Round 2 - Team Building Comments - Page 2 - WIS Championship

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The post-mortem. Pre-league comments in italics, post-league comments in bold.

60m Double Albatross and Teammates (Cobb Hits It Past A Diving Jeter): I think this took me less time than most. I had very specific parameters for my albatrosses that I suspect are different than most had - a deadball outfielder to get access to deadball pitching and a long-career modern shortstop with great fielding to make sure the deadballers weren't a disaster, and one of them had to have at least a slight pitchers' park. It didn't take me long to identify Ty Cobb and Derek Jeter as the top candidates, and Cobb has two pretty good matches for 99 Jeter. In the end I went with the lighter-hitting CF model Cobb since finding CF range with the trashier guys wasn't going to be pretty

It turned out that in addition to everything I wanted out of them, using these two also gave me access to two lower-cap cookie full-time players: Cobb has access to 1927 Max Bishop and Jeter has access to 1995 Wade Boggs. Both of those guys should completely wreck $25m-30m pitching and weren't more than slightly above the $/PA number I was shooting for. The Yankees also had a pretty wide array of usable hitting seasons at this cap - full-timers (04 Olerud and 01 Knoblauch should be effective here), part-timers (2010 Cervelli and 97 Jorge make a nice hitting catching tandem), and bench guys (200k Jim Leyritz and 95 Straw are the best, but there's a lot of cheapness here). I think I can manage the PAs

The pitching is entirely early-Cobb Tigers guys - I couldn't find anyone who could come close to matching the depth of cost-effective deadball pitching as Cobb. There's some usual suspects from this era like Summers, Siever, Winter, and Willett, and then some guys I'd never heard of before. It's a weirdly structured staff - while I have ~1350 good innings (good relative to the cap at least) 1300 of them are clustered in six starters. Like the PA situation, there's no reason this can't work, but it's going to require some precise management.

We went 93-69 and won the AL Wild Card. I realized after the draft that I made two rather boneheaded mistakes in the team construction. First, I used a lighter-hitting Ty Cobb in center instead of one of the better-hitting options in a corner, despite the Cobb I was using in center not being all that much better on a projected errors/plus-minus than Austin Kearns, who was the long side of my LF platoon. And although Cobb hit .380, it was the emptiest .380 ever and he was by far the worst of the Cobbs in the league. Second, I misread the rules and didn't utilize the 300k exception, so my bench quality was lower than it should have been. If I lose the overall championship by five points, at least I'll know why.

Despite that bit of stupidity, I won a lot of games here based on having enough innings and having good innings, basically, and the 1300 starting innings thing always left me with three guys out of the bullpen ready to throw 50 pitches even though it wasn't the same three guys from game to game. Ty Cobb's pitching looked hard to beat beforehand and that seems to have proven right given that four of the five Cobb teams finished with 92 or more wins. I could really, really use a big playoff run out of here if I'm going to make top 3 in the overall standings.

80m The Nineteen Tens (Two Guys, One Cub): I found this theme to be mindnumbingly bland, to be honest, and I expect a ton of similarity between teams. I focused on fielding, expecting with the all-deadball group there to be a ton of errors, and doubles to go to the Polo Grounds. But I think pretty much everyone is going to have a team that hits around the same and pitches around the same, and there just aren't a lot of strategies you can execute with how limited this theme is.

We went 80-82 and finished 3rd in the NL Central. Maybe I should have tried more builds, but as I suspected this league was pretty closely clustered - the entire NL finished between 72 and 90 wins. I did finish 3rd in the league in fielding. Bleh.

90m TOC Open (Marco Polo): This is also a Polo Grounds team, but a much more extreme given the open rules one. It has pretty much the same guys you'd expect on a Polo Grounds team at this cap - Wade Boggs, John Olerud, Earl Webb, Addie Joss - and some other guys that do other things well but also hit doubles like HoJo and Gavvy. I have a feeling this league is going to have a gigantic amount of teams clustered around .500 just like the 80m, but at least they'll be different teams.

We went 88-74 and won the AL Central. Despite making the playoffs, my first thought was that we should have been better. My 08 Addie at $90m in the Polo Grounds really got outpitched by my 08 Addie at $120m in Palace of the Fans? Yikes. And most of the lineup underachieved a bit too. But the overall team build was good, and we overcame having by far the worst non-abused 08 Addie at this cap and didn't get stuck in a death division. With only three playoff teams but the overall championship still within striking distance with some help, I could really use a big run here too.

100m Modified Rule V (Brave New World): Love this team. The hitting seems pretty far above average, although I'm lacking a traditional leadoff guy. 95 Maddux/96 Smoltz/99 Millwood/97 Neagle is about as good of a rotation as possible in this theme. The bullpen core is strong. I think this is my best hope.

We went 89-73 and won the AL West. Everyone basically did what they were supposed to do, all the draft choices worked out (Olerud hit .314/.407/.492 and Thome hit .290/.396/.534 as the core of a great lineup, Sundberg threw out 47% and chipped in a respectable .318 OBP, Eldred was my best reliever with 113 innings of 2.55 ERA ball and made some brilliant starts in the pennant race while things still looked iffy) and despite a little bad luck in one run games (19-23) we pulled away from a multi-way playoff race in the last week.

110m Silver Anniversary Draft (From Nixon to Clinton: 1968 to 1992): This draft just didn't go very well. I saw several potential angleshoots given the letter of the rules but passed them up to work within what appeared to be the obvious spirit of the rules, and it's clear to me based on later events that was a huge mistake. Anything resembling an elite pitcher was gone by my second pick, and while I did put together what I think will be a competitive staff and the hitting has some guys that will do very well in the Astrodome, it's just not going to be good enough for contention given what others were able to assemble through better luck or other means.

We went 89-73 and finished second in the NL West. For as much as I hated this team at the draft, the Astrodome gimmick actually worked out quite well and we would have contended with an easier divisional draw. As it was, we hung the WC race until alleyviper got scorching hot. Given my low expectations and an era/gimmick that was a total shot in the dark with pitchers that on paper didn't look great compared to what was out there, I am quite happy with how this worked out.

120m Top Dollar (Return of Bob): This is a more extreme version of a team-building strategy I used in the first round at 140m (which was, all-in-all, a fairly similar theme), which is going to the most extreme doubles/triples/anti-homers park in the sim, Palace of the Fans. In the first round I focused on doubles more than triples, here it's more balanced. Essentially, a number of elite doubles or triples hitters are also top dollar players, enough that it puts together quite a cohesive team, much moreso than any other strategy. By more or less complete accident, I also assembled a super-range OF. The pitching staff is a mix of deadball starters and elite relievers. Death to dingers.

We went 83-79 and finished in 2nd place in the AL West. A bunch of bad things happened to this team along the way.

First problem: divisional draw. The division contained the entire top three from round 1!

Second problem: our 53-28 home record got more than counteracted by our 30-51 road record. Now, I built this team to heavily take advantage of Palace of the Fans, but a 46 game home to road swing is just incomprehensible even given that.

Third problem: my god did the non-Addie pitching blow. This is mostly my fault, as I tried to be cute and use open league quality deadballers behind Addie instead of just taking Walsh and Maddux and Pedro like everyone else to save a few bucks to fit in Wade Boggs and Rollie Fingers, the latter of whom was himself a disaster. I figured my defense and dinger-nerfing would help them, but nothing could save Ed Summers in this league. My team made 71 good plays in the outfield alone and even still everyone on the staff except Addie and Joey Devine was over a .300 average against, some much farther over that.

Fourth problem: the absence of good luck. Now, even given my previously pointed out stupidity with the pitching, the team did score 1020 runs and allowed 870 non-mopup runs (I really beat the stuffing out of poor Guy Cooper), so we probably should have been a bit better than an 83 win team.

Somewhere along the line I forgot the adage I always use at $100 million or higher which is to draft the best darn pitching you can first and then build the offense. Never again!

1/21/2011 8:05 PM (edited)

rbow923

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POST MORTEM

$60M - 97-65. my draft strategies worked. modern era, avoid fatigue, use part timers, dont overpay for anything. looking at the standings the modern era teams had a big advantage over the oldtimers. Several people commented that they wanted deadball era pitchers. I dont see it at this cap. elite pitchers from that era are a bargain, cheap pitchers from that era stink. also there weren't enough part time hitters to choose from.

$80M - 96-66. following up on the idea that elite deadball pitchers are bargains and cheap deadball pitchers stink, I drafted a pitching dominated team. $45M+ on pitching and the only team with Ed Walsh who breezed to a Cy Young award. cheaper hitters did an adequate job, my $2.9M SS hit .269 with only 14 errors and OF platoons did fine.

$90M - 105-57. what a finish, winning 31 of my last 33 games for a total of 105. the awful thing is I don't know why. I thought this would be a flat league, everyone has experience at Open/Champs leagues so not much room to gain an advantage. I did have strong and deep pitching again, maybe that's underrated in this tournament. also I didn't pay for much range on any of my teams as it is now overpriced.

$100M - 87-75. I had doubts about this team until they got off to a fast start. sputtered in the 2nd half then held on to make the playoffs. my salary managemnet worked here, picking stars is easy often it's more important to know where and how to go cheap. I chose a losing franchise because I thought the competition would be weaker, imagine my surprise when the bottom tier had more Wins than the top tier.

$110M - 66-76. I hate drafts. It's jst not my style to select a whole team one person at a time. In the draft I couldnt get the right balance between drafting good players and playing the salary cap. I passed over too many good players because they were expensive and didn't fit my too-rigid plan, and so I ended up with too many mediocre players. also I regret playing the moderen era here the pitchers weren't good enough. I did outscore my opponents by 37 runs, not a good pythag result.

$120M - 95-67. I was expecting a flat league here too and dont know why I won over 90 games. nothing new to report, just more of the same strategies that worked on my other teams.

1/23/2011 12:10 AM

alleyviper

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I'm curious what makes you think deadball pitchers did poorly at 60m. Only 8 of the top 25 pitchers by ERA were post-1920 and 8 of the top 10 teams by ERA had a deadball captain. That's oversimplifying things but it looks to me like the deadballers did quite well. As tjeff mentioned, four of the five Cobb teams won 92+

1/23/2011 4:47 AM

alleyviper

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Commenting on my original comments:

Ty Cobb did not lead me astray. Every team over .500, 4 playoff teams and possibly a 5th and he was excellent in every league except 90m, where he was merely good. Not too shabby.

60m: Cobb and Sheffield were both fantastic, even despite playing at 95% or less the entire season. I had the most PAs and the 6th most IP by the end of the season which stretched my fatigue a little thin, thankfully most teams were generally weaker which helped my fatigued players play up a bit. The modern players kept me from committing too many errors but I did make the most - plays in the league, fatigue certainly couldn't have helped there. I can't help but feel this team underpferformed a bit, especially considering I easily had the best pythag in the league, but I'm pretty satisfied with it.

80m: I really hated building this team but it came together pretty well. I underestimated how many PAs I'd need so my lineup was mostly in the 93-96 range all season, which certainly contributed to the 200+ errors. Steady Eddie Cicotte was great, Harry Coveleski was a revelation. Really not much to say, it was a very balanced team.

90m: I'm really thrilled with how this turned out, especially given my reservations about it beforehand. 4th in the league in + plays despite having only three A+ range guys. Addie and Summers did their thing and Mike Caldwell was surprisingly strong. My overall pitching numbers are inflated a little by calling Municipal Stadium home - I comfortably had the best road pitching staff. Probably would have taken home the best record if rbow hadn't gone nutso to wrap up the year.

100m: As I mentioned before, I had San Fran as one of my top four choices and apparently with good reason. Every single player I protected or drafted played a key role on the team. I second guessed drafting Don Sutton but he (undeservedly) finished third in CY voting so that worked out. Carlton may have been my most important player, seamlessly shifting between the rotation and bullpen and eating a lot of innings helping keep my 'pen rested. He was fairy effective to boot. I can only imagine the team drew inspiration from Ty Cobb, looking up at them from Hell.

110m: This team basically lived up to my expectations. My main hitting targets (Cobb, Delahanty, Lyons, Brouthers) all finished in the top15 in OPS, Big Ed and Ty finishing 1-2 in MVP voting. I badly wanted Addie and settled for Mordecai, sure enough Addie was better but not by a very large margin. Like my 90m team, my pitching suffered at home thanks to Palace of the Fans but that was to be expected - my offense took full advantage and raked at home. I am disappointed in one thing: Delahanty only managed 46 doubles despite a 10 2B/100# playing half his games at PotF.

120m: Now this team was a disappointment on a number of levels, because it badly performed below its pythag, because it did so poorly for the first 3/5ths of the season, because it was awful at home and because it still JUST missed the playoffs. I really don't get the home performance at all - I don't have home run hitters so my offense shouldn't have minded playing there, my pitchers performed almost half a run WORSE at home than on the road despite calling Target Field home. If I play .500 ball at home then I win the WC by three games. My Joss was very mediocre, which didn't help matters. The one thing I badly misjudged was how many elite basestealers would be used - it looks like only three teams cracked a 75% stolen base percentage, nobody broke 80%. I spent 5.5m on Tenace hoping for a modicum of offense and an elite catcher's arm. I got the arm (49% CS) but zero offense and the arm probably played down due to how few great baserunners there really were. Oh well.

Very happy with the results all-in-all. I'm not expecting much in the playoffs given my terrible playoff track record but I THINK I've secured a top 5 finish which I'll be thrilled with for my first go at this.

1/23/2011 5:49 AM (edited)

bardin

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My post-mortem…

60mil: Record: 84-78

After doing research, I found that some pitchers in the 70s and 80s appeared to be pretty good bargains so I went with Yaz and Reggie, who combined just barely got over 15mil. I was able to get a few other decent hitters too. The result: My pitching was better than average, and my hitting was also slightly better than average… but just not enough. I punted the SS position and I didn’t have enough Abs there, or for an OF spot. I think my defense suffered. In retrospect, I should have found a speedster with good defense. Someone like Otis Nixon. I wonder if I could have worked Billy North onto the team. He would have been perfect! Not a terrible team, but just not good enough, and they missed the playoffs by 3 games.

80mil: Record: 90-72

This team didn’t take me long to put together. I just tried to put together a bunch of hitters who normalized the best, at each position, including a good range CF. Same with the pitchers although I decided to splurge for Jake Northrop. I’d like to say I had some genius plan since the team turned out to be successful, but I didn’t. I guess I understand the ‘10s pretty well, although in hindsight, oh, maybe I should have figured out a way to get Gavvy Cravvath on the team? Especially after seeing his performance on one of my later teams…

90mil: Record: 72-90

This team also didn’t take me long to put together… and it showed. I greatly misjudged what I could afford with pitching, and the hitting was so bland vanilla, and without any sort of plan, that I got what I deserved. After seeing rbows team (who was in my same division) before the season started, I knew my team was in huge trouble. They got off to a ridiculously awful start (2-16 after 18 games) but it’s not like they improved; they still finished the season with a below .500 record in the remaining games. In hindsight, I would have most definitely figured out a way to get some really, really good pitchers on this team. And never again shall Sid Gordon grace his presence on any team of mine… unless it makes sense of course ;-) …

100mil: Record: 70-92

Now this team really perplexed me for awhile. I chose as my franchise and was thrilled. No team had the troika of pitchers of , Clemens, and Lowe, plus I got to have Nomar or Wade Boggs too. has lots of 3Bs so I chose not to protect Wade, and he was chosen, but no problem. The bullpen looked deep and the hitting was solid everywhere, except CF, which I addressed immediately. I was very confident when the games began.

And then the team just started losing and losing and losing. It turns out the hitting was fine. It was the pitching that was an absolute disaster. If I had a pitcher with an ERA in the 5.00s, he was one of my team leaders. The biggest problem: I gave up 240+ homers, easily leading the league in HRs allowed by a wide margin. That was the problem in a nutshell right there; my team was not well suited for the ballpark at all. If I had to do it over again, I would have picked a team who played in a park more conducive to the team. I also see that it was relatively easy to put together a pitching staff if you had a couple decent starters. I didn’t need to start with three starters. Still, I owe a big apology to Theo Epstein; ugh, what a disaster…

110mil: Record: 105-57

This is the team that may carry me to a top-ten finish. I wanted to be in the ‘10s and ‘20s in order to have access to the good pitchers of the ‘10s and good hitters of the ‘20s. I employed a similar strategy in last year’s round 2 draft but the cap for that league was much higher and as a result, it appears that I wasn’t able to get good enough hitters to compete. That team finished above .500 and missed the playoffs by a game; but they were pretty mediocre. It appears that this very same strategy was perfect for the 110mil cap. I was able to afford pretty much the same pitchers as last year, but this time the hitters I could obtain were perfect for this cap too. However, one hitter in particular, Gavvy Cravvath, turned out to be an absolute godsend, becoming an MVP candidate for 5.7mil. The pitchers pitched great, the hitters hit decently, and there were no fatigue issues whatsoever. If only all my teams had worked out so well, maybe I’d be in alleyviper’s shoes, challenging for the title. Still, at least one team in this round was a fabulous success for me. The 105 wins tied rbows 90mil team for most in round 2.

120mil: Record: 71-91

I really missed the boat on this team too. In hindsight, I should have had some sort of strategy to make my team unique. Instead, I just relied on the usual standards of normalization for both hitters and pitchers. I also relied too much on homers, which weren’t going to cut it in a high-cap league where all the pitchers could suppress those dingers. Next time, I’ll try focusing on triples and putting them in the Palace of the Fans, or… something…

In summary, I will finish where I usually finish: 10^th to 15^th or so. It is clear I’m a pretty good owner, but just not quite elite as some of you. I’d like to say I’m learning, but it appears I just keep spinning my wheels. Maybe someday I’ll get there, but this tournament is so much fun, I’ll definitely keep enjoying the attempts. Thanks again schwarze for continuing to run a highly enjoyable event!

1/26/2011 4:29 PM

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