NL Thursday (Joey Almars)

One thing that we have been seeing in Major League Baseball recently is the building of super teams being more common. For developing super teams, the concept is simple: bring in established high-grade talent to compliment your current players at whatever cash amount necessary. Seems simple if you have a lot of money, and developing the farm system can drop lower on the to-do list if you have a lot of it.

Of course we have always seen this concept embraced by the Yankees and they have always been the go to team to hate because of it. Believe me, I would always be the first to make their argument that they have bought all their championships, but now I have found a little more respect for the Yankees. As of recent years we have seen teams like the Red Sox, Dodgers, Marlins (yikes!), Toronto (yikes!!!), and the Angels have tried this same method and have yet to find success. Boston had a bright moment in 2007 but in the year of 2011 where they spent big money to bring the hot free agents, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez they have had little luck since.

However, the Red Sox got bailed out of paying $250 million (through 2018) to those two players in addition to Beckett and Punto because it was seen as the Dodgers’ turn to create a super team. The Dodgers took on these players last season in hope to make a playoff run, they were unsuccessful. So the Dodgers simply inherited the troubles of the Red Sox and now Boston is free to use that money in other ways to help their team.

We have seen this more and more in the past 5 years and with little success to follow. After the big deal between Boston and LA, Dodgers co-owner, Magic Johnson said, “We understand that you have to spend money to be good in this league. We understood that before we bought this team.” With that said, may I make the assumption that the Dodgers are spending money in the wrong ways.

Obviously if you bring in that much talent you are going to bring in more interest for your ball club (even if it is in Canada), but if a team goal is winning… they need to go back to the drawing board and realize that the Yankees know something that these other teams don’t know. And creating a super team is harder than it looks. I am Joey Almars and this is the last time you will ever hear me compliment the Yankees.

Now with all that said I tell you my opinion on what teams should do to if they got the cash and want a super team.

1)     Do not inherit other people’s problems: We have seen this with the Dodgers, we have seen this with the Blue Jays and so far they have had roughly the same problems from the other team. If it didn’t work the first time, don’t put more money into it and try it again in a different uniform.

2)     Don’ t buy your team leader: When the Yankees go out and buy talent they know that the captain of their team is still Derek Jeter and no matter who they bring in it will always be his team. In other words there is no question of leadership and any player coming in (know matter what position he held last year) knows whose team it is. I could not tell you if this has been the problem with these teams as of late but it is something that is clear cut with the Yankees team and not so definitive for others. Obviously you get different characters on different teams and there are some people that will mesh and others that won’t but if you have a strong leader to build around I believe that building will be easier.

3)     What to Buy: Obviously the Yankees have pursued the hitting route more exclusively than pitching (although they have not ignored it all together). But for the sake of this analysis lets just say they know something we don’t know (or simply had years of practice). What I think is that anyone creating a super team should start with pitching. We saw this start in 2010 with Philadelphia and reach its peak in 2011. They acquired Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt in 2010 and Cliff Lee in 2011 to accompany the arms of Blanton and Hamels. During this time, they led the MLB with wins in 2010 (97) and 2011 (102). And not to mention San Francisco won the World Series in 2010 and 2012 with one of the best pitching staffs in the league.

So what does all this mean? Pitchers are the safest bet if you are building a super team. In any trade or acquisition, GMs need to be aware of injury history of any player. If you exclude injuries from this equation on both the hitting side and the pitching side, pitchers are a safer bet because they are in their own world on the mound. There isn’t a question of leadership, because they simply go out and pitch their game. We are in the pitching age and it is clear how valuable pitching is once you arrive to the post season. In the market today I believe that there is a draw to getting big name hitters because seeing a HR is more interesting than a strikeout. But if teams are more interested in wins and not about filling seats, this is an option that hasn’t been tried enough and it has shown positive results.