27th Man

[jleddy]

On my lunch break, I was listing to Thursday's Effectively Wild podcast and one of the hosts brought up MLB's expansion to 26-man rosters and asked what type of player is likely to be added. (Note: MLB's rule is that the additional player must be a position player, so I guess there will be a maximum number of pitchers a team can have rostered at one time).

To tie it back to the BBA, I'm interested in what type of player most of us have as our 27th man. I've posted as many types as I could think of and I'm interested to see the distribution across the league. Imagine if we rolled our rosters back to 26 players...what type of player would likely not make the roster?

Feel free to discuss in detail your 27th-man type player or what you think MLB teams will end up doing.

[recte44]

I love the fact that we came up with this years before MLB.

[Fat Nige]

I'm not quite sure what my 27th man does, he's a RP or a 5th outfielder. In all probability he's likely to be an 5th outfielder, I could probably do with only four outfielders if we went back to 26-man rosters but I don't think I'd be happy cutting the number of bullpen arms.

[shoeless.db]

I was stumped on who my 27th man was until I had to decide who I’d get rid of to go down to 26. Turns out it’s a RHB platoon outfielder.

[RonCo]

It's usually a platoon guy, but it changes a lot.

[JimBob2232]

For me, he is a DH.

[ae37jr]

I usually platoon all of my bench bats. I feel it keeps everyone fresh so they perform better. Also cheaper to find two half superstars then one complete superstar.

This year I've been carrying around an extra lefty bat due to poor planning on my part. Sometimes I get stuck with players out of options and just ride it out for a bit.

Also a good idea to use the spot to cover depth. Like a 10 stamina reliever in bullpen in case a starter gets hurt. Or a guy who can play multiple positions during 19 inning games to save defense. You hope that stuff doesn't happen.... But it always does.

[indiansfan]

I put middle reliever because that’s what it usually is. Sometimes it’s a bat, but normally an arm

[HoosierVic]

For Chicago, it’s outfielder Keith Sánchez - he’s a defensive sub in CF and LF and 1B, if necessary. Going to have him learn RF, too, to increase his versatility even more.