If you have been following the campaign for EFL Commissioner, you know the incumbent’s air of invincibility, propped up by his never calling an election despite the Rules, has taken a hit this week. Only on his 5th attempt did he succeed in remembering to put on the Rule 5 draft list all the players dropped by EFL teams since the end of the 2016 season. His repeated promises to make the trains run on time have now added incredibility to their irrelevancy.
On the other hand, now that the “last” 15 players have been added to the Rule 5 list, if you had unlimited Rule 5 draft picks, you could draft a pretty fair team:
Infield: 5.0 WAR $17,250,000Catcher: Yan Gomes (1.3 fWAR) 2000Carlos Perez (1.1) 5001b: Chris Carter (0.8) 3750John Jaso (0.7) 42502b: Scooter Gennett (0.1) 10003b: Mark Reynolds (0.1) 2750ss: Alcides Escobar (0.9) 3000OF: 7.9 WAR $ 16,000,000Kevin Kiermaier (4.5) 8750Carlos Gomez (2.2) 5500Aaron Hicks (1.2) 1750Bench/ OH: 3.2 WAR — 11,500,000Chris Iannetta (1.1) 3250Alex Dickerson (1.0) 2000Matt Adams (0.6) 2000Scott Van Slyke (0.5) 4250SP: 12.8 WAR – $ 33,000,000Tyson Ross 2.7 9000Jason Hammel 1.7 6750Collin McHugh 2.7 5250Hisashi Iwakuma 2.5 6250Jeremy Hellickson 2.2 5750Pen: 4.3 WAR – $10,250,000Doug Fister 1.4 4250Corey Knebel 1.3 500Wade LeBlanc 0.3 2000Carson Smith 0.3 500Matt Wisler 0.8 500Rzepcynski 0.2 2500
That’s a 33.2 – WAR team. It would win, on average, about 78 games. And you’d still have the Rookie and Free Agent drafts to get some better infield options, and maybe an ace pitcher, to put your team into playoff contention.
And look: this team costs just $88,000,000. You would still have $4,250,000 left to fill those holes!
Note that the bench consists almost entirely of Cheese. This may be an indicator of something…