Welcome to Mr. Sparkle Saturday. My name is David Arnott, and I'll be bringing you at least four posts today on whatever the hell I damn well please (as long as Zach doesn't kill me first). If you are interested in distributing Mr. Sparkle in your home prefecture, shoot an email to sportszilla at gmail dot com.

10:43am -- I'm working today, so it's time to unleash Mr. Sparkle's Saturday of Lists! Settle in, plug in American Aquarium, and read, dammit.

Yesterday, a few co-workers and I had a discussion about the best fantasy baseball seasons of the past twenty years. In other words, if you were to do a hybridized WhatIf Sports type league and play 5x5 with all available player-seasons from 1987 through today, who would you pick first?

I'm sure someone can crunch the numbers and actually compute which guys added the most to fantasy teams on a raw stats basis, and then add a variable for position scarcity, but here's a short list of players we put together in our discussion. Feel free to suggest guys in the comments.

1) C - Mike Piazza 1997 - 362 AVG/40 HR/124 RBI/104 R/5 SB
2) OF - Larry Walker 1997 - 366 AVG/49 HR/130 RBI/143 R/33 SB
3) OF - Eric Davis 1987 - 293 AVG/37 HR/100 RBI/120 R/50 SB
4) OF - Barry Bonds 1993 - 336 AVG/46 HR/123 RBI/129 R/29 SB
5) P - Randy Johnson 2002 - 24 W/2.32 ERA/334 K/1.03 WHIP/0 SV
6) SS - Alex Rodriguez 1996 - 358 AVG/36 HR/123 RBI/141 R/15 SB

3:30pm -- In a sense, it's a good thing Michigan's about to lose to Wisconsin. It means they'll have nothing to lose against Ohio State, with the opportunity to take everything away from the Buckeyes. David's preferred Championship Game participants, in order of how much he wants to see them there:

1 - Oregon
2 - LSU
3 - West Virginia
4 - Ohio State
5 - Kansas

Notice that every team on this list has a signature aspect to their games. There is no 2005-vintage USC type team out there, a team that can do everything better than all but the most elite teams.

6:05pm -- We're on upset alert, as tOSU is trailing Illinois by two touchdowns late in the third quarter at the Horseshoe. The Buckeyes are not panicking, still running the ball, just like video games have taught a couple generations of football gamers... and Ohio State scores to get back within one score, on a run.

From playing these games, scores of kids have learned football strategy better than their forebears could, because they've been watching a reasonable proxy for game film and making relevant decisions. Of course, there are still major differences between real life strategy and video game strategy, a discussion of which could fill an entire column. The major one is that speed skews everything in video games. If a guy is fast, his football skills are far less meaningful.

With that in mind, here are the most dominant football video game players of the post-Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson Era:

4) Steve Smith - Madden 2005 - Smith has a great kick return rating and he's got great hands. He also doesn't demand the same salary as Terrell Owens or Randy Moss, for some reason, so he's the most valuable receiver you can get.

3) Lavar Arrington - Madden 2001 - I played Arrington at defensive end and controlled him on every play. This was back when he was young and his Potential rating was a 95, or something, and he improved exponentially as the season went on. Because I was controlling him, his Awareness hardly mattered, and I was able to take advantage of his 87-ish Speed and 85-ish Strength to dominate every right tackle I played against. The same sort of thing happens when you make Terrell Suggs into a defensive end in more recent editions of Madden.

2) Michael Vick - Every version of Madden he's in - Kajillions of pixels have been spilled on this. Basically, if you control Vick, you can rush for 1,500 yards and throw for 4,000 on a consistent basis. Spread the offense and if they don't contain, run.

1) Michael Vick - NCAA 2004 (All Time Virginia Tech) - In Madden, Vick starts out with accuracy issues, and his Awareness isn't all that great, so he has a propensity to fumble. However, in NCAA, he has none of those issues. He's literally an unstoppable player in the Bo Jackson mold. Not only can he throw like John Elway and run like Bob Hayes, but you can run option plays with him. Unfair.

Comments

I might have to go with A-Rod's 1998, his 40-40 year...yes, you'd sacrifice quite a bit of batting average and quite a few runs for a marginal bump in HR and RBI, but you get 31 more steals! Also, you might have to consider his 2007 as the 3B year: .314, 54 HR, 143 R, 156 RsBI, 24 SB. I don't think anyone else at 3B can match that.

Posted by: Zach Geballe | November 10, 2007 5:59 PM

Also, how about Sammy Sosa's 1998? .308, 66 HR, 134 R, 158 RsBI, 18 SB. What a year for offense.

Posted by: Zach Geballe | November 10, 2007 6:01 PM

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