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The Bottom 100 All-Stars

Publication Date: August 3, 2004

The Best of the Rest

A coach once said to me, "Isn't it amazing that in a country this big, all of the guys good enough to be on the All-America team end up in the SEC and Pac 10?" The point he was making, which is quite valid, is that baseball, more than any other major sport, is a team game, and top performance by an individual or two is not enough to elevate a team to the top rungs, as the third-place San Francisco Giants can attest. That doesn't make that top performance any less valuable, though, and it's unlikely that an SEC third baseman hitting .330/.400/.500, which seems to be the default for the traditional All-America teams, is actually the best player in the land.

In that spirit, then, I want to look at a group of guys who have been undervalued due to the darkness into which they lit their candles -- this week I'm going to give you an All-Star team made up entirely of guys from the teams who finished in the bottom 100 (roughly the bottom third) of the ISR's for 2004. This listing is purely performance-based -- I don't care what scouts think or how a guy looks, I just care what he's done on the field. One caveat is that defense is hard to judge even for the high profile guys, so it's essentially ignored here. With all that in mind, I'll save you the toolsy "Bob is a gutsy right-hander with an Esteban Loiaza-style intensity" comments, along with an analysis of how bad their teams were, and just tell you what these guys did this year.

Pos   Team   Player   AVG   GP   GS   AB   R   H   2B   3B   HR   RBI   TB   SLG   BB   HBP   SO   GDP   OBP   SF   SH   SB   ATT   OPS  
1B Georgia State Tim Burgess .413 49 49 167 33 69 19 1 7 31 111 .665 32 3 26 3 .510 2 0 4 6 1.175
2B Tennessee-Martin Bryant Jones .425 54 54 226 55 96 13 3 6 33 133 .588 15 6 25 1 .472 1 1 18 21 1.060
SS Indiana Seth Bynum .387 55 55 204 54 79 15 4 10 65 132 .647 21 1 28 1 .435 6 0 19 21 1.082
3B Southern Andrew Toussaint .392 41 41 148 55 58 9 4 15 56 120 .811 28 1 35 0 .478 5 0 7 7 1.289
C Cincinnati Steve Pickerell .375 52 52 192 43 72 14 1 14 46 130 .677 39 0 43 7 .476 2 0 0 0 1.153
OF Rider Scott Rich .375 51 51 200 54 75 17 3 15 45 143 .715 29 0 35 3 .450 2 0 16 18 1.165
OF Detroit Mercy Charlie Anderson .366 55 53 186 42 68 17 0 14 53 127 .683 38 3 40 4 .474 3 0 2 2 1.157
OF Toledo Sean Dobson .394 54 54 231 55 91 23 4 10 63 152 .658 22 5 17 4 .454 2 0 18 24 1.112

Pos   Team   Player   ERA   W   L   APP   GS   CG   SHO   CBO   SV   IP   H   R   ER   BB   SO   2B   3B   HR   AB   BAA   WP   HBP   BK   SFA   SHA  
 
SP Delaware State Shawn Phillips 2.02 10 2 17 15 7 2 1 2 115.2 94 40 26 11 111 14 0 10 425 .221 1 7 0 5 3
SP Pace Patrick Stanley 2.30 8 4 12 12 5 1 1 0 74.1 56 29 19 31 69 13 1 3 265 .211 9 9 1 2 6
SP Massachusetts Eric Chown 3.03 7 4 12 12 9 1 0 0 77.1 75 33 26 15 55 12 1 8 290 .259 6 6 0 1 3
SP Western Illinois Patrick Kohorst 3.03 9 5 16 14 6 2 0 1 101.0 84 45 34 51 74 15 3 4 365 .230 4 12 5 2 9
SP Mississippi Valley State Jermaine Shack 3.10 10 4 14 14 7 2 2 0 87.0 73 32 30 23 77 - - - - - - - - - -
RP Davidson Jay Heafner 2.37 2 2 19 0 0 0 1 11 19.0 23 5 5 5 20 4 0 1 76 .303 0 2 0 0 1

None of these guys made the Baseball America All-America teams, for example, and I can't swear that any of them should have, although you could make a decent case for Toussaint, who was the bright spot in an off year for Southern. On the other hand, around half of them were drafted this year, a couple of them are putting up decent short-season numbers, and Toussaint is among the offensive league leaders in the Pioneer League for the summer, so there's some gold here worth mining for teams willing to take a look.

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Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> The Bottom 100 All-Stars About the author, Boyd Nation