This thread is by far the best thing about the WISC. I hope everyone chimes in when they can.
70m: We'll do better next time
Park: Enron Field
Hitters: 271/349/424 147hr 121sb/36cs
Pitchers: 1362ip 1.13whip 25hr
I probably didn't spend enough time on this team. I started with pitchers who I knew I would want on the 120mil team and who also had a usable season at 70m. That got me some starters and also some relievers. For lower caps I like to run a 5 or 6 man rotation just to get as few 200k guys as possible. So my 120mil rotation is Joss/Cy/Walter (can't beat that), and my 70mil rotation is McQuillan, Maddox, Babe Adams, Cy Young and Niggeling, with Joss and Walter coming out of the 'pen. With that core in place I added Bill Henry and Trevor Hoffman who can pitch well in both leagues, Cy Morgan to give me more innings at 120, and Hal Woodeshick for both.
On offense, I wanted some speed and switch hitting since that's how low caps seem to work. I couldn't find a good shortstop, Ozzie never really dominates a 120mil like you'd like, but I settled on Jose Reyes. My OF/1B is Ruth, Mantle, Beltran, and Willie McGee, with Mantle playing 1B at 70m in his later years. Ruth25 platoons with Davey Lopes at 70m, and Chipper, Robbie Alomar and Yadier Molina round out the cheap team. Neither Robbie or Yadi can hit at all at 70m but Yadi's arm is a necessity for this cap, and I hope he hits OK at 120m if I make it there. I wanted to use a cheap Teixeira season for another switch hitter but couldn't make it work. Same with Carlos Beltran, who I would have loved to find a way to squeeze in.
I'm definitely short on PAs for this team so I'll be playing hitters in the mid-90s. But I didn't want to be short on IPs.
As for the park, Enron is +2 for RH HR, +1 for LH HR and +2 for triples. I needed the triples, my pitchers can handle the HRs, but I just wish it wasn't backwards since my hitters will be hitting lefty most of the time. I'm hoping that there will be at least a few non deadball pitchers here. We don't have a ton of raw steals but everyone has a good percentage.
80m: Hitting .289 and Pitching 2.10
Park: AT&T Park
Hitters: 288/370/425 106hr 293sb/74cs
Pitchers: 1353ip, 1.11whip, 19hr
To get started with this one I picked the pitchers and hitters I liked for this cap, and then checked if there were any other useful players at that number. Hitting .289 gives me Vince Coleman, and also Max Carey and Rickey Henderson for the outfield. Then you can add Jimmy Rollins, Ray Durham and a solid Mel Ott season at 3B to form a pretty nice core. 1B wasn't great (platooning Fullmer and Rickey Jordan) and Milt May was the only A+ arm catcher, but I got a couple of D- fielding catchers that should be interesting backups (Coggin and Gowdy). So within parameters I tried to stick to switch hitters and steals. And I figured that everyone would have deadball pitchers so I went with AT&T and a bunch of non-HR hitting guys. Like most others, I also looked at .312 (Shawn Wooten, also comes with a nice Knoblauch season), .298 (Raines and Mumphrey, but the rest of the .298 guys were sluggers) and .274 (Rickey, Cy Williams and Frank Howard for a Yankee-3 type team). I liked my .321 team (McGraw, Beltre, starting with Milton Bradley) but they cost too much.
For pitching I tried to go with 1.91 (my man Ed Siever, plus Willie Mitchell and Jake Wiemer) but in the end they cost too much. 2.10 starts with Al Maul, and also a great Spud Chandler season and 2 deadballers to round out the rotation (Leever and Liefield). The 2.10 crew was the only one that I could find that had a really good bullpen - Vida closing, Kimbrel, Todd Jones, Lefty Tyler and more. I liked 2.06 a lot but couldn't get the 'pen right.
90m: Card Counters (1906-30)
Park: Sportsmans III
Hitting: 321/382/468, 84hr, 307 2b, 105sb/132cs
Pitching: 1406ip, 1.05whip, 11hr
I knew all along this would be a deadball team, so I looked at shortstop first, and the Cards, Sens, Phillies, Cubs, Giants and Pirates were the ones I liked best. Of those teams, really only the Cubs, Giants and Cards also had a usable 2B. The Cubs were the obvious team and they were the frontrunners for a long time. The Reulbach/Pfiester/Lundgren/Overall rotation was strong, Hack and Hartnett provided the pop and they actually had a really good bullpen.
Then I thought about a non-deadball team and came really close with the 84-08 Mets, Gooden/Ojeda/Leiter/Sid/Pedro in the rotation. Then I had to cut Doc to keep Beltran, but I still really liked the team with Wright/Reyes/Alfonzo in the infield. I probably should have gone with them.
I tried a deadball Yankees team but I couldn't find a good combo of Ruth/Gehrig that allowed me to fill my infield and stay under the cap. So I finally went back to the deadball Cards and found a pretty good, really low-K rotation (Karger, Bugs Raymond, Jack Taylor) , a surprisingly stout bullpen and of course a great offense anchored by Frisch, Austin McHenry, Hornsby and Les Bell. They definitely lacked the star rotation power that the Cubs had but I decided to roll with the offense over the starters.
100m: 2005 Tigers/1910 Pirates
Park: Comerica
Hitting: 314/369/497, 267 2b, 135 3b, 132hr, 189sb/109cs
Pitching: 1477.2ip, 1.00whip, 33hr
I tried a lot of teams for this one. I figured that the basic construct would be deadball rotation + modern hitters/bullpen. I started with the 2009-2012 Yankees so I could have their park, but never really found a match I liked. The best I could find was the '07 Americans. I liked that team a lot but it was too expensive to get the good versions of the hitters I liked. So finally I had to abandon the Yankees in search of another HR hitting park with a team that could provide most of an offense and a good bullpen. I couldn't find any Wrigley/Kingdome/Tiger Stadium teams, and I was a little leery of AFC. I came closest with the '17 Red Sox with a modern Cubs team (2002/2006, with Maddux) but the hitters just weren't good enough. Stupid bad Cubs.
Finally I figured that if everyone else was going to have deadball pitchers, maybe I shouldn't bother with HR hitters. So I paired up my 2 favorite outfielders (Chief Wilson and Granderson) with a great Pirates pitching staff. The '05 Tigers are a really good twist team, with Pudge Rodriguez and a ton of relievers, plus Polanco and Dmitri Young. I was happy to use Honus at SS but had to compromise a bit with Tommy Leach at 3B. At least he had 26 triples. These guys may not have enough offense but I'm hoping defense, pitching and triples will carry the day.
110mil: Twenty-Five One Percenters
Park: Tiger Stadium
Hitting: 327/436/522 323 2b, 191hr, 223sb/112cs
Pitching: 1517ip, 0.94whip, 14hr
Expecting that most people would platoon, I wanted to draft a rotation of all L/R tandems and a lot of switch hitters on offense. The switch hitters proved to be a little tricky to fit in, but I still got Chipper, Mantle and Milton Bradley. I drafted 4 outfielders (Mantle/Bradley, Billy Hamilton, Mike Griffin) and Bradley will fill in at all 3 spots, with the other guys set to 99% auto-rest. The rest are just a straight L/R platoon, with Joe Harris filling both 1B/DH and Terry Shumpert filling both 2B/3B.
On the pitching staff, I've got Fred Anderson/Ferdie Schupp, Harry Krause/ernie Shore, Jack Pfiester/George Mcquillan for my 3 tandems, and 5 relievers in the bullpen. These guys don't run a lot, and Hamilton/Griffin aren't great fits for Tiger Stadium. They also don't have a ton of power, but they do have some, and they walk a lot, so it was the best park I could find.
120m: I Soduku, Do You?
Park: Robison
Hitting: 325/422/529, 169hr, 339 2b, 207sb/123cs
Pitching: 1554ip, 0.92whip, 31hr
I figured this would be a really interesting league. Teams could really stack their pitching staff with deadballers, but the soduku aspect and the cap of 30mil per year might make it a little tough. So I've got some power hitters. I started with 1995 Maddux, even though I wasn't sure there was anyone else in '95 worth having. I ultimately used Bonds and Norm Charlton and Troy Percival when I ran out of good bullpen options. Then I wanted to make sure I got a shortstop and some deadballers so I went with.... 1906, not 1908, because I was looking for a 4-man rotation and liked White and Pfiester. Then I added 1914 to get Dutch Leonard and Tris Speaker, and rounded things out with '87 (Boggs, Tim Raines) and '32 (Lazzeri, Cochrane, Gehrig). Even though they offered up good hitters, the 87/95 combo didn't give me a ton of great relievers, but I pieced things together with Tim Burke and Dave Smith, along with Fritz Coumbe from 1914.
This team actually has a solid bench (Joe Medwick, Domingo Ramos, Mike Mowrey) so I hope I don't wish I spent that money on starters.