I'll fix it. Sorry

You've probably figured this out, but the previous message was not meant for this forum.

Posted by schwarze on 10/5/2023 11:37:00 PM (view original):
The $110 million theme was by far my favorite theme. I just kept building teams. A total of 14 rosters... I had to narrow it down to 6 rosters for my live testing. Here are the eight teams that didn't make it into my private league.

1906 Cubs
1921 Giants
1924 Giants
1941 Dodgers
1942 Yankees
1944 Cardinals
1954 Indians
2004 Cardinals

The teams that did make it include...
1902 Pirates
1914 Red Sox
1969 Orioles
1985 Cardinals
2019 Astros
2020 Dodgers

$110 Million - Elite Eight
1914 Boston Red Sox (Fenway Park)

Two of the six teams were playing above .500 at the 120-game mark of my test season... the '69 Orioles and the '14 Red Sox. The Orioles actually had a better record than the Red Sox, but their record was mainly due to a 17-6 record vs the '19 Astros. Although I like the pitching and defense of the '69 Orioles, they are a bit right-handed heavy (even with free agents Rose & R.Smith). I figured a bunch of folks would take the 2019 Astros or 2020 Dodgers and I wanted to mute the HRs of those teams. (I had forgotten about the alignment by season, but it probably didn't matter in my decision). If I could have worked out the fact that the '69 Orioles teams would've been stuck in the "deadball" division, I would have taken the 1914 Red Sox anyway.

Here is my roster...

Offense (Free agents highlighted)
C: Les Nunamker, Bill Carrigan, Hick Cady
1B: Dick Hobitzel / Fred Kommers (of) / Olaf Hendrickson (of)
2B: Bill Kenworthy
3B: Larry Gardner
SS: Donnie Bush
OF: Tris Speaker (will also play 1B)
OF: Benny Kauff
OF: Duffy Lewis / Elmer Smith
DH: Gavvy Cravath

Hitting totals (excluding scrubs): 6236 pa, .297 / .379 / .427 $54.305 million

Pitching
Claude Hendrix
Ray Collins
Dutch Leonard
Rube Foster
Ernie Shore
Joe Wood
Al Mamaux
Fritz Coumbe

Pitching Totals (excluding scrubs): 1534 ips, 1.83 era, .214 oav, 1.01 whip, 2.2 bb/9, 0.11 hr/9 $54.274 million

In a shocking development, in my test league, the 1969 Orioles (who has about a 6-game lead over the 1914 Red Sox) have gone 1-19 over their last 20 games, including a current 15-game losing streak. The Red Sox now have a 5-game lead in the division. I don't ever remember any of my previous sim teams ever losing 15 games in row (that wasn't fatigue related).

Great

I'd say it was pretty extreme for schwarze to create a whole league just to find out which team he wanted to use in the tournament. But you can't argue with his 17-5 (!) record.

My teams did a lot better than I thought. Tied for first in regular season wins! Surely some luck sprinkled in. I'm pretty new to this (about a year), and I'm sure most of you have forgotten more things about this game than I know, although I have definitely immersed myself in everything SImleague over the past 6 months. My first few teams last winter didn't make it to .500. I started doing better when I downloaded the data in late spring. I'm sure many (most?) of you have done the same.

The sortable and filterable collums are great for theme leagues. I didn't have any grand overarching strategies for any of the 6 leagues. Just tried to pick the best players available for the $$$. In most cases, I built two + teams in each league and had them square off in the sim matchup tool. This helped in every league except probably the 110 million team league, which was my favorite. I'd love to play it (and the Coors/MIle High draft league) again. I think that forcing the team to have 50% the payroll from the originals added a great touch to it. I may create a league like it soon. I'll probably lower the cap to 100 million. Call it the 50/50 league or some such.

The thing I tried to do (imperfectly) with my spreadsheet is create a single column that combined offense and defense (weighted for position). Obviously, I used the errors and +/- to do that. The shortcoming is that there is nothing about speed or SBs in my formula. That's about it. Nothing exciting. The pitching excel file is obviously more straightforward.

For the All-Star team, I thought there would be a lot of homers hit so I was looking for low HR/9# guys with a lot of IP that fit the budget, which is why I got Hubbel and Groves. My 60 million team is not worth talking about. In the Coors/Mile High league I was looking for batting average and low OAV and defense, just like the rest of you guys. I probably over-valued homers with picks like Pujols and JD Martinez (who absolutely annihilated the tired team but that was about it..)