Hitting The Cutoff Man

As anyone who watches the show knows, the former players who serve as analysts on ESPN's Baseball Tonight tend to have their shortcomings as TV personalities.

But it's interesting to think about what would happen if you collected all the BBTN analysts through the show's history and brought them together do something more natural to them to talking on TV: Playing baseball. The show has been short on quality analysts over the years, but a collection of these guys in their playing primes would have been quite a formidable team, I believe.

The idea for this came from this post on ESPN's TMI blog, which relayed a question posed by BBTN's Tim Kurkjian: Could the current BBTN crew "in their current state of physical fitness, protect a 10-run lead against the 2010 Yankees heading into the bottom of the eighth inning"? I think the answer clearly is no, but it got me to thinking.

Without further adieu, I will introduce our squad. (I used Wikipedia's list of BBTN personalities.)

Starting Lineup
1. Eric Young, 2B: Handled the bat better than he does the English language. .359 career OBP and 465 stolen bases.
2. Nomar Garciappara, SS: Recently retired and a newcomer to the show, Nomar was on his way to the Hall of Fame career before being derailed by injuries. Still finished with a career line of .313/.361/.521.
3. Dusty Baker, LF: Now known more for ruining promising pitchers' arms than anything he did as a player or an analyst. But he was a solid hitter, putting up five seasons with an OPS+ of better than 130.
4. Dave Winfield, RF: Easily one of the greatest all-around athletes ever to play the game. Hit 465 career home runs and made the Hall of Fame.
5. John Kruk, DH: It's hard to believe, but Kruk was a pretty damn good hitter for a while. Career line of .300/.397/.446 and topped a .400 OBP four times.
6. Tino Martinez, 1B: Topped a .500 slugging percentage five times and finished with 339 career home runs. Managed to rack up more than 400 postseason plate appearances, putting up just a .672 OPS.
7. Bill Robinson, CF: Playing mostly for the Phillies and Pirates in the 1970s, he slugged better than .500 four times. Hit .304/.337/.525 with a career-high 26 home runs in 1977.
8. Ray Knight, 3B: The man who scored the winning run in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series enjoyed his greatest success earlier in his career with the Reds and Astros. From 1979-83, made two All-Star teams and reached at least a 116 OPS+ three times.
9. Mike Macfarlane, C: Macfarlane is the only former catcher to become a regular analyst on BBTN (as far as I can tell), so he gets this job by default. But he actually was a decent hitter for his position, posting a 99 OPS+ over more than 4,000 plate appearances.
10. Curt Schilling, SP: Another newcomer to the show, Schilling is a completely insufferable human being. That said, he was a hell of a pitcher.

And the rest of the squad ...

Bench: OFs Brian McRae, Doug Glanville and Chris Singleton; IFs Aaron Boone, Eduardo Perez, Fernando Vina and Harold Reynolds

Starting pitchers: Jim Kaat, Orel Hershiser, Rick Sutcliffe

Relief pitchers: Jeff Brantley and Rob Dibble.

This team obviously is a little short on pitchers, but the ones it has will get the job done. I think the lineup would be solid enough, and the bench is deep, particularly from a defensive standpoint.

Now we just have to wait for MLB Network to cycle through enough analysts to have a team for the BBTN crew to play against.

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