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Pseudofantasy WAR League Thingy May Update

So, remember in February when we all jumped into a Google Doc together for, like, five hours and drafted a bunch of guys based solely on how much WAR we thought they would produce? Well, I thought it might be a good time for an update - not that we can do anything about our teams at this point, but more just to remind us who the heck is on our team and how they're doing.

WAR, of course, is a terrible way to measure a player's value after only about 35 games. But when you're in a pseudofantasy baseball league based solely on WAR, it's a wonderful way (actually, the only way) to measure how well your team is doing. So here's the roundup, with totals added up before Tuesday night's games. Links to each team's roster on Fangraphs are in the table (and yes, I included all the bullpens and the guys who weren't in Fangraphs yet when we drafted).

Your leader about a fifth of the way through the season is -JP-, who's riding some phenomenal pitching in addition to some solid hitting. He's making us all look silly by drafting Jake Peavy (1.7 WAR) in the 17th round. His home-run rates for his pitchers are absurdly low, though, so he's primed for some regression at some point.

Running just behind him is Hyatt, who is getting tons of production from his bats and a bit less from his pitching. My favorite part about his team is that his second-leading hitter, Chris Young, has put up 1.5 WAR in 46 freaking PAs. A .588 wOBA will do that for you. The apparent downside for Hyatt is that he has both Chris Sale and Aroldis Chapman as starting pitchers, so if I understand the league rules right, he'll lose their WAR (1.8 so far) if they don't end up qualifying at SP.

Rounding out the top tier is NoahJ, whose "draft all your pitchers first, so you can grab the Braves bullpen" strategy seems to working out for him, but probably not in the way he expected. Unless the other part of that strategy was "draft the overperforming bastards from the Brewers' rivals" - because he's being led by Bryan LaHair, David Freese, and Yadier Molina.

Jordan M is being kept in the hunt by the Rangers' bullpen, which has accumulated half of his pitching WAR, as well as Derek Jeter's insane start. He's lost Chris Narveson for the season, but once his pitching staff's high home run rates regress, they should make up for him.

I, Cheeseandcorn, also went with the "draft the overperforming bastards from the Brewers' rivals" strategy, and it seems to be working out OK for me, too. With Matt Holliday, Carlos Beltran, and Rafael Furcal, I feel kind of bad tangentially benefiting from the Cardinals' deal with the BABIP devil, but I'd still be as happy as anyone to see them start slumping. Also: Austin Jackson is amazing, and Yu Darvish is the only thing keeping my pitching from being a complete black hole.

Right now, Rendezvous' team is pretty much just Michael Bourn, Carlos Ruiz, and Justin Verlander (and the Yankees bullpen). Jayson Werth just went on the DL, but I suspect this team will make a run once Lance Berkman comes back and Tim Lincecum and Yovani Gallardo start pitching like themselves.

Decent performances up and down Mr McGehee's roster, led by Matt Wieters' breakout start. If Jose Bautista and Mike Trout start hitting, this team could move up in a hurry. On the other hand, Gio Gonzalez is probably going to actually give up a couple runs at some point, too.

Saltire's going to ride Matt Kemp like Rubie Q's raptor, because that's pretty much all he's got so far on the batting side. He also has three players who have yet to play this year (Michael Morse, Roy Oswalt, Jorge de la Rosa), so yeah, Kemp had better have a 70-homer season in him.

ecocd has gotten some pretty solid pitching (thanks, Reds bullpen!), but this team's got a whole lot of meh on the offensive side. Except - oh look, at the top of the list! Another Cardinal (Jon Jay) with a .400 BABIP! (No, I'm not bitter at all.)

Tepo6688's team has been pretty average on both sides so far, though I could see a few players taking off soon. Yoenis Cespedes (only 0.1 WAR?), Clayton Kershaw, and Adrian Gonzalez seem like pretty good candidates.

brewcrewshrew's pitching is solid (mostly King Felix, Wandy Rodriguez, and Jaime Garcia), but the batting is pretty weak, and then - ewwwwwww, Marlon Byrd. -0.7 WAR, yikes. Evan Longoria's out for a couple of months and the pitching should be due for regression, so things might get worse before they get better.

SRB has Josh Hamilton and Zack Greinke, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's already jumped up three or four spots just from when I grabbed these numbers Tuesday afternoon. He also has Bryce Harper, who's racked up 0.6 WAR in a week and a half and whose defense UZR loves. But unfortunately, Albert Pujols is the Yuni B of this team - destroying something that could otherwise be beautiful.

MrLeam's being killed by having two starters (Tim Stauffer and Scott Baker) who haven't thrown a pitch this season, though the ones who have thrown for him have been decent enough. He's got a lot of really slow starters on the offensive side, too (Miguel Cabrera, Mark Teixeira, Dustin Ackley).

The pitching for bschles is decent, but there's a crapton of dead weight on the batting side of the ledger. Erick Aybar, Rickie Weeks, and Lorenzo Cain are the worst offenders, and Mat Gamel's done for the season. But Jose Altuve's been awesome, so that's cool, I guess.

And there's masondlo, with Brennan Boesch and Eric Hosmer obliterating his batting WAR and Jhoulys Chacin (who's now been demoted) and Clay Buchholz laying waste to his pitching WAR. This team's been just a trainwreck so far (sorry, Mason), and outside of Hosmer, there's not a whole lot you can blame on luck. Mason may be proving the old adage that you can't win a title in April, but you sure can lose one.

Here's the league standings (table shamelessly stolen from mkecheese):

PSEUDOFANTASY WAR LEAGUE THINGY
TEAM Total WAR Batting WAR Pitching WAR
-JP- 14.6 8.0 6.6
Hyatt 14.0 9.2 4.8
NoahJ 13.8 8.9 4.9
Jordan M 12.8 8.6 4.2
Cheeseandcorn 11.9 9.6 2.3
Rendezvous 10.7 6.1 4.6
Mr McGehee 10.1 7.4 2.7
Saltire 9.9 6.2 3.7
ecocd 9.8 5.7 4.1
Tepo6688 9.6 6.1 3.5
brewcrewshrew 9.5 5.3 4.2
SRB 9.1 4.4 4.7
MrLeam 8.9 5.9 3.0
bschles 8.8 4.9 3.9
masondlo 5.4 3.7 1.7

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

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