffee. If you want to talk about something tangible, on the other hand, then we can talk about the Las Vegas Doggs’ off-season roster shuffle.
Las Vegas GM Howe Dogg is the hardest working GM in the game, and his persistence (some might say annoyance) has paid off this year, as he has pestered a number of teams into giving him their best players for very little in return. The result is a sick, loaded roster filled with young guns on offense and pitching that gives him without a doubt the most talent on any roster in the EHCC. Does that make them the automatic champion? Not quite, but it certainly makes them the team to beat.
Fact or Fiction: If made possible by Yahoo, the EHCC should go to a divisional playoff system, rather than the current overall standings system.
Gammo: Fact
The EHCC would benefit tremendously from a divisional playoff format. It would make for better rivalries, more competitiveness, and more parity. Teams would have a better chance of making the playoffs based on divisional rankings rather than overall. More strategy will come into play throughout the season, trading will become more interesting as teams debate whether or not to send star players to other teams within their division, and fans will get more involved in rivalries that actually might mean something, rather than have to go by the media that makes up trivial "rivalries" between Las Vegas and Tijuana.
Snark: Fiction
This would be the worst thing to happen to the league since the Cortestelastics joined. The way the league is formatted now, the best teams make the playoffs. Period. If you earned it, you’re in, no arguments. If the league switched to a divisional format, there is a good chance deserving teams would wind up sitting at home and watching the playoffs from their computer monitors while lesser teams competed for the title. A perfect example can be found in the MLB, where an atrocious San Diego Padres club snuck into the playoffs with a barely .500 record, just to get drubbed by the St. Louis Cardinals. Wouldn’t baseball fans prefer to see a more deserving club who might be able to hang with a higher seed in that game? I think they would. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Fact or Fiction: The proposed lottery minor league draft order will hurt, rather than help the EHCC.
Gammo: Fiction
The format just makes sense. At least, much more sense than the current format, which is completely arbitrary. The lottery system will basically help bad teams get better over time and thus make the league itself stronger, bringing in a stronger fan base and pushing teams to build their team up when they're down, so that in the future they can contend. As it stands there's the possibility that the worst team in the league could end up with the worst minor league picks in the draft. With this being the case there's the chance, by no fault of the owners themselves, that the bad teams could/would just end up getting worse over time rather than getting better. In this presented format, bad teams would only be able to blame themselves for bad scouting if their draft picks didn't pan out. The new format keeps the "arbitrary" aspect of the old system by allowing the bottom 6 teams a chance at the top pick as well, which should please some owners in the EHCC.
Snark: Fiction
It’s a good system. It gives the tired, the poor, and the hungry of the EHCC a chance to help themselves. A hand up, rather than a hand out. And it also keeps some of the spice of a random drawing, without giving the leeway for a poor club to end up even worse off than it already is. Let me tell you a story. In my Franchise mode of Madden 2004, I am in the year 2010. I took over an NFC West club, and in that division, I am pretty much always the top seed. The perennial bottom seed, the 49ers, always are willing to trade me their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round draft picks in exchange for my 1st round pick. I’m not sure why; it’s a glitch in the game. The problem is, every year I go deep into the playoffs, making my first round pick pretty low. Conversely, the 49ers finish with one of the worst records in the league every year, providing me with a Top 5 pick in the draft year in and year out. And so, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
That is the dynamic that is always present with the format as presently constructed. The new format eliminates that dynamic, while still giving some of the excitement and mystique of the old, crappier format.
Fact or Fiction: Brian Fantana's plan in Quebec will win Canada an EHCC championship by 2009.
Gammo: Fiction
Quebec City is cursed. You've heard it here first. They had possibly the best team that they have fielded in their short history last year, and quite possibly the best team they'll ever field, last year. Nothing came together. They seemed to have one of, if not the, best pitching staffs in the EHCC anchored by Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder. They combined that with a solid hitting core of Andruw Jones, Derrek Lee, (who finished 2, 3 in the NL MVP voting last year) and Gary Sheffield and couldn't put it together to finish higher than 5th in the regular season and in the playoffs. They have a GOOD plan, yes, but it won't work. They've picked up a nice core of young prospective talent from around the league (Perralta, Olsen, Perez, Penn) and have some young talent coming up through the minors (Barfield, Hermida, Milledge) but there's a lot of question marks there (though not as many as, say, Tokyo) but questions nonetheless. I can see THE QC fielding a similar team as they did in 2005 in 2008 and 2009, but look for them to fall just short in both years.
Snark: Fact
Brian Fantana and Pat Renaud are playing a chess game with the rest of the EHCC. They are moving around their pieces and hiding the Queen while they prepare to make some fancy Russian move. And then they’ll capture the Queen (if that’s even how you play chess…I’m not really sure).
The QC has made a smart move in giving up on their title hopes this year and making plans for a run a few years from now. They’ve been all hype and no substance the last few years, always coming up short when it counted. It was becoming clear that they were not going to win a title as they were, and this plan comes at the right time. Better to move your assets while they still have peak value, rather than holding on to players who are fading fast. Instead, they are stockpiling a lot of good, young talent, and this could pay off big-time. Of course, it could crash and burn too, but I think they are more likely to finally get that elusive prize.
Fact or Fiction: Tokyo's plan has hurt the team more than helped.
Gammo: Fact
The GM in Tokyo told me that they've been "throwing stuff at the wall and waiting to see what sticks". The problem is with the exception of Dontrelle Willis, nothing seems to be made of anything adhesive. They have some names including McCarthy, Duke, Marte, and Fielder that have big time written on them but are yet to produce anything considerable (with the exception to the start of Duke's major league campaign last year). Many of their highly touted prospects such as Jackson and Floyd have fallen by the wayside and have even put on the trading block. Attendance in Tokyo was horrible for their inaugural season, not a good sign considering other new clubs all made profits their first year in the league. The Tokyo scouting staff either needs to find position players and stick with them or just do a better job scouting out prospective talent. Trading for Willis was a steal and picking up Duke off waivers should end up being a good move, but much of their young talent is unknown and seemingly unwilling to contribute.
Snark: Fiction
Prediction: Tokyo and Quebec City will meet in the 2009 championship game. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It’s not. Take a look at those rosters, figure out the average age of each, and then do some light scouting. Both teams are young and loaded, especially Tokyo. Fielder, Barton, Marte, Johnson, LaRoche, Butler, Diamond, Duke, Zumaya, McCarthy, Niemann, Volquez, Barmes, and Kubel. Tokyo’s roster reads like a top prospects list for the minor leagues. While teams like Winston-Salem and Golden have seen their eyes bulge with the prospect of early success, Tokyo has done their homework and taken the fastest route towards the ultimate glory of a championship. Let the other teams scrape by as the final teams into (or out of ) the playoffs. Tokyo will surpass all of these teams, and more, by the time they are through. And it’s all attributable to the plan.
Pedro Gammo and Jayson Snark write for EHSPN.com. They'll be covering the World Baseball Classic games in Tokyo, but neither of them know a single word of Japanese.
