Legends 08 Review

All congratulations are due to our first loser, Legends! Legends is the inaugural winner of the ‘CAN’T’ Division. Blog’s not too sure that this honor is going to cause Legends to go out and get a trophy on his own dime for that accomplishment, but it is what it is. The fact of the matter is though, that Legends did not lose in the playoffs until the finals, taking down the defending champ Regulators on the way. Fine. Bra-friggin-vo.

A-Rod, Dodger-Manny, Rollins, Delgado, Bay, An-Ram, Dye. Rollins was ranked 88 as he missed some time and had a ‘down’ year, but the rest all finished ranked better than 43. Very solid; especially down the stretch as Manny, Delgado and Bay all had monster 2nd halves.

The final 2 week battle against Snot was closer than the final 7-3 score may indicate. 2 more saves and 3 more strikeouts would have given the title to Legends, 5-5. So close, yet so… well… Blog won’t rub #2’s nose in it anymore.

- Best Move: Legends only pulled off 2 trades during the season (one in pre-season), and both were pretty much even deals. (Getting Nady for Hardy: both solid, and getting Verlander for Sherrill, both stunk). Legends was able to grab a lot of the bottom tier closers who started picking up saves, and this really made up for their poor luck on closers in the draft, but there’s not one great closer that they were able to grab. Overall, the best move was probably grabbing Jason Bay (25) with the 96th pick in the draft.

- Worst Move: Legends dropped DeRosa (64) Votto (98) and Huff (26), but so did everybody else. Byrnes was taken with Legends 2nd pick, but was injured after he was drafted. Kelvim Escobar was taken 91st overall, but was injured before the draft. Kelvim wins.

- Biggest Surprise: In early June, Carlos Delgado looked to be done. He was awful, killing the average and not providing enough power to make up for it. But Legends was patient, and it really paid off. Delgado found the fountain of HGH and wound up ranked 39th overall by putting up an MVP type 2nd half.

- Biggest Disappointment: Besides all 4 closers that Legends took in the draft disappointing at one time or another (Sherrill, Soriano, Wilson, Borowski), the biggest disappointment was probably Josh Beckett. Legends traded a 4th round pick for Beckett and a 10th, then kept him expecting him to anchor the Legends rotation. Not so much. Beckett wasn’t awful (166), but he certainly wasn’t the ace Legend was hoping for and paid for.

- Blog Would Have: Besides not taking Escobar in the draft, you know, cause he was hurt, Blog would have sold some draft picks for help this year. There were some real solid closers out there down the stretch (K-Rod, Rivera, Nathan, Hanrahan and Marmol were all moved after 8/23. One or 2 of these guys may have given Legends the saves and K’s he needed to be champ…

- Legends Should Keep: Manny, Bay, Aramis Ramirez, Rollins, A-rod. Even though A-rod is hurt and, well, A-rod, the value is probably still there as a top 50 caliber player. The other 4 are pretty solid across the board, though not without questions. Will Manny want to play? Can Bay stay hot in Boston now that AL East pitching has a book on him?

- Final Draft Grade: B+. The Escobar pick keeps the draft from getting an A, because he was injured. Offensively though, there were very few misses in this draft. Byrnes got hurt, Varitek stunk, Griffey was a disappointment, and there wasn’t much speed taken. Those are really the only glaring negatives on offense in this draft. The closers Legends took were crappy, but they were still in line to get saves and weren’t taken earlier than they should have gone. Legends ended up usually getting their replacements anyway.

- Final Season Grade: B+. Only one team gets an A.

- 2009 Outlook: Legends still has all his picks, which is certainly NOT the case for the 1st and 3rd place teams from 2008, so that’s good. The keepers could be great if A-rod is A-rod by July 1. The keepers could also be huge disappointments if A-rod’s not A-rod by July 1, Manny stays Manny, and Bay replicates 07 instead of 08. Blog guesses that Legends should be in contention once again in 09.