Stars versus depth roster construction Options

[Worst Trade Evah]

Another problem with "spreading it around" is that a lineup full of .800 OPS hitters will do better against bad and mediocre pitching than a lineup that has some great hitters and some lousy hitters BUT against the best pitchers, it'll do no better, and probably worse. Those .800 OPS hitters live off the bad pitchers but the 1.000 OPS hitters can hit anyone, anytime.  See the 5-game Yankee series for reference.  Papi did fine.  Manny was Superman. The rest of the lineup did an impersonation of 7 eunuch dwarves.  THEY embarrassed the organization.  Not Manny.

Well, the 2004 Cardinals had the bigger offensive stars while we had more people like Bellhorn, Mueller and a longer list of .800 OPS people, and that worked out pretty well.