Great thought piece.  Inspecting the OFs in the lineup, it strikes me that perhaps there are superior, balanced players such as Carlos Beltran, Nate McLouth, and Corey Hart just off the top of my head.  Were Pence/Hunter/Bruce meant to represent the baseline talent level for that position?

I’m a big fan of the power-speed combos in early rounds like Sizemore, Granderson, McLouth, Beltran, Soriano etc… but you certainly can’t forget the guys that derive a great deal of their value from two categories like Dunn (HR & RBI).  I think you inappropriately pegged Ichiro as a one-category maven when he is actually very good in three: R, SB and AVG. 

“Any team that rosters Dunn will need several bonafide average studs to balance his yearly flirtation with the Mendoza Line.”

The keyword here is several.  You really don’t need several to offset Dunn unless you also have Cust and Jacobs, too.  The impact of one batting average anchor is vastly overrated these days which makes those three along with Giambi and Reynolds (and others) very good values since they can be had so late.  (Batting Average Anchors: Myth?)

I’m curious where the “average” stat line came from. It specifies a 12 team league “average” player, but of course the “average” OF is going to have a better stat line than the “average” C. What’s the point in average all the positions together? If you have an OF with that average line listed above, he’s actually probably below average. If you have a C with that line, he’s above average.

Anyway, I understand the gist of the article, but I think it would be more helpful and illuminating if that average stat line was explained in a bit more detail.

First thing that I noticed was how NL oriented the list was, I wonder if this is a fluke coincidence or something more to the NL and players at a the certain level.