Hot Position Player Combos
by rotoballs
by Luke Kelley
This is a love-hate thing. Teammate combinations can bring pain, joy, and even mediocrity. But I love them anyway. I have had duos that have carried my whole team some weeks, and screwed my roster on others. I’ve made in season trades to set up a duo down the stretch to try to carry my team to the playoffs, and have had to break some up because the production wasn’t there. Some notable combos I’ve had in the past include Pujols and Holliday (’10), Longoria and Upton (‘09), Han Ram and Uggla, and a few years back I had the tough-when-healthy pair of Wright and Reyes.
An ideal twosome would have both power and speed, so you can cover all 5 categories. But you don’t have to be picky to find solid partners. The elite teams have multiple possibilities in this category: Yankees (Cano, Arod, Tex, and Jeter), Phillies (Howard, Utley, Rollins, and the Flyin’ Hawaiian), and even the Brew Crew (Braun, Fielder, and now Hart and Weeks).
These are my Top 5 Combos in new places for 2011 (that are reasonably draft-able):
1. Gonzalez/Crawford, BOS 2010 Stat Line: .303, 50 HR, 191 RBI, 197 R, 47 SB
Wow, this combo could be extremely dangerous. If they are within a couple lineup spots of each other just imagine: Crawford singles, steals 2nd, and Gonzalez lines a double off the Monster! However, this might be hard to pull off. I feel that the 9 or 10 slots would have to get lucky to do this, but I had to include this dynamic duo because of the potential (maybe substitute one for Youk who will be at 3B).
