Winning the World Series is awesome, trust me.
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It’s a year — sometimes longer — worth of work paying off.
For Vandelay, it was several years in the making, as young
pitchers and hitters all came together to form a championship team in 2015.
Now, five months later, Vandelay knows what it feels like to
make the cuts.
Tearing apart of championship squad is rough. I know, and
I’m sure the Gamblers and Outs can agree, that after my championship runs, I
wanted nothing more than to take all 34 players back with me for the next year.
Alas, I had to make decisions, and so did Vandelay.
Matt Kemp, Carl Crawford, Ryan Zimmerman, Michael Cuddyer
and a few young pitchers all earned pink slips Sunday, and no one can blame him
for dropping these guys. The eight batters ahead of them were obvious choices,
and the pitching rotation includes eight starters — nine if you counter RP
Daniel Norris — who will lead the charge.
Vandelay will head into the 2015 JLB Draft with the most
starters of any team at eight, followed by the Slammers, Jerk, Sex Panthers and
Otto Parts who all will keep seven. The basic food group — Steaks and Chalupa —
will keep six, as will Choo, which keeps the eating theme going.
That leaves four teams with five starters heading into the
draft — Big League Choo, Steroid.ERA, Outs, Bombers and Gamblers. They, along
with the six-starter teams, will all be in a mad rush to pick up some starters
in the first couple rounds to try and catch up.
Those four teams decided to go heavy on offense into 2015, and
they mostly have their lineups set. Three of the four have strong top-line
starters — like the Outs, who enter the year with Garrett Richards, Jordan
Zimmermann, Madison Bumgarner, Michael Wacha and Cy Young winner Corey Kluber.
He’ll just need to find a few more solid starters to fill in the gaps.
Choo, on the other hand, dropped Justin Verlander and others
to go with Michael Pineda, Jake Arrieta, Hisashi Iwakuma, Aaron Sanchez, Zack
Wheeler and last-second acquisition Danny Salazar. Sanchez hasn’t been placed
into the starting five for the Blue Jays yet, so there are some questions here,
and he’ll need some good picks to catch up to the rest of the pitching staffs
in the league.
Offensively, though, Choo could be tops in the JLB, no doubt. He has several sluggers, mostly Cuban, who will lead him to the top of the power charts.
But he'll have to do it without his inspiration.
Choo made the ultimate sacrifice, sending his namesake away
to the draft pool on Sunday as Shin-Soo Choo couldn’t make the cut on this squad.
He knew this day would come, but it's not over. Perhaps Choo will be around in the mid-rounds of the draft. If so, Choo can restore balance to the universe.
Full team capsules to come later this week.
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