Junkyard Jake’s UT man Adam Jones Makes an Error

The Generals start off the expert league season with a matchup against radio co-host Junkyard Jake.

This matchup is a good test for my “no starting pitcher” strategy. The point of the strategy was that there would only be marginal differences offensively unless you really went hard for hitting and this week shows how it works in practice. It will be a good litmus test.

Matching up the rosters I think we have a slight but discernible edge overall in hitting. We lose slightly at catcher with the Mauer/Johjima matchup. We have the better player at all infield positions with the possible exception of SS where he has Jeter and we have Michael Young. Jake’s OF is top notch, with Holliday, Sizemore and Markakis, but ours is no slouch either with Abreu, Ordonez and Crawford. Jake does get the edge here though.

At the two UT positions I think we have a good edge with Beltre and Dye over Billy Butler and Adam Jones. So overall we have the edge but it is very close and could easily go either way, which will likely be the case almost every week.

This is where the pitching strategy will hopefully work its’ magic. So far it is going exactly as planned, though a vulture win by Betancourt helps the Generals’ staff. Through today the score is 7-2-1. I am seriously considering putting up all of my starters, since none of them are two start pitchers, after their first start so that I take a zero for the remainder of innings, thereby negating at least in four roster spots the possibility of a disastrous blowout.

As of right now I have an ERA of 0.00 and a WHIP of 0.88. I will have to keep the closers in there to make sure I get some saves, hopefully. So this would be a good time to consider benching as many players as I can so keep that ERA low. I can’t quite act yet since I do not want to get any stats from my starters but so far so good after two days.