Matt 2003
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Draft Capsule:
I loved the Dotel-Hammond combination. I don't think you learn how to manage a pen in this league until you challenge yourself like Matt did in taking relievers 1-2. I thought Padilla and Pettitte were marginal 3-4 picks, but I ended up quite wrong about that. Matt kept plucking relievers as the draft went along, and when he did go offense, it was with guys with much better secondary offensive numbers than batting average numbers. I thought Floyd, Vizquel, Miller and Walker were all great bargains. Going into the season, you just wondered if the pitching could trump the relatively weak offense and give Matt a chance for success. Ended up with a lot of high-platoon guys after the draft, which didn't help the offense's batting average dilemma.
Season Highlight:
Improved a ton as the season went along, and took 5 of 6 from me in our final intra-divisionals to get to a high water mark of 79-83.
Season Lowlight:
Started off slow. Team did not hit, be it singles or home runs, for the first 40. Matt expressed a great deal of frustration too about his pitching at that point, in the fact that the were not preventing the hits he hoped they would. After the first 40, I'm guessing the lowlight was after working hard to get himself into shouting distance of Dave in the wild card race, he couldn't capitalize on a late-season 10 gamer with Dave. Dave took 6 of 10 and re-emerged as a strong bet for the post-season.
If I analyzed the scripts or boxes, I'd check how:
Matt used Chad Bradford. I say this because I saw Bradford get alot of press in the summaries Matt sent out. Seems to me that after investing so much in a relief staff (1-2-6-10-16-20) before selecting Bradford in the 26th, you'd hope Bradford gets 0 decisions and pitches in 0 save situations during the season. Obviously, Matt put him in situations that he thought he could thrive in, and related to that, if Bradford didn't give Matt reason to have confidence in him, he wouldn't have brought into those games. Just the same, I think it's worth checking out.
2003 Surprises:
Pettitte was not on the Cy Young radar before the season. And if you ask Matt, he'd probably tell you that Padilla was just as vital to the team's success as Pettitte was. Palmeiro was an offensive force ... we haven't had very many 100 extra-base hit seasons. Millar's success was somewhat surprising, and Sheff's continued injury plague was pretty surprising. The across the board unproductiveness of guys like Rolen and Miller and Drew and Lofton were pretty surprising to Matt. To me, it wasn't surprising that they weren't very productive, but usually you don't see it happen to so many guys on a team, to the point where they were as unproductive as they were, and for the duration of the season like it happened to this group.
Best Strategy:
Palmeiro started out as poorly as the rest of the bunch, so I think it should good restraint for Matt to keep him and to keep him in the lineup, while jettisoning Green and eventually benching Rolen when they were ineffective. With his pen as it was, I know I would have been pretty tempted to extend a short hook onto the starts that 12Z Padilla and 11Z Pettitte made, but again, Matt did well to rest his pen in these starts to make better use of them for the Miller-Schmidt-Lidle starts.
Worst Strategy:
Running Wilkerson as much as he did. I think giving Bradford as many "important" innings as Matt did was questionable, though I agree with some of Matt's defense on that topic.
GM Summary:
Did well to improve his team during the season, though I think Ken did much better in the Sheff-Ichiro for Green-Floyd deal. But even in that deal, he did well to recognize problem areas and then to act on it. Not making a trade with Steve (not sure who exactly was involved other than Rhodes) is always a good move. I didn't like Matt's team after the draft (minus the pen), but I couldn't beat his team at the end of the season.
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