In the spirit of the season, all of us here at Davey Enterprises (with no small measure of help from Cheese Stands Alone Industries and Pander Productions) thought today was the perfect day to test a new blog post. Voting is cool, right?! Voting between two insufferable blowhards is even cooler, can I get an amen?!?!
With that, we proudly present to you Untitled Interactive Blog Post. We debate three topics, and you vote on which of us had the better argument. The winner moves on to compete in Untitled Interactive Blog Post: The Sequel; the loser (editor’s note: Cheese) is relentlessly mocked for his poor takes.
Is the gap between the SL and PL getting bigger?
| Davey: Our league has more good players than it ever has. There is a seemingly endless talent pool, and the talent can be acquired from more ways than ever. Free agency is better than it’s ever been, the draft is deeper than ever, and IFAs are IFAs. But the influx of talent has only made the gap between the haves and have nots wider, not narrower. Boston still has the best farm system and the most major league talent, for seemingly the 10th season in a row. Teams that have figured out the financial system and acquired elite talent (Buffalo, New Orleans, and Hollywood) will sit near the top of the PL for as long as they want. And as teams like Las Vegas in 2038 and Greenville this season have shown, if you don’t sell off your team it’s as easy as ever to make the drop down to the SL a one year trip. |
| Cheese: Gap? Please. Teams are constantly coming from the SL straight to competing for the PL championship. 2039 Hollywood finished in 2nd by 1 game and 2040 Buffalo did the same but in game 109, both in their inaugural PL seasons. This year is no different with very strong Mississippi and Cleveland clubs promoting and looking to make waves. St. Louis and Greenville could both be competitive PL teams this year as well but are stuck down in purgatory for one more year. The bottom of the PL is nearly constantly an embarrassment of teams tanking and the middle of the pack teams are full of holes. In case you thought that the PL was actually good, Northern Virginia is currently a .500 team and Davey has done nothing but try to get to the 3L for the last 2 seasons. Look at the Cup results from the group stage, Portland just got swept by Vegas, Seattle swept Mississippi. Even the mighty defending PL champs split with the fighting fish from Panama City. So no, the gap is not getting bigger. In fact, the gap may be disappearing all together. |
Is bottoming out in the 3L the best way to rebuild a team?
| Cheese: Yes, sell everything not bolted down, acquire large quantities of lottery tickets, aka picks, specs, and cash for teenagers. Fill your team with fringe players and have some fun. Max out your scouting and dev budgets, and enjoy your seasons dropping to the bottom. If your payroll is more than $10,000,000 you’re spending too much. Invest in the future and use all that excess cash you have on hand. Buy more teens, picks, specs. It’s a great situation to be in, no expectations, all upside. Just ignore the product on the field and keep working the phones to bring home the future. |
| Davey: Lol, no. Spending money on prospects rather than major-league talent is a GREAT way to rebuild a team, but that doesn’t go hand in hand with finishing at the bottom of the 3L. The losing a lot part shows two things: a lack of organizational depth and an unwillingness to bring in cheap free agent fillers. There’s always a Robbie Betchley available to round out your staff. A Yao-pang Chiang to slot in as your DH. There’s also no advantage to losing a lot – when OOTP was seemingly modeled after NBA drafts there was a real advantage in getting the top pick, and based on the classes in XX that’s clearly no longer the case. All you get from finishing last is a Brett-like Fan Interest. |
Who is the best pitcher in the PL?
| Davey: There’s a lot of beauty in question this vague. Best now? Best going forward? Best value, best career, best at winning one game, best at getting one out? Masterclass. Anyway, I’m fairly certain An Jang-Yop covers a lot of these bases. He’s a lefty with 12 stuff and three top tier pitches. He’s only making $4M this year. Small sample size and all of that, but in 21 innings this year he’s walked 3 and struck out 36, which sources tell me is the only way to win on that putrid Mississippi team. In closing, Van Hileman is the best pitcher in the league. |
| Cheese: I’m sure I’ll get accused of homerism with this pick, but Jesús Vidro is the class of the entire USBA. In a down year for the entire organization where Vidro himself went 4-8, he still posted the best Starting Pitcher ERA and 2.97 WAR which was good enough for 8th in the PL. He is always a formidable opponent when on the hump and is a nightmare for opposing hitters. His down years are better than most pitcher’s career years. Since breaking into the league in 2033, he leads all pitchers in FIP, WAR, WHIP, K%, K-BB%, and is top 10 in nearly every relevant statistical category. All while playing the majority of that time for very average Thunder Bay teams. He may not be the hottest pitcher at any given moment but he is consistently elite, even when his team is not. Until someone unseats him, Vidro is the crown jewel of the USBA. |