Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Here's a fun/embarrassing exercise I undertook on my Cardinals board.
How much better are the Astros than the Cardinals? If you went down their roster, let's just say alphabetically, and culled every other player and replaced him with someone they had in AAA - would the Astros STILL be better than STL?
It's a close call. Here are their respective 'halved' rosters - sorted alphabetically and then split every other player down the middle - that you'd then need to supplement:
Team 1:
IF: Altuve, Correa, Gurriel, Diaz, Chirinos
OF: Brantley, Marisnick
SP: Verlander, McHugh, James, Sneed
BP: Osuna, Pressly, Rondon
Bn: Straw
Team 2:
IF: Alvarez, Bregman, Maldonado
OF: Reddick, Springer
SP: Cole, Greinke, Miley
BP: Devenski, Harris, Peacock, Smith, Urquidy
Team 1 is better than STL's, no question. Add Tucker to the starting lineup in CF, Whitley to the rotation, Fisher to the bench, guys like Garza, McCurry, Bielak and Emanuel to the bullpen. That teams better than the Cardinals; bench is poor because a lot of their offensive prospects are in the low minors now. That's the only weakness they'd have since I, y'know, blinked half their !@#$ing team out of existence and all.
Team 2 is closer b/c that IF is pretty lousy. Bregman at SS and Alvarez at 1b is a heck of a start but there's really nothing left for them at 2b and 3b. Fortunately they have a GM that isn't reeruned so they'd probably shop that extra relief arm to Team 1 to try to bring Straw over, who'd look awfully nice at 2b for them. As it stands you're looking at Jack Mayfield. 3b is probably Nick Tanielu but Mayfield has an OPS of .940 in AAA and Tanielu at .790 so these guys (organizational depth for them) aren't scrubs. Throw in Jones and Ferguson w/ OPS north of .900 and .860 respectively off the bench and yeah, you're probably doing okay (could obviously fit those same guys on the bench in team 1 as well).
I mean if you sat down and intentionally tried to build 2 teams that could be made better than the Cardinals by actually picking and choosing, it would be child's play. This was a completely random attempt and created at least 1 team that's better than STL and very probably both of them due to the strength of Team 2's pitching staff.
Now I couldn't make 2 squads if I could only use each minor leaguer once. But if I split the 25 man down the middle and let them share their minor league depth, I think both teams are better than the Cardinals.
Folks, that's just funny right there.
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