$80m – Irv Young Americans
Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds
.288 AVG, .361 OBP, .416 SLG, 89 HR
1421 IP, 1.04 WHIP
A lot of people chose Bill Bernhard for this league, which makes sense. I think I missed that because of my approach to leagues like this. I’ll divide half the salary by the approximate number of innings desired–in this case $40m / 1400 = approx $28,500/ip. I’ll bump that up a bit when I search, but I mostly looked at pitchers who cost less than $30,000/ip. Which gives me a more balanced team versus a brilliant starter and a weak one I could rest during the playoffs.
Is that a superior approach? Doubt it, but that maybe explains how I ended up with Irv Young as my most expensive player. Which sounds familiar. I think I had him at the $80m theme last year? Can’t recall specifically how that worked out. I know I was battling for the bottom of the cage most of round one last year and my teams collectively took a 2007 Mets-like swan dive at the end. But that can’t be Irv Young’s fault. Can it?
Irv played in Huntington Ave Baseball Grounds, so my park is neutral. Unless I build a team around a particular park’s strength, Yankee III or whatever, I’m probably better off neutral anyway. I found a decent fielding infield, and all four are new to me (Kevin Young, Dick Egan, Bill McKechnie, and Cliff Pennington). The only old favorites here are Mitchell Page and the extreme-low-walks versions of Tiny Bonham and Denis Boucher. I’ve used Buck Rodgers at C for low cap themes before, good arm for cheap.
This team was a pain to build so I didn’t mess with it much once I initially drafted it, apart from realizing there was a $300k exception. I typically only use mopups when I’m in an extreme hitter’s park or when the theme suggests extreme outcomes, so I didn’t draft one here, but I added Donnie Hill (my fav sub-$300 scrub) and Eddie O’Brien.
In my few WISC tournaments I’ve seen the most parity at the lower caps. Correspondingly, I expect this team to be fine but nothing special.
$90m – I Don’t Believe In Modern Love
Great American Ballpark
.292 AVG, .369 OBP, .475 SLG, 187 HR
1394 IP, 1.03 WHIP
Two Bowie references in a row! I could try for six, but my reasoning might grow obscure. (‘Crystal Japan’ for Koji Uehara?)
I built this with a deadball staff and immediately cleared it. The modern staff I then drafted didn’t seem significantly worse, especially as I chose relatively good HR/9 numbers (only 86 surrendered total), and the modern dudes should help my fielders.
But then I guessed that the majority would go modern with their staff, so why not try to hit homers? I like HRs as a strategy whenever the theme suggests I won’t face all deadballers. Thus Great American Ballpark with Reggie Smith, Bonilla, Bob and Davey Johnson, all A range fielders with some pop. Mitchell Page makes another appearance as well. 1885 Germany Smith might be a gamble at SS. Terrific range, terrible glove (.885 fielding pct), although that gets adjusted to .932 with normalization.
Daniel Hudson might be my best pitcher, which sounds worrisome on paper. But if I can outfield the deadball teams and outslug the modern ones, I might be on to something.
$110m – …Baby One More Time
Palace of the Fans
.316 AVG, .379 OBP, .469 SLG, 113 HR
1468 IP, 0.97 WHIP
This was the hardest (or most Toxic?) build for sure, but I also think this is my best team. It’s my best fielding team, anyway:
C Ivan Rodriguez
1B Pujols
2B Lajoie
3B Santo
SS Rey Sanchez
OF Speaker, Roush, Cy Seymour
I’ve been pretty successful lately with great fielders (both range and glove) combined with a hitter’s park.
Like many, I never considered for a second trying any distribution but one year. I typed in a list of desired criteria for each position plus a salary maximum, organized by last name then season, and made a list of players who had more than one qualifying season. Even narrowing it down like this it still was a struggle to put all the pieces together and get under the cap, especially as I couldn’t find a lot of bench players with consecutive cheap seasons. Bob Heise (bench) and Dave Black (mopup) were good finds.
Finding starters and relievers with two consecutive usable seasons wasn’t hard, but the exception was my long reliever. Drafting Rich Hill and Jose Fernandez ended up being the solution. Hill threw 29 innings in 2015 and 110 innings in 2016, and Fernandez threw 173 in 2013 and 52 in 2014, so I was able to split ‘em up.
Once I finished distributing the players by price and quality between the two squads I ended up with remarkably similar statistics for both. My round 2 team will be
$110m – Oops!…I Did It Again
Palace of the Fans
.314 AVG, .372 OBP, .467 SLG, 111 HR
1479 IP, 0.96 WHIP
If my first round team is as good as I think it is, I’ll be in good shape in the second round. Of course, I’m usually wrong with my preseason predictions, which is why I don’t make many.
Update: I started writing this before the tourney launched but didn’t have time to complete it. In the meantime, this “favorite” of my teams has been by far my worst, starting the season 3-8. 06/12 pm my teams went 5-1, with this team being the only loss. I’M SORRY I SAID YOU WERE GOOD. I DIDN’T MEAN IT. Y’ALL SUCK.
$120m – Yomiuri Giants
League Park (I)
.317 AVG, .370 OBP, .441 SLG, 66HR
1417 IP, 0.90 WHIP
My studs are
Joss
Uehara
Kershaw
Cobb
Robinson
2016 Kershaw is perhaps the single best bargain in the game, so that choice was easy. I didn’t think HRs was a winning strategy in this league, so I took Cobb and his ridiculous AVG#.
I went with Brooks Robinson over Furcal for two reasons: he’s a better hitter, especially as Furcal provides a ton of PAs but a poor OBP. Also, I’ve noticed that 3B fielding percentages drop off pretty rapidly. A D+ fielding 2B will have a FPCT# of almost .96, compared to closer to .925 for a 3B. Yeah, a 2B will get more chances, but I don’t like seeing all those 3B errors pile up.
Joss and Uehara had the lowest $/IP. Blowing a ton of dough on an elite closer is the dumbest waste of money I can think of. I don’t actually use the Closer setting, just Setup A and B. But if I can get Sean Doolittle and his .93 ERC# for $57k/IP, why would I ever draft a comparable Kimbrel at $101k/IP?
Filling in the rest of the blanks, was, as everyone has said, like hunting for bargains in an $80m league. Thus pitchers like Ralph Comstock and Charlie Smith, and the cheap 1893 Roger Connor and the partial season 1990 Willie McGee. Kershaw is too valuable to use as a long reliever in this league, so my rotation is Joss, Tully Sparks, and a tandem of Kershaw and Rankin Johnson. The cheapo Deacon Phillippe-o handles the long reliever role.
Uehara apparently began and ended his major league career on the Yomiuri Giants, which worked well enough since “Koji Uehara” doesn’t lend itself easily to puns.
$140m – Siegfried & Roy
Pacific Bell Park
.359 AVG, .430 OBP, .524 SLG, 109 HR
1436 IP, 0.83 WHIP
“Giant White Tigers”, ya? And hey, did you know Roy died of COVID-19? I didn’t, not until I was naming this team and Googling how to spell “Siegfried”. And just when we were recovering from losing Kenny Rogers. We hardly knew ye, Gambler.
(As a Mets fan, I will NEVER be over the #@$%&! other Kenny Rogers’s series-losing bases loaded walk in the 1999 NLCS)
It’s interesting reading the instant decisions everyone made upon reading this list, and how different those decisions were. I use the Giants for franchise squads a lot, mainly for their pitching: Mathewson, Schupp, Toney, tons of relievers. And while I’m not especially good at choosing ballparks, Pac Bell and Polo Grounds are both workable. I glanced at this list and said “Mathewson/Walsh/Cobb? I can build around that” and never considered other options.
1912 Cobb and his .407 AVG# is one of the great bargains in the game at a higher cap. My pitchers are all Giants plus Ed Walsh and the 28IP Jack McDowell. My hitters are split pretty evenly between Tigers and White Sox, with super sub Dave Anderson of the Giants available off the bench. Polanco and Kell are ace fielders with decent bats, and while Appling is a bit weaker SS glove than I normally like, he offers good range and a .372 AVG#. And Shoeless Joe/Cobb/Heilmann looks like a killer outfield.
$170m – One Seventy
Cleveland Stadium
.369 AVG, .433 OBP, .553 SLG, 157 HR
1394 IP, 0.78 WHIP
I’m surprised to see all the buzz around Silver King. Yeah, he’s a bargain, but I have no idea how to use him. I tried once in a theme league based around earning the most Silver King wins, and I fell into a fatigue spiral and ended up with my one and only 100+ game loser.
But at $180m, I don’t need to sacrifice quality to save money. Walsh/Pete Alexander, Kershaw/Toney, and seven relievers leaves me with $184m to draft hitters, which is plenty.
Platooning in a DH league is pretty comical. Looking back, I actually kinda wish I had gone even lower in salary and stuck to more full timers. As it is, Cobb, Lajoie, Speaker, and Hughie Jennings play every day. My platoons are
C Elston Howard/Eddie Perez
1B Mize/Teixeira
3B Boggs/Matt Williams
OF Al Simmons/Possum Whited
DH Ted Williams/Felipe Lopez
Lopez I drafted not so much for his deft switch-hitting bat (DH league! When am I pinch-hitting?) but because he plays five positions. Yeah, he sucks at all of them, but at least that’s some late-game rest for my starters.
I can probably outslug my opponents a bit, thus a marginal HR park. I prefer to build teams that can run themselves, especially with six squads going at once. I’m nervous about balancing playing time for Boggs and Williams, but hoping Sparky can figure it out.