Use this thread to talk about why you made the choices you did when building your teams. Maybe make predictions for how well they'll do. I'll include my own as well.

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This year's tournament is historic for a few reasons. It's the:

• First time we've managed tor each 120 owners in Round 1
• First time Admin has played (that I know of)

For me, life is busier than ever so I appreciate everyone for being patient while I checked rosters and got things going. Even with spreadsheets, checking 720 rosters is a massive undertaking. We're still waiting on a few fixes but, for the most part are good to go.

I'll write up my own strategies later, but at a high level I tried to come up with themes that would test some basic assumptions about the sim. The biggest of those is that you can't win by drafting HRs. I think we'll see multiple leagues where teams that go all in on HRs do quite well. This game has never been about cookies, it's about out-thinking your opponents. And I've seen more competitive play, different strategies, and new mindsets appear over the last year than any year in recent memory. The game is definitely alive, and we're going to see who comes out on top once again.

We're in for a great tournament.

$70M: MH .263
Stadium: Target Field

This was the most challenging theme. The obvious strategy is to minimize your opponent's walks, and maximize your own. Both of these things are pretty cheap, and have been common strategies for a long time. I also did some other standard low cap things like drafting as many switch hitters and A+ range as possible.

One thing I did a little differently than most was that I drafted "too many" innings and plate appearances for this cap. I could've gotten by with less, but since I was drafting A+ range and have a bunch of low K/9 pitchers, I wanted to take advantage of that by putting them in a hitter's park. Additionally, since my hitters draw a ton of walks but my pitchers don't give up many, a hitter's park would be more advantageous for me than my opponents — walks are likely to capture their potential value in hitter's parks. However, I still wanted to minimize HR in case anyone was crazy enough to draft them, so I settled on my favorite park — Target Field.

It became clear pretty quickly that there wasn't going to be an equilibrium that I was happy with on both sides. If I drafted the hitters I wanted, and even made some concessions, I still couldn't meet myself in the middle on the pitching. To solve this, I waited until I had the lineup and pitchers I wanted and then "bought" OAV and AVG. I spent about $2.7M on bad players — one pitcher and 4 hitters. The hitters will get a little bit of playing time during blowouts but the pitcher will not.

At a low cap, this is really expensive. Normally, you want to squeeze all the juice out at low caps because every single dollar is more valuable. I didn't develop a robust method for evaluating the tradeoff, but since I didn't actually do this until the majority of my team was completed, it was easy enough to look at the team with different iterations and say whether or not it was "better" one way or the other just by eyeballing it.

Hitting: 5,086 PA, .270 / .380 / .397, $32.5M + 4 scrubs (326 PAs, .141 AVG, $1.3M)
Pitching: 1,344 IP, 1.03 WHIP, 0.44 HR/9, $34.8M + 1930 Hal Elliott (124 IP, .382 OAV, $1.4M)
Prediction: I don't think many people will be as comfortable in a relative hitter's park as I am, but we should also do well in pitcher's parks. Feels like a good team. 93 wins +/- 4


$90M: MH The Snoring 20's
Stadium: Target Field

Pitchers from 2020 are cheap because most people don't draft HR hitters, which are their only weakness. Additionally, you can get extra IP out of them due to their high real life K/9. Add in one of the best value SP at this cap, 1920 Babe Adams, and my choice was made. I briefly looked at a few other years but not seriously.

Once you picked your years, this team was easy to put together. Pitchers from 2020, hitters from 1920. I am a bit concerned about the lack of SLG but was able to fit Joe Jackson, so I'm optimistic we'll score enough.

Hitting: 4,843 PA, .323 / .391 / .459, $44.6M
Pitching: 1,355 IP, 0.94 WHIP, 0.76 HR/9, $44.0M
Prediction: There weren't a lot of choices here so I'm expecting a lot of similar teams, which means luck will play a larger factor and achieving a high win total will be challenging. 88 wins +/- 7


$110M: MH Smell Ya
Stadium: Target Field

Wasn't really a good way to do this without a spreadsheet, so I created one that was formatted like this:

	Team	Player		Position		Alternative Options
Pair		Round 1	Round 2	Round 1	Round 2
1	1925 Detroit Tigers	Al Wingo	Ty Cobb	OF	OF
2	1920 Chicago White Sox	Happy Felsch	Joe Jackson	OF	OF
3	1897 New York Giants	George Davis	Bill Joyce	SS	3B

Once I had that, I had to think about how to approach the problem. I realized that since I had a minimum of 4 bench spots for hitters, I only needed to find 4 pairs of hitters, max. This was good news since I thought that finding pairs of hitters would be challenging. Before committing to any pairs, I also looked for interesting pitcher / hitter combos. I wrote down all the combos as I went along.

Pitchers were easier. The cap is high enough so that I could use the incredible 2020 guys, and modern pitching in general, AND most of them have a stud reliever as a teammates.

Getting under the cap was a bit challenging and required a few last minute tweaks, but thankfully I had my list of options so making tradeoffs was easier than it would've been otherwise.

I had been building with Round 2 in mind the whole time (i.e. I had a "Round 1 team" and a "Round 2 team"). I went stronger on SLG in Round 1 and pitching and defense in Round 2. This worked very well for me in the 110M theme last year, so I'm hoping for the same result.

To do well drafting these teams you had to have a good handle on when you were giving up flexibility, and when doing so was worth it. For example, drafting a great player who could only have a teammate who was a scrub 200K guy might give you a better hitter, but then you'd need to fill up another spot with the same. This meant you just spent 4 of your 50 total roster spots to fill 2 roles. Not ideal. However, if you're at teammates 21 or later, it didn't matter at all.

Round 1 Hitting: 5,054 PA, .345 / .408 / .533, $52.9M
Round 1 Pitching: 1,408 IP, 0.91 WHIP, 0.67 HR/9, $55.6M
Round 2 Hitting: 5,129 PA, .335 / .419 / .509, $54.5M
Round 2 Pitching: 1,394 IP, 0.88 WHIP, 0.60 HR/9, $54.5M
Prediction: I've probably sacrificed some Round 1 wins in exchange for a better Round 2 team. 86 wins +/- 4


$120M: MH Doubles, Obv
Stadium: Jefferson Street Grounds

I made this team by process of elimination of each hit type's primary obstacles:

1. Singles teams won't be able to generate enough runs — Dodger Stadium is their only hope.
2. Not quite enough people are drafting modern pitchers yet for HR teams to be the best option at this cap. Maybe if it were 20-40M higher.
3. Triples teams will do well in triples parks, but are vulnerable elsewhere since triples are rare
4. Doubles hitters typically don't have great defense and are slow

The doubles and triples obstacles seemed easier to overcome, so I built two teams. I didn't really care about maximizing the amount of doubles or triples I drafted. In fact, as long as they were over the threshold I didn't pay attention to those stats at all. The hitting stats of the doubles team was simply so far better than that of the triples team that it would've been foolish to pick triples.

I picked Jefferson Street Grounds to give myself at least a +2 on doubles, which does leave me more vulnerable to HR teams than I would've been if I picked Target Field, but it was a risk worth taking since I didn't think too many people would take HR teams.

Hitting: 4,846 PA, .343 / .434 / .527, $57.6M
Pitching: 1,398 IP, 0.82 WHIP, 0.80 HR/9, $61.7M
Prediction: Seems like a bit of a toss up based on who you get paired up with in your league. However, I think this team is pretty good in a vacuum so I'll say 92 wins +/- 6


$140M: MH 2000+ & The Other 20's
Stadium: Target Field

Box 1 gave a lot of interchangeable choices for pitching, and Box 3 gave 1 option that was better than the rest (2000's), so that left Box 2 as the key decision. I thought that both the 1920's and 1880's could be interesting.

The 2000's bring great relief pitching and a couple hitters to get me to $40M minimum (I went with Chipper Jones, Jimmy Rollins, and felt Albert Pujols and Todd Helton were both ok options at 1B).

The 1880's gave less hitting and more pitching than I expected, which meant I needed to use a decade from Box 1 that had a bit of both. The clear choice was the 1910's, so I built that team in full.

Then I turned my focus to the 1920's, which had an abundance of hitting and no pitching. This meant I needed a decade from Box 1 that had a ton of great pitching. Both the 2010's and the year 2020 had that, so I built both of those teams.

Between my options, the 2010's + 1920's + 2000's team reigned supreme. I was hoping to take advantage of the 1880's bad defense mixed with the 2010's great impact on defense, but the team was just way worse.

Hitting: 5,619 PA, .356 / .440 / .560, $71.5M
Pitching: 1,430 IP, 0.81 WHIP, 0.70 HR/9, $67.9M
Prediction: This team should do really well. I feel confident I have the optimal combination. 95 wins +/- 3


Variable Cap: MH Arbitrage .80
Stadium: Yankee Stadium (III)

This was the most interesting league. The stadium restriction is the key to this theme. Since everyone will be in a HR+ park, there's a confusing incentive structure: raise your cap or risk giving up way more HR. Also, to pick your hitters you needed a good read on how everyone else would make that choice. How many HR should you draft?

I figured most people would not be able to resist raising their cap at least a bit, so I wanted to lean into hitting HRs. However, it'd be hard to do that without giving them up myself, right?

To get around this, I spent $3.5M on 300 IP of 2.0 or higher HR/9 (thank you Jose Lima), which let me reach 0.80 HR/9 in aggregate, bumping my cap up by $12M. I basically "spent" 3 roster spots in exchange for $8.5 in salary and now had the freedom to draft pitcher's that restrict HRs but lean fully into hitting them on offense (my starting 8 hit 335 in real life).

Little worried about IP because Walter J doesn't get the same pitch-boost that those 400 IP would get if they were from modern pitchers, but that's a minor concern.

Hitting: 5,185 PA, .338 / .468 / .684, $94.9M
Pitching: 1,398 IP, 0.83 WHIP, 0.29 HR/9, $76.1M
Prediction: Thinking that this will be my best team. 98 wins +/- 3

Overall Prediction: My predictions put me at 552 wins, with a high of 579 and a low of 525. This feels a little low based on how good I feel about my teams, so I think I'll land somewhere in the higher end of that. Since there are 120 participants this year, the stiffest competition is more spread out. I may have been conservative with my predictions. See you in Round 2.

In previous WISC, I've struggled with trying to experiment and push boundaries too much and often have one team that tanks my chances of advancing to round two. As always, I tried really hard to not do that here again, but once again I definitely didn't succeed. I took big chances in strategy in all 6 leagues starting with the decision to run all 6 teams with Baker Bowl as my home ballpark. In the past as I experimented with pitching fatigue I often pushed the boundaries of IP. This time around I took significantly more IP than in past WISCs, but I also "experimented" with all of the teams being very offense heavy, or more accurately, running pitching that would traditionally be viewed as weak in WIS due primarily to HR rate and season. There were were also several themes here that I really liked and would have loved to build out multiple teams for.


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$70m: .271
Stadium: Baker Bowl

I immediately knew what I wanted to try here. I recently grabbed a wildcard spot in a Champs League with this exact pitching staff (minus La Marr Hoyt & add a David Wells clone). This pitching staff seemed perfect for this theme. With AVG being tied to OAV, I figured most teams would be looking for teams with AVG/OAV of around .240-.260 and try to load up on high BB hitters to try to still have OBP to drive run production. So I wanted to start with a staff that didn't walk anybody. This team has a lower BB/9 than HR/9 with a 0.77 BB/9 and 0.79 HR/9. To combat my pitching's higher OAV, this team is stacked with A+ and A++ range. Also playing in Baker Bowl, I wanted to try to make sure that when my team got hits those hits counted for more and am counting on the range to cut back on both opponent hits and XBH. Also counting on my relatively high AVG to give me more hits in general to turn into those XBH for my team to score more. I also drafted lots of BB to go with my higher AVG and as a team we carry a 10.96 BB/100 PA, with that being heavily weighted towards my starters on the hopes that some of my opponents went with either higher OAV pitchers as well, or higher BB rate.

This team literally took me the least time to build as I instantly loaded that CL team in and swapped one Wells for Hoyt and then cut the offense back a tad to fit in the cap while lining up the AVG/OAV (first pass from the draft center load already had them at .273/.271, so just cutting the salary back from $80m was the biggest challenge).

This was probably my favorite theme. If it wasn't for this recent CL team I'd have certainly played around with a number of options first (which I still ultimately did. I had four other teams I really liked with .289, .258, .246, and .233. Each of them drastically different from this one and each other. The .246 was a SB heavy team in Dodger, the .233 was a BB/HR heavy lineup in Kingdome, the .258 and .289 were both in Petco, but the .258 was built very balanced with pitchers I like in OLs but only carried 1140 IP, while the .289 was a top heavy lineup with low AVG gloves rounding on the back end. I played around with adding some clunkers on both sides to boost up/down rates, but never felt it added enough value at this level. I'd be curious to see how those teams would do.

Hitting: 5,312 PA, .271 / .359 / .445, $40.08M
Pitching: 1,305 IP, 1.14 WHIP, 0.79 HR/9, $29.92M
Prediction: 87 wins +/- 4

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$90M: 1919/2019
Stadium: Baker Bowl

I looked at '85-90, '93-96, and '17-20. Came THIS close to entering the '87 team. Ultimately, decided to run '19 because of Gavvy Cravath, and I liked that one of my years wasn't going to be impacted by dynamic pricing. I split almost entirely in each of these builds with offense from the deadball season and pitching from the modern season. While the defense-adjusted TWISL seemed to show conclusively that there isn't an inherent advantage of deadball or modern pitchers, the modern pitching not being impacted by dynamic pricing and giving more leeway to manipulate the effects, I feel/felt strongly about running modern pitchers wherever and whenever I could. My deadball hitters should help drive up opponent errors. I have A+ range at every position outside of one corner OF and 1B. The corner will be manned by a platoon of Cravath and Yordan Alvarez and other than my first base platoon, the rest of the lineup is stacked with familiar names: Speaker, Hornsby, Roush, Groh, Schang, & Peckinpaugh.

I was somewhat concerned about the HR rate of my pitching, but in going for my HR bounty, I've run a bunch of teams that give up a TON of HRs and have won quite a few games while trying (and succeeding) to give up 350+ HRs in a season. Couple that with the results from the defense-adjusted TWISL and the pricing seemed to account for errors/HR quite well and I'm much more confident in running HR prone pitchers. Once again, I have A+/A++ range to minimize opponent hits/XBH while playing in Baker Bowl to maximize the impact of my own hits with hitters that already have high XBH rates.

I would have also really liked to see how the '87 team would have done, and I also really liked '20 as an option.


Hitting: 5,199 PA, .304 / .388 / .440, $47.3M
Pitching: 1,336 IP, 1.00 WHIP, 1.11 HR/9, $42.7M
Prediction: 86 wins +/- 5

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$110M: Wild Card Aspirations
Stadium: Baker Bowl

I didn't think about this one too much. I drafted a team inspired by the teams I've been running in Doc's Mile High leagues. Over the first three seasons there I'm averaging 88 wins per season with this basic strategy. Some big differences, I'm not in Mile High, most likely, neither is anyone else. Doc's 4th season is about to get started and is also $110m. Both this team and that team share both the overall strategy and a large number of players. I did swap a few players around for better teammates and synergy, but there's not too many differences between the two teams. I drafted '07 George McQuillan so I could get Baker Bowl, he's my only pitcher that isn't post-expansion (1961). Pitching-wise, I focused on (relatively) low OAV to try to minimize the ballpark's impact for opponent offenses. This team has my highest OBP across all six teams. In terms of teammates, for the most part I just clicked the player profile link and sorted their teammates by either salary, OBP, or WHIP and chose the best player. I had to make a couple adjustments from that to fit in cap and with strategy, but overall I feel it worked out very well. Aside from their high OBP, this is a HR heavy lineup. I expect a number of deadball opponents, so don't expect to realize those totals, but in Baker Bowl, I expect most of those lost HR to still be XBH, and with the BB rates of my offense, I expect to have baserunners constantly and expect to create fatigue issues for opposing pitching staffs as well as score 1,500+ runs. Goal is to allow less than 1,200. We'll see how well that plays out.

Round 1 Hitting: 5,550 PA, .318 / .474 / .544, $67.5M
Round 1 Pitching: 1,434 IP, 1.05 WHIP, 0.60 HR/9, $42.5M
Round 2 Hitting: 6,069 PA, .322 / .400 / .595, $58.25M
Round 2 Pitching: 1,529 IP, 1.03 WHIP, 0.66 HR/9, $50.75M
Prediction: 88 wins +/- 4

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$120M: Turning 1B/100 into XBH
Stadium: Baker Bowl

Sticking with the Baker Bowl theme, this hit type felt right immediately. I did look at teams with each of the other hit types, but nothing felt as good for Baker Bowl as 1B/100. Goal here is to get all those hits turned into XBH by the ballpark and to get lots of hits. I looked specifically for hitters that were as close to the 2B/100 and 3B/100 thresholds, as well, to get the max benefit of the ballpark in turning our hits into XBH. Our team-wide hit type breakdown is 1B/100: 26.67, 2B/100: 6.45, 3B/100: 1.75, HR/100: 1.52. Once again using A+ range and low OAV pitchers to help keep opponent hits/XBH down. Also utilizing as many deadball hitters to go with my modern staff to try to capitalize on opponent errors as most still seem to use deadball pitchers.

Given the restrictions here, I thought long and hard about a HR team, especially with how much I've played around with HRs for the bounties. I thought a HR team designed around Kingdome would do great here. Ultimately decided between a doubles team and the team I went with, and the decision was primarily shaped by my ballpark choice which became a huge decision point across all the themes and something I really enjoyed sticking with.

Hitting: 5,903 PA, .364 / .425 / .509, $65.6M
Pitching: 1,417 IP, 0.95 WHIP, 0.49 HR/9, $54.4M
Prediction: 89 wins +/- 3

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$140M: 1880, 1930, 2020
Stadium: Baker Bowl

This will likely be my worst team. I chose both decade groups that had limited players pools (1880s - 5 seasons and 2020 - 1 season), so had 14 less seasons to choose from. I knew three things:
1. I wanted a 1890s-1930s for Baker Bowl
2. I wanted 1970s-2020 for pitching
3. I wanted 1880s-1910s for defense

For number 1, I originally was hoping to double down on number 3 and get two decades in that grouping, but three of those decades were in one box, which also had what were ultimately my two favorites for number 2. So decision one ended up being narrowing pitching to Box 1 (2010s or 2020). Decision two was automatic at that point and left number 3 with 1880s as the only option and closed up Box 2. That forced my hand for decision three and required me to take the 1930s to satisfy number 3 and Box 3. I dabbled with an 1890s, 1920s, 1970s team that could have been fun.

I drafted the pitching from 2020 first, then chose the best hitters/defenders from 1880, and filled in from the 1930s. Had to make a few adjustments to get the salary distribution across the decades right. Primarily having to take a pitcher from each 1880s and 1930s, and then needing to replace a couple of 1880s hitters with 1930s hitters. Overall, I'm very happy with this team, though this is the one I'm most uncertain on and feel like could implode the most.

Hitting: 6,322 PA, .350 / .435 / .563, $78.96M
Pitching: 1,352 IP, 0.87 WHIP, 0.63 HR/9, $61.04M
Prediction: 82 wins +/- 9

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Variable Cap: .81 & Tons of Fun
Stadium: Baker Bowl

First choice I made was to ignore HR/9. Draft the best pitching I could without regard to HR/9. See where that put me and fill in the offense with whatever cap I had left. I've got 2000 Pedro, '16 Kershaw, Rich Hill, Drew Smyly, & Bob Milacki, short seasons, '99 Foulke, and bunch of guys from 2020. That left me with a total cap of $176m, or roughly $92m to spend on offense. You can build a really good offense for $92m. Thankfully, my decision to play Baker Bowl for all of my teams worked really well here. I wanted to capitalize on my ballpark so once again focused on hits, and primarily deadball hitters to take advantage of what I believe will be a predominantly deadball pitcher heavy league. I have a lineup full of high-AVG XBH machines, with just enough HR power to take advantage of any other owners that decided to go with pitchers that give up HRs. I've got .400 seasons from Hornsby, Sisler, Delahanty. I've got Arky Vaughan, Babe Ruth, Cap Anson, and Ted Williams, who all didn't quite hit .400, but more importantly, all get on base a ton and get XBH when they do hit the ball. As a team they have a 1B/100 rate of: 23.28, an XBH/100 rate of: 13.62, and a BB/100 of 15.00. Not that it matters as much at this cap, but I also have sneaky good defense/range. Similar to the $70m team, I played around with adding some clunkers (three $200k guys from 2020 will single-handedly add .50 HR/9 to a 1,500 IP team), but also like the $70m, ended up going with a no clunker option, despite the loss of an extra $9.4m (at the cost of three roster spots), felt the team was much stronger this way. Though, if I were willing to run deadball pitchers, I would have seriously considered a King/Walsh or King/Johnson combo with those three that would probably be quite strong.

Hitting: 5,899 PA, .369 / .468 / .614, $91.85M
Pitching: 1,530 IP, 0.77 WHIP, 0.81 HR/9, $84.15M
Prediction: 88 +/- 4

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My predictions put me at 520 wins with a full range of 491 to 549. So, everything goes right, round two is on the table... things don't quite go right, sitting on the outside looking in around the mid-40s, which seems about right. I didn't do anything as crazy as some past years, that should keep me from having those 90-100 loss seasons that tank my ranking, but I have just enough crazy to probably keep from from realizing full potential. Oh, I didn't mention the other crazy thing... I have a non-traditional rotation on all six teams. With the exception of my $110m team my rotations have 550, 628, 658, 702, and 780 IP, respectively. The $110m has 964 IP, but includes the 48 IP Mike O'Neill and is far from standard.

Good luck everyone. This should be tons of fun. I apologize in advance to your pitching staffs.

Will expand on this as I get my thoughts together. But one of the toughest things I struggled with being new to theme leagues was how to split salary between pitching and hitting, and how many innings pitched I need at higher salary levels. In open leagues, I've found the best strategy is to generally aim for a pretty even split, maybe skewing at most 55%/45% in either direction, and can typically get away with drafting only 1,200 or so IP while historically relying on AAA pitchers to give me about 100 innings in mop-up/spot start. Be curious to see how that translates to theme leagues and higher salaries.

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$70M: AVG = OAV
Team Name: All Day Errday 24/7
Stadium: Sicks' Stadium (HR LF/RF:2/2 1B:-2 2B:1 3B:-3)

First time building a team at < $80M cap, so felt like I was scraping for value every step of the way.

Started by plugging in the value pitchers that I always fall back on when I need to boost IP at a low cost (’02 Joe McGinnity, ’88 Al Mays, ’10 Frank Smith), who also happen to have a relatively high OAV (.219, .234, .203 respectively), which helped with the theme. Then just worked to fill out my pitching staff with guys .230+ OAV, and skewed my number upwards by adding 154 IP of ~.400 OAV.

On the hitter side, I found myself just trying to scrape together value with low AVG, high OBP, high SLG positional players. ’06 Adam Dunn (.234/.365/.490) is the perfect example of what I was looking for here, and he will be batting cleanup for me. In order to stretch the value, I found myself going with a platoon strategy, with 5 of my 8 starting positional players under 600 PA, and 2 under 400 PA.

Hitting: 5,570 PA, .247 / .343 / .452, $33.6M
Pitching: 1,353 IP, .247 OAV, 1.15 WHIP, 0.18 HR/9, $36.4M
Prediction: Not sure if 1,199 IP of actual usable pitchers will be enough along with 150+ IP of garbage mop-up. If we can avoid the pitching death spiral, I feel confident that this is a 90+ win team.

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$90M: One Hundred Years
Team Name: The Roaring 20’s
Stadium: Target Field (HR LF/RF:-4/-4 1B:0 2B:1 3B:1)

Knowing that there is a plethora of great pitching options from the 2020 season, I made one and only one attempt at this theme, and started by drafting the 2020 pitchers that I wanted (Shane Bieber, Trevor Bauer, Zach Plesac, Brad Keller). The risk with the 2020 pitcher strategy is the high HR/9 in the current era, so I did my best to offset this by choosing Target Field, and steering clear of power hitters on offense, drafting instead for doubles and triples.

Knowing that I need to hit $40M for both 1920 and 2020, I knew that I needed to start my drafting of positional players with the year 1920. Found guys I was looking for with low HR but value elsewhere in Max Carey, Jack Tobin, Elmer Smith, Jake Cronenworth, and Steve O’Neill. Toss in Babe Adams’ 1920 season to get the IP up and Jose Ramirez and Dominic Smith from 2020 on the offensive side, and the team started to take shape.

Hitting: 5,581 PA, .310 / .380 / .457, $42.7M
Pitching: 1,338 IP, .209 OAV, 0.98 WHIP, 0.68 HR/9, $47.2M
Prediction: I think the success of this team is largely dependent on other teams’ strategies. If other teams loaded up on HR hitters, my team might be in trouble. If folks steer clear of the long ball, my pitching staff should dominate. I’ll guess 88 wins on this one.

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$110M: See Ya Later Friendo
Team Name: Bye Felicia
Stadium: Kauffman Stadium (HR LF/RF:-2/-2 1B:1 2B:2 3B:3)

Heard a lot of complaints about this one, I absolutely loved it. Although I thought I was being very diligent about matching each player up with a mate on the other team, I got to the end and found 2 players on each team that didn’t match.

My general strategy was to try to make a powerhouse team for Round 2 and scrape together a good enough team that wouldn’t totally sink in Round 1. In the end, I think they actually ended up fairly balanced, with Round 2 getting the slight edge. I tried to avoid matching stars on one team with bench players on the other as long as I could, but ended up trying to draft 700+ PA starters so I could save my bench spots to make rosters work.

I started where I knew there were teammates that typically perform well on this site( ’04 Cubs Jake Weimer and Mordecai Brown, ’08 White Sox Frank Smith and Ed Walsh, ’36 Pirates Arky Vaughan and Paul Waner, ’20 Indians Jose Ramirez and Shane Bieber). From there it was just a lot of trial and error, picking a guy I wanted to use, and seeing if he had a rosterable mate. Not much strategy in terms of hit types, obp, HR/9, etc. just felt like I had to grab good value anywhere I could find it and match a ballpark as best I could at the end. This might be misplaced confidence, but the combination of feeling good about my team and seeing all the folks talk about struggling with this one, I’m predicting this team as my best of the bunch.

Round 1 Hitting: 6,364 PA, .304 / .408 / .503, $57.1M
Round 1 Pitching: 1,420 IP, 0.95 WHIP, 0.36 HR/9, $53.7M
Round 2 Hitting: 6,435 PA, .317 / .386 / .482, $55.9M
Round 2 Pitching: 1,437 IP, .205 OAV, 0.96 WHIP, 0.31 HR/9, $54.1M
Prediction: Like I said, I think this is my best team. Shooting for the moon predicting a 99 game winner

Team	Round 1	Round 2
1889 New York Giants	OF Mike Tiernan	1b Roger Connor
1890 New York Giants	2b Shorty Howe	C Buck Ewing
1902 Philadelphia Athletics	OF Socks Seybold	P Bill Bernhard
1904 Chicago Cubs	P Jake Weimer	P Mordecai Brown
1906 Cleveland Naps	C Malachi Kittridge	C Jay Clarke
1908 Chicago White Sox	P Frank Smith	P Ed Walsh
1930 New York Yankees	OF Babe Ruth	SS Yats Wuestling
1933 Pittsburgh Pirates	C Val Picinich	SS Arky Vaughn
1936 Pittsburgh Pirates	SS Arky Vaughan	OF Paul Waner
1993 Toronto Blue Jays	2b Roberto Alomar	SS Alfredo Griffin
1965 Kansas City Athletics	P Moe Drabowsky	SS Bert Companeris
1982 Philadelphia Phillies	1B Roger Connor	P Jack Taylor
1983 Philadelphia Phillies	OF Joe Lefebvre	P Ed Farmer
1990 St. Louis Cardinals	OF Bernard Gilkey	OF Willie McGee
1992 Detroit Tigers	C Mickey Tettleton	P Buddy Groom
2001 Cleveland Indians	P Steve Karsay	2b Roberto Alomar
2015 Boston Red Sox	P Matt Barnes	P Rich Hill
2016 Cleveland Indians	P Andrew Miller	3b Jose Ramirez
2016 LA Dodgers	P Rich Hill	P Mike Bolsinger
2017 Anaheim Angels	P Garrett Richards	OF Justin Upton
2018 New York Mets	P Jacob DeGrom	3b Luis Guillorme
2019 Arizona Diamondbacks	OF Blake Swihart	OF Ketel Marte
2020 Cleveland Indians	3b Jose Ramirez	P Shane Bieber
2020 Cleveland Indians	P Zach Plesac	P Cal Quantrill
2020 Kansas City Royals	P Brad Keller	P Jesse Hahn

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$120M: Hit Type Challenge
Team Name: Chicks Dig the Long Ball
Stadium: Bennett Park (HR LF/RF:3/3 1B:1 2B:0 3B:-2)

Think I’m in the minority on this one having gone the HR route. My gamble was that most folks wouldn’t go with HRs, and also wouldn’t expect many people to go with HRs when building out their rotations. We’ll see how true that is. One area where I think I am probably pretty well aligned with other owners is in trying to match my hit type with a high OBP, since there are limitations everywhere else. As a result, I loaded up on walks on offense, and selectively chose pitchers with low BB/9.

Can’t build a HR team without Babe Ruth, so his 1930 season is where I started. For the rest of the guys, I tried to find a good mix of players that meet the hit type limitations, but only narrowly so. In the end, I managed to stay above the .300 BA mark for the team with guys like ’59 Frank Robinson, ’58 Ernie Banks, ’90 Ryne Sandberg, and ’37 Rudy York. Also found a lot of value in lower PA guys, so didn’t worry too much about PAs for starters, instead opting for a deep bench.

On the pitching side, when thinking about accuracy, Greg Maddux was the first guy that came to mind. My 4-man rotation starts with the $16.3M ’94 Maddux. Rounding out the rotation is ’48 Harry Brecheen, ’96 Kevin Brown, and ’18 Jacob deGrom. BB/9s for that group range from 1.27 to 1.91.

Hitting: 5,840 PA, .301 / .388 / .589, $58.4M
Pitching: 1,461 IP, .211 OAV, 0.97 WHIP, 0.28 HR/9, $61.6M
Prediction: I think this one has the most variability. No idea if my HR gamble will pay off or not. Predicting 80 wins +/- 20.

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A couple things about me before I move onto the mindset of each team (as much as I can remember at least as all 6 teams were finished within 2 weeks of them being posted). I hate using deadballers. I don’t enjoy them, I feel they never perform as I hope (see last year's tourney where my Joss/W.Johnson/Cicotti team lost 95 games). So I tend to stay with modern pitchers, with a few deadballers perhaps thrown in. I don’t use spreadsheets when creating my teams like some do, and try not to think too much about it, but rather just pick the players I like and then make small adjustments as I go. I also try to be unique. Also, I’m horrible with predictions so I don’t even try, but I have high expectations for all my teams, and while I’ll see small tweaks I wish I could make, I still love the overall makeup of all my teams.

$70m: The Two Eight One Club:

Stadium: Petco Park

I built two teams for this theme. My initial strategy involved drafting guys like Eddie Stanky, Max Bishop, and Yank Robinson and other very low AVG/HIGH OBP hitters. My team avg was .240, and I was able to build a solid pitching staff that focused on preventing walks (2020 Hendricks, 1992 Tewksbury, and 2010 Lee led my Rotation). I assumed most teams would build similar style offenses that focuses on high BB and good defense so I decided that because most teams will likely go that route, I didn’t want to do it. So I started playing with ways to get the best hitters possible. Stanky was the only low avg/high OBP player I kept at 3B, and then a pretty crappy SS in Rodney Scott and Walt Wilmot in CF (at least I’ll get 30-60 plus plays from Wilmot and hoping for 60-80 SB from Scott). However, I upgraded many other positions and got 31 Goslin, 1913 Cravath, 2006 Victor Martinez, 1971 Reggie Smith, and 1887 King Kelly for a team AVG of .281 once adding my backup scrubs. I doubt anyone will have as strong a core of hitters as me, and I’m hoping that they’ll still perform even in Petco, while Petco will prevent some hits from my high OAV pitchers (as well as my defense of Wilmot, Smith and Kelly). I expect this team to do well. Goose and Gavvy willl both battle for MVP of the league, and Wilmot, Kelly and Smith to win gold gloves.

Hitting:

PA/162 AVG OBP SLG Salary

5,480.00 0.281 0.357 0.549 $37,960,70

Pitching:

IP/162 OAV WHIP BB/9 HR/9 Salary

1,302 0.281 1.26 1.3 0.77 $32,035,773

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$90m: The Bug Holliday of 1894-1994:

Stadium: Veterans Stadium

In the $90m I went with 94 which I’m sure will be a unique year, with maybe 1-2 other owners picking it at most, but I knew 20 was gonna be really popular, and I try to be unique in my team building. Of all the themes in this year's WISC, this is the one that took the longest, simply because I felt it had a lot of great options. Others here will say there was only one true option with 20, and maybe they’ll be right in the end, but I disagree. I played around with 11, 13, 15, 19, 20, 85, 86, 93, 95, 96, 98, all having really strong hitting and pitching rosters, before really falling in love with my 94 team. My goal in creating this was to have deadball hitters/fielders (remember my dislike for deadball pitchers) with modern pitchers. My team is pretty much an even split between 1894 hitters and 1994 pitchers, with a couple backups of each era mixed in. My raw stats don’t look too intimidating for my pitching, but they normalize really well and the offense absolutely rakes. Tuck Turner (.416/.456/.540) hits 9th. Wanted to play in Baker Bowl, but missed it by 1 year (95) and so I settled with Veterans. I expect this team to do well. There’s only one player on this team that I’ve used previously is 1894 Roger Connor, who bats 5th and should drive in 120+.

Batting Totals:	PA/162	AVG	OBP	SLG	Salary
	5752	0.347	0.411	0.493	$44,040,619

Pitching Totals:	IP/162	ERA	OAV	WHIP	BB/9	HR/9	Salary
	1,453	3.19	0.223	1.16	3.07	0.72	$45,876,988

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$110m: Sandy King of the Hill:

Stadium: Baker Bowl

For this theme, there’s a bit of a backstory, and an interesting twist at the end.

There was a similar theme last year, where you drafted a team and then had to twist players a specific number of years forward or backwards and all players had to follow the same number. So it could be 1,2,3, etc years forward or back. I spent more time on that team than any other last year and finally put in a team I thought was going to dominate, with Cicotte, Joss, and Walter Johnson anchoring both teams. I think I won (maybe) 60-70 games. And never got to use my 2nd team.

So this year, I took a much more simplistic route of team building and built the absolute best round 1 team I could build, with no thoughts on even building a round 2 team unless I needed to build one down the road. Picked up my favorite player in the sim, 1919 Gavvy Cravath, and will have him platooning with 73 Reggie Smith and 1894 Roger Connor (partial 537 PA version). Heilman (.394), Burkett (.396), and 1887 King Kelly (another sim favorite) anchor my offense. Picked up the best 4 man rotation I felt I could in the cap, (Verlander, Kershaw, Santana, Koufax) and drafted what looks on paper to be a dominant bullpen.

So I sent my team in to Ozo for verification, Sending him just my round 1 team and hadn’t even considered who anyone on my round 2 roster would be except for Sam Wise, as I knew he’d be a perfect companion for my 1887 King Kelly. So when ozo replied and said “go ahead and send me your round 2 team”, I slightly panicked. But did some quick looks (pulled up team from player links and then just picked the players that best filled out my team. In all, it took me about 1-2 hours and I put together a roster that rivaled my initial team, but is still a drop in overall talent, and I didn’t need to make any roster changes to my original team. Both teams had less than $50k cash leftover. I had to be a little more creative when building the 2nd roster, but still got some solid players with 26 Babe Ruth, 16 Trout, 89 Henderson, 88 Cap Anson, 87 Sam Wise, 2015 Grienke, and 2020 Degrom and Maeda thanks to some scrubs from team 1. Did most owners spend more time on these teams than me? 100%. Will their extra time and work pay off? Most likely, but I think my teams are pretty solid nonetheless!

ROUND 1:

	PA/162	AVG	OBP	SLG	Salary
Batting Totals	5729	0.334	0.411	0.508	$56,650,177

	IP/162	ERA	OAV	WHIP	BB/9	HR/9	Salary
Pitching Totals	1,408	2.43	0.201	0.96	2.09	0.77	$53,333,520

ROUND 2:

Batting Totals	PA/162	AVG	OBP	SLG	Salary
	5863	0.308	0.402	0.477	$57,506,110

Pitching Totals	IP/162	ERA	OAV	WHIP	BB/9	HR/9	Salary
	1,415	2.46	0.212	1.01	2.09	0.56	$52,443,948

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$120m: Babe’s on 2B, Goose on First?:
Stadium: Baker Bowl


This was my favorite theme to build, as I loved finding guys who I may not normally use, and also guys who’re some of my favorites (with the group I selected (doubles) I grabbed some of my sim favorites 19 Cravath, 87 Kelly, 31 Goose). My strategy for this theme, as I am sure it was for many owners, was to grab guys who fit as closely to the other hit types without going over. I have a few guys with 3B’s in the 2.0’s, a few HR’s in the 5.0’s, and 1B’s in the 20’s, hoping to optimize my offense with a little bit of everything.

My first order of business however was my pitching. The restriction of 1930-2020 didn’t change my team building whatsoever as, you may recall, I hate deadballers. I split my salary in two and made the best rotation I could with $60m. It’s very similar to my $110m rotation with 15 Kershaw, 11 Verlander, 04 Santana returning, but with 97 Pedro taking over for Koufax with the extra salary. Also created a lights out bullpen with Sherriff, Manaea, Smyly, Bailey, Tiefenauer, Erasmo, Romo, Rivera and Gagne in the pen. Rivera’s .209oav is the highest in the bullpen, as is Bailey’s 0.96 whip. With my pitching completed, I then set to making different teams with each hit type to see what I liked best.

I made a singles team, and hated it because of the lack of power. Created a triples team, and hated it because it just didn’t look as competitive as the other teams I built. Created a doubles and a home run team, and I loved them both. While this was my favorite theme to build, it’s the only one I have regrets with as I wish I’d have gone with my HR team over my doubles team. Not because I feel it’d necessarily win more games, but it would have stayed true to my unique team entries, and I think it just would have been a lot of fun. Alas, I decided that while the doubles team didn’t hit as many bombs as the HR team, they can still mash, and put up a team total of 174HR. One of the reasons I put this team in the Baker Bowl was to absolutely capitalize on my doubles, but also to see increases in 3B and HR.

	PA/162	AVG	OBP	SLG	Salary
Batting Totals	5894	0.346	0.431	0.558	$61,667,137
	IP/162	ERA	OAV	WHIP	BB/9	HR/9	Salary
Pitching Totals	1,370	2.11	0.189	0.9	2.05	0.7	$58,316,766

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$140m: Why afraid?? Cause 70 Eight(y) 90
Stadium: Baker Bowl

Like with most of the teams I created, I didn’t think too hard about overall composition or make spreadsheets on the different options I had, I looked at group 1, and liked the idea of 1890 hitters/defense, looked at group 2, and I liked the 1880’s hitters/defense/pitching, and then in box 3, it was really just between 1970 and 2000 for pitching/bullpen, and since I’d pretty much exclusively made my teams at this point with pitching >2000, I decided to have a little fun and took 1970. For reasons I don’t remember now, I knew I wanted 1888 Tim Keefe (a rare deadballer on my team) to anchor my staff, and then went with 1971 Vida Blue, 1885 Toad Ramsey, and 1886 Jim Handiboe who will all alternate days with Keefe in a unique 2A/2B/2B/2B rotation. With 1970 I knew I had a lot of great RP’s, and while their numbers aren’t as gaudy as the 2000/2010/2020 numbers, this staff is built to win.

Offensively, I had a ton of options, but knowing I had Keefe, Handiboe, Ramsey for the 1880’s, Blue and the bullpen from the 70’s -plus 1973 Reggie Smith and some key bench players in Gates Brown, George Thomas, and Oscar Gamble, I knew the bulk of my offense needed to come from 1890. Insert Ed Delahanty (.410), Sam Thompson (.392/.654slg), George Davis (.353), John McGraw (.391/.547obp), and Billy Hamilton (.330) anchor my offense, with 1880’s Roger Connor (.355), King Kelly (.322) and Cap Anson (.371) filling the holes. This team, like my $90m theme, absolutely rakes.

Box 1: 1890: $45,884,965		Box 2: 1880: $52,141,091		Box 3: 1970: $41,917,672
3B	1899 John McGraw	C	1886 Cap Anson	OF 1973 Reggie Smith
SS	1897 George Davis	1B	1886 Roger Connor	OF	1979 Oscar Gamble
OF	1899 Ed Delahanty	2B	1887 King Kelly	2B	1972 Larvell Blanks
OF	1895 Sam Thompson	SP	1888 Tim Keefe	SS	1974 Rick Auerbach
OF	1892 Billy Hamilton	SP/RP	1886 Jim Handiboe	OF	1971 Gates Brown
		SP/RP	1885 Toad Ramsey	OF	1970 George Thomas
				SP/RP	1971 Vida Blue
				SP/RP	1974 Dale Murray
				SP/RP	1973 Don McMahon
				SP/RP	1976 Grant Jackson
				SP/RP	1979 Bruce Sutter
				SP/RP	1972 Doug Rau
				SP/RP	1972 Steve Busby
				SP/RP	1972 Ramon Hernandez

	PA/162	AVG	OBP	SLG	Salary
Batting Totals	6684	0.358	0.432	0.525	$79,731,683
	IP/162	ERA	OAV	WHIP	BB/9	HR/9	Salary
Pitching Totals	1,518	1.9	0.189	0.95	2.4	0.25	$60,212,045

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$178m(var): .70 Reasons Coors Was a Mistake
Stadium: Coors Field


I am not a high cap player. I do really well in 60-80m, do alright in 90-120, but anything over that and I really start to struggle. So when I got to this team, I didn’t think too much on the value of each player, or think of ways to increase my HR/9. My thought process was to just grab the best of the best, and then see where I am at from there. Built my pitching staff first so that I would know what I had to work with and started with 13 Walter Johnson, then 2000 Pedro, and rounded out my rotation with 2020 Lamet, Bauer and Maeda. My bullpen is nothing but power studs, Andrew Miller, Smyly, Kimbrel, Verlander, Feliz, Anderson, and 16 Kershaw to anchor my bullpen. Kershaw’s .184oav is the worst in the pen this time, with Johnson’s .187oav the highest on the team. We give up some HR, but not much else. I spent almost $92m on my pitching and with my .70hr9, my offense had about $82m to play with, and play with it we did. 1920 Hornsby and Ruth, 1912 Baker, 1886 Anson and Connor, 1895 Thompson, 1960 Ted Williams and 2020 Trea Turner round out the starting team, with 1919 Cravath (told you he’s a favorite), 79 Gamble, and 41 Valo’s .420avg coming off the bench. We hit for avg, we hit for power, and with everyone in a hitters park this team should do well, and I figured “what the hell” and decided to put these guys in Coors just to see what happens and maybe **** off some opposing owners.

	PA/162	AVG	OBP	SLG	Salary
Batting Totals	5982	0.360	0.436	0.611	$82,317,995
	IP/162	ERA	OAV	WHIP	BB/9	HR/9	Salary
Pitching Totals	1,593	1.67	0.167	0.75	1.5	0.7	$91,678,350

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2021 WISC Write-Up


$70 Mil: DR9 273 Reasons Not To Enter This Team

This was the 1st team I built, and I built this to see if I was even gonna enter this tournament. I don’t play anything under $100 mil, but I know how to build a successful OL team, so I incorporated a couple of guys into this one.

In comes 1913 Christy Mathewson and 1992 Bob Tewksbury. I then tried building a pitching staff from the 1894-95 and 1929-30 seasons, but didn’t really like it. Kept 1930 Sloppy Thurston and 1929 Marv Gudat (and his .282 OAV) and swapped out nearly everyone else. Reluctantly picked 2001 Maddux, and it’s funny (to me atleast) that cookie Slim Sallee doesn’t have a high enough OAV for this type of league. Dropped him in anyways because an extra 2020 arm will boost up the OAV.

I figure the strat here on offense is to draft walks so Dan Quisenberry fills out the final spot in the bullpen to limit those.

On offense I forced 4 guys into my lineup. Those are Kyle Tucker, Dexter Fowler, Ben Zobrist and Jed Lowrie. Those are guys who’ve performed for me and will hit XBHs. I then filled out the rest of a good fielding SS (Carlos Correa), a good enough armed catcher (Tom Daly) a triples hitting OF (Gino Cimoli) for the bottom of the lineup.

Threw in some 2020 batters again to lower the BA like Billy Hamilton and Jose Martinez and match my OAV and was done. Wasn’t terrible so I entered the tourney.

Lo and behold, when I entered my team, they were way off. While my BA stayed steady, I got an extra 10 points on the OAV to add to my lineup. Gone is low range, low BA Gino Cimoli and in comes David Fletcher. Ben Zobrist moves over to 2B to replace Jed Lowrie and Tommy Tucker takes over at 1st. Jose Ramirez takes over Eduardo Escobar at 3B and suddenly my meh offense is a strength.

Still wasn’t enough to match the OAV so I even got to play around with the bench. They may not hit much, but Sammy Strang, Jason Thompson, and Gene Tenace will draw a walk and maybe even hit an XBH or two.

Hitters: 5236 PA, .273/.358/.405, $33,854,478
Pitchers: 1391 IP (only 1272 are usable but I’m hoping everyone else’s offenses aren’t too good), .273 OAV, 1.20 WHIP, 0.81 HR/9, $36,143,277

Prediction: 85 wins

$90 Mil: DR9 Roarin’ Twenties

No real plan here, I just wanted modern pitchers that haven’t been hit by the salary explosion, and deadball hitters that won’t strikeout with a runner on 3rd and will beat out GIDPs.

Apart from Babe Adams and a LRB to pitch when down, everyone else on my staff is from 2020.

Babe Adams, Kyle Hendricks, and Marco Gonzalez make the first 3 spots in my rotation, and my tandem of Cardinals pitchers I’ve never used, Kwang Hyun Kim and Dakota Hudson, will round it out.

Clayton Kershaw and Zach Plesac will hopefully pitch 3-4 innings apiece and finish out most games. Clev and Stashak will be there in case one of them gets inexplicably pinch-hit for 30 pitches before their TPC, and Buddy Napier is the LRB to pitch mop-up innings.

They’re all high OAV, low BB pitchers so I’ll just throw them in Target Field and hope for the best.

On offense, I started out with deadball hitters, but couldn’t fit them under the cap so I replaced a few of them with 2020 players with good rates.


The outfield will have plenty of range to take away hits in Roush, Williams, and Cobb. And hopefully the modern infield won’t make too many errors. DJ Lemahieu, Jose Iglesias, and Alec Bohm will carry the offense, Jack Fournier is just there as a cheap placeholder that’ll score from 1st on doubles. Steve O’Neill and probably one of the more expensive benches in this theme round out the offense.

Offense: 5168 PA, .329/.388/.453, $45,570,731
Pitching: 1378 IP, .219 OAV, 0.96 WHIP, 0.91 HR/9, $44,424,903

Prediction: .500 ball

$110 Mil: DR9 When I See You Again (Round 2 will be Ohhh woahhhhh oh)

This theme was a lot easier to build, and came out a lot better, than I initially imagined. Apart from grabbing some scrubs in Round 1 for studs in Round 2, I really focused on the regular season aspect of this one. I didn’t short on any innings, nor did I short on any PAs in hopes of a deep playoff run with great quality. Nope, nearly every hitter has 700 PAs, and your starters are your typical good deadballers, but certainly no Johnson, Walsh, Brown types.

Claude Hendrix, Babe Adams, and 1905 Christy Mathewson make the rotation. I fully expect them to take on much of the load as the bullpen is full of, I guess, misfits? I got 1915 Hooks Wiltse with 2019 Ryan Pressly. 1907 Nick Maddox and 1915 Ed Walsh are alongside 2016 Grant Dayton and 2016 Alec Asher. Idk just kinduva weird pen to me atleast.

I’m very much looking forward to the offense however. George Gore leads off, and behind him are studs Heinie Zimmerman, George Davis, and Honus Wagner. Henry Larkin is in there as one of my favorite values, and King Kelly rounds out the bottom of the lineup. I’m tolerating Lave Cross and Sam Wise for their Round 2 counterparts.

This team should be a regular season juggernaut assuming I avoid jbohrman in my division, even if it’s likely not gonna go far in the postseason. Deadball pitching, doubles and speed on offense, and likely no rest days for any regular contributor, thrown in Jefferson Street Grounds, it’s got everything.

Offense: 5670 PA, .331/.386/.488, $55,798,297
Pitching: 1419 IP, .212 OAV, 0.94 WHIP, $54,226,205

Prediction: 95+ wins

$120 Mil: DR9 Triple Trouble, But Not Really

When I saw the archetypes for this theme, I immediately knew I wanted to go with triples. Not to draft a triples team, but to take advantage of all the deadball hitters with enough triples to qualify for the team while also hitting doubles.

1908 Honus and 1913 Speaker immediately join the fray. Roger Connor hits too many singles to qualify, so going with the next best option for deadball hitter with speed and range goes to John Reilly. I use one version or another of King Kelly with almost every team, so the 1888 version comes into play for this team. Last year I voiced my frustrations with the 3B position, and always having to settle for ‘12 Baker or some version of George Brett, despite them always disappointing me. Well that’s exactly what happened here. Initially chose 1912 Baker, but knew he was probably gonna return a .320 OBP, so swapped him out for 1979 George Brett and an upgrade in the bullpen. I’m not happy about it. 1945 Stirnweiss plays 2B with great range, and will eat PAs at the top of the order without tiring, so I don’t have to worry about any bench PAs there. The last two spots are in the Outfield, and the options weren’t all that great. It was basically whoever I could find. 1916 Shoeless Joe takes one spot, will probably ground into some double plays, might make a few minus plays, but I know he’ll hit his weight. Bob Caruthers on the other hand, I’m more nervous about. Hopefully sticking him in RF will reduce his errors and minus plays, and batting him 9th will limit bench PAs, but he was cheap and fit the bill so here he is.

In the rotation, John Tudor makes another appearance for me in the WISC. He doesn’t have the best stats, and I may not trust him, but he’s always been rock solid when I play him. JV in a -4 HR ballpark will give me a sub 1.1 WHIP and around a 3.5 ERA. 2018 deGrom will be a name I expect to see a ton, and finally 2020 Lamet, who appears on every single one of my teams now, rounds out the rotation. In the bullpen I was aiming for guys with a 40-43K/IP, which includes
‘16 Devenski as my multiple inning, super reliever, and 14 Pineda, 19 Glasnow, 14 Smyly, among others filling out the rest of my pen. I probably should’ve gone with ‘16 Kershaw, but this is round 1, so I can dip into the next tier without it hurting too bad.

Plenty of speed and XBHs at Municipal, while also limiting the HRs from the modern pitchers will hopefully bring this team a division title, I’m thinking this is good for 95 Wins.

Offense: 5479 PA, .332/.394/.511, $60,796,466
Pitching: 1401 IP, .189 OAV, 0.88 WHIP, 0.70 HR/9, $59,197,543

$140 Mil: DR9 Turn of the Centuries, with a little side of 80s

Now this cap is my bread and butter. I’m most confident I’ll create a winner here.

When I saw the boxes, the only question I had is whether I’d use 1900 or 1910 from the first box.

I ultimately went with the 1900s for 08 Walsh, and a MIF consisting of Honus Wagner and Nap Lajoie, due to the lack of reliable elite options elsewhere. Threw in 1905 Cy Seymour for good measure as he’s my backup OF I usually use when I can’t use Cobb or Speaker. Not as fast, not as much range, will botch more flyballs, but the man can hit.

And, finally, because there’s a DH, and I need to save a bit more money, I threw in the best value in the game, 1902 Bill Bernhard.

Total: $57,662,964

In box 2, the only decade I was considering was the 1880s. I’d be able to get 1885 Roger Connor, the only Catcher I ever use in King Kelly, and some fast OFers. Settled on another OF I sometimes like to use when I don’t have Cobb or Speaker in 1887 Pete Browning and his .402 AVG. All I was looking for in a DH was someone fast enough to stay out of DPs, with terrible fielding grades so I could get a decent bat for cheap. 1885 Dan Brouthers fits the bill here as his 84 speed, 149 AVG+, and many XBHs will play well at the Palace. I hardly ever use Henry Larkin in caps over $110M, but I’m lacking PAs and he’s fast, so here he is batting 3rd.

Total: $41,952,400

Finally with almost my whole lineup filled out, I just needed some relief pitchers to finish off the squad.
The 2000s have a whole lotta elite options in the pen; Papelbon, Bailey, Ryan, Saito, Meredith, Romo, and Karsay make out most of the pen. The 2000s also gave me an elite bat at 3B in 08 Chipper, and a good enough arm to round out my rotation in 03 Schmidt. Throw in some 200k scrubs and I barely surpass the minimum with $40,384,415 spent from the decade.

This is probably my favorite team here, but the lack of PAs at the bottom of the order will prevent any big win totals as I will have to play my bench here a lot. I still expect a playoff berth and decent playoff run.

Offense: 6156 PA, .358/.414/.525, $78,089,697
Pitching: 1451 IP, .197 OAV, 0.89 WHIP, 0.30 HR/9, $61,910,082

Prediction: 90 wins


Variable Cap ($176 mil) DR9 .8 HR/9, .7 WHIP

I know this team won’t be very good. I seriously considered the deadball Yankee Stadium III strat here, but couldn’t quite fit all the Babe Ruth’s and Jimmie Foxx’s I wanted. So I went with the 2020 pitchers strat just so I could get all those old homerun hitter types in my lineup.

Justin Verlander joins the frey alongside Bauer and Maeda as a huge boost to the salary cap with his 1.45 HR/9. And because of the high cap, I thought “why not add the best pitcher season of all time?” I could spend way more wisely, but here I am with 2000 Pedro.

I didn’t want to go too overboard with homers, so my bullpen is much better at preventing homeruns.

16 Kershaw and Jansen, 17 Green, 18 Doolittle, 2020 Williams, Hand, Martin, Hendricks, and Anderson round out the rest of the (hopefully dominant) pen. I fully expect all the starters, not named Pedro Martinez, to have 6 ERAs. I put them in Cinergy to hopefully reduce the amount of knocks they’re gonna give up with its 0.90 Ballpark Factor.

On offense, I went with Ruth, Foxx, Hornsby, Williams, Mantle, Gehrig, the usual suspects I’d expect to see in this theme. However, I went with 07 A-Rod at 3B, and idk how I feel about that. He performed well enough for me in a 140M Best Damn Franchise league for me to turn to him once again. At SS, I just went with whoever can fit under the cap. 09 Hanley won’t make many errors, but he’ll give up the minus play every once in awhile. No clue how’d he do here.

Again, don’t expect much here, just to avoid a losing season.

Offense: 5851 PA, .349/.455/.660, $92,133,480
Pitching: 1442 IP, .162 OAV, 0.73 WHIP, 0.82 HR/9, $83,857,321

Prediction: 80 wins

So d_rock and I have essentially the same exact team for $90M...same name, same stadium, and looks like half of the same players. Be curious how many other people went with this strategy, certainly felt like low-hanging fruit to me.

2020 threw a monkey wrench into some normal strategies.

$70m Sammy Strang allstars .265
Unique league requiring unique strategies and players I've never used. I can.t handle a low BA so I had to find high OAV pitchers who normalize well. A fair amount of speed. Power too easy to counter, BB/9 will be low in this league, and defense is somewhat expensive at low caps though I did scrounge up 3 A+ rangers and an A+ arm. I have 2 mopups with 56 and 58 innings of .400 ball to boost my oav. Playing in Petco to avoid fatigue.

1920 Babe Adams is my Ace. Half of my pitchers are from the 1920's. Partial SPs Morrison and Fitzsimmons with RP Barnes and Heimach. 1898 Cy Young and his 411 innings keeps my numbers intact, a .264 oav that normalizes well and he can hit too. Throw in some RP in the .225 to .240 range that showed up in my searches.

2B Zobrist is one player I've actually used before, along with Mark McLemore not a bad low cap middle infield. Mac is my hitting champ at .287. Secondary positions can be priced better at this cap and I have 4, SS and 3 guys from the 19th century, C John O'Brien, 1B Billy O'Brien (brothers?), 3B Paul Hines. An affordable Ledesma backing up the entire infield. I made a list of suitable OF fitting the numbers and might as well be throwing darts to pick which ones to draft. Zack Wheat in CF, Ken Harrelson, and the 3rd OF is a platoon of 3 guys who will also pinch hit.
oh, and Sammy Strang was the first player I penciled in. .086 hitter with a slew of walks.


90m 1906 and 2006
Cap is low enough to make it a challenge and to rule out 2020. Searched for SP first..Liked 1904 1906 1919, and possibly 1908. Looked up the corresponding hitters and settled on 1906/2006. Rotation of Walsh Joss Pelty Reulbach. Actually closer to a 3 man rotation with Reulbach spending a lot of time in relief or Tandem B. 5 low inning RP from 2006 and 2 Long B's from 1906.
Hitters mostly in the low $5m range. 3B Miggy Cab is the big spender and C McCann is the budget guy. Reyes at SS with speed and stamina but hitting may be a tad lite. 2B Orlando Hudson my only A+ ranger. Vladi the best value at OF. Not expecting a HR friendly league so i went with oldtimers Harry Lumley and Bunk Congalton, great names. Good backups except Sandy Alomar stinking up the joint at reserve C. 1B Justin Morneau in a tiebreaker, chosen last his salary matched.


$110m Two Teams at Once
Looked cumbersome and not much fun so I procrastinated then went with my first draft. So it's probably my weakest team.Bullpen and glove are not up to snuff.
Looked at the usual suspects to see who had a teammate I could use. Made a list, then shuffle and deal. Filled 18 slots on each team then searched for pairs of what I still needed. Ed Walsh and Frank Smith were the first pair selected. SP first. Bernhardt with 1B Hickman. Mathewson with OF Donlin. DeGrom with a mop, Hearn with a RP. Sale with OF Betts and Lamet with RP, those two SP will play Setup because my RP are all tagalongs and afterthoughts. Got under budget by later adding Reulbach and 3B Bradley .

OF Heilman and Wingo from 1925. 2B Lajoie 03 with 3B Steinfeld. Other hitters paired with minor players. SS Chipper and ARod, 2B LeMahieu, 1B Burns, cheap C's McCann and Peitz. A mishmash of part time Outfielders to make the puzzle pieces work.
The two teams are about even. One had lower HR/9 and better arm while the other had slightly better hitting. Chose the latter for round 1. in Polo because I have lots of doubles.


$120m Doubles
Doubles is the closest to a normal team and Polo is the obvious stadium.
Mostly recent pitchers provide the best value here. Bieber and Sale starting with Kershaw at setup. Except against HR teams I'm more likely to start Gonsolin and Keller with Latman setting up. DeGrom starting against either. I reached all the way back to 1996 to get Kevn Brown who will be mostly long relief when not spot starting. Roark Murray and Dutch Leonard complete the pen.

Speedster King Kelly catching, Jose Ramirez a decent 3B without spending too much because I splurged on ARod at a troublesome SS position. 2B Jackie Robinbson a last minute replacement chosen for salary match. OF of Musial and Medwick, not their best years and I don't think I've used these versions before. Manush platooning with KenWilliams Giles and Huskey. Ryan Zimmerman is a nice doubles pinch hitter.


$140M Oldtimers Aught 20 30
Deadball pitchers again, I did try modern pitchers but didn't like the higher cost. 20's and 30's have the best hitters in the $10m range. Only drawback is a scarcity of pitching but I don't need much after maxing out on 1900s pitchers. 1900's narrowly beat out 1910's. Walsh Mordecai and Christy though none of them in their best year. Efficient pricing. Mcquillan Maddox closing with the 4 best RP from the liveball decades.
Swinging away with $10m Ruth Gehrig Hornsby Medwick Appling. $8M Heilman DH and Speaker CF though he'll need some backup. Two concessions to the cap, C Foxx 3B Traynor.


$176M
Using 6 mopups from 2020 boosted my HR/9 total to .80, seems sketchy but I specifically asked if stacking the bench was legal. Then the rules clarification threw us a bone in 2020. Only 7 real pitchers so I drafted additional innings to keep my bullpen fresh though it will take some maneuvering. Maddux (288 ip), Big Train (392 ip), Mathewson (292 ip) and Walsh (394 ip). A collective .242 batting average makes a difference since it's a no DH lg. Bieber a risky choice because of the HR, he seems to be performing in other leagues. Niggeling and Northrop complete the staff, I can't handle all those low IP/g guys with just 7 pitchers.

approx $10M per hitting position. Infield had limited choices I went with Connor Hornsby Wagner Schmidt. OF of Ruth Williams and Juan Soto platooning with Pham, Stevenson PH. Milligan Catching. One concession to cap Lefebvre backup C.

For you with limited time, here’s the TL/DR:
Low self-esteem, likes Tulo, thinks too much, any success is purely good fortune.

For those who have an afternoon free, read on ...

Overview/Overanalysis
Let’s just get out of the way that I have some sort of sim-man crush going on Troy Tulowitzki and took him on three of these teams. Sometimes I’m not sure I’m even looking at the other names in the draft center, just seeing a glowing light around Tulo and navigating straight toward it. My other shortstops this round are Paul DeJong (he can, uh, play defense), Cliff Pennington (I have no idea who he is), and some guy named Honus. Occasionally, alas, Tulo just doesn’t fit the theme. But I’m consulting my psychiatrist about the obsession. I may need a Tulobotomy.

My life contains ample anxiety without playing the WISC, and I think it’s rubbing off. I am indecisive about important life changes, always seeing both sides. Apply that to trying to choose which direction to go in this tournament, and you have the makings of endless staring at lines of numbers. Is there a 12 Step group for this? Tuloholics Anonymous?

Maybe a really disappointing year in this tournament can cripple confidence. I finished 46th my first year, jumped to 15th, and then to 7th. At that point, I basically assumed I’d be in Round 2 every year. Then I finished 35th last year, and I don’t have any certainty of what I did wrong. Unsure what to correct, I am left with an overactive brain and uncertain game. I’m basically 14-year-old me standing against the wall at a school dance, not talking to any girls or dancing. I didn’t get to Round 2 back then either. Someone once asked me what was the farthest “base” I’d gotten to, and I responded, “Does a sacrifice bunt count?”

But I digress … If I’d had a social life as a teenager, I wouldn’t have had time for sim baseball after all. And so I have a late growth spurt and a bad wardrobe to thank for my intense interest in this game and all that came before it. Here I am on a Saturday night writing self-deprecating analysis, so as you can see I’ve come a long way since then. So, where was I? “Dear Penthouse Forum …”

Oh yeah, so these 2021 themes all seemed pretty reasonable to me and for the most part I found that tinkering or trying alternate approaches resulted in better rosters eventually. The depth of the tournament competition appears awfully strong, though. I guess, what, a few people have been stuck at home more than usual for some reason?

I won’t hazard any predictions about this group of teams. All the strategies are defensible enough. The teams all look pretty good from here, but I’m certain they will disappoint me in all sorts of creative ways once we get going. I had just enough confidence in me to save what I think is the better 110M team for Round 2, so all is not lost. Yet, anyway. My horrible division assignments still await.

My team names play off a TV/movie/song titles theme this year. Some lent themselves to better choices than others, but I think they all work. (Note: My team stats include raw numbers from the full roster, scrubs and all, because I don’t use enough of them fancy spreadsheets to separate the wheat and chaff.)

70M: Car .254, Where Are You?
Park: Network Associates Coliseum

My strategy was to build the best pitching staff I could at the highest OAV that would still be pretty effective at limiting runs. My first try came out at .252, which I nudged up to .254. I tried a second one to be a little stingier with hits and built one at .241 that I think would likely have allowed just about as many runs based on more walks and homers. So, I went with the higher OAV knowing it gave me more hitting options.

The key to this pitching staff will be limiting walks and benefitting from the high-range defense. The highest BB/9 on the roster is 2006 Greg Maddux at 1.71, half the guys are under 1 and the team total is 1.05. The team WHIP of 1.07 seems about as low as I could expect with that high an OAV. A respectable 0.44 HR/9 should keep us away from too many big innings, too.

My goal with the offense was to try for good speed, a few switch-hitters, lots of walks, and strong range at least at 2B, SS, 3B and CF. I’m sure most teams will try to limit walks, too, but those that are less effective should find this lineup pretty patient. That .254 AVG carries a .359 OBP, and that should produce enough baserunners to be competitive.

The top of the lineup has 1991 Rickey and 1975 Billy North with higher AVG and OBP and wheels. In the middle we’ll have 2002 Carlos Delgado, 1995 Chipper, and 1984 Strawberry. Gene Tenace walks a ton and throws out enough runners (A-) to be helpful; the cost of an A+ arm just didn’t seem worth the reduced offense. (This theme seems ideal for a large Tenace population with his high OPS despite low AVG. I actually had 2018 Yasmani Grandal in there for more offense until halfway through this writeup, then decided that his C- arm wasn’t going to cut it.) The DP combo of 1888 Bid McPhee and 2010 Cliff Pennington are mostly there for their affordable ++ range, and anything they contribute with their speed is gravy.

C 78 Tenace .224/.392/.409
1B 02 Delgado .277/.406/.549
2B 88 McPhee .240/.312/.336
3B 95 C. Jones .265/.353/.450
SS 10 Pennington .250/.319/.368
OF 75 North .273/.373/.330
OF 84 Strawberry .251/.343/.467
OF 91 R. Henderson .268/.400/.423

5330 PA, .255/.359/.411, $36.5M

The three horses in the rotation are 1920 Babe Adams, 1926 Pete Alexander, and 1992 Bob Tewksbury. Is it just me, or is Tewksbury some sort of low-cap Bill Bernhard? I can’t see it by looking at the stats, but he seems to outperform “better” pitchers whenever I see him used. I never tried him, but this theme seemed a perfect place to start.

I’ve tossed a few guys in the bullpen who can start, and the top reliever is pre-rehab 1982 Steve Howe. Going with just 1,260 innings in Network Associates Coliseum (0.89 park factor), which should suffice at this cap. I fully expect to see teams under 1,200. I thought about a more extreme pitchers’ park, but my offense has some HR potential that I didn’t want to squelch completely.

SP 20 Adams 2.16/.244/0.98
SP 92 Tewksbury 2.16/.248/1.02
SP 26 Alexander 3.05/.250/1.11
SP 81 Reuschel 2.67/.280/1.20
SP 48 Gumpert 3.79/.275/1.19
RP 82 Howe 2.08/.240/1.05
RP 18 G. Smith 2.34/.249/0.96
RP 06 Maddux 3.30/.244/1.09

1,260 IP, 2.68 ERA, .253 OAV, 1.07 WHIP, 0.44 HR/9, $33.5M

90M: 1919-2019th Nervous Breakdown
Park: Network Associates Coliseum

I actually started with this theme but couldn’t decide which combination to go with for the longest time, and of course I still think I am choosing poorly. My final four were ‘85, ‘88, ‘15, and ‘19, and I liked something about each of them but also found all of them flawed. I went with the 1919-2019 combo mostly because of comfort with the pitching staff and defense. The self-doubt creeps when you think about which teams others might go with and then asking if I have the right team to match up with them, and that’s pretty much a spiral into unending uncertainty. Which is why I left those four teams in my Team Center for three weeks while I built other rosters.

My biggest concern is my modern hitters rely a bit too much on homers in a league where deadballers are sure to pitch the bulk of the innings. It’s just really difficult to build a roster with enough modern hitters who aren’t sluggers. I’ve got four guys who hit 25-32, though I’d be surprised if any crack 20 in this league. Only one guy in the lineup hits under .300, with George Sisler topping the pack at .352.

The infield range is terrific with Hornsby (C/A+, 6.26 RF), DeJong (A+/A+) and Moncada (B/A), and the platoon of Max Carey and Ken Williams will be A+ in CF. Wally Schang, whom I’ll use basically any time I can, should slow opposing run games pretty well. I’ve seen talk of Ketel Marte as a great value; I just hope he’s a great hitter because he’s the key to the lineup.

C 1919 Schang .306/.436/.373
1b 1919 Sisler .352/.390/.530
2B 1919 Hornsby .318/.384/.430
3B 2019 Moncada .315/.367/.548
SS 2019 DeJong .233/.318/.444
OF 2019 Marte .329/.389/.592
OF 2019 Blackmon .314/.364/.576
OF 1919 Williams .300/.376/.467/ 1919 Carey .307/.376/.365

5367 PA, .303/.370/.482, $45.7M

The cap forced me to steer clear of the most dominant SP in any of the combos I tried. But I’ve got confidence in my 3-man rotation of not-yet-banished Eddie Cicotte and fellow workhorse Jesse Barnes, plus that Jacob DeGrom guy.

This season was really weak for LHP, so all I have are 30 innings from Sean Manaea there. Hopefully LH don’t crush us. Since my top SP put the ball in play a lot, we’ll put the team in Network Associates Coliseum to help them out. Only using two actual RP on this roster, with a few lower-inning SP in the pen to try to combat those low pitch count woes. Also, I’ve now heard schwarze mention once or perhaps 20,000 times that relievers suck in this game. (I know schwarze isn't participating this year, but hopefully he peruses this thread for the shoutout.)

SP 1919 Cicotte 1.82/.228/0.99
SP 1919 Barnes 2.40/.236/1.01
SP 2019 DeGrom 2.43/.207/0.97
RP 2019 Hendriks 1.80/.201/0.96
RP 2019 Glasnow 1.78/.186/0.89
RP 1919 Caldwell 1.71/.181/0.99
RP 2019 Manaea 1.21/.160/0.78

1,302 IP, 2.17 ERA, .217 OAV, 0.99 WHIP, 0.47 HR/9, $44.3M

110M: Friends: The (Hopefully Round 2) Reunion
Park: Comiskey Park (I)

The most emblematic fact about my building process would have to be this: I wound up dumping the first pair of teammates I started the whole thing off with. I worked both rosters simultaneously spot by spot, and it got to the point where 1912 Tris Speaker just wasn’t going to be affordable and I had to take 1917 instead. So there went Joe Wood off the other roster, in came Stan Coveleski, and the rest was just a blur. … A very slow, halting blur.

I’d fill a few spots, get back to it a couple days later and add a few more, return again and move a little closer. And then suddenly it was two days before the deadline and I still had 6 open spots and forget about trying to build another one of these.

When the roster deadline was almost up, my league still had 4 vacant spots in it. Clearly I wasn’t the only one just happy to wind up with anything at this point. If the sim gods are kind, I’ll get a couple of the hastily assembled squads in my division. If not, I’ll never get to tell you about my Round 2 team.

Are these teams any good? Does it matter at this point? They’re done and meet the rules. They came out awfully similarly in the team stats, so I had to decide which one to play first. I ultimately chose my 2nd team for Round 1 because I think the one I’m saving has a better starting rotation and plays better for speed, defense, and offensive versatility. You have to think like you’re going to be in Round 2, so I’ll hope this other one is good enough. Maybe someday I’ll actually get to tell you about it, if I didn’t bungle this one too badly.

I built that Round 2 team primarily and then tried to find a spot for a teammate on the Round 1 roster, so any coherence would be purely accidental. There’s a bit of speed with Benny Kauff and Curtis Granderson, who also give me one more plus defender in the outfield than I expected to take … but Kauff just fit as the only useful teammate from Hooks Wiltse (please don’t ask me to explain why I needed to use him badly enough to overlook this problem) so I left him in there. Probably should have swapped Grandy for Magglio Ordonez, but too late now. There is of course a Tulo season (2011 on this one and 2007 for Round 2), and the other one brought along a potent Matt Holliday. Favorites like Johnny Mize, Frankie Frisch, and Bill Bradley roam the rest of the infield. Somehow I wound up with Carlos Ruiz behind the plate and I honestly have no memory of what led to that. Some guy I never heard of will play the other third of the time.

I thought I’d have a park available that could help my guys knock their fair share of doubles and triples, but the best choices there would have totally killed the homer potential I’ve got. The compromise will be old Comiskey Park (+1 for 1B and 3B but minus for HR), a highly imperfect fit. For Round 2, I can go with a homer-killing park with less concern.

C 2010 Ruiz .302/.400/.447
1B 1938 Mize .337/.422/.614
2B 1928 Frisch .300/.374/.441
3B 1902 Bradley .340/.375/.515
SS 2011 Tulowitzki .302/.372/.544
OF 2007 Holliday .340/.405/.607
OF 2007 Granderson .302/.361/.552
OF 1915 Kauff .342/.446/.509

5568 PA, .314/.385/.518, $57.0M

On the mound we’ll have Coveleski, 2015 Zack Greinke, 1906 Jack Pfiester, and 2020 Dallas Keuchel. I didn’t even realize Keuchel pitched in 2020 … Probably could have been better if I’d swapped out either Kauff or Granderson and saved some cash, but this team wasn’t getting built twice. A couple of those ridiculous 2020 relievers will complement tireless Hoyt Wilhelm to key the pen. The “use whoever fits” approach yielded a lot of relievers with low pitch counts, so we might find out just how tireless Hoyt really is in a hurry. This doesn’t feel like a staff with 1370 innings, which is probably too many anyway. It’s just a hot mess, isn’t it?

SP 1917 Coveleski 1.81/.194/0.99
SP 2015 Greinke 1.66/.187/0.84
SP 1906 Pfiester 1.51/.194/0.94
SP 2020 Keuchel 1.99/.218/1.09
RP 1964 Wilhelm 1.99/.202/0.94
RP 2020 Kolarek 0.95/.164/0.79
RP 2020 B. Smith 2.25/.163/0.67
RP 1993 Poole 2.15/.175/1.01

1,370 IP, 1.92 ERA, .198 OAV, 0.97 WHIP, 0.32 HR/9, $53.0M

120M: Doubles Indemnity
Park: League Park II (Cleveland)

I started this one off by building a pitching staff I liked, then seeing which of the four lineup options looked strongest. Not surprisingly, there was something to like about every version. With the pitching limited to 1930-2020, even homers could be a successful strategy. My 1B team, to no great surprise, had the best team AVG and lowest SLG but good speed. The 2B team had almost as high an AVG and the same OBP with higher SLG. The 3B team had the best range but was weakest across the slash line. The HR team turned out to be pretty impressive aside from speed but lower AVG than I particularly liked.

Ultimately, I chose Doubles over Homers because of the much higher AVG and still very good SLG. Then of course I started tinkering and wound up changing half the pitching staff and three of the eight hitters as I aimed to refine the roster. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, but I also feel like Doubles will wind up being pretty popular because it’s a happy medium in a lot of ways. That would be a potential benefit if a lot of parks favor doubles, to be sure. I just don’t want to be in a division full of Dodger Stadium and Petco.

My starting eight totals 383 doubles (an average of 48) with no AVG below .332. If Wade Boggs is my weakest hitter, it's gotta be a pretty deep lineup, I figure. We’ll stick them in League II for the +2 singles, +3 doubles and -2 homers. The +4 doubles parks all seem to benefit the other types more than I wanted to.

C 30 Cochrane .357/.424/.526
1B 34 Greenberg .339/.404/.600
2B 03 Lajoie .344/.379/.518
3B 91 Boggs .332/.421/.460
SS 09 Wagner .339/.420/.489
OF 23 Speaker .380/.469/.610
OF 98 Walker .363/.445/.630
OF 28 Goslin .379/.443/.614/
5556 PA, .348/.418/.550, $61.8M

I’ll trot out a 4-man rotation of Shane Bieber, Clayton Kershaw, Jacob DeGrom, and Joe Horlen (all just over 200 IP) with Tiny Bonham for spot starts. I loaded the pen with 5 strong arms, but they’ll no doubt get blown up anyway. Hopefully 1297 IP is enough (including a mop), but I went for quality as much as possible while spending just over $58M. I think flirting with fewer innings is just something you do in this tournament if you want to compete. Remind me of this when I miss Round 2 because this team floundered.

SP 20 Bieber 1.63/.167/0.87
SP 15 Kershaw 2.13/.194/0.88
SP 18 DeGrom 1.70/.196/0.91
SP 64 Horlen 1.88/.190/0.94
SP 40 Bonham 1.90/.224/0.97

RP 20 Hendriks 1.78/.161/0.67
RP 19 Glasnow 1.78/.186/0.89
RP 95 Charlton 1.51/.143/0.82
RP 17 Miller 1.44/.144/0.83
RP 58 Latman 0.76/.162/0.92

1,297 IP, 1.86 ERA, .191 OAV, 0.91 WHIP, 0.50 HR/9, $58.1M

140M: 1885/1930/2010: Two and a Half Boxes
Park: Sportsman's Park (III)

You can make yourself crazy trying different permutations to eke out something slightly better with a theme like this. I play this game obsessively, ergo I am already crazy. Quod erat demonstratum.

After starting out with a 1910s/1990s/2000s team I liked quite well, I decided to try one with reliable old Silver King and a pair of 2010s SP and see what developed. Once I decided on the 1930s for the bulk of the lineup, I felt like that was the stronger team … and then I returned a few days later and swapped out King for Ed Seward to make the bullpen better because I can never manage to use all of King’s innings anyway.

So now I have to shed the fear that Seward starting 81 games is going to turn out badly. NebHusker and I just drafted Seward 1st overall in the $120M Tagteam league, so I’m darn well invested in this folly at this point. I need him to pitch 8 effective enough innings each time out to keep us in games. King probably would have done it more reliably, and every bad Seward start will leave me doubting this choice.

Knowing this league will be dominated by deadball pitchers and the best modern guys, I wanted to emphasize high averages and doubles, and also make sure the defense could handle the many balls in play against Seward. The 1930s and 2010s hitters wound up with more HR than I was expecting, boosted by a certain Mr. Ruth who I just had to take, and less speed than my first team by a big margin (may regret that). The key infielders (LeMahieu, Tulo, Beltre) are modern guys who should minimize errors and rack up some plus plays. Though I would have preferred ++ guys, I hope I found the balance. Pete Browning is a little lower in range in CF than I prefer, but I think the extra offense makes up for it.

C 30 Cochrane .357/.424/.526
1B 39 Mize .349/.444/.626
2B 16 LeMahieu .348/.416/.495
3B 10 Beltre .321/.365/.553
SS 10 Tulowitzki .315/.381/.568
OF 87 Browning .402/.464/.547
OF 32 Klein .348/.404/.646
OF 36 Waner .373/.446/.520
DH 30 Ruth .359/.493/.732

6438 PA, .346/.422/.567, $75.9M

Ideally I’ll get about 80 starts from Seward, then 40 apiece from Arrieta and Kershaw. Toad Ramsey is on board to spot start and pitch late innings. Only two actual relievers in the pen here in Mike Adams and Chad Green. Plus I’ve got Rich Hill to pitch the 7th game in a WS and TOC (snort, chortle, snicker).

SP 88 Seward 2.01/.198/0.99
SP 15 Arrieta 1.77/.185/0.86
SP 14 Kershaw 1.77/.196/0.86
RP 85 Ramsey 1.94/.157/0.91
RP 17 Green 1.83/.147/0.74
RP 11 Adams 1.13/.155/0.73
RP 88 George 1.34/.149/0.86

1,454 IP, 1.90 ERA, .189 OAV, 0.92 WHIP, 0.25 HR/9, $64.0M

High Cap: Hawaii Point Five O
Park: Minute Maid Park

I built two versions of this pitching staff, first trying for the highest HR number I could tolerate while still really liking my ability to stay in games. I landed on 0.80 for a $176M payroll, and I was actually pretty happy with that team. But I found some time to try again and assembled a 0.50 team that was a few million cheaper on pitching and just as good. So that allowed me to keep basically the same lineup at $170M.

And then I tinkered endlessly with it because I feared I’d want more innings or more speed or better this or better that … ultimately realizing that in general I have no confidence at high caps. Or much love for them, honestly. I hate drafting 12M players who put up a .650 OPS or watching some of the greatest pitchers ever with ERAs over 6.00.

When it came to the lineup, I struggled a lot with the balance between wanting enough homers to take advantage of the potential this theme offers without being dependent on them against dominant pitchers. I decided on a few faster high-average guys whose fairly limited homer potential normalizes well and offers some pop. So I ultimately picked George Sisler over Todd Helton at 1B and Tris Speaker over Mickey Mantle in CF. Third base gave me fits. I’m pretty sure ‘81 Schmidt won’t earn his salary facing pitchers who don’t give up homers, and it’s beyond me to know how many people will try to minimize homers and sacrifice salary. I’m hoping enough will let ‘em fly to justify this pick, because I kept wanting to take Frank “Not Quite So Many Home Runs” Baker, who would have left my lineup very lefty-skewed and less powerful. I’m sure whatever the wrong answer is, that’s what I went with.

C 1935 Foxx .346/.461/.636
1B 1920 Sisler .407/.449/.632
2B 1921 Hornsby .397/.458/.639
3B 1981 Schmidt .316/.435/.644
SS 2011 Tulowitzki .302/.372/.544
OF 1912 Speaker .383/.464/.567
OF 1926 Ruth .372/.516/.737
OF 1912 Cobb .409/.456/.584

5844 PA, .366/.447/.613, $94.5M

The pitching staff skews very current, because the modern pitchers allow the most homers but many still normalize decently. Other than 1913 Walter Johnson, the rotation is from 2018-2020 (DeGrom, Beiber, Lamet). And I have three relievers from 2017-20, too (featuring Devin Williams). What’s nice about a cap this high is I really don’t have to reject any pitching options because of high $/IP. It’s more about convincing myself that I have enough quality innings to avoid fatigue without being wasteful. The 2020 guys help boost the projected HR/9 up from 0.47 to 0.51.

It’s hard to get much better than a team .175 OAV and 0.83 WHIP, though the version I built with .80 HR/9 actually slid in at .167 and 0.75. My feeling was the significant increase in homers would wipe out those edges in reducing any type of baserunner because the homers are guaranteed runs. I should have tried to build a homer-stingy roster and get down to $162-164M, and if I’d been less busy with the rest of life I likely would have. But then choosing among three options would have been more torture.

The park is a conundrum here, because I hate to make it harder on these pitchers but also don’t want to waste the strengths of the offense. We can hit a ton of 1B, 2B, and 3B, too, and most of the + homer parks take away one or more of those. Minute Maid Park at least doesn’t repress anything while saving the pitching staff from an all-out hitting paradise.

SP 1913 W. Johnson 1.14/.187/0.78
SP 2018 DeGrom 1.70/.196/0.91
SP 2020 Beiber 1.63/.167/0.87
SP 2020 Lamet 2.09/.161/0.86
S/R 1950 Hearn 1.94/.169/0.88
RP 2020 D. Williams 0.33/.089/0.63
RP 1995 Charlton 1.51/.143/0.82
RP 2017 Verlander 1.06/.149/0.65
RP 2018 Doolittle 1.60/.135/0.60
RP 2009 Feliz 1.72/.124/0.67
RP 1999 Wagner 1.57/.135/0.78

1,447 IP, 1.58 ERA, .175 OAV, 0.83 WHIP, 0.47 HR/9, $75.5M

You're still here? It's over. Go home. Go.

Posted by ozomatli on 6/11/2021 12:45:00 PM (view original):
Reserved for my own strategy post. One anecdote now though:

• Variable Cap strategy was the most interesting for me — my real team's HR/9 is 0.28, but I spent $3.5M on 300 IP of 2.0 or higher HR/9 (thank you Jose Lima), which let me reach 0.80 HR/9 in aggregate, bumping my cap up by $12M. Also, since my staff doesn't let up many homeruns, but a lot of other people's will, I went all in on HR on offense — Yankee Stadium III, McGwire, Bonds, Ruth, etc
• Same thing in the 70M with pitcher OAV, but it was a tougher pill to swallow at the lower cap

I'm sure many of us are saying "why didn't I think of that!", myself included.

So first time getting the chance to participate here, these were fun builds. Going in with no expectations other than to beat my pre-ranking (114, I think) which, I hope I can manage, LOL

70 Mil: Team .290 (Network Associates)
Hitters: 5374 PA, .290/.330/.406
Pitchers: 1457 IP, .290/1.36

I’ve never played at a cap below 80 million, and this wasn’t my first idea here, my first thought was to try and play for a HR strategy with an average somewhere in the .250s but then given that I figured I’d be facing a bunch of dead ballers and HR limiting stadiums realized that that was probably pretty dumb. So went in this direction here.

Built my pitching first with the idea that I would target somewhere between .280-.290 and would do my best to limit walks and HR, and I mean…I don’t think I did that bad a job with what I put together given that my staff OAV is .290, haha. Then in terms of hitters, it was a matter of making sure that I had enough PA and the Average matched the OAV. Made sure to get A range guys at SS and all three OF positions. I wondered how many teams would go above .260 for this theme and it seems like a bunch did.

90 Mil: 18 & Life to Go (Busch Stadium)
Hitters: 5799 PA, .302/.358/.414
Pitchers: 1386 IP, .201/.98

Strategy wise here I went in looking for two things, a good pitching staff and a catcher with enough plate appearances not to really have to worry about platooning who could throw and I feel like I have both of those things. Could be potentially famous last words, but I like what I put together here as far as a pitching staff especially given the fact that I’m going to be playing in Busch.

Had an offense built but wound up completely revamping it. Realized that the 18 Speaker was too high price wise to really justify keeping around, and wound up with what I feel like was definitely a more balanced offense of primarily 1918 guys. Not a lot of pop in the bats which again (Busch) might not matter. Little concerned that some of the +++ range defense teams might make scoring runs harder.

110 Mil: Greinke is my Friendo (Target)
Hitters: 5808 PA, .330/.379/.504
Pitchers: 1381 IP, .193/.92

Hitters (B Team) 5991 PA, .314/.383/.450
Pitchers (B Team): 1408 IP, .196/.92

Had some debate with myself over which team to enter here given that the pitching staffs are relatively similar stats wise, but wound up entering the first team that I built and the one with the better offense. Like seemingly most of these teams I wound up building out my pitching first and as the team name maybe indicates I got started with 15 Greinke given that I knew on the other team that would then give me 15 Kershaw and kind of went from there. Knew that I was taking the team to Target after I grabbed Verlander so wasn’t too concerned about HR/9

Got 37 Medwick as my offensive headliner and then built around him with some guys that I’ve used and liked (George Kell, Merrifield, Tim Anderson) and then guys like Tony Oliva, Sam Crawford, and Tony Pena who I’ve never used before but fit the categories that I was striving for

120 Mil: One Baggers (SBC)
Hitters: 5861 PA, .359/.417/.513
Pitchers: 1393 IP, .195/.88

Of all the league options this is the one that I feel the best about. As 120 million is probably my favorite cap to play I built out teams for all four hit types and actually entered a HR team that I pulled after drock pointed out I had an illegal pitcher. At that same time I had a HR team getting its brains beat in in another league so in kind of a wuss move I went in another direction.

Pitching wise I like the 20 Plesac and have had some success with him when I’ve protected him with a stadium that limits HR, same with Kluber and Foulke. Otherwise did my best to limit HR and limit walks. The offense is where I kind of let my mind work here and I feel pretty good about the guys that I’m going to be running out there. I set the rule in place to get the cut offs and then made my decisions based on SLG# once everything else had been counted. Some of the guys on my team I’ve used and I know will be good in this stadium at this cap, the others I mean, I hope so.

140 Mil: 30s/80s/2020 (Exhibition Stadium)
Hitters: 6520 PA, .334/.395/.544
Pitchers: 1455 IP, .178/.85

Knew that I wanted to use 2020 here for the pitchers, and then eventually settled on the 30s and 80s as well. Built the pitching staff first and focused on 2020 guys, I just got done a season with the I’ve never used the Devin Williams, so I was glad that I had the money available to bring him into the squad. I’ve had good luck with the other 2020 guys in Bauer, Lamet, Hendriks, and Martin so hopefully they can shut teams down. Other than that the big innings 80s guys in Scott and Tudor (who had been on a lot of my teams recently).

Hitting wise I think I initially built a version of this offense that I had to revamp because I didn’t realize that the league had a DH, don’t know if I have a ton to say here (don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing) went with a mix of players that I have used and had perform reasonably well (McGee, Mickey, Seager, Machado) and then some guys that I haven’t used before like Frisch. Hoping Jimmie Foxx can give me a nice offensive boost as a set him and forget him guy at the DH spot

Variable Cap: .51 Caliber (Ameriquest Field)
Hitters: 6275 PA, .362/.438/.588
Pitchers: 1512 IP, .178/.87

Went a couple of different directions in terms of where I was going to go with this here, eventually settled on kind of a middle’ish route, which maybe it’ll go well, maybe it won’t. Pitching wise I mean, no real special ideas here. Made more of a concerted effort to limit HRs in the bullpen than in the starting rotation, but other than Bieber and Lamet that isn’t bad there.

Given the salary cap, I figured I would go big dummy and take the 27 Gehrig for a spin as kind of the showpiece of the offense. The rest of the guys are all high average, but also high slugging percentage guys who hit some home runs. Babe will lead off so have some power at the top of the order as well.

I'm reserving this space for the rest of my write-ups, but I'll begin now with the $70M:

$70M: AVG=OAV (WISC #1: ME-262)

As some people probably noticed, the theme is one I submitted to ozomatli for consideration.

Over the years, I have observed that one of the most tried and true strategies in WIS for building good teams has been to build offense to rack up as many hits as possible (high AVG) while picking pitchers that allowed as few hits as possible (low OAV). This observation led me to this theme idea: what if this tried and true strategy is denied? How many new strategies would become viable?

I think I know how this theme will play out, but the only way to find out how it actually plays is to play the games. However, here are my thoughts about how I think this theme will play out that guided the construction of my roster:

No $70M pitching staff is going to be great at everything. There is always going to be a weakness. Here, that means the pitching staff might give up too many hits, it might be caught walking too many peeps, or it might give up too many bombs. Given that this theme forces AVG=OAV, the "best" weakness to have is OAV, because in order for other teams to exploit that weakness, their own pitching staffs have to also give up a lot of hits. That doesn't apply to BB/9 or HR/9: a team could be great at drawing walks or hitting HRs, yet their pitching staffs are not weak to that same strategy. This is also an optimization theme, so I will share my personal belief that the sweet spot for AVG/OAV is between 0.255 and 0.275 - significantly lower than that and the offense will be anemic while the pitching staff gives up too many walks or homers, and significantly higher than that and the pitching staff will be in danger of the fatigue hell death spiral because the quality of innings will be terrible.

Another one of the clever things about this theme is that the AVG=OAV idea will lead a lot of people to roster a whole bunch of players they rarely ever use. In my opinion, this is a big mistake - there's a reason why cookies are cookies: they are simply more efficient (cost vs. performance) than other players. The really ingenious thing about this theme is that it actually doesn't bar cookies at all, what it bans is cookie cutter strategies.

I've watched ozomatli (and some others) in previous low cap WIS leagues significantly underdraft PA with the idea that they can play in a pitchers ballpark and ride out any fatigue they incur so that they can roster better offensive players. I have largely copied that strategy, and then filled up the PA gap with hitters that have extremely low AVG but extremely high BB. In the end, I wound up with pretty much the exact amount of PA I roster in a normal WISC $70M, but its composition is quite different than usual. That allowed me to roster Roger Connor, Babe Ruth, Ken Caminiti, Ben Zobrist and Mark Mclemore - who are pretty great cookies at this cap, and also pick up an elite arm in Bob Boone, as I am sure that quite a few owners might have gotten the idea to steal bases in a low cap theme.

Hitting: 5490 PA 0.262/0.361/0.391 97 HR
Pitching: 1262 IP 2.72 ERA 1.12 WHIP 0.262 OAV 35 HR allowed

$90M: One Hundred Years (WISC #2: Active Pandemics in 1919 & 2019)

This one was pretty quick for me to build, considering that there is a rule that requires at least $40M to be spent in each year selected. I've always liked 1919 pitchers in leagues that require a pitching staff to be built from a single season, and there's quite a few modern day hitters from 2019 that I like to use in WIS, particularly Ketel Marte. I had thought about 2020, but I decided against it because I didn't like enough 1920 players at this cap.

Babe Adams is this team's ace, but I also liked 2019 Zack Greinke and 1919 Phil Douglas. 1919 Jesse Barnes is a good innings eater, while 1919 Joe Jackson is another great offensive player to add to the roster along with Ketel Marte.

Hitting: 5533 PA 0.300/0.377/0.501 196 HR
Pitching: 1328 IP 2.38 ERA 0.97 WHIP 0.222 OAV 50 HR allowed

$110M: See Ya Later, Friendo (WISC #3: Ruth's Friends in Astrodome)

Although this did take the longest of the six themes for me to build, it wasn't nearly as onerous for me to build as it sounds like it was for some owners. I think the important thing was to identify pairs of players on a given single season that were worth rostering. Some that come to mind are:

Duke Farrell and Dan Brouthers (1891)
Jim Bottomley and Frankie Frisch (1928)
Ketel Marte and Zack Greinke (2019)
Christy Mathewson and Mike Donlin (1905)
Walter Johnson and George Dumont (1915)
Alex Bregman and Justin Verlander (2019)
Jose Ramirez and Corey Kluber (2017)
Clayton Kershaw and Rich Hill (2016)
Benny Kauff and Cy Falkenberg (1915)

Then it was just a matter of sorting these pairs and others into two rosters, and then deciding which one to run in round 1. I've kept the one with the better bullpen and more power for round 2, running the team with less reliance on HR power in R1.

Hitting: 5900 PA 0.308/0.392/0.490 136 HR
Pitching: 1443 IP 2.06 ERA 0.92 WHIP 0.206 OAV 67 HR allowed

$120M: Hit Type Challenge (WISC #4: Triple or Bust)

The very first time I played a theme like this one, I thought I would build a team specifically around hitting a specific type of hit on offense. My experience with that kind of strategy was that the resulting team was mediocre, and that teams that relied on the tried and true strategy of rostering cost-effective players that comply with the requirements of the theme are far better at winning games. This is why I winded up selecting triples - because I found that there are a lot of players that hit the required number of triples who also happen to be reasonably good in the other categories, and that makes a well rounded cost effective team (it helps to be able to roster players such as Tris Speaker, George Brett and Snuffy Stirnweiss). I did however select Petco Park as my home ballpark, to help give my team a further advantage at home against non triple hitting teams.

Hitting: 5838 PA 0.324/0.386/0.515 130 HR
Pitching: 1405 IP 1.91 ERA 0.91 WHIP 0.193 OAV 79 HR allowed

Red, I enjoyed your write-up immensely. Guess, I have the afternoon off.

Tulobotomy > Tuloholics.

Posted by jmissirlis on 6/11/2021 2:06:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ozomatli on 6/11/2021 12:45:00 PM (view original):
Reserved for my own strategy post. One anecdote now though:

• Variable Cap strategy was the most interesting for me — my real team's HR/9 is 0.28, but I spent $3.5M on 300 IP of 2.0 or higher HR/9 (thank you Jose Lima), which let me reach 0.80 HR/9 in aggregate, bumping my cap up by $12M. Also, since my staff doesn't let up many homeruns, but a lot of other people's will, I went all in on HR on offense — Yankee Stadium III, McGwire, Bonds, Ruth, etc
• Same thing in the 70M with pitcher OAV, but it was a tougher pill to swallow at the lower cap

I'm sure many of us are saying "why didn't I think of that!", myself included.

I am feeling less nervous about employing the same two strategies as Ozo. Also, it looks like, my obsession with 2020 may have some sound basis. Fingers crossed.

Posted by jmissirlis on 6/11/2021 2:06:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ozomatli on 6/11/2021 12:45:00 PM (view original):
Reserved for my own strategy post. One anecdote now though:

• Variable Cap strategy was the most interesting for me — my real team's HR/9 is 0.28, but I spent $3.5M on 300 IP of 2.0 or higher HR/9 (thank you Jose Lima), which let me reach 0.80 HR/9 in aggregate, bumping my cap up by $12M. Also, since my staff doesn't let up many homeruns, but a lot of other people's will, I went all in on HR on offense — Yankee Stadium III, McGwire, Bonds, Ruth, etc
• Same thing in the 70M with pitcher OAV, but it was a tougher pill to swallow at the lower cap

I'm sure many of us are saying "why didn't I think of that!", myself included.

Ditto that, particularly on the variable cap. Even taking one piece of ballast might have been a really wise "waste" of pitching salary.

I did it to some extent in the 70M with a pair of long men/spot starters who are about 30 points above the rest of the team OAV. I hope they are still usable, because I didn't want to carry innings I wouldn't use in that one. I can certainly see how a thoughtfully constructed variable staff could carry that dead weight (not unlike many teams I've rostered in the 16x16 leagues) without sacrificing quality.