Returning to Stratomatic Blogging/ Natural League Update

Natural Stratomatic League - Seattle Pilots

Background and update

After a 7+ year time out, I'm back to blogging about Strat baseball. I am the manager of two teams, The Seattle Pilots in the Natural league and the Bellingham Bozos in the SOMISA league. I've been in the SOMISA league since 2003. Additionally, I'm beginning to do Strat-o-Matic season replays. I will provide updates on all of this in the upcoming days as I update my Blog to bring it current.

In the Natural League, I inherited a team last year that finished as the 3rd worst but it should be very good for the coming season. I made several big changes trading away the 3rd overall pick (Lindor? Seager? Syndergaard?) plus my 3rd round pick (#43 overall), Odorizzi, Moustakas, Suarez, Carlos Gonzalez, Detwiler, Paxton and Gyorko. In return, I received Boergarts, Cueto, Estrada, Cecil, Strop, JD Martinez, Casilla, Clippard and the 9th overall pick.

This gave me a great starting shortstop, two quality starters and three excellent relievers. With a team that was too Left handed, Gonzalez for Martinez helped balance the line-up. The hope is that pick 1.9 will yield a good player like Sano or Buxton. Pick 2.3 should yield a young starting pitcher.

The team now looks like this..
1st base...       Chris Davis
2nd base...      Brock Holt
3rd base...       Manny Machado
SS ........         Xander Boergarts
LF.........         Andre Ethier/David Peralta
CF.........         JD Martinez
RF.........         Jason Heyward
Catcher....      Yadier Molina/Nick Hundley
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Starting Pitchers
Johnny Cueto
Marco Estrada
J.A. Happ
Jason Hammel
John Danks

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Bullpen
Aroldis Chapman
Pedro Strop
Santiago Casilla
Brett Cecil
Tyler Clippard
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With the addition of the top two draft picks, it is expected that this team would win 85+ games and make the playoffs. the hope is this is a top 4 team that can compete for the championship.
More to come after the draft, unless a mega deal changes things significantly.

Bellingham Bozos - SOMISA Strat league

The Bellingham Bozos are clearly the comeback team candidate for 2006. In 2005, the Bozos lost over 100 games with an awful team including no bullpen, so-so starting pitching and a bad offense. This wasn't helped by awful draft choices by management includign Jason Davis, Kaz Matsui and Scott Hairston.

In the past 18 months, Bellingham has traded JD Drew, Randy Winn, Roy Halladay and the #1 overall 2006 draft choice for combinations of draft picks and players. The new team has a steady pitching staff (still no real ace), decent relief pitching, much improved fielding and hitting. It is now a much younger team including many up and coming stars like Grady Sizemore, Willy Taveras, JJ Hardy, Edgar Encaracion and Derrick Turnbow.

The team for 2006 looks like this:
1b Ibanez, Mientkiewicz and Todd Walker
2b Spivey, Matsui and Counsell
ss Hardy and J. Wilson
3b Ensberg and Encarnacion
LF Hawpe and Reed Johnson
CF Taveras
RF Sizemore
C Barajas and Closser

Starters
Westbrook
Sabathia
Robertson
Clement
Chris Young
CM Wang
Kip Wells
Fogg
Backe
Franklin

Relief
Turnbow
Jenks
Reitsma
Witascik
Worrell

I will use this blog to describe the ups and downs of what should a fun team that will probably win around 80 games, a 20+ game improvement.