The Wild Card: Introducing the Diamondbacks Team Tournament

So in the interests of getting five weeks worth of content without having to think of new ideas resolving an age-old debate, I am proud to introduce the Diamondbacks Team Tournament, wherein I take every Diamondbacks team in history that has completed a season and pit them up against one another in the Clefo Thunderdome to see who winds up victorious.

How will I do this?

You probably don't recall (but humor me) I did a few "projections" last season using Hardball II, a computer game from 1989 from Accolade, to see how the Diamondbacks would do (poorly, as it turned out.) I will go back to that well, but this time, take all 17 past teams in Diamondback history and pit them against one-another.

With Hardball II, there is a team editor where you can plug in stats (Like Batting Average, Walks, Homers, Doubles, ERA, etc.) to players which tells you how they will perform. I will take the season numbers from every Diamondbacks team and plug them into the game. I will be setting who will be starting or on the bench with whoever had the most ABs at that position for the Diamondbacks on that given year (easily found on Baseball Reference)

I will do single elimination format, even though that goes against everything Baseball stands for, and in a month, we will have definitive proof as to which Diamondbacks team was the best of all time, however, any team advancing will move to the next starter in the rotation, up until the final round (because who doesn't wanna see Ace vs. Ace in that?)

Seeding

Seeding was done by the tried and true method of "Going farther in the playoffs gets seeding precedence", because it seemed wrong to have the 2001 team not be the 1 seed (of course, this leads to the 2007 team being the 2 seed. Life isn't fair), Wins was the next tiebreaker, followed by pythag record/run differential

1. 2001
2. 2007
3. 1999
4. 2002
5. 2011
6. 2000
7. 2003
8. 2008
9. 2012
10. 2013
11. 2005
12. 2006
13. 2009
14. 2010
15. 1998
16. 2014
17. 2004

The 2014 and 2004 teams will do a play-in game, it will probably be hilarious. For the more visual minded, here's a bracket

The play-in game and first round will be completed in next week's edition. In the meantime, place your figurative bets. Although, if you want to place real ones, wire me some cash and I'll make sure it's put to good use.

Honest.