My time slot is open, which means we are skipping a pick for now ...

Ribbentrop, you drafted the 1978 Royals and then received the 1978 Twins. You've got a handful of usable pitchers, headed by a stout Larry Gura, but after him the rotation starts to jump above the 3.00 ERC# line. You've got a few relievers who are solid enough, though a few of them walk a lot of guys. So one of my goals is not to help your pitching staff out much, if at all.

On offense, you've got several good quality guys to fill your lineup who have good gloves, too, assuming you have money and spots for all of them. The Twins actually gave you two nice starters in Carew and Smalley to go with Porter, Brett, and Otis from the Royals. I can't take any of that away from you at this point, only try to make it harder for you to roster them all and surround them with talent.

Let's also look at areas of roster construction that could be issues. Your two teams each have just one Catcher and one Shortstop. I don't want to make those problems go away for you, if I can avoid it. Alas, just two other teams left have just one Catcher on them, and they're otherwise decent teams, so you're spared there, but not entirely if I can help it. It wasn't too hard to find teams that don't have a backup SS, so I plan to leave you with that problem.

I narrowed down my options to two teams. I can't name the other one, of course, but it did have just one SS and two not-cheap catchers. The problem was it had a few useful pitchers, and I just couldn't bring myself to do that. What is interesting is both the teams I considered here were actually kind of good, at least 10 games over .500 in fact.

So let's meet a rather surprisingly not-useful team, the 83-71 Pittsburgh Pirates of 1948.

Starting with the pitching. You've got 11 guys to choose from. The problem is none of them are actually any good. The best ERC# among them is 3.60. By all means, stick some of them on your staff. We'll all be grateful. They're not horrible, but they're not what you want out there either.

As for the hitting, well I do have to give you their one very good player, Ralph Kiner. He's an affordable masher with a decent glove. But he is a $6M player, and several of your other good hitters are in that range, too. Hopefully this means you have to settle for lesser choices in a couple spots.

After that, though, things really tail off. You've got a couple other replacement-level outfielders in Westlake and Walker, and then it's a hitting desert. Only Kiner and Westlake even slugged .400 for this squad, with Kiner hitting 40 of their 108 HR that season. It's not all that hard to build an outfield in this league, so if I have to give you any talent at all it's best put there.

As for the SS situation, well you get one more full-time player and no cheap backups, so you've now got just the 3 guys there. And behind the plate, adding to Porter and Wynegar will be a platoon of $1.5-2M guys. So at best right now you're wasting a decent chunk of cash on the backups while trying to fill all the other holes with your final team and avoiding daggers.

If making your job harder is my top job here, I think I did the best I can. Good luck!

Picking now

JBarr gets the 1938 Cardinals

Why thank you Vilefileman! I will learn to love or hate those Cardinals!

Well vilefileman you started with the 1968 Baltimore Orioles and were gifted by one of our amazing neighbors the hapless 1988 Texas Rangers.

The Orioles have a main man at the helm for SP's and, like said before by redcped, a quality staff but a lack of cheap alternatives on the bench.
The Rangers do not offer much in ways of the "cheap" bench players as well, the staff is almost unusable, so probably using some of their hitters.

After taking that all in:

Drum Roll!!!

Sending you some California love with the Halos! Yes, Your prize is the 1968 California Angels! They have a few P's you can use but the hitting and bench are just horrible. Only one hitter above .256? Bench is $763K, $994K, and then $1.1M and up! I could not think of a better gift.

Am looking for redcped

Looking at the 88 Reds and 68 Senators

I gift thee redcped with the 1988 Seattle Mariners

And there bounteous plenty (broad strokes)

The 1988 Seattle Mariners

Looks like the wrong third team is listed for Ribbentrop on the first post:

19 Ribbentrop ... 78 Royals, 78 Twins, 48 Tigers

He was actually assigned the 1948 Pirates, not the Tigers.

Posted by _jwillis on 3/26/2024 3:10:00 PM (view original):
Looks like the wrong third team is listed for Ribbentrop on the first post:

19 Ribbentrop ... 78 Royals, 78 Twins, 48 Tigers

He was actually assigned the 1948 Pirates, not the Tigers.

Correct, and the wrong team has the strikethrough on the list of 1948 teams.

_jwillis chose the '78 Yankees as his first team and then was gifted the '48 Reds. Those Yankees give you some serviceable if not great options at several positions, especially with Nettles at 3B. Guidry and Gossage are good pitching prospects, although both are expensive. The '48 Reds roster looks VERY thin - maybe you can use Vander Meer and there are some usable OF's as well as a few low cost back-ups available. I searched for a team that would allow you to continue your search for a decent SS and cheap back-ups while also giving you limited pitching choices. I also thought I'd give you a team that I wouldn't want since I'm about to get screwed myself.
I finally decided that the best choice for you are those 1978 Atlanta Braves. You've got Neikro (if you can afford him) and Garber to help your pitching staff along with a decent OF Burroughs but not a whole lot else...

Sorry, BeAllEndAll - I just saw your post or I would have waited. I'll re-do mine if necessary...

Posted by kentol on 3/26/2024 7:02:00 PM (view original):
Sorry, BeAllEndAll - I just saw your post or I would have waited. I'll re-do mine if necessary...

I'll redo mine. I just saw your pick. I was stuck at work trying to write this and work... bad timing this draft pick

Claytonengel started off his team by selecting the 1988 Oakland A’s. What an offensive powerhouse, led by 40/40 club member Jose Canseco, power hitting Mark McGwire, and .300 hitting defensive CF Dave Henderson. They also have a nice C platoon with Steinbach and Hassey and a nice 3B with Lansford. Weiss also provides a nice defensive switch-hitter at SS. They also come with a plethora of platoon options in the OF. They’re only missing a 2B from fielding a complete offense. 7 possible players. Very nice.

On the pitching side Oakland is strong in relief, led by Dennis Eckersley who is a very affordable $2.5M. They also have not great but usable relievers Gene Nelson, Greg Cadaret, Todd Burns, and Eric Plunk. Leaving Honeycutt off this list seems wrong but he would be your 3^rd best LHRP. Plenty of options here.
Where Oakland is “weak” (they are the A.L. Champs) is at SP where his best option is Dave Stewart at $7.3M. Past him there’s Bob Welch and his 3.74 ERC# for $5.2M if you dare (please do!). Other than that though, they don’t have much to offer.

Your first gifted team, the Kansas City A’s, didn’t do a whole lot to help this pitching, just Duke Maas in relief and a lot of bad options. Offensively they do provide your best offensive option in Bob Cerv although I’m not sure you can roster him, Canseco, and Henderson on the same team. They also fill your hole at 2B with a usable but not good Hector Lopez. Other than a Vic Power platoon, the rest of this team makes me want to puke. Glad they were gifted to you.

A lot of crappy teams have been gifted but I found one you may like…for the moment. I present to you, the 1978 Atlanta Braves. The good: Phil Niekro and his 335 innings for only $9.44M. You’ll need those innings considering you have only 2 SP’s now. There is also a nice Gene Garber and a usable Larry McWilliams in relief. The rest, blech.
On offense there is a nice Bob Horner to platoon with. Jeff Burroughs is nice on offense but his defense in the OF is suspect. Gary Mathews is the same. Maybe you draft Murphy and play him at C?

Sounds like a lot of what you already have, OF’s, C, and 3B. Good luck finding your missing pieces (pitching). Looking forward to batting practice at your place! Good luck!

Well, claytonengel get’s off lucky…or does he. I switched up my search criteria and found two viable options. But I can only give him one so please give a warm Bad Neighbor welcome to the 1958 St. Louis Cardinals! Yeah, sure they have a cheap version of Stan Musial, at 1B. But their only other two good offensive options are 3B Ken Boyer at a spendy $6.8M and another 1B, Joe Cunningham. Combined with Musial, that’s over $9M at first. A McGwire combo with either still hits between $7-8M. The rest are a bunch of no-fielding punch-and-judy hitters whom we’d love to see make your team.

On the pitching side there is one SP in Sam Jones but he’s not better than Stewart. And they have one RP in Jim Brosnan. The rest of the pitchers, well, they’re worse than the Braves staff I was about to give you.

Still looking forward to batting practice at your place. Good luck!

68 Red Sox

I think the Tiger problem is fixed and all caught up.

Alas, I don't see a clear way to screw kentol.

His first pick, the 1988 Dodgers, basically ensures that he will have a healthy pitching staff. There's too many good options--he could take 7 pitchers if he wanted, but he's got a few useful hitters that he can flex for if he ends up with enough pitching elsewhere.

His first screw pick, the 1988 Orioles, are pretty bad, but they fill some important gaps for him. Bad as they were, these O's give him a good 1B in Murray, a good SS in Ripken, a useful C (albeit only 318 PAs) in Tettleton, and a couple of playable-if-uninspired OFs. Depending on the daggers, he's on his way to a passable lineup to go with his deep pitching staff.

The one thing kentol doesn't have is any budget-friendly backups. The Dodgers have only two players who cost under $1M: one backup OF and one mop-up type pitcher, both of whom are still over $800K. The O's fair even worse in this regard: they have only one player on the entire roster who costs less than $1M, and he's another mop who costs $740K.

So the best way I can think to screw him is to squeeze his budget even further. Which leads me to...

The 1958 Philadelphia Phillies.

Not unlike kentol's other two teams, the 58 Phils have only one player who costs under $1M: a backup 3B who costs $922K. So with three of his rosters on the books, kentol has a total of... four players who cost under $1M, and none with salaries below $740K. That will make it pretty hard to roster Richie Ashburn, who is far and away the Phils best player but comes with a whopping $9.6M price tag.

I still don't think this will screw him too badly, but hopefully, it will squeeze him in terms of which teams he can consider for his final round pick. Good luck!

Posted by claytonengel on 3/26/2024 11:45:00 PM (view original):
68 Red Sox

Interestingly, I had them on my list of possible Round 4 teams.