As we head down the stretch of another season of baseball, I find the inherent change in baseball fascinating. Nothing stays the same (except Chuck’s willingness and ability to consume prodigious amounts of food and still maintain the same general silhouette of his physique).
 

Notable changes this year:
 

1) D-Rays enjoying a winning season – before this year, the Rays had never won more than 70 games in a season.
 

2) Yankees – probably not destined for the playoffs
 

3) Significant change at the top of the starting pitcher heap. After 3-4 years of a more or less consensus top 5 of Santana-Webb-Sabathia-Beckett-Peavy et al, this year finds some new names at the top of the list (how many had Dempster, Lee, and Volquez in the top 30 on their draft lists, much less their top 10?)
 

Which leads to the draft – recent message board postings have pondered the issue of what it takes for a team to win the league on draft day, or at least not lose it.
 

I thought it would be interesting to take a quick glance back and the world on March 28, and how “expectations” then square that with the rapidly changing reality of “now.”
 

In no particular order (although this is the order off the Yahoo draft page)—
 

Tigers – “Drawing Dead” -- Jimmy Rollins in the first round. 2007 NL MVP (although most would have thought Matt Holliday’s season was a lot better); injuries, a bad attitude, but most importantly, so-so performance (his points per at bat this year are middling at best) leave Rollins currently as the 12th highest point producing SS in the HSL. Other than JD Drew as the 17th round selection . . .there were not a lot of players on the Tigers’ draft day roster that offered a lot of hope for a serious run at the crown . . .
 

Highlanders – “He Hate Me!” -- He didn’t like it on draft day, but the Highlander’s draft day assemblage, while eclectic, did offer promise (some might recall this author’s “Fear The Highlanders!” post in May while Mr MEC enjoyed a brief stay in the league bowels. This team had a lot of good players get off to slow starts. Santana-Braun-Beltran-Dunn-Jeter-Swisher-Kinsler (probably the AL MVP before busting a hernia a week ago – has this been the year of the Man-Injury (see also Chris “Ball Busted” Snyder) or what?)-Maine-Billingsley-Butler ranged from outstanding to at least adequate. Would not surprise me to see the Highlanders finish in the money, despite (potentially problematic) injuries to Braun and Kinsler down the stretch. Late selections of Lester -S Drew-Jacobs- Doumit were excellent. Kinsler an obvious “breakout / career year” performance.
 

Redbirds – “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” -- I sort of liked this group in the warm afterglow of the obligatory “team photo shot” session in the lobby of Gaines-Hogan-Buser-Pansing et al, but a raft of injuries to Tulowitzki and a return to reality for Carlos Pena (who has been ok, but not Third Round Pick ok) sort of sealed the deal. My hunch is that Sheffield 1) will be a Buser Never Ever, and 2) will not be drafted before round 20 in 2009. In a nice homage to Shamu’s “When in doubt, draft someone who has at least 15 years of MLB service” Jim Ed took, in rounds 14-18, Damon-Petitte-Varitek-Todd Jones-Percival. They held up about as well as you would expect 35-38 year olds to. Brad Hawpe has had a nice second half, but Buser did not benefit from any draft day guys having a career and/or breakout year . . .
 

Monarchs – 8 of the top 10 picks turned in solid performances, and 2 suffered meaningful injuries (Byrnes and Furcal). The 8 were Wright (def first round material) – Vlad (his worst year but ok even as a 2nd round pick) – Hamels (semi breakout year despite way below avg run support – he could easily have 4-5 more wins) – Lee – Halladay – Crawford (now also hurt) – Mauer – Cain. Late round / FA pickup lightning – Aviles and Joe Saunders (28th). Connor Jackson having his best year rewards 17th round pick, and Marmol (19th) and Adam Jones (21st) also very solid late round bets.
 

B-squareds – “The House That Ruth Built . . .and Hank Demolished . . .” -- moment of silence as Mouse pays $2,500 a bleacher seat for a glimpse of the last moments of the Yankee empire – sort of like paying $5,000 pounds to high five Queen Victoria in London before Britain assumed second class citizen status for the better part of the 20th Century. Mouse wistfully recalls the halcyon days of the “Class Act” Yankees, players like O’Neill and Jeter and Bernie, and wipes a tear from his cheek as Joba flips off the Yankee faithful and has a no autographs clause inserted into his contract before jogging to the bullpen to work on his headhunting Youkilis pitches, while drunken Yankee fans scream obscenities and urinate on each other and Mouse’s wife and kids.
 

Hope you have DVDs of that last World Series win for the Yanks (was it 2000?), Mouse, because with Hank Steinbrenner at the helm, the next decade or two could be rough, unless Michael Bloomberg buys the team and jacks the payroll to $450 million a year. Oh wait, you already HAVE the best players in baseball under contract. My bad.
 

Mouse’s Top 10 picks were at best “uneven.” Fielder does a modified Carlos Pena and regresses, but still a very solid player who could get hot late. Still, a first round pick as the 8th best 1B currently is costly. Putz in round 3 was not helpful, even if he hadn’t gotten hurt. No breakout or career year guys in the top 10, and rounds 6-7-8 of Rios-Francouer-Konerko sealed the Bombers’ 2008 fate, as Rios regressed a little, and Francouer and Konerko posted career, or close to career worst seasons, although Konerko’s 2003 was almost as bad. What is doubly maddening is that Konerko’s horrific production comes in the midst of the 2008 White Sox doing a passable impression of the ’27 Yankees. 27th pick Giambi and 13th rounder Dye were great value at those spots but not near enough to offset a mediocre to not so hot top 10 picks.
 

Cubs – “You Can Get Anything You Want At Alice’s Restaurant” -- eating all you want at Buffets’? $7. Losing the HSL asterisk? $800. Spending 300 hours in HSL preparation in the offseason? Priceless. Arguably the best payoff from the top 3 picks – Cubs, with ARod, Pujols (chuck had the rox to shrug off the risk of A-Pool shutting it down early with a bad wing and essentially lock up arguably the 2 best hitters in the game with his first 2 picks), and Webb (odds on NL Cy favorite at this point). Chuck also was sagacious enough to snag Lackey in the TWENTY-FIRST round, and arm troubles behind him, Lackey has posted 380 points (inside the top 50 SPs) and a point per inning rate north of 3, production worthy of a top 15 pitcher pick. More upside-breakout-career year stuff – Chipper flirts with .400, Ibanez (9th round), laboring on arguably the worst team in baseball this side of the Nats, puts up LF points in the same zip code as Manny, Dunn, Burrell, Carlos Lee, and consensus draft day stud Ryan Ludwick. But we’ll get to him in a bit . . .Uggla and Hart also have career best years out of the 7 and 8 slots, and to add ribs and chicken wings to a platter already loaded with filet mignon at the front of the line, Aubrey Huff in round 28 also goes career year. This team hit the Success Trifecta – some career years, some breakout years, and no significant injuries to key players, except for John Smoltz (essentially offset by the Lackey pick). Kudos.
 

Tribe – “Reversion to The Mean Does Not Exist” -- Well, it does exist, but apparently not in Bob’s universe. If JT is the Sultan of Fret, then Bob drafting is Kryptonite to the concept of Mean Reversion. It should be better but it is not—Bob is on an unlucky streak that is top only by JT’s famous dry spell at Ameristar after the 2000 season draft, which I believe at one point reached 52 consecutive losing blackjack hands. It is unfathomable, but yet it exists. Four of the Tribe’s top 5 picks rocked – Hanley, Berkman (arguably a career year, but ALL his years are great), Markakis (nice 4th round pick) and Brian Roberts all met or exceeded expections. Hafner was a killer, and you wonder if how badly he faded last year wasn’t a clue that not all was right. You cannot argue the Hafner pick in the 3rd round, but again, a devastating loss of production out of the 3 round pick pretty much buried the Tribe. Along with the Young boys, Buchholz, Corpas, McGowan’s season ending injury, Westbrook (out for the year early), Ian Kennedy (total unadulterated ineptitude at the MLB level), and Zimmerman (injuries, an off year when healthy, and no protection from a Nats lineup that might not finish in the top half of the Missouri Valley conference). Career bests from Danks (28th) and Ethier (23rd) just not nearly enough. With more bad luck than one-way Tony for seemingly the 10 season running, Bob has not complained a whit and will receive a plastic likeness of a Wahoo with duct tape around its mouth from the Wahoo marketing department, as testament to his consistent chipper approach in the face of extended bad fortune. But it is a likeness, not a Bobblehead, and Blongo promises not to make fun of it just because some people might deem it “mascot.” I would think Blongo would promise just about anything these days just to keep the mojo going for a few more weeks. . .
 

Chiefs – “Glue Factory in the 9th at 40 to 1” – The Chiefs’ 2008 draft looks like a guy falling further behind each race at the track and then betting longer shots in an effort to win it all back in one fell swoop. Holliday-Soriano-Phillips-A-Ram-Lincecum (career best – 6th round) were a solid start . . Figgins (hmm) . . .Escobar (13th) . . .Hoffman (15th but looked washed up in the Mile High Miracle game v. Rox last fall) . . . the Other Upton (.400 in April, 175 the rest of the way before landing on the DL). Did get a career best from Game-Boy Bradley, but the pattern emerges – career bests from 20+ rounders may not offset disasters higher up, unless you have a lot of them. . .Garza 17th round has worked well too. Figgins-Gordon-Brett Myers-Loney in rounds 7-10 provided a full set of flat tires that left the Chiefs’ Mobile Sewage Unit stalled in Butthole Missouri while I infected half the tri-state area with BlackLung, Big Guy waxed poetic about the ’84 Tigers, and JT propositioned Connie the Cashier at the Truck Stop, leaving BT at the pump with a $450 gas bill to ponder the roadworthiness of the fastest mobile outhouse north of the Mason-Dixon Line. We were 2 hours late to catch the last race at AK, but it was probably just as well. The brothers had all cashed in on Who Doctor Who in the feature race, leaving the senior citizens from LaVista, Skeezix, and the homeless guys from downtown to scoop up butts and sort through the racing forms for the “free coupons” before the last MAT bus left the lot for Abbott Drive and points north. Not a pretty sight.
 

Jax – “Some are Born with Greatness, others have Mediocrity Thrust upon them.” Or do they? Do we, as men, not have free will? As the great philosophical minds debate this eternal paradox, we can all agree that no one FORCED JT to take: Shane Victorino, Jered Weaver, AnDRUW Jones, Joe Borowski, Freddy Sanchez, and Melky Cabrera within a 90 minute span on draft day. Most of those guys suck on their face (res ipsa?). One is out of baseball, and another should be but for the $30 million contract his agent managed to pry out of Nick “Sheep in Sheep’s Clothing” Coletti.
 

But the more I think about Andruw Jones (full disclosure, I took him in the FOURTH round in 2007 – at least he hit 20 home runs to go with his .230 avg and 150 strikeouts that year), the more I think JT gets a pass. I mean, no one likes Jones as either a person, or more importantly, for our purposes, as a player. As the draft unfolds, players with resume’s like his drop to a point where it just seems they should be taken, and you would think a 13th round pick would adequately discount the obvious risk that his skills were deteriorating. You would think that, and you would be wrong. His skills have not only deteriorated, they have evaporated. (I saw Jones in LA on May 1 v. the Mets. The crowd booed his every move. He K’d 3 times versus a Met pitcher who was released the next week. I would have sooner taken Chuck’s father in law than Jones if I needed a base hit to win a game. Jones was BEYOND awful. He was abjectly hapless and inept).
 

This pick had to feel like George C. Scott scurrying around on the blimp in that movie – it felt weird, even a little foreboding, especially with all the gay-Nazi subtext going on with the creepy SS guys lurking around, but still – 13th round, how bad could it be? No one thought Jones would crash like the Hindenburg, certainly not George C. Scott, for sure not JT, but there he is, lying in crashed flaming ruins in his scorched Dodger uniform with Vin Scully running around screaming “ . . . oh the horror . . .the humanity . . .” Not that Jones caused the Jax’ demise in 2008, but he sure didn’t help them make a serious run at a top half finish, and his season makes for a nice word picture for “disappointment.” (Ironically, Jax’ fave Man-Ram ends up in real life as a Dodger, to some degree assuaging the pain felt by the Dodger faithful. No such help for the Jax). And again, a career best season from 29th pick and likely AL MVP Carlos Quentin (and arguably the best pick of the draft on a “points relative to round taken” basis) won’t be enough to offset the mediocrity thrust on this roster in earlier rounds.
 

Senators – “Never Had a Chance” -- A CY winner (Sabathia in round 2), a saves record (KRod in the 6th), resurgence for Lidge, and a career year for Burrell (8th) may not be enough to prevent a basement finish (yet again) for the Politicans. Injury to Wang hurt (no pun intended), and the Sens paid dearly for their numerous early pitching selections by assembling an offense that had little upside with players like Garrett Anderson and Richie Sexson clearly on the downside of their careers (sidenote – notice how few career high and or breakout guys are over 30? Most are in their mid to late 20’s). And again, a very sage late pick (Cantu in 30) is miles from being able to offset Cano-Hardy-Rowand-Beltre-IRod in the top 11 rounds. The promise of a year unburdened from the madness of running the KWAA dissipated in the reality of a team that might not hit 220 home runs on the season (6 HSL teams are there already or will probably pass that mark this weekend; other than the JAx’ they are all in the top half of the league). You have to have hitting or you can’t win. You cannot really draft for pitching success; like Chevy Chase in Caddyshack, you just have to line up the balls on the green . . .and be . . .the ball. Otherwise you will end up right in the lumberyard.
 

Bears – “The Only Good Democrat is One That Doesn’t Vote (and thank goodness there are some of those)” -- Denny, thanks for sharing. Sharing must be a Democrat trait. Lohse and Slowey were yours on draft day, now they are mine. Thanks! Or, is that recycling? Recycling is a Democratic trait also. Free agent pickups are like going to the recycling center and finding cool stuff others didn’t want anymore that you can use, like old refrigerators, tires, meth lab equipment, the like. Lohse and Slowey have pitched better than old refrigerators. Not wild about the aqua, orange and brown motifs, but hey, they were free to me. Now that they are making me points (Slowey and Lohse, not the fridges), maybe we could come up with a tax system so that I could share some of my “windfall points (or is it profits?)” back with you, or better yet, some of the teams at the bottom of the standings who through no fault of their own, have had tough times this year. Actually, maybe the Blues should share some of their points we with the rest of us! I’d vote for that in a heartbeat. We need CHANGE! CHANGE is good!! I wrote this, and I approve it. Vote, but use your common sense, and do what is right and fair.
 

(That last paragraph cinched it – bad things are going to happen to me now).
 

Wahoos – “The Market Does Not Know if you own the Stock” or “Process Trumps Results” (or is it “Discipline Trumps Conviction”?) -- Zero career years, maybe one breakout year (Youkilis, arguably, although his numbers this year are more are less in line with the improvements he has shown in the last several seasons), 7 weeks lost for #1 pick Ortiz (and his worst year when he has played), more injuries than an HMO on steroids, and it all adds up to zero chance to catch the runaway Blues train . . .Ever loyal, I would not trade my guys for most of the rest of the players out there, although Dunn for Willingham-Upton-Perkins-Kent would have probably been an ok deal.
 

Blues – No Major Injuries (the average HSL team has made 63 transactions this year. The Blues have made 23. No need to make transactions when your top players are healthy). Career / breakout years galore. No major disappointments. Hamilton. Pedrioa (career/breakout). Greinke. Volquez. We know the litany. This team is headed to a championship faster than Charlotte you know who used to grab the bong out of Web B’s hands at certain law school get-togethers. You have to hand it to the Blues. They are now clearly out of three sigma territory on the right side of the standard distribution of outcomes curve, and headed toward “perennial force to be reckoned with” status. Dead Man Walking? Try “The Man.”
 

No player more clearly represents “change” than Ryan Ludwick. To win the league, you need more good things than bad things to happen, and picking up a player who has tripled his career RBI and HR totals in 3/4s of a season is a good thing. Ludwick is currently the 12th highest point batter in the HSL, with more points so far this season than ARod, Manny, Morneau, Braun, Beltran, Dunn, Fielder, Miguel Cabrera, Derek Lee, Vladdy, and Ryan Howard. The odds of that happening on draft day would have been a million to 1 (and if Bob had bet on it, Ludwick would have gone 12 for his first 135, and been sent back to AAA). Next year on draft day, before you make that first or second round pick, just think “Ryan Ludwick.”
 

Last year, in 120 games, Ludwick had 14 HRs, 52 RBIs, and hit .267 (his first season in the bigs at age 29). This year, thru his first 119 games, Ludwick has 31 HRs, 94 RBIs, and has hit .304 while slugging .609. I would wager that on draft day only Chuck knew who Ryan Ludwick was. While the Wahoos were pulling avocado colored refrigerators out of the dump, the Blues were driving the Ryan Ludwick Mercedes out of the recycling center, popping some serious rap CDs into the music deck, lighting a cigar bigger than . . .well, it was a big cigar, and laughing all the way to the top of the HSL heap, while calling his secretary down at the law firm telling her to take the afternoon off because His Honor ha a hammerlock on the baseball world.
 

Carlos Pena (1 home run to 43 between ‘06-07), meet Ryan Ludwick, your 2008 HSL MVP. No coincidence that both players toiled for HSL Champs.
 

Change is inevitable, and there has been a lot this year.
 

I could probably say more, but I don’t get paid by the word, so that should cover it for now, unless I think of something really important later.
 

Peace. TB