Well, in rereading the first post on my WBC roster selections, I realized I may have been a little overly derisive, but I really just wanted to foster some debate and decided the best way to do so would be to go with low blows. All in all though, I wanted to point out that I didn’t mean to imply that any of Bo’s choices were not logical or defensible (except of course when he arbitrarily started throwing dudes from other countries on his team). Anyway, here’s part 2 of my roster, the pitchers:

Starters

One of the reasons I ended up not doing pitchers yesterday was that I really wasn’t too sure how to go about it. As Bo pointed out, the younger arms like Lincecum, Hamels, and several others will probably not be pitching in this tournament under any circumstances (Well, Hamels certainly won’t at least. The Giants are very dumb, so you never know with Lincecum). In fact, there are probably many veteran guys, starters and relievers, with no discernible health issues who will not agree to pitch in this thing either. Rather than try to guess who will be available and who won’t be, I’ve decided to just go ahead and make the best staff I can out of American pitchers, regardless of how likely it is that they participate in the real WBC. Let’s face it, the real team’s pool of available talent will be much smaller than ours no matter what we do, so we will suspend reality once again, just as we did in not selecting any of the Jeter/Varitek types. As I mentioned in my previous post, I will also be taking more than 4 starters. I know there are a lot of good reasons the team stuck to 4 last time and may even do it again, but this is my team so I’m going to do what I want.

I agree on Halladay, Lincecum, and Hamels. In our perfect world scenario, these guys simply have to be on the team. I’m taking Brandon Webb as my fourth starter. I know he faltered down the stretch, but the first few months of the season have consistently been his best, so I think he’s a natural fit for this tournament. Now, I definitely wanted at least one more guy with the ability to start or at least pitch 3-4 innings if need be, but I also wanted him to have the makeup to be a short reliever if necessary. There were two obvious guys for this role, David Price and Joba Chamberlain, and I’m taking them both even though there isn’t a chance in hell either will be pitching in the WBC.  Their teams would never allow them to put the extra innings on their golden arms, but as mentioned above, most likely neither would the Phillies with Hamels, nor the Giants with Lincecum, so I’m sticking to my guns and going with the best American staff I can put together. I also think that if their respective teams were ridiculously stupid and decided to turn them into relievers next year, they would both be among the top 10 in baseball, so they could each have a lot of value on this hypothetical team even without starting. Apologies go out to Sandy Koufax, Kyle Kendrick, Boof Bonser, and Rick Reed.

Relievers

I agree that Lidge, Nathan, Papelbon, Fuentes, and Wood are clear choices. Though again it is very unlikely that all of them participate. I know Bo went with some situational guys, but honestly I would just never want a guy like J.P. Howell in the game over anybody mentioned above. There’s about a 50% chance J.P Howell is going to suck next year. So I don’t mind going with all top notch end of game type guys without worrying so much about roles. With that in mind, I’m giving a spot to Jon Broxton. I’ve always liked him and feel that he is on the cusp of being a top closer. I had a hard time figuring out what to do with this last spot. There isn’t a reliever that really jumps out at me and I’m fine with Price and Fuentes as my only lefties, so I decided to go with a guy I considered for the swing role I spoke of above: Justin Duchschurer. He was great last year as a starter and I know most people, including myself, are not sold yet, but if you look at his career previous to that, he’s been an excellent reliever as well in all but 1 of his 5 previous big league seasons. I like his versatility for this team too much to choose a guy like Sherrill over him just to have a 3^rd lefty.

(Pat)