World baseball classics

Will the World Baseball Classic be, in fact, classic? An Olympic-style competition featuring the world’s best players competing for their country to determine which nation reigns superior sounds like a perfect celebration of baseball. But the World Baseball Classic has already endured a few hiccups, including the U.S. government’s initial rejection of Cuba, some big name players bowing out, and A-Rod’s endless indecision as to which country, if any, he will represent.

Do the Blue Jays have enough to challenge Boston and New York?

The Blue Jays have added pitcher A.J. Burnett, 1B Lyle Overbay, 3B Troy Glaus, and closer B.J. Ryan to an already young and talented team. The Red Sox added Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, and Coco Crisp while the Yankees signed Johnny Damon.

These 3 teams will likely compete for 2 playoff spots. Does Toronto have enough to unseat one of the superpowers? If everything goes right in Canada and injuries and/or age beset the big boys, the Jays will be ready to pounce. Otherwise, it’s 3rd place again.

Is Miguel Tejada happy enough in Baltimore to bounce back from a sub-par year?

In his first year with the Orioles in 2004, Tejada hit .311 with 34 HR and 150 RBI. The average and RBI totals were the highest of his career and the HR were on par with his career best. But he was unhappy in 2005 and “slumped” to .304-26-98. After the season, he asked the Orioles to trade him due to their inability to build a winning team. He has since withdrawn the request, but will the focused, energetic Tejada that made him the best SS in the game be out there every day in 2006?

In order to make this kind of trade, you will need to do some preparation.

As described previously, you will need to rank your own players. After that, you will need to rank the other teams probable keepers to determine which teams would make good trading partners. For this type of trade to work, you must be able to trade them a player that increases the value of their keeper list. Remember, you want to increase your quantity of keepers and ultimately improve the overall value of your list as well.

Lastly, you need to evaluate your league’s rules as described before. If, for example, your league allows six keepers, you may be better off with six keepers even if their total value is the same or slightly less than the five keepers you started with. It helps in this analysis to include the sixth player that you considered a non-keeper in the total value of your keeper list prior to making the trade. By doing so, an apples-to-apples comparison of the total value of your keeper list before and after the trade can be made. The illustration below describes how this can work to the benefit of both teams. Again, for simplicity, it is assumed that only six players can be kept.