THE LEGION OF DOOM: THE EVIL EMPIRE

Real life photo of Vinson Mulvey. Trust me.

off-season profile part 11

Welcome to the Penultimate edition of Off-Season Profiles, and the final edition I will be authoring. It’s been a remarkable journey of self-discovery and hubris. We laughed, we cried, we read most of these on the toilet, but all mediocre things must come to an end. This is the part where I will usually write something quippy about the structure of this article for you all to skip over, but I hope you didn’t pass it by this time.

Vinson Mulvey has just come off one of the most dominant seasons in league history, and to spend 1,000+ words trying to give him advice about what he should do or not do would be arrogant, even for me. I am merely a gnat caught in the afterbirth of his greatness. So, we are going to blaze a slightly different trail here. Why should I presume to tell a God how to rule, but we can all dream of toppling him can’t we? Everyone wants to see the Emperor with no pants. Let’s have a little fun here and turn this thing on its head.

Pop your popcorn, crack open a Hamm’s, and like the subject of this video, set aside that nagging sense of imposter syndrome. I’m going to tell you what has to happen for you, dear reader, to de-throne the Champ.

what things does he need to mess up?

Mulvey excels at trading. For him, making optimal trades is like a dolphin swimming through the ocean… he can do it in his sleep (that’s true. Read a book). Last year Mulvey acquired Trea Turner, Jose Ramirez, and Freddie Freeman all through trades, netting him a grand total of four (4) first round caliber players. It’s just astonishing how he manages to convince owners to act against their own self-interests. I’m convinced he exudes some sort of pheromone (and it’s delicious).

The first step for us mouth-breathers to catch up to the king is for some of these trades to start going south. Mulvey’s first order of business over the next few weeks will be to move Freddie Freeman and Jose Ramirez for draft pick capital. I set the market by sending a seventh round pick to him for Trea Turner, so now Mulvey is likely angling for a fifth round pick or better in exchange for Freeman. Best case scenario would be if Mulvey doesn’t manage to deal Ramirez and isn’t able to swing higher than a sixth round pick for Freeman. Mulvey thrives on turning dead assets into value. It’ll be up to other owners to start putting the squeeze on him (yes this is hypocritical and no I don’t care that it is).

Mulvey also hasn’t been coy about his desire to hear offers on George Kirby. Kirby has been a fantasy darling this off-season, but mostly because many analysts are projecting him to increase his strikeout rate and take the next step into the realm of the true elite. Mulvey thinks he is smarter than that. He thinks he can deal Kirby for a decent bat in return and cobble together a strong rotation off the late rounds and the wire because the rest of us neck-beards are so bad at fantasy we may as well be chiseling our waiver claims into stone tablets.

Someone needs to pry Kirby away from him for a fair price and make him regret it. Kirby’s floor is incredibly high, and his developing slider has the potential to give him the true swing-and-miss offering to dovetail with his improving fastball that he needs to boost his strikeout rate. Kirby as is is a top 20 starter. Kirby with better location on his slider and continued command excellence with his fastball is a true top-5 SP. There are already signs that it is happening with improved swing and miss on the slider out of the zone down the stretch.

Someone go out there and make Mulvey put his money where he mouth is regarding his disdain for keeping pitchers, and then make him swallow that mistake. Yes, that was intentionally dirty.

Besides off-season trades there’s the draft. Spoiler alert, Mulvey is an excellent drafter, even when he spends most of it intoxicated. Don’t believe me? Last year alone Mulvey managed to draft…

BLAKE SNELL - EVENTUAL CY YOUNG AWARD WINNER IN THE 6TH ROUND

GEORGE KIRBY - SOPHOMORE PHENOM, FANTASY PHENOM, AND NOW TOP 20 STARTER IN THE 8TH ROUND

NICO HOERNER - OR AS MULVEY LIKES TO CALL HIM… TREA TURNER, IN THE 11TH ROUND

JARED KELENIC - TWO MONTH STUD IN THE 18TH ROUND

And this is all in addition to the picks that worked out well for just returning the SAME value they were drafted at.

Owners need to count on a more normal draft from Mulvey where he doesn’t strike as much gold, and the somewhat controversial strategy of DOING YOUR HOMEWORK AND PREPPING FOR THE DRAFT. This applies even more in the new Minor League Draft. If you are planning to wing it through that and “see how it goes”, or worse not even show up at all, you should know Mulvey is prepping for it. He’s drinking in prospect news like it’s discount beer. He’s guzzling that knowledge straight down his gullet and into his gray matter. This is just another avenue for him to gain an advantage on you. Don’t let him.

Mulvey’s success isn’t because he’s some sort of fantasy Rain Man, it’s because he’s well read and well researched. He knows the players he likes and knows who he doesn’t and most importantly he can give you LOGICAL REASONS WHY. The good news, dear reader, is that you too can possess this superpower. Read a few fantasy articles now and again, watch some spring training games, and put on a podcast the next time you’re driving to your soul sucking job. Mulvey takes the time to make informed decisions and that’s why he makes a lot of correct ones. We can lament his success or emulate the methodology.

how do his keepers fail him?

Mulvey has assembled one of the best keeper crops in the league, but keepers are still lottery tickets to some degree, and outside of the very top end of players there is always risk. Are there risks, blindspots, and potential failure points within Mulvey’s most likely crew of sleepers?

MOOKIE BETTS (1)

Not here.

In all honesty, Betts is as close to a sure bet for continued excellence as you’ll find in the draft. You can try to poke holes in his age, or the fact that he can’t possibly replicate a 39 homer season, or that his batting average jumped almost 40 points and is due to fall. In the end he’s going to return first round value and we all just need to be happy he isn’t kept at a lower round.

GEORGE KIRBY (8)

There isn’t a lot to criticize in Kirby’s floor either, and that causes a problem. So far these first two keepers are very “low risk”, which is exactly what Mulvey builds his success off of. Kirby’s worst case is more of the same; high command and control with low strikeouts. Worst case is he’s a slightly worse Cliff Lee, and that is still a sparkling value in the 8th round. Best case he pumps up that strikeout rate and you’re looking at a Cy Young contender. I’d love to poke at obvious red flags here but I don’t see them. Hopefully the risks are coming.

VLADIMIR GUERRERO JR (9)

Ah. Here it is.

For all of Mulvey’s logic he’s still susceptible to the odd sentimentality. Vlad is the perfect example of this. Here is the list of career OPS marks every season for Vlad. You tell me what jumps out at you:

2019 - .772

2020 - .791

2021 - 1.002

2022 - .818

2023 - .788

Golly Gee though that 2021 number looks really enticing, doesn’t it? Surely there must be a really great player in there for him to produce a season long OPS over 1.000. That’s elite. It’s not like he was playing in a little league ballpark right?

Oh..

TD Ballpark in Dunedin, where the Blue Jays played the first two months of their 2021 season, had the highest fly ball park factor during that time period of any ballpark used for major league games. Does that solely account for Guerrero’s huge season? Probably not. He barreled the most balls in his career and kept his notoriously high career ground ball rate under control during that time, which has nothing to do with the ballpark. But the possibility exists that he was a one-hit wonder and that he is good and not great. At round 9 the risk is still low but this is where we start to see cracks in the armor. Another 700 OPS season isn’t going to be acceptable or helpful in helping Mulvey repeat. Failure in this case looks like more of the same. High ground balls, underperforming homers, and an OPS below .800.

SEIYA SUZUKI (14)

Suzuki engendered himself to Mulvey last season by going on a tear down the stretch where he pushed his OPS over .800 and put his strong exit velocities to good use. Suzuki always had in-game power in Japan but wasn’t able to translate it to similar numbers in America until now. The problem is that his “breakout” was a stretch of about two months at the end of the season, and replication isn’t assured. Suzuki also doesn’t profile to be much better than his top end of last season with his peripherals and while that’s a good player, it’s not the stud Mulvey tends to fill out his roster with. He’s a balanced fantasy option with a high floor at a weak position. Failure for this keeper slot is a regression to the beginning of last year, which would mean that Mulvey kept an OF3 or OF4.

CORBIN CARROLL (24)

What a stud with great hair. What can I possibly have bad to say about Carroll. I’ll tell you.

That’s right. That’s it. That’s the best he’s got. He shot his load and now he’s spent. Carroll’s value is primarily built on his speed, and owners expecting an Acuna-esque bounce in his power numbers should temper their expectations. Carroll’s exit velocity and barrel rates are middling at best, meaning that an increase from the 25 homers he socked last year is unlikely. He doesn’t have a wiry frame to fill out with muscle either. Couple that with lingering questions about this problem shoulder and you have a player primed for regression. This is where things could unravel for Mulvey in that Carroll is the type of injury-susceptible stud whose loss in a roster could have an outsized impact.

ROYCE LEWIS (FA)

I love Royce Lewis more than most cats, some dogs, and at least 60% of all people. Dropping him last season was a mistake that I will have to live with for the remainder of my life. My parents write me twice a day to remind me of how much of a disappointment I am (before Lewis it was only once-a-day). Lewis has all the tools to be great, but he’s more fragile than my tender self-esteem. I expect 100 games played next year. Even if Lewis does the improbable and avoids another catastrophic injury, he’s coming off many incomplete seasons, so a sudden jump to a full-season workload could expose him to repetitive motion injuries in the hamstrings and obliques like we’ve seen before in players of his body type. Failure here is directly tied injury risk, and the risk is sky high.

irl team analogue:

los angeles dodgers

It couldn’t have been anything else. This is a well run team by an energetic, knowledgeable, willful owner who is laser focused on winning. Even if everything that I spelled out goes wrong for Mulvey, chances are he is still going to be in the mix for a playoff spot. Magical seasons like last year don’t tend to repeat themselves though and I expect his road to be harder, but that also depends on owners making it so. Properly value your players and the players on other teams, do your research, believe in your valuations, and fight for every category.

The Dodgers, like Mulvey, have only one title in my lifetime. Winning it all is hard. Make it harder. Be better.