2010 WISC Team Building Process (38 owners posted) Topic

schwarze
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I'll start things off. 

70M Theme (Bargain .300 Hitters)
I initially wanted to construct my low-cap team based solely on speed and defense (specifically infield range).  But it's really hard to find that particular type of player under $4 million that doesn't totally suck on offense.  I've had defensive-oriented teams that can't hit in low cap leagues before and it's painful to continually watch them lose 2-1 all the time.  So I changed my mind half-way through.  I decided to get the best hitting team (avg, obp) that I could afford.  Except for catcher (Wynegar, A+ arm), my other 7 batters have a combined .307 avg, .375 obp, .427 slug. with an avg of 606 PA/162 per player.  My best hitter is '95 Wade Boggs (.324, .412 obp), my slugger is 2001 Dmitri Young (.302, .350, .481).  I did draft one speedster - 1988 Henderson (93 SBs).  The defensive range is sub-par though, but I shouldn't give up a lot of errors.

For pitching, I drafted five SPs with A+ range (I think this is undervalued).  I also wanted pitchers with an average of 7 IP per start (which isn't easy for SPs < 200 IPs).  Of course, I try to keep down the HRs allowed.  The five pitchers I chose are: '03 Tim Hudson (240 IP), '97 K.Brown (237), Rick Reuschel (177), Joe Magrane (165) and Mike Dunne (163) for a total of 982 IPs.  I added three 75-85 RPs - all with better stats than my SPs.  I should be able to come from behind to win some games.  Overall, my non 200K pitchers have the following stats:  1250 IP, 1.12 whip, 2.63 ERA, .230 OAV, 0.48 HR/9, all A+ range.

I've not really tried a team like this before at a low cap, so I really don't know what to expect.  My A+ catcher should keep other speed teams in check.  My pitchers aren't great but don't give up a ton of HRs.  If my hitters can put together a couple of "crooked-number" innings per game, that might be enough to win 87-90 games.  I'll take that.


80M Theme (Raines x3, Brown x4)
To me, there's not much difference between a 70M league and a 80M league.  I wanted pitching, speed and defense.  Well, for speed, the best choices at this cap are Willie Wilson, Rickey Henderson or Tim Raines.  I went with Raines because I liked his combination of high-average and high-walks and that he's a switch hitter.  I then decided to get A+ range in the infield (B.Terry .322, O.Hudson .270, O.Smith .288).  At third base, I'm saving salary by running a 7-man platoon of <300K players.  And at catcher, I have an A+ arm (G.Carter).  The offense isn't great (.283, .354, .400) but with Raines, Raines and Raines (.334) at the top of the order, I anticipate close to 300 SBs - which should translate into runs.  The defensive range at 1b, 2b, ss, should net me 70-80 "+" plays.

At pitcher, I kept with the strategy of A+ range and 7+ IP/G and selected four versions of Kevin Brown (whips of 0.94, 1.07, 1.07, 1.18).  These four versions should add another 20-25 "+" plays.  The bullpen is decent with short-IP studs Latman and Tiefenauer.  Miljus and T.Martinez should keep things close till the 9th.  I grabbed some 200K scrubs to help with fatigue because I only drafted 1216 good innings... Stats: 1.06 whip, 2.39 ERA, .225 OAV, 0.35 HR/9. 

Just for fun, I threw this team into an open league (right after I had opened my 80M theme) just to see how they'd play out.  They finished 92-70, won a tie-breaker game, then lost in the first round.  K.Brown combined to go 72-58 in 1164 IPs.with a 2.85 ERA.  Raines finished with 303 SBs at 83% rate.  The team finished first in ERA but near the bottom in runs scored.  Of course, it was an open league. 


90M Theme (99 Royals + Stud Staff)
I went through every season of baseball-reference looking for real-life teams that underachieved relative to their runs scored hoping to find a gem.  Having so much success with the 1924 White Sox last year, I started by trying to make 1924 Cardinals work (tried to add Ruth, Vance, W.,Johnson) to a putrid team with Hornsby.  But I couldn't get all three guys in to fit under the cap.  I tried the 1920 Giants and the 1928 Senators but didn't like either team.  There was also a 30's Giants team and 50's Indians team that I tinkered with (it was so long ago, I can't remember the exact years). 

Then, I stumbled across the 1999 KC Royals (.398).  They had a -11 luck factor that season.  Their offense was ranked 9th in all of baseball (their pitching was ranked 2nd to last).  1999 has some really good SP options, so I was able to build a pitching rotation of Randy Johnson (1.02 whip), Kevin Brown (1.07 whip) and Pedro Martinez (0.92 whip) to go along with relievers Derek Lowe (1.00 whip) and Mariano Rivera (0.88 whip).  The KC offense is very solid with Sweeney (.322), Randa (.314), Sanchez (.294), Beltran (.293), Dye (.294), Damon (.307).  I added Mike Lieberthal (.300) to the mix.   Even the defense is above average.  I really feel strongly that this team will do well. 


100M Theme (Bronx Bombers circa 1940)
I tried a number of different teams before I settled on the 1940 Yankees.  The method I used to research was to look for two really good starting pitchers to build around.  I looked at both the 1908 and 1909 Cubs and the '09 version was a finalist.  I strongly considered the 1905 Indians (with '08 Joss & '02 Bernhard).  I also considered 1984 Astros ('86 Scott plus the '81 staff).  But as is the case with most teams, there always seemed to be a weakness that I didn't like.  When I discovered the 1940 Yankees, I was particularly impressed with the balance.  They have a very strong lineup from one to eight (every player has either good avg, good obp or good power).    Their defense is respectable - not great - not poor.  Their starting pitchers normalize very well (Chandler, Gomez, Bonham).  The bullpen doesn't have a shut-down closer, but they have 300 IPs of 1.10 whip guys.  Again, more balance.  My starting 8 hitters' stats: .304, .396, .495.  My pitchers: 1478 IP, 1.11 whip, 2.41 era, .225 oav, 0.42 hr/9. 

I see that 1939 and 1942 Yankees were also popular choices.  It will be interesting to see how this team matches up with those other Yankees teams.  Also, I am a bit concerned how my power hitters will do against those deadball '09 Cubs teams.  Still, I feel good about this choice.

120M Theme (Normalized Power)
Matching strength against weakness (HRs vs pitchers with HRs allowed or SBs vs catchers with poor arms).  Which strength vs weakness is more important?  I went with the idea that HRs will eventually lead to more runs than SBs, especially at a 120M cap.  So I ended up going with almost a 60% HR / 40% SBs split.  My league's average was 40% HRs, 60% SBs. 

For hitting, I went with power hitters who normalize well.  Cy Williams, Ken Williams, Buck Freeman, Johnny Mize, Ralph Kiner.  I also added Maury Wills, Chipper Jones and Mike Piazza to get up to 500 (barely).  Eddie Stanky was the last piece as I need to save some salary and also needed somebody to get on base for all those HRs.  For pitching, I went with modern pitchers so their 0.50+ HR/9 would normalize better than a pitcher from an earlier era (SPs = R.Johnson, Hudson, P.Martinez, J.Schmidt and Peavy).   Overall pitching stats = 1482 IP, 0.92 whip, .197 oav, 2.23 era, 0.60 hr/9.

This is going to be interesting to see how the SB-dominant teams do compared to the HR-dominant teams.  High-cap leagues are hard to project.  I could win anywhere between 75-95 games... let's take 85 as an average.


140M Theme (Elton/Addie to Greg/Pedro)
I usually start building the pitching staff first, so I started with Maddox (95) and Pedro (00).  I knew I was taking a 300+ IP deadball pitcher and despite his recent struggles for me in another league, I went with '08 Joss.  I still needed one more SP.  It was down to 78 Guidry or 68 Tiant and I went with Tiant (he went 25-2 for me once in a theme league).   I like 2+ IP/G relievers so I drafted all those low-inning SPs such as Milacki, V.Blue, Latman, B.Adams, Niggleing, etc.   I also added Elton Chamberlain and Fred Toney for those important middle innings.  Needless to say, I love my pitching staff.  1594IP, 0.81 whip, <.185 oav, 0.28 hr/9.

Offensively, I was for sure taking Ruth and decided on 1921.  The rest of the lineup includes 33 Cochrane, 90 R.Connor, 73 Carew, 86 Boggs, 49 Appling, 13 Speaker, 54 T.Williams, 63 Mantle (Ted and Mick will platoon).    Hitting: .343, .454, .547.

Of course, my team looks awesome, as will everybody's team.  I guess it comes down to if you drafted enough innings to handle the fatigue that you typically see in high cap leagues.   I drafted almost 1600 really good innings.    I will probably start out slow (say .500 after 40 games), then the extra IPs I drafted will start to matter and I'll end up with 91 wins.

8/4/2010 12:09 PM (edited)
Jtpsops
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$70mil

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever done a league below $80 (and I’ve only done like 2 at $80mil in my last 20 teams).  For this one, I did a little forum reading and got some insights from other owners.

I decided to focus on getting as much pop and OBP as I could. I sacrificed a little on D, but I don’t think so much that it’ll kill me. I’m confident I’ll outslug most teams and hopefully my pitching staff can temper the damage.  I went with Henderson and Morgan at the top for walks and SB, and followed with Ramirez, Clark, Gant and Ensberg – lots of low average pop.  I took Loretta and McDonald on my bench for their versatility, as I’ll be flirting with the fatigue strategy a bit.

I went with ’90 Stieb as my ace, a fairly good and relatively cheap 200+ IP.  I actually spent more on my #2, ’81 Guidry.  ’91 Wegman, ’88 Rasmussen and ’90 King round out my rotation, and I think my bullpen will more than get the job done.  I went with the Oakland Coliseum to help my pitchers a bit and stretch out my ABs.

$80mil – Clone Me (Henderson and Knepper)

Oddly, my hitter never changed in all my drafts. I knew I wanted Henderson from the get-go.  Speed, OBP and solid D for a relatively low price. As I said, I’m interested to see how other owners made guys like Ruth work – I suspect the rest of their lineups will be somewhat bare, but we’ll see.

My pitchers changed constantly...I tried Pedro but it left me to short for the rest of my roster. I just wasn’t comfortable.  I set a cap of $24mil for my rotation and tried guys like Stieb, Drabek, Bonham and others.  I eventually found Knepper by setting some desired specs in the draftcenter. I liked what he gave me and his price, which allowed me to come up with a good ‘pen and some decent surrounding pieces.

The rest of my lineup again focuses on walks, with Randolph, Pena and Killebrew (with Pena and Killer giving me 40+ HR each).  Went with the Coliseum in Oakland again, to stretch out the ABs and innings.

$90mil – GM Challenge (1992 Expos).

I came up with many teams I was satisfied with, but none that really stood out head and shoulders above the rest.  I had 2-3 teams I liked better than this one, but they were in fairly extreme hitters parks (Kaufman, etc.) and I didn’t feel comfortable.

This team had a good pitching staff already in place, to which I added ’92 Maddux. I then added Bonds and Thomas to the offense. They’ll have to carry the load though, as my 6-8 hitters are a bit of a black hole.  I’m in a fairly neutral park (1.00 park factor) that limits singles and HR a bit, so we’ll see how it all works out.  This, to me, is a feast or famine team.

$100mil – Limited Twist (2003 Yankees)

I’ve never used a Yankee team in the SIM, but I had to put my hatred aside for the cause.  When I went through all my drafts, this team cried out at me.  A very good mix of power, speed and average, with a solid pitching staff led by ’05 Clemens and anchored by ’05 Rivera. Once again, ballpark factored in, as I felt this team was also the one that lined up best with the park they were in.

At the risk of a jinx, I think this is the team I feel best about.

$120mil – Power + Speed

I went with a ballpark strategy on this one.  I noticed there aren’t many parks with a HR RF rating significantly higher (2 or more) than HR LF. So I decided to take Robison Field (-1 LF/+2 RF) and stock my lineup with lefty power hitters.

I have Morgan, Ruth, Bonds, Williams, Mauer and Mantle (switch). I also have McGwire and Yost for some righty pop on the road. I focused on walks as well and put a premium on defense and range up the middle (Mauer/Trammell/Morgan/Mantle).

I went with a three-man rotation of ’71 Wood/’63 Koufax/’65 Short. Not as many K’s as I’d like, but the walks are fairly low and the HR/9 are fairly close to the .50 minimum.

This is a pure strategy team. I’m not sure how road games will work out but I fully expect with my ballpark and my lefty-heavy lineup, that I’ll really clobber a lot of teams at home.

$140 – Through the Decades

This was a crapshoot in my eyes. I find that management becomes a lot more of a priority at higher caps, so we’ll see what happens.

I focused on some guys I really wanted (Mathewson, Joss, Maddux, Ruth, Mantle, Bonds, Roseboro) and then filled in the gaps around them.

I tried to use a bit of ballpark factor again. I chose Cleveland Stadium to give my HR guys a bit of a boost, as well as singles, and cut down on doubles and triples, which I don’t have many of.

I put a huge premium on low walks and HR and did a very successful job at it (though I’m sure many others did too). I also have solid D, so hopefully I can pull the right strings and make this team a success.

8/3/2010 2:25 PM
Jtpsops
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Schwarze...interesting choice on the GM Challenge. I was absolutely in love with that 1999 Royals team (I had Maddux, Johnson, Millwood, Foulke, Hoffman and Pudge).  But Kaufman scared me off. I think I may end up regretting it.

EDIT: I was also $4mil over the cap with that crew, and no matter where I cut it, I just wasn't comfortable.

8/3/2010 2:59 PM (edited)
rbow923
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70M - the biggest challenge was buying enough quality PA and IP, especiially important now that slightly fatigued players make errors. at low caps I like a balanced pay scale without spending much on any one role or attribute. The unbalanced approach is less efficient, making it harder to get enough stamina. I find that part-timers and utility players have good value at lower caps, so I'm filling in with a very active bench. making good use of all 25 roster spots.
I figured an SP budget of somewhat less than $3M/100ip and drafted Gura Rijo Hesketh Moore. I hate 5 man rotations so the 5th guy is for long relief and spot starts. Vince Coleman stealing bases, infield cookies Boggs Weiss Castillo, Dmitri Young cleaning up, Concepcion and Merced doing a bit of everything, and Inge is a poor mans A+ arm.

80M - Carl Hubbell and Harvey Kuenn. $80M is a good cap for this theme. we can't afford good clones without serious compromise so there are plenty of reasonable choices. I tried to clone Bob Gibson or Kevin Brown but still needed to trim the budget. so I selected Carl Hubbell's best 3 seasons with 981 innings for $32M he normalizes well and hits a little. I tried and rejected Rico Carty (not enough stamina) and Tony Gwynn (bad range) before selecting Harvey Kuenn. I've had good results with Kuenn's best season, he has another good year can play SS, and a reasonable cheap year. also he has good Performance History, for whatever that's worth. I have Gary Carter throwing out those basestealing clones. I have the same infield as my $70M team, let's hope I'm not making the same mistakes twice.

90M - I chose 1999 Royals. same team as schwarz except for the last 2 Free Agents. I have Pedro Randy Brown Lowe and then took Millwood for the innings becaue KC doesnt have much pitching. at C I took Kendall. only a part-timer but so much better I don't mind sharing with some reasonable bench players, and I'll have a better playoff team.
SP are the most efficient use of FA so I looked for a losing team with good hitting, using FA for most of my innings. 1999 Rockies were an extreme example, strong hitting and 5 FA to salvage the pitching. they were my runner-up choice last year, buth there's been an update and now the Rockies are over budget and not deep enough. they would make an interesting fatigue team. I also drafted teams for 1919 Red Sox, 1924 Indians, and 1965 Reds. I kept coming back to the Royals because they were the only one with good defense and they had 6 FA.

100M - 1909 Cubs. I wanted solid and deep pitching. I only found a handful of teams that had enough good pitchers. of those only 2 had good hitting. I quickly narrowed it down to 1909 Cubs and 1998 Braves. close call. Braves had a better Ace and worse #3-4 starters. Cubs will get a few more hits and giveup less walks. Braves have some speed a better bench and better pinch hitters. surprisingly, the modern team had no advantage on defense. Cubs will surely hit more HR than they give up, Braves might not. I like the Cubs.
pitching is anchored by Mordecai Overall Pfeister Reulbach and Lundgren. I chose 1909 so I could reach some big 1912 hitters.

120M - HR are expensive and .5HR/9 isnt a huge handicap, so I drafted 70% sb leaving me more money to draft what I wanted. I suspect there will be a lot of duplication in this league. I have what I expect to be popular choices Jefferies Sandberg Larkin Raines PJ Koufax Brown [edit- so i was wrong, some of these guys weren't popular]. I took high avg hitters Cobb and Gwynn.  Mauer is about the best CS% I can get. didnt like 3b so I saved money with 95 Boggs. 19 Gavvy and 79 Gamble make a nice DH platoon. selected Veterans Stadium for the XBH.

140M - I went all out for pitching with PJ Maddux WJohnson Chamberlain and Milacki Carlos closing. I cant draft 6 teams without at least one Addie Joss so he is here too. that only leaves room for some very low inning RPs. I have Ruth TWilliams Mantle and Boggs, the hard part was choosing which year and I went with ba/obp over power. Arky Vaughn seemed obvious. struggled at C and reluctantly selected Piazza. made a few compromises for the theme, Carew and Brouthers werent my first choices but they did help make the cap. Gates Brown is the worlds most expensive PH.
8/4/2010 2:43 AM (edited)
BastanRedsox
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I'll add my uninformed opinion to the group, as I believe it is one of the many cool things about this tourney.

70 million cap- I had the same concept as the genious above. I wanted a couple of boppers, but not too many, because I think homers are overvalued especially in lower caps like this. Which by the way, I hate lower caps, and do not do well on them so take this entry with a grain of salt. I wanted to get very good fielders that may not have the best range, so that when they do get to a ball, they won't make an error. Without naming my entire roster, my high points on offense will be the 95 Boggs, 00 Vidro, 00 Segui, and 98 Alou. Overall my team offense has a (.301, .362, .439).

My pitching will either help me win in this league or be a major disaster. I can't tell yet. The major thing I wanted were SP that wouldn't walk many and cutting down the people on base, and tried to get low OAV guys also. The 5 pitchers I chose may not have the innings, but like I said, I'm terrible at lower caps. They are 94 Pedro, 05 Silva, 04 Carpenter, 03 Schilling, 08 Slowey. As you can see, I am hoping for not many big boppers being in a low cap league, as these pitchers don't have the best HR/9. I tried to combat that also by going to Pac Bell Park and hoping my scrappy offense can take advantage of the +singles and triples.

My bullpen is a strength, that might help me get the lead late in games. I have 6 guys with WHIPS under 0.82 and I am hoping that my starters can keep me in the game enough so my bulpen can take over and dominate. If I can get 81 wins from this club, I will be happy with that. Any more than that is just gravy.


80 Million Cap- (CY x3, Seaver x4)- After looking at the speed and defense theory and the 7 man platoon (which I would have never thought of), this team is more of the same as the 70 million team. Only difference is that hopefully the cookie Cy Williams can dominate enough to help my offense out by putting the ball out of the ballpark and not in play for the great defenses.

I looked at Brown but just didn't like the fourth season enough, so instead went with the under-rated Tom Seaver seasons (73,71,68,77). I'm hoping that better pitching and home runs will be better than defense, but it may not translate because Seaver will need a little defense out there to do well. I didn't really help him out much in the outfield with Cy, but the infield defense is okay, with plus gloves but no range. My bullpen kinda worries me though with only 150 good innings and 3 mop-ups, but i'm hoping (And the main reason i like Seaver over Brown) that Seaver can pitch alot of 7-9 inning games. I took Shea Stadium to try and keep my innings down as much as possible because of my bullpen issue. Once again, if I get 81 wins from this team, I will take it and move on.


90 Million Cap (1997 Bastan Redsox + A Rotation)- This one took me awhile to find a team. I know I wanted at least 4 free agents because I thought the value was in having more free agents added to your team. I first looked for a team I could add 6 free agents. After spending hours and hours, I don't think there is a good option for 6. When I finally found a team I loved, the 2000 Astros, of course it had been taken, and I was devastated because I really wanted to use the 00 Pedro with that good offensive team. And then I saw it, and even remember playing with this team before in a not-so similar league. The 1997 Redsox, and even named it after my id, which is always a plus on the good luck charm, er, maybe for me not so good luck. This team has a great offense with alot of .300 hitters and even some cheap power and a very good bench. I love the offense for this team, and didn't need to add anything to it, which was good because I really needed to concentrate on pitching, pitching, pitching for this team.

The pitching staff in Coors lite, was obviously horid for this team back in the steroid era in the al east. So I used all 4 of my free agents (thats right 4 for a REDSOX team!) on my rotation. Got Roger Clemens, Pedro, Maddux, and Johnson to give me a formiddable rotation that I really love since the Redsox had nobody I could use without laughing. My bullpen isn't the worst I saw when looking for teams, but not the best either. Since I had to to use my 4 free agents on my rotation, my bully will have to suffer a little. With a combined 1.28 WHIP, they could be in for some trouble, but I'm hoping my SP and offense doesn't have me in too many close games. I really love this team, and think it has a very good chance at being a contender in the playoffs if the bullpen can stay competitive.


100 million cap (1910 Pirates)- This was surprisingly easy choice thanks to a friend and Survivor for helping me out here. The main thing I looked for was some very good dead ball pitchers to combat the home run guys, because knew the yankees would be a popular choice throughout the tournament. With a good Babe Adams and Camnitz, my SP has a chance to really be good. My bullpen is very good in my opinion with Deacon 1910 and Maddox 1907 and Elmer Steele 1908. If my pitching can keep me in games, I think the offense I have on the field will win alot of low scoring games because of their scrappinest.

My offense doesn't have a lot of power, but has .300 hitters 1-8 through the lineup with speed up and down it with a good Max Carey and Honus Wagner season to anchor it down. Playing in a very neutral park in Forbes Field will help keep other offenses in check while not taking away from my scrappy offense either. I am really hoping this can be the scrappy team I want it to be, just like it won in Survivor for me, although only in a 7 game series.


120 Million cap- One of the things I tried to do first was to combat the power with my pitching staff. How you ask? Get more lefty starters to combat all the great lefty homer run hitters likey to be chosen. Although I won't win everytime, I still much rather have a Lefty-Lefty situation than having it the other way around. I chose Koufax 65, Vida Blue 71, and 04 Santana (who i love) and added 00 Pedro who I think is a must. I love my bullpen, which has a lot of innings (which I think I will need) and a great WHIP of 0.71 combined. With 380 great innings, I think that will help tremendously.

I have to say I decided to go with speed over power, although not by much. I have speeders Willis 62, figgins 07, sisler, and buck ewing who normalizes good for my speed guys and Cy, Gavvy, Buck, and Moises Alou who I think is very under-rated in the sim as power guys, with the 99 Chipper as a 5 tool guy who can hit a lot of homers while stealing tons of bases too. I'll be playing in Metropolitan Stadium which will benifet my homer guys while giving my speed guys a boost with the singles. I think by taking high sb% guys will help play a little small ball in such a high cap. I really like this team, and think it will make the playoffs and offset my non-existent lower cap teams.


140 Million Cap- Will I have enough to compete?- I also think pitching comes first when it comes to any league. I went with the same 3 pitchers, 08 Joss, 00 Pedro, and the 95 Maddux. Curious to see if everyone did, or at least most. I drafted Toney and Elton too, but more as a combo for my sp 4. I couldn't get Milacki on my team because wanted Eck instead, but my bullpen could be strong if it has enough innings. With about 250-300 great innings low inning relievers, I'm hoping I can get away with it. With 1388 decent innings, I may be a starter short, but I also might not have had wasted innings. In retrospect, I wish I would have added another starter, but just couldn't find one I liked without giving up one of my offensive studs. I'll go in with 1388 IP, 0.80 WHIP, .186 OAV, and a very low Hr/9, which will be needed playing in the new yankee stadium.

I wanted an above average defense that could hit well and I think I found it. I got the 70 Bench to shut down the running game while he enjoys the HR+ park, put Cy at first, Jackie at second, Boudreau at SS, and Boggs at third. With Cobb, ruth, and Mantle roming the outfield, it should be able to score alot of runs in different ways. It also allows me to be good in my home park while being able to adjust my play if people go with a low homer park, and can then use my speed and defense. All in all, I'm hoping I cna sneak this team into the playoffs to offset my lower cap teams.

8/3/2010 3:16 PM
tjefferson
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$70m Five Man (Luis Luis, Oh Baby, Me Gotta Go)

I couldn't come up with a pitching staff that I liked, so I cheaped out and went Petco to cover for it. Given the year range restriction and my general crappiness at low cap teams, I didn't see much of a choice. Offense is the usual Petco mix of triples/speed guys (Figgins, Castillo, Lance Johnson) and cheap OBP (Weiss, Nick Johnson). Pitching is 5 180-200 inning guys clustered in the $4-6 million range (81 Guidry, 07 Hamels, 04 Carpenter, 99 Schilling, 81 Honeycutt) who should be able to keep it together and give me a viable rotation. I hate my bullpen, but what can you do at this cap? This team is really lame but should win some games.

$80m Clone Me (Marichal Raines Supreme)

Raines was the first choice and proved to be the best. Considered Ruth, but couldn't keep the offense cheap enough. Considered Kingman, but didn't want to build a dingers-only team without being able to access deadball pitching. Ended up with five Raineses on the team instead of 3 - 82 at 2nd, 85 in left, 87 in center, 89 in right, and 01 on the bench. Since we were going to the Oakland Coliseum, I filled in the gaps with the typical cheap OBP machines (a Boggs, another Weiss, 1985 Pete Rose) and of course Gary Carter to murder opposing running games.

Unlike the hitting clone, deciding on a pitching clone was a long struggle. My initial plan was Greg Maddux, but using 94 or 95 proved too expensive and trying to build a rotation without those years was crappy. I cycled through a lot of different choices before settling on 66, 63, and 68 Juan Marichal. I had normalization concerns with those years, but the performance histories look fine so I rolled with it. The bullpen on this one is very good.

$90 GM Challenge (1993 (Mostly) Metropolitan Men)

Like a good Mets fan, I immediately went to the 1993 Mets for this one and never found better. The thought process was pretty simple: this Mets team has the worst Pythagorean differential in baseball history at minus-14. They lost enough games to get me 6 draft picks, but the talent was really a 4 draft pick team even before considering that I got access to a pretty good full-season Tony Fernandez shortstop that mostly wasn't on the real team. There were some good hitting (a 3B-capable Bobby Bo, a decent Jeff Kent, a strong half-season of Jeromy Burnitz, the aforementioned Fernandez) and pitching (strong third and fourth starters in Doc Gooden and Frank Tanana, two very good partial season starters that will serve as relief aces in Bret Saberhagen and Sid Fernandez) pieces already in place.

And 1993 is a really good year to be drawing draft picks from. Four were obvious. 1993 Barry Bonds is just a superb offensive force. 1993 John Olerud is a personal favorite. 1993 Chris Hoiles is a tremendous hitting/A+ arm catcher option. And a prime Greg Maddux to be the ace is never a bad thing. After those were finished, I needed a second starter and a centerfielder. The second best starter available was Kevin Appier. He's not really price-efficient because of his walk rate, but he had to be here to fit the team. For a CF, I had the option of an $8m Ken Griffey that I had concerns about normalizing, an $8m A+ range/okay hit Lenny Dykstra with too many PA, or a $5m OBP/speed Rickey with questionable defense. I went with Rickey and used the extra money to load up on extra pen innings.

$100m Twist (Twistin' and Turnin' the 2002 Yanks Away)

This was the one that gave me nightmares. The initial idea was a $100,000 Infield-era Philadelphia A's team. But I couldn't make the defense work. The second idea was the 1928 A's, an already great team that had access to the last great seasons of Speaker, Cobb, and Collins plus prime seasons of Foxx, Grove, Cochrane, Bishop, and Simmons. But I couldn't even get over $40m in pitching for that team - it was really going to be ugly. So after playing with some more options like the Ruth/Gehrig-era Yankees, Speaker/Ruth-era Red Sox, and Joss/Lajoie-era Indians, I eventually landed on the Torre-era Yankees. And it looks like a heck of a lot of people are in the same boat, so at least that's good. Ended up going with 2002 as the best option to get access to the best in hitting (99 Jeter and Bernie) and pitching (05 Clemens and Pettitte and 99 Rivera).

$120m Power/Speed (Why Does It Always Raines On Me?)

The basic construction was "build the best 1500 inning pitching staff that will allow the least dingers for the theme, then backfill the offense." So we've got an 00 Pedro, 04 Unit, 64 Koufax, and 68 Tiant rotation filled out by a bunch of great relievers right around that 0.50 HR minimum mark. Working backwards from that $61m pitching staff, it struck me that there's no way other than catcher - such as park or pitcher - to suppress steals. But there absolutely is a way to to suppress power - use the Astrodome. So I built the best damn OBP/speed offense I could, figuring that between the as close to dinger suppressing as possible pitching and the park that I should be able to neutralize the power teams. I suspect others had the same idea.

And this is quite an OBP/speed team here - 87 Raines, 75 Morgan, 85 Rickey, 92 Bip Roberts, 93 Jefferies, 87 Molitor, 87 Gwynn. There's two concessions to price/feasibility here. There simply is no catcher with a D+ or worse arm, good on-base ability, and lots of steals at high percentage, so I picked a cheaper OBP guy that has enough pop to help on the road in Dick Dietz. And needing to save a bunch of money, I went with a more modest OBP/speed solution at short in my third Walt Weiss, who really needs to get a price increase so I don't get backed into using him so much.

$140m Across the Decades (Hold Me Closer Tiny Bonham)

Similar to $120m theme, I wanted to screw the teams that are going to load on homers as much as possible. So I combined the best 1625 inning staff the theme could buy - a 00 Pedro, 95 Maddux, 08 Addie, 68 Gibson rotation with a super-pen of dinger-suppressing WHIP < 1 guys. Then I built the lineup around extreme average/doubles hitters - 88 Boggs, 99 Delahanty, 87 O'Neill, 19 Ruth, 93 Olerud, 00 Nomar, 02 LaJoie, 28 Foxx - and put the team in the +2/+4/+3/-3/-3 Palace of the Fans. I think it's going to be a pretty different lineup than what most have, but my experience is limited at this cap so I'm more or less guessing whether it'll work.

I'm also really looking forward to seeing what some of the elite other owners have done for these teams.
8/3/2010 3:30 PM
bigmc
Posts: 338 (0)
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$70 – Modern League
It’s no secret I do not perform well in low cap leagues. The only strategy I know at this level is to implement some platoon situations so you don’t ‘waste’ as much with $200K scrub players on your bench. As such, I opted to platoon 3 positions, including second base and two outfield positions. The offense has absolutely no power, which is why I stuck them in the Astrodome (0.89 park factor with -4 for HR’s). Oh sure, I’ve got a few name players like Boggs and Phillips and Weiss and Raines, but the seasons I chose are not of all-star caliber. The pitchers consist of 10 quality guys with relatively equal stats across the board and one mop-up. My best starter is probably the ’84 John Denny and he will spend most of his time working out of the bullpen. I brought 1,289 innings, in addition to one mop-up pitcher, which I’m confident should be enough in the Astrodome. Anything over .500 winning percentage will be nice here.
 
$80 – Clone League
Two cookies. Tony Phillips and Eppa Rixey. At first I was optimistic about this league. However, after reviewing rosters with Maddux and Pedro as cloned pitchers I now have second thoughts. I reviewed one roster that spent $39.3 million on four Pedro’s (1997 – 2000) . Sheesh!!! Not a complaint, more a comment out of admiration as to how they can stomach a move like that. Anyway, surrounding three of Tony Phillps better years (’93, ’94 and ’96) with ’33 Ruth, ’23 Cy Williams, ’95 Boggs and ’75 Carter should generate a few runs in Redland Field (0.99 park factor but +1 for HR’s for Ruth, Williams and Carter). I tanked SS and will go with a three-man platoon of nobodies. I wanted an offensive clone that would not plug up all 3 outfield positions so the only choices I considered were Babe Ruth, Chipper Jones, Pete Rose, Craig Biggio and Tony Phillips. Should have also looked at Paul Molitor but I didn’t. As a commish for this league, I noticed Newarkwilder and the legendary PennQuaker also chose Eppa Rixey for their pitching clone and both took the same four years I did, which has to count for something! I plan to run a 3-man rotation of ’22 Rixey, ’25 Rixey and ’24 Rixey with ’87 Pascual Perez making some spot starts when necessary. This will allow me to put ’32 Rixey in the pen since his IP/162 is under 5. I also brought along ’38 Dean, ’27 Miljus and ’90 Tomlin to work out of the pen. These eight pitchers provide 1,315 quality innings which will be supplemented with 2 mop-up pitchers. 
 
$90 – GM Challenge
The choice of 1919 Boston Red Sox was not difficult. However, choosing who to take as free agents was extremely difficult. The core of the team is solid to build around with Ruth, McInnis and Schang (all +.300 hitters) and Hooper. The core pitching included a decent starter in Carl Mays and some solid, yet not spectacular, bullpen guys in Hoyt, Russell and Caldwell. With a .482 winning percentage I was allowed to take 4 free agents. The first three choices were easy. I solidified my starting pitching by taking Walter Johnson and Babe Adams, the two best starters in the league that year (okay maybe 2 of the top 3 if you want to throw Pete Alexander in there, but he has less than 300 IP/162). I will run a three man rotation of Johnson, Adams and Mays and expect to have them pitch deep into games since I only have 3 quality guys in the bullpen, which I am not at all comfortable with. I like to have at least 4 quality bullpen pitchers AND I prefer if the bullpen is at least as good, if not better, than the starters. This team is not set up that way as my starters are my 3 best pitchers out of the 6 quality guys I brought. However, the 1,385 innings plus 3 mop-ups should be sufficient for an offensive park like Fenway (1.09 park factor). I also brought along Ty Cobb to hit in front of Ruth and provide some serious offensive fire-power. My final free agent choice came down to second baseman Eddie Collins or the short-season of pitcher Art Nehf. I might live to regret this decision but I opted for Collins since I felt he was such a significant upgrade at second base both offensively and defensively. Nehf would have been great to take along to really solidify my bullpen but my thinking was to take the guy that will play everyday and just get this team into the playoffs. If I am lucky enough to get to the playoffs I can drop to a two-man rotation of Johnson and Adams and put Mays in the bullpen to help out. If I can make the playoffs, this team could be dangerous as it will be able to roll out a top notch front line starter every game and still have 5 or 6 really solid offensive players in the lineup. One downfall could be the horrible range on this team, especially on the left side of the diamond where both players are rated D-. Even Collins at second base is only a D+, yet that was an upgrade over the incumbent who was a D-.
 
$100 – Limited Twist Team
I knew I wanted a modern era team since they tend to have a larger player pool to select from. I looked at some Cardinals teams from the 80’s and some Braves and Mariners teams from the 90’s but ultimately settled on the ’05 Yankees. The starting pitchers are not quite as strong as I would have liked for a $100 million league, although ’04 Big Unit makes for a great ace. I will need ’03 Mussina, ’03 K. Brown and ’04 Pavano to pull their weight. The seven man bullpen, not including mop-up, has four guys with sub 1.00 whip, including the ’08 Rivera and his 0.67 whip to close out games. The 1,359 innings in Yankee Stadium II  (0.95) plus 1 mop-up should be sufficient. The offense is loaded. Top seasons for Jeter, Bernie, Sheffield, A-Rod, Giambi, Matsui, Posada and Cano. Defense is solid with only Matsui lower than a B fielding rating. The hitting will hold their own, I just hope the starting pitching can do the same or else I will have regretted not taking the ’97 Braves.
 
$120 – Power and Speed
Selecting the pitchers was not difficult. I chose pitchers whose HR/9 > 0.5 and HR/9# was about the same or better. The staff is comprised primarily of modern day aces such as ’86 Scott, ’86 Clemens, ’04 Big Unit, ’03 Schmidt and 02 Pedro, all with 200+ IP/162 I brought along 4 relief pitchers to team up with one of the above mentioned starters, probably Pedro, to round out the pen for a total of 1,445 inning plus 2 mop-ups. My first thought was that amount of IP/162 was too much for this cap but maybe with the DH I will end up needing them. No real strategy with the hitters. I don’t generally draft teams with a large amount of HR’s or SB’s so I just set out to take the best players available and reach the minimum 500 combined HR’s and SB’s…..and that’s exactly what I did. 500 even. My cheapo DH, ’87 Hugh Nicol, has 138 stolen bases and is a terrible hitter. This allowed me to grab 8 other decent hitters without worrying too much about money or paying too much attention to HR’s and SB’s. Lineup should go something like ’54 Asburn, ’97 Jennings, ’19 Ruth, ’81 Schmidt (would have preferred Boggs at 3B but he doesn’t have HR’s or SB’s to contribute to the cause), ’23 Collins, ’70 McCovey, ’23 Cy Williams (not too shabby for the #7 slot), ’09 Mauer and his D+ arm with ’87 Nicol rounding things out. I dumped the team in Shea Stadium (0.93 park factor) since I will be on the lighter side of HR’s hit, don’t steal a ton of bases and don’t want to have my opponent get too many runners on base with a couple of D+ arms behind the plate.
 
$140 – Decades
I don’t care what the experts say, I still think pitching wins in the sim. As such, I started this team by trying to find the best pitcher in each decade while trying to keep some semblance of a 3 or 4 man rotation. I knew Maddux was a definite for the 90’s. I liked ’09 Mathewson as a starter and wound up taking ’85 Tudor over ’86 Scott to complete my 3 man rotation. While Scott is better, Tudor was a bit cheaper and he is also a lefty, which might come in handy in a high cap league such as this one where there seem to be more left handed hitting superstars. Since I was going with a 3 man rotation I had to take the ’94 Maddux over the ’95 version but those 3 starters give me an average of 285 IP/162. The bullpen includes the likely suspects of ’01 Pedro (who can spot start if/when necessary), ’50 Hearn, ’18 Toney, ’67 Carlos, ’43 Niggeling and ’24 Adams, among others. With no DH in this league my 1,435 of quality innings plus 2 mop up pitchers should be sufficient in Shea (0.93 park factor). Why Shea? Well….that’s kind of my default stadium when I am not sure what park really fits best. Given that I now had the staff of my choice, I was a bit handcuffed in certain eras with respect to offense. However, I still managed to get my top choices at C (’35 Foxx), 1B (’27 Gehrig) and 3B (’85 Boggs). ’94 Hamilton, ’48 Musial and ’19 Ruth (he is on 3 of my teams in round 1) in the OF should provide some solid offense (and hopefully defense) as well. ’72 Morgan at 2B and ’69 Petrocelli at SS would not be my top choices here but they were the best with what I had left to work with and their defense up the middle (A/A and A/B-) is what ultimately sold it for me.
8/3/2010 4:32 PM
bigsteve12
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$70 -- ($70 million mess)
So for the few years I've been here, I've just never found the time/patience to get in and learn to play some low cap baseball.  I've only played about 4 leagues total that had $80 caps or less and I think 2 of those were in a previous WIS Championship.  Needless to say, I am dreading this team's outcome....praying that it doesn't singlehandedly cripple my effort.  With that said, I figured that low cap baseball meant platoons and I have them all over....to do that, I shortened up the pitching staff. Figured I could get away with that here because offense should be down.  Went with a 4 man staff of Doc, Clemens, Pedro, Eck...with Denny in long relief. On offense I tried to get the best avgs I could with a decent number of PAs. Obviously spending a little extra on the staff meant less on offense, so this should be interesting.  

$80 -- CC Marichal
In this theme, I figured finding a SP who doubled as a quality RP at some point would be an excellent way to go....Immediately thought of Eck and Smoltz. Didn't like the Eck SPs I'd need to get to the innings min, so I went with Smoltz. So why isn't he in my team name? Well because after putting together a staff of Smoltz's and 68 Tiant, I was informed I missed the innings min for Smoltz. I checked and sure enough, I missed by about 40....so that ended that run.  I had used Polanco's avg/def and multi-position versatility to be the offense for the Smoltz team, but when Smoltz died, so did Polanco.  I decided that in the re-try, $80 wasn't much more than $70, so I'd again go for strong front line starting.  Tried Maddux and Pedro, but just couldn't make it work. So then I decided to look at offense and went with the guy who is my current RL fav, Carl Crawford.  Brings a solid avg, lots of speed, and pretty solid defense. I figured I could mix and match in the IF which I did with A gloves and decent avgs.  So then I had to find me a pitcher...settled on Marichal because he's been decent for me in the past and I figured in a lower cap league, his numbers would hold up better. Plus I could get the starting innings I needed with just 3 of him, leaving me more $$ and space to build a better build, which I think I did with Babe, Meredith, Gonzalez, Feliz, and Nathan.  I'd like to think this team is capable of winning 82-86 games.

$90 -- Strike These '94 Expos
I did some reading and digging around before starting on this theme.  Once I got done, I started searching....of course finding teams I liked but couldn't use because they were blacklisted.  I thought I finally had it narrowed down to a franchise and time frame (Astros, early 00s) but I couldn't find a core + FA group I liked.  So I did some more looking and got nowhere.  Then I decided to search for last year's WIS Championship to see if Schwarze still had a post up about this particular theme.  Low and behold I find one from the end of the leagues and an analysis of which types of teams ended up being the most successful and the stronger starting teams getting just 1 FA seemed to have the least drop off.  Sure there were some that weren't great, but on avg they did well (above .500 records). So that's what I set out to find a team like that, one that was decent on offense, solid on pitching, and in a year where I could add 1 stud pitcher.  Well the strike year Expos seemed to fit and I added Maddux to solid 2-3-4 of Hill, Pedro, and Fassero.  Hoping that this team falls in line with what these types of teams did in last year's tourney.


$100 -- 88 Bums From Queens
Moving into a more familiar cap range, I really wasn't comfortable with what I did with this theme.  In the end, I ran out of time to put together something I liked and will likely pay the price.  I tried to find a team and range that would allow me to build a more balanced roster here.  I figured that though the cap was higher here, that a balanced team might still play well because you couldn't just freely choose anyone from anywhere to build the roster.  Stretched the Mets every which way I could to get the most from the pitching side, while still having the key Doc season and the best balance (avg/power/spd) on offense.  

$120 -- Let'em Fly, Hit'em High
Here I felt more comfortable knowing right away that I wanted to go speed more than power, as I've had much more success and gotten much more consistent performance from guys with good avgs combined with spd, vs the big power guys.  Took me several re-works to fit the cap and get the necessary hr/stl totals, but in the end it ended up feeling like a team I thought would be relatively strong.  Ended up with some stand-bys, Hamilton/Sisler/Thompson...added some newer steals Crawford/Reyes (Reyes ended up being the sacrifice to save money for the pitching staff), a duel threat in Canseco, took a Biggio, Traynor, and grabbed the best Mauer a league like this could have.  For pitching, I tried to keep close to the min for hr/9, along with low whips/oav...found some good Ks in Clemens, Tiant, Scott, and Pedro.  Found the best, hr/9 versions of some quality closers to fill the 'pen...Gagne, Eck, Mariano, Soria, Wagner, and a 2nd lefty in Shackleford.  Ended up with about 1362 IP of good innings.  That may be my only real concern....if that is enough against this type of competition.

$140 -- Slapping a Decade at a Time
I modeled this team after one I currently had running in a theme league (it won 97 games)...plus I used what I've been learning from playing with and talking to some of the more veteran players I've encountered over the past 6 months or so.  I knew this team would feature lots of high avgs/obp, some speed, but not much pop..which is ok because we'll play to the single/doubles hitters we have at home.  Went with Sisler, Morgan, Vaughn, Duffy, Musial, Boggs, Mauer, and then actually went off my board a little and took Beaumont. I needed to save a little there for pitching, since that is what counts most, and I've had a bit of success with Beaumont in the past.  On the pitching side, Walter, Joss, Maddux, and Pedro are there.  With the bullpen stocked with 388 quality innings.  If this isn't the team of mine that wins the most, I'm likely looking at the bottom 30 places.  

Hoping this all adds up to 3 playoff spots and a top 40 finish.  

8/4/2010 12:03 AM
alleyviper
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70 Mil - The first priority was building the pitching staff, I went in with specific parameters to look for and ended with five guys at roughly 3.00 ERC#, 2.00 BB/9#, 1.20 WHIP# and 7 IP/G.  While looking at my pitching options I didn't see much in the way of home run suppressors, so I decided to go cheap dingers on offense.  Platooning at pretty much every position except SS and 3B.  Miller Park to help my pitchers' OAVs and my hitters' dingering.  Bullpen was the best I could get with the leftover money.

80 Mil - For my pitcher I liked Grover Cleveland since he's essentially a deadballer available in league aiming to deny deadballer usage.  He's also pretty cost-effective, making him a nice choice.  For my hitter clone I wanted someone who gave the best bang for the buck.  Raines was an obvious choice and was my first option.  It's easier to find value in the outfield than the infield, though, so I started looking at guys who could play positions other than OF and settled on HoJo.  '89 HoJo is pretty much my favorite value player in the entire sim at SS, '87 and '91 will slide in at 3B and the OF.  I added '31 Earl Webb and '91 Bobby Bo for strong doubles play and filled out the offense with cheap OBP guys in Tenace, Hargrove and Bishop.  The bullpen is littered with standard relief cookies.

90 Mil - Unsurprisingly, a lot of the teams I liked were already blacklisted from last season.  I looked at pythag w/l like most others but was actually kind of underwhelmed with the correlation to usable teams.  I also went into Live to get a nice look at total team payroll vs. w/l%, looking for teams with high payroll to w/l ratios, figuring those teams would have more talent available.  Ultimately I wanted a team that was either completely set for either their offense or pitching, since I felt most of the teams that needed help at both couldn't be adequately filled, even with 6 FAs.  It came down to the '72 O's, whose pitching didn't need any help or the '65 Reds whose offense was ready to go.  Even with the free agent additions to Baltimore I felt the Reds' offense was a little more solid, meanwhile I think Koufax and Marichal should be able to stifle offenses given how restrictive this league is, so Cincinnati was the way to go.  I'm a little concerned about the bullpen but I shouldn't need much help there on the days Sandy and Juan pitch so I'm hoping it won't be much of an issue.

100 Mil - I targeted teams that had strong rotations, so of course I looked at the '90s Braves, '70s Orioles and several deadball teams.  I was originally going to go with a '10s Pirates team but settled on the '09 Philly A's.  Collins, Shoeless Joe, Stuffy McInnis, Home Run Baker and Danny Murphy make a strong 1-5 and they had four excellent pitchers and a fifth who is very good.  The only problem is that I'm essentially running out a five man pitching staff - there are enough total innings but I'm uncertain if it's going to work with what's basically a two-man bullpen.  It was a gamble I was willing to take given the quality of the players.

120 Mil - I prefer HR/100 instead of HR/9 when evaluating a pitcher's homer proneness and I was pretty underwhelmed by the HR/100s of the pitchers available, so I felt DINGERS was perfectly viable on offense.  I disagree with jefferson, there IS a way to suppress speed - don't let them on base in the first place.  So pitching became the top priority, taking the best starters with the lowest HR/100 available and just try to stop everyone's offense.  Offensively, Ruth, Aaron, Schmidt, Gavvy and Greenberg were easy power choices, Eddie Collins and Bonds are the OBP machines at the top.  Collins adds a nice 50+ steals to the 500 minimum and will promptly be set to 0 for his stealing aggressiveness.  New Yankee Stadium will squelch the inferior extra base hits of the base stealing teams out there and maximize my DINGERS. 

140 Mil - Once again I went pitching first, '00 Pedro, '95 Maddux and '13 Big Train have the best ERC# of anyone 200 IP+, so they were the first adds,  '08 Addie rounded out the rotation.  I didn't like the price of the good 1880s hitters so Elton Chamberlain became the de facto choice from the '80s.  With deadballers back in play I shied away from DINGERS on offense and focused on pure volume of XBHs.  '28 Ruth stands as the only true home run hitter, '19 fit better but was too expensive with Johnson in the rotation.  '48 Musial has one of the best true slugging percentages in the game and has the performance history to back it up.  I just filled in the bullpen with best available from each year once the rotation and lineup were in place.
8/4/2010 1:26 AM (edited)
markeking
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$70M Modern 5 Man Rotation.  I don't know how to build low cap teams.  My goal was to build a .500 team. If I succeed I'll be happy, if I fail I won't be surprised. My offense is high OBA with some pop in the middle of the order.  I sacrificed defense and pitching to get better hitting. All things being equal, I think good hitting can carry a team in the regular season. My best hitter is 1990 Frank Thomas (42hr, .267/.390/.562). Because I don't know what I'm doing, I drafted about 1390 effective IP (low walk/low hr). They may be bad but they won't be tired. My starters are 92 Nagy; 05 Pettite; 06 Halliday; 88 Reuss; and 04 Lieber. My bullpen is serviceable. I dropped this mess in Riverfront to help my HR hitters and use its singles suppression to help my pitching. Pre-season optimism leads me to predict a double digit win total.

$80M Clone Me. I didn't spend a lot of time on this team. From the start, it seemed to me that Maddux was a great fit for the rules and the cap. As to hitters, my first impulse was Ken Singleton. He is a switch hitter with high OBA and some pop and he is cheap for the performance he gives. I also looked at Manny and Raines. I liked them both. I discarded Manny because he made my lineup awfully righthanded. Raines was great, but I felt like I was having to overpay for his speed. As with most of my recent teams, my defense is suspect. Anybody who did use Raines will be able to steal to his heart's content.  Its hard to be optimistic about a team I didn't spend a lot of time on, but then given my track record when I spend a lot of time, its hard to be optimistic then too.

$90M GM Challenge (1924 Reds). I read with admiration schwarze's matter of fact explanation of looking at every team at the baseball-refence.com site. I thought... why didn't I do that, and then immediately remembered that I'm lazy. Even so, I spent a lot of time on this one. I drafted many teams. My finalists were the 95 Indians (+ Maddux); 41 Yanks (+ Ted Williams) and 26 Pirates (+ Ruth, Hornsby and Jesse Petty). Among those teams, I rated this Reds squad the lowest (adding Ruth, Fournier and Joe Sewell). I impulsively went with it anyway because of a gut feeling that 1920s pitchers will do well at this cap, the Reds solid (if unspectacular staff) and the attraction of adding Ruth to compete at this cap. Drawbacks are potential lineup and pitching fatigue and an idiot owner. I'd like to think that my hours of research here would translate into a high winning percentage, but I know better.

$100M Limited Twist (2004 NYY). This one came rather quickly too. It seemed to me that the best choices here would be modern teams with bigger rosters and a tendency to add new faces (often over the hill vets) at the trade deadline. Modern team, big roster, big name additions... sounds like a job for the Yankees. After thumbing through a lot of choices, I settled on 2004.  Great offense, great bullpen and adequate SP was what I wanted (and got). Defense is a problem and, again, other teams can run at will. Still, I think this one is above average.

$120M Power/Speed. My first thought was go with speed here because power can be greatly inhibited by park choice. My second thought was "What, are you nuts, draft some guys who can hit it out of the infield...". So I compromised and ... (wait for it) added some HR hitters with speed! Genius! My pure speed guys are Henderson, Raines and Ozzie. My speed-power guys are Bonds, Chipper, Bagwell and Alomar. Probably what I've got is a team too slow to beat the pure speed teams and too weak to beat the pure power teams, which translates into between 0-5 wins. One thing I enjoy about this theme though... every team has the same sort of crappy defensive catcher I voluntarily drafted in the other themes.

$140 Across the Decades. I really enjoyed drafting this team, partly because I like high caps and partly because of the puzzle aspect. I started out with a few givens.. Ruth and Ted Williams for the offense. Foxx at catcher. Johnson and Joss for the rotation. Eck and Gagne for the pen. Then it was just a matter of filling in. Add Boggs, Jeter, Morgan, Helton and Joe Kelley to the offense. Gibson to the rotation and ... well, several warm bodies for the bullpen. When I drafted it, the bullpen looked serviceable. Now it looks like a disaster. The immortal advice of one Bluto Blutarski comes to mind, "My advice to you kid, is to start drinking heavily..."
 

8/4/2010 2:01 AM
just4me
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$70m Cheap Modern 5-Man:

It's no secret that I love the low caps and would love to get to the 2nd round just so I can play in the $60m league and would even love to see a $40m league in the tourney someday, so I built this team first as I figured it would be the easiest for me. This team is unlike most of my teams though as the modern day restriction limited my choices for cheap power. i went instead with a pitching and defense oriented team with some speed. I have four players with 30+ SB including Raines and Henderson. The strength here though is my pitching staff anchored by Pedro and Nolan Ryan along with the solid 2007 Chris Young and rounded out with '93 Darryl Kile and Ken Hill. My bullpen is my real strength here with Maddux, Milacki, McDowell, Reuschel, and a couple of other solid seasons. I fully expect this team to make the playoffs and win 90+ games.  Hitting line is .254/.357/.382 and pitching is .213/1.11/3.04 with 1,268 IP/162.

$80m Clone Me (Ruth & Witt):

I've been experimenting in OL/CL quite a bit lately with super cheap pitching staffs and high powered offenses. In fact, in the same OL that Schwarze entered his cloned Brown/Raines team in I had a team that included both the '04 Bonds and '20 Ruth and spent about $25m total on the entire pitching staff (that team was on the cusp of the playoffs before getting swept by the division leader with 8 to play and finished 82-80). So, I knew I wanted to build a team built around Ruth just because he is the most consistently over performing hitter, regardless of which year you draft. I started by drafting my surrounding hitters: Gary Carter behind the plate and HoJo at SS, and a couple of defense minded players at 3B & 2B, and knowing that didn't have much for pitching I knew I had to go with a relatively cheap pitcher that gives me average to above average stats. The only one I'm aware of with enough seasons to work was Mike Witt. With 100+ OAV & HR/9 and 180-250+ IP/162 in 4 seasons between $3.9-$6.2m he was the perfect choice. The left over money allowed me to draft the '22, '28, '31, and '32 Ruth. My bullpen is pretty much the same "cheapest" useable pitchers I can find as with my OL team mentioned above, but overall I expect this team to be a little better as the offense is spread out more and the pitching staff is better. Given the higher competition here I'd wager around 82-88 wins +/- some luck. Hitting line is .299/.408/.544 and pitching is .250/1.28/3.49 with 1,307 IP/162.

$90m GM Challenge (1902 Orphans):

I used the same basic strategy here as last season and looked for a team that would net net me 3-5 free agents, have 1 or 2 stud pitchers, and allow me to add 1-2 more stud pitchers, while also having a strong negative luck factor. That narrowed it down quickly. I was left with a handful of teams that were blacklisted, and the 1902 Cubs (Orphans). I added Bill Bernhard, Honus Wagner, Bobby Wallace, and Nap Lajoie to the team that already had Jack Taylor and Carl Lundgren and Sammy Strang. This team makes sense, but is so far outside my comfort zone that I have no idea what to think. Solid defense and range (especially for the era), good pitching, and some great bats, just absolutely no HR power and no real speed wither with the horrible CS% of the era for everyone on my roster. Team is also a little bloated in PA and IP, so... This team could win a bunch, but may not win many either. I'd be happy with a .500 team.  Hitting line is .287/.350/.363 and pitching is .243/1.12/2.06 with 1,409 IP/162.

$100m Limited Twist (1929 A's):

This one was difficult for me in that I really had no idea where to even begin and don't have the time to research, so I just started with one of the most dominant teams and just started adding players until I felt I had a pretty good range of years and then narrowed it down to 1929. This team fits my comfort zone much better with high OBP and power. With hitters such as Bishop, Foxx, Simmons, Cochrane, Collins, and pitchers Grove, Walberg, Ehmke, and Earnshaw... I really like what this team has to offer. But I really have no idea how it'll stack up. I'll also be happy with a .500 run here. Hitting line is .317/.396/.491 and pitching is .246/1.21/3.26 with 1,330 IP/162.


$120m Power/Speed:

I went with power here. Lots of power. I took some cheap steals with OBP at the top of the order, but the rest of the lineup is all about the longball. Lots of OBP at the top of the order with Hornsby & Ruth hitting 2-3 and then Stargell, Greenberg, Williams, HoJo, and Clements providing cheap power at the bottom of the lineup Foxx & Schmidt fill it out. Went with low OAV modern pitchers with high Ks to minimize the effect of HRs and possibility of SB. Mike Scott, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and Jason Schmidt in my rotation with Rivera, Feliz, Mark Davis, Pascual Perez in the pen. I don't know what to expect here as I think alot of teams will be similar, but it'll at least be fun. Hitting line is .314/.407/.595. Pitching is .200/1.00/2.43 with 1,306 IP/162.

$140m Decade:

Feel this is mostly a crapshoot. I started by getting the best rotation I felt I could in Pedro, Maddux, and Pete Alexander. Then started filling in the best hitters I could find in each decade, Ruth, Lajoie, Williams, Jennings, Foxx, etc... and then just filled in my bench and bullpen (Carlos, J.R. Richard, McQuillan, Blue, Harris, Blanton) around the stars by filling in the decades and the $$$ requirements. All told, I think I spent about 15 minutes putting this team together. I like this team, but again, I think many of the teams will be similar, so... who knows. I know I probably have among the fewest IP here with 1,301 IP/162. Hitting line is .349/.438/.584. Pitching .193/0.88/1.78.

All told, I like my chances in four leagues, and have no idea what to expect in the other two. So we'll see how it all shakes out.
8/4/2010 3:17 AM
schwarze
Posts: 38035 (3)
Hall of Famer
1698 74 4 1 1
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markeking... great writeup... LMFAO
8/4/2010 10:05 AM
newarkwilder
Posts: 1015 (0)
Hall of Famer
1089 1 45 4 102
Prospect
$70M: Modern Day 5-Man Rotation
I think the challenge level of low caps is usually overstated. basically, do the same thing you do in higher caps, but move down your price range a bit. it's almost ridiculous how good the players you can afford at $70M are. I knew right off the bat that 2006 Greg Maddux and Chien-Ming Wang would be on this team; they're fantastic bargains. unfortunately, my other standard sub-$5M pitchers are pre-1980, so I filled out guys with similar profiles to Maddux and Wang (primarily very low walk rates) and some solid relievers. overall, minus mopup: 1,298 IP, 1.19 WHIP, 4.41 K/9, 2.08 BB/9, .255 OAV, 0.61 HR/9, $32.8M.
on offense, I didn't really do anything particularly creative. '86 Gary Pettis and Willie Randolph were locks for OF range and cheap OBP. my primary goal elsewhere was to avoid paying for poor normalization; as a result, I ended up going with a moderately doubles-heavy offense anchored by '83 Darrell Evans and '02 Jorge Posada. the overall line for my starters is .280/.367/.441 with 126 HR for $35.5M.

$80M: Clone Me
I wanted to be a bit eccentric with my hitter clones. I figured there would be a ton of Rickeys and Raineses and Roses. after going through some middle infielder combos (Pesky, Sewell, McDougald), I settled on Pedro Guerrero. his 1985 season has always been money for me, and '82 and '89 look like a very solid 2-3-4 combination at $80M. I rounded out the lineup with some typical $80M choices (Appling, Randolph, North) and made sure to get an A+ arm at catcher (Carter) for the aforementioned Rickeys and Raineseses. my starting eight are at .293/.386/.438 with 130 HR, $38.6M.
my first choice for pitcher clones by far was Kevin Brown, but as much as I tried, I couldn't get a bullpen for the Browns that A) I felt comfortable with and B) was under cap. Eppa Rixey stood out as an obvious second choice; he's cheap and he plays very well at $80M. I have 1,360 innings of 1.13 WHIP, 2.87 K/9, 1.54 BB/9, .253 OAV, 0.29 HR/9 pitching for $39.7M. in retrospect that's probably too many innings, I could've cut that a little lower and improved my bullpen. hopefully that will not come back to hurt me.

$90M: GM Challenge
the 1981 Astros were the first team I went to, as I had looked at them for last year's WISC. I just love this team's pitching, and I like 1981 as a source for FAs. I was somewhat reluctant to take a team that only got two FA selections, but none of the other teams I looked at really worked for me—the 1924 Reds were closest. the pitching staff for the Astros didn't need a lot of help, so I added only Rollie Fingers. I've had a lot of success with his '81 season in a relief ace–type role. the Astros' offense is definitely not good, but their biggest hole is third base, and I can add an MVP-level season of Mike Schmidt, which should definitely help. ultimately, I'm relying on what I think is an excellent pitching staff: 1,464 innings at 1.09 WHIP, 5.71 K/9, 2.55 BB/9, .221 OAV, and 0.34 HR/9. they're going to have to carry a very weak offense, though. the 12 guys who'll get most of the playing time for me have a total line of .274/.338/.409 with 70 (real-life, not pro-rated) HR. I'm hoping the Astrodome helps by killing everyone else's offense as well.

$100M: Limited Seasons Twist
honestly, I didn't think a whole lot about this one. I came across the early 1940s Yankees teams looking for good twist fodder in other leagues and noticed that most of the players had roughly contemporaneous peak seasons. also, I really like the 1943 Spud Chandler season. so I went right to those early 1940s teams for this league. I tried a few of the seasons in this era, including the popular 1940, but I opted for 1942 because it gave me a couple players (Cullenbine, Lindell) that I like using. the really tough choice was deciding between Keller, Henrich, and Selkirk for left field; I went with King Kong. I like my offense a lot: they hit .309/.401/.498 with 148 HR for $51.8M.
one problem I have with this team is the bullpen—I would've really liked better relief pitchers. Chandler and Bonham should dominate as my 1/2 starters though, and the bullpen isn't bad—just mediocre. hopefully a strong offense will make that less of an issue. overall my pitching staff has 1,486 innings at 1.12 WHIP, 3.64 K/9, 2.40 BB/9, .232 OAV, 0.37 HR/9 for $44.7M.

$120M: Power/Speed
I couldn't really decide whether to go straight power or straight speed, so I sort of split the difference on this team. I figured I could get a ton of high success rate steals with Rickey (1983) and Vince Coleman (1985) without paying too much money, fill out the heart of the lineup with power hitters, and then fill in the gaps with cheap high-OBP guys. I knew I wanted 1920 Ruth at DH, and I complemented him with '46 Greenberg, a great bargain power hitter, and '81 Schmidt, my default 3B at $100M and up. I went with '98 Piazza at catcher, who I'm guessing is going to be a popular choice. my lineup hits .300/.405/.502 with 204 HR and 295 SB (real-life, not per 162) for $61.5M.
I drafted almost exclusively modern-day pitchers, for obvious reasons, with five of nine coming from the 2000s. my rotation is Blue/Scott/Smoltz/Brown. the bullpen should be strong, with good seasons of Rivera, Rhodes, Meredith, and Gordon. I definitely wanted to make sure I had enough IP to get through the season, because I'm expecting some high-scoring games in this league. I took 1,460 non-mopup innings at 0.93 WHIP, 9.08 K/9, 2.06 BB/9, .197 OAV, 0.61 HR/9 for $56.9M.

$140M: Across the Decades
I had basically no clue what to do for this league. I usually top out at $120M caps, and the decade constraints made for some difficult choices. I took my rotation first, with '95 Maddux, '12 Johnson, '09 Mathewson, and '72 Sutton. I drafted a ridiculous amount of bullpen innings, as I wanted to again make sure I could avoid the fatigue issues seem to happen so often in the WISC high caps. it was looking like I wasn't going to be able to afford Walter Johnson though, so I switched to Eddie Cicotte—a change that I don't like a lot. in any case, after tweaking my bullpen to keep everything within the salary ranges and under cap, I ended up with 1,648 innings (maybe overkill, but I've seen people get screwed with fatigue in previous WISCs) at 0.87 WHIP, 5.51 K/9, 1.65 BB/9, .194 OAV, 0.22 HR/9 for $65.8M.
on offense, I knew I wanted Babe Ruth in the outfield and King Kelly at catcher, so the rest of my lineup was basically constructed around the two of them. those two are pretty expensive, though, so I ended up cutting some corners elsewhere; hopefully cheaper seasons of Luke Appling and Tony Phillips will be able to keep up. all told, my lineup hits .343/.459/.508 with 112 HR (power never translates for me at high caps, so I basically ignored it) for $71.8M.

ranking these teams by my confidence in them, I would probably put $100M & $80M in the top tier with $70M & $120M not far behind. $90M makes a respectable showing, and $140M holds down a spot way down at the bottom.
8/4/2010 10:41 AM
gorbyruss
Posts: 5381 (0)
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966 3
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$70 M (Dubliners)
This was one of the last teams I entered, and it was primarily because I didn't really know what to do with them...I tried platooning at every position, in light of the fact that high PAs drive up salary, but was worried that I wouldn't be able to manage fatigue effectively...I tried sh*tty fielders...ultimately, what I settled on was reasonably decent fielding infielders, less-than-desirable fielding outfielders, and all of them hit lots of doubles, which led me to choose Olympic Stadium.  I went for pitchers with decent ERC# numbers...

$80 M (Foxxie Palmer)
I really like Jimmie Foxx, and I decided pretty early on that I would try and use him, thinking most would go with three OFers, and I could take Foxx and use him at C, 1B, and OF (deferring on the 3B option)...I also wanted to use a 300 IP pitcher so I could try and run with just three of them, saving some of the money for other areas of the team..  So, I went with Jim Palmer, who's been good to me in the past, and some of the savings translated into a pretty strong bullpen.  The other hitters I added around Jimmie Foxx are largely high OBP guys, with only two guys having an OBP under .400.

$90 M (93 Padres and 6 New Souls)
Ideally, I wanted a team that stunk (of course), but that dealt a number of good players during the season (which is one of the reasons they stunk).  Being a Braves fan, I still clearly remember the Crime Dog's arrival in Atlanta, so I decided to check out the 93 Padres.  They were very bad.  But they dealt a number of good players during the season (or acquired them).  So, I get McGriff, Sheffield, and Hoffman (who were all either dealt or acquired), as well as Tony Gwynn, Andy Benes, and Phil Plantier (they didn't go anywhere).  I added Piazza, Alomar, Junior, and then three good arms to go with Benes in Maddux, the Unit, and Appier.  I'm weak at SS, but reasonably happy about everyone else.

$100 M (97 Braves)
It appears I wasn't alone here in choosing this Braves team.  Dynamite staff, strong 'pen, three guys slugging over .600...

$120 M (Run, Forrest, Run)
I didn't realize I was going to be on one extreme of the spectrum, having the most lopsided ration of SB to HR of any other team.  My rationale was that I felt like the rules might be more favorable to teams built on speed rather than teams built on power (due to HR/9 for modern day pitchers normalizing more favorably than the deadball guys), so I decided to go with a team built almost exclusively on speed.  So, I have over 900 SBs and I'm playing in a pitcher's park with 5 guys who throw cheese, all averaging at least 9 k/9.  Not playing in a 120 mil league very often, I don't know whether my pitching, as good as it is, will be able to hold my opponents' power in check.

$140 M (Decadent Pleasures)
This is the team that scares the crap out of me.  In last season's WISC, my $140 M team got crushed, and one of the main reasons was because I didn't have enough IPs.  I have over 1700 IPs this time and am playing in a pitcher's park, hoping that will help some.  My lowest OBP is .440.  I built these hitters, however, around my pitching, going with a great Train, Joss, Pedro, Maddux, and Koufax.  I have no clue on this team.
8/4/2010 2:31 PM (edited)
EasyE7273
Posts: 760 (0)
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Given my past poor performances, you'd think I'd take the time out to put some solid clubs together but as usual, I kind of winged it.  Let's see what we've put together:

$70M (Modern Day 5-Man Rotation)
We slated about 4/7 of the allocable salary to pitching so offensively we're balanced and that is not necessarily good.  I may have drafted too few PA's as we have only 4,727 but I am hoping that will be OK at this level.  As for pitching, we went for 1,255 quality IP resulting in an OAV of .215 and WHIP of 1.00. 

Only one position player is has a salary over $5 million (1980 Cesar Cedeno) and he'll lead off.  Only one power hitter as well (2002 Robin Ventura).  I did what many others did, try to get some decent OBP & speed with the aforementioned Cedeno (.309/.389 & 48 SB), '80 Molitor (.304/.372 & 34 SB), and '86 Cangelosi (.235/.349 & 50 SB) along with '94 Rickey and '01 Cristian Guzman.   There is no bench so fatigue may be a big factor.  I tried to target SP's with about 180 IP and low walk rates and would up with an all 1980's rotation of '81 Guidry, '88 Ojeda, '88 Perez, '83 Boddicker, and '85 Eck.

$80M (Clone Me)
I really struggled with this theme and another with more salary towards the pitching end of things.  I didn't believe I could build a decent team around stud clones but it seems many have been able to.  I really wanted to use Carlos Beltran but wasn't able to make it work and wound up on settling with Pete Rose (considered Biggio as well) with the '81 version in the 1B, '65 at 2B, and '71 in the OF.   The supporting cast is nothing to write home about, mostly a bunch of singles hitters and a couple of base stealers ('80 Dave Collins & '98 Otis Nixon).  I did grab 2009 Yadier Molina to gun down the opposing base stealers I'd figure we'd see.  When '71 Rose and his 13 HR is your top power guy, you could be in trouble.

I usually build the staff first and then worry about the batters but went against the grain this time.  So, once my lineup was built I had to find a pitcher to go along with a 1B+ but negatives on the rest and decided on Dodger Stadium.  Tried to make Hershiser and Valenzuela work. Nope, couldn't do it without sacrificing the bullpen.  So, we ended up with Sutton and going with a four man rotation of '73, '75, '81, '80 giving us 969 IP.  The bullpen IP only brings me to 1,290 IP so we could be short again.  I'm also only using nine pitchers (something I've never done) along with five guys in the pen I've never used ('97 Osuna, '02 Marte, '88 McMurtry, '08 Carlson, '04 Gonzalez, and '46 Abernathy).  This is a big risk, we'll see if it reaps rewards.  We're at a .212 OAV and 1.00 WHIP as a staff so I have some hope.

$90M (GM Challenge)
I failed at this theme last year when I took the '86 Cardinals, a team that just didn't have enough of anything to succeed.  This time I figured that I'd at least look at some teams with better pythgeoran records than real life and see if we could find a decent pitching staff to work with.  I looked at some teams that most would laugh at; '83 Cubs, '88 Reds, '80 Cardinals, '79 Mets, '99 Dodgers, '84 Astros, and '84 Pirates.  The two that fit my criteria were the two 1984 clubs and I initially built an Astros team since their real life winning percentage was .494 allowing me 4 FA's.  Before I submitted my team I took another look at the '84 Pirates and liked them better.  The staff was not great by any means but it did give me five solid starters and all had at least 180 IP to work with.  The pen was pretty good too and I almost decided to use all four FA on the weak lineup but wound up adding Willie Hernandez to the pen.  I'm a bit worried with the 1,498 IP, .238 OAV, and 1.19 WHIP, we're probably going to be in trouble.

The lineup needed some big time help.  Ultimately, I added Raines, Gwynn, and Ripken but it also could have used Schmidt, Dale Murphy, and Moseby - all of whom were considered.  The rest of the lineup is not so great but at least there should not be a lot of K's so I guess my biggest hope is that there are some weak fielding clubs out there for me to exploit.  We're at .287/.350/.418/.768 for the lineup, not so hot.

$100M (Limited Seasons Twist)
I had to scramble at the deadline to put this team together and originally planned to use a team from the past ten years since there should be more players to choose from in theory.  Then I said the hell with it and just find a team you think might be unique but work as well.  We stumbled upon the '83 Phillies, a team that made the World Series and that had won it back in 1980 so I thought we'd have some good seasons to work with.

Yet another team that better be able to run successfully with four guys in the lineup at 40+ steals ('84 Dernier, '84 Hayes, '85 Samuel, '80 DeJesus) 1981 Schmidt will provide the power with 47HR/162.  We did spend more than planned on the bench, plenty of double switches and pinch hitters coming up to bat - never seen the 1984 Jeff Stone, he looks awesome with a .362 BA and 27 SB in 185 AB's.  I hope I can get him in there enough to make a difference.  Overall, the batters bring .287/.365/.436/.801 to the table.  Will that be enough at this cap level?

Anchoring the pitching staff is 1980 Steve Carlton and his 303 IP.  We also decided to use '84 Denny and his 155 IP and 0.98 WHIP in the rotation, at least to begin the season.  We have four lefty's in the pen with McGraw, Willie Hernandez, Al Holland, and Don Carman.  The pitching staff overall numbers look like 1,602 IP, .225 OAV, 1.11 WHIP -  maybe too many innings but it is what it is at this point.

$120M (Power/Speed)
I rarely play in leagues with caps above $100M and for some reason built this team first.  The gawdy numbers for offense (.303/.406/.500/.906) will be enhanced by playing at Wrigley Field.  We have a bit more speed (338 SB) than power (210 HR).  The lineup has the typical '75 Morgan along with '87 Raines, '92 Bonds, and '85 Brett.

On the pitching side, I went against my usual philosophy again by going with a 4 man rotation ('68 Tiant, '69 Cuellar, '77 Seaver, '80 Norris) and am worried about normalization hurting me along with the ballpark effects.  The bullpen is pretty solid and features '04 Flash Gordon along with '72 Jim Brewer from the left side.  The staff numbers show a decent 1,629 IP, .196 OAV, 0.97 WHIP.  I wanted to make sure I had enough innings at the higher cap levels but it looks like I may have overdone it again.

$140M (Across the Decades)
This cap level is a total crap shoot for me, only playing it for the WIS Championships each year.  My batters bring .315/.414/.558/.972 to the plate and the lineup features '75 Morgan, '22 Speaker, '34 Foxx, and '55 Mantle - am worried about using players from the ealry part of the century as I typically use guys from the late '60's through present.

On the mound I went with your commonly used '00 Pedro and '95 Maddux and a bullpen anchored by '77 Sutter and '89 Eck.  I may have messed up big time by drafting pitchers that have a high IP per appearance that are going to have to pitch in a lot of games ('19 Nehf, '59 Harshman, and 1899 Waddell come to mind).  We'll see how this affects fatigue levels.  I've somewhat countered that by drafting an inordinately high amount of innings (1,811) to go along with a .197 OAV and .88 WHIP.

I selected Cleveland Stadium as my ballpark but now realize this might not have been the best choice.  It does give me +1 for 1B and HR but my batters might have benefited more from a better rated 2B and/or 3B park.  Ah well, another lesson learned.

Overall Outlook

I believe this is my fourth go-round in the WIS Championship and I've never come close to the Top 24 and don't expect to this time either.  So, the optimistic goal is to stay in contenion for a playoff spot or two while realistically staying away from averaging 100 losses per club.  I'd like to finish in the top half for once so I am predicting 48th overall!

Thanks to Jeff & Co. for doing a great job as usual.  I look forward to this each summer now.  Best of luck to all and I enjoyed the thread and love reading how the champs put together their rosters.


8/4/2010 1:12 PM (edited)
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