Roster Selection Strategies Topic

I'll start the legendary 'Roster Selection Strategies' discussion.

$70M. This was an exercise in using the search function. I had no idea what I would find and I never used most of these players, at least not in the years selected. I must've underestimated the talent pool because I quickly met the cap with enough stamina. I briefly looked for improvements with lower stamina, but why look for trouble? This turned out to be one of the quicker drafts and so long ago I don't remember my thought processes.

Pitching rotation of oldtimers Jesse Barnes, Fred Anderson, Rankin Johnson and Elmer Jacobs. 3 mid-level and more modern pitchers and 6 guys in the 25-35 inning range. Don't know why I did that but those little guys do look cost efficient. Hitters are led by 3B Hank Blalock, CF Clyde Milan and C Ray Mueller. Despite having just 12 hitters these are my only 3 fulltimers with 2 more in the 500pa range. Most owners prefer full-timers so the part timers don't get used and their salary drops. SS Nomar-Robles platoon, 2B Evers-Sanchez platoon, 1B and two OF slots shared by near full-timers Victorino Burns and halftimers Dellucci Vanderwaal and Champ Summers with enough left over to pinch hit. Three A++ range guys Milan Evers and George Burns who must be at least 100 years old.


$80M 1931 New York Giants. A masterpiece if it works, an embarrassment if it doesn't. Different than any team I've ever drafted.

The cap seems low for the intent of the theme. Instead of Improve a Real Team it should be called Downgrade a Real Team to Fit the Cap. My strategy was to add 1 or 2 high inning pitchers who were simworthy but not necessarily the best, then manage the budget by using a plethora of 300k hitting exemptions. If 10-15% of my hitting is terrible that does less damage than an abundance of mediocre pitching would. First team I looked at was 1969 Orioles. Use most of their pitching, adding Marichal or Dierker and I may have the best pitching and defense in the league. but I had to gut my offense. Even with a cheaper Free Agent and a pile of 300k's I'd have fatigue issues at several positions. This was looking like the best of ugly options.

Later I took a look at old timey teams, not expecting to find much because they don't sim well and the options are more limited. Surprised to stumble upon the 1931 Giants and everything fell into place. Not elegantly, but better than any other team I tried. Add Lefty Gomez and George Earnshaw to NYG Carl Hubbell, Bill Walker and Freddie Fitzsimmons (the weak link). That's 5 pitchers totalling 1350 ip. Add a mopup and I have enough innings but is it enough pitchers to be nimble? Three of them hit over .225 so I'll start them with 1 pull setting and refuse to pinch hit for them. This will limit the number of pitchers used and keep up my hitters stamina. I used all of the NYG hitters except for a half time Outfielder, 2 backup Catchers and a utility infielder. only remaining flaw is half of 2B has no glove. I loaded up on 300k, some of whom might actually get a hit or two but only one of them owns a glove.

Ready to enter when I took another look at the Orioles and was shocked to see team OBP was nearly identical. Maybe I should reconsider. I compared the two teams six ways to Sunday and it was very close. So the Giants don't walk, they only hit and stay healthy. Studied normalization again, even checked performance history for what that's worth and the Giant pitchers had stats as good as the O's except for consistently higher ERA. Explain that one. O's may be good for 40-50 fewer errors and +/- differential which matches the number of extra hits I'll get from Giant pitchers. The deciding factor was the uncertain level of O's fatigue which may be a personal bias, I hate playing fatigued.


$100M 1909-11 Cubs. This team practically drafted itself. I've played several old time Cub teams so I knew where I wanted to go with this theme and knew what to do once I got there. The only trick is noticing Heinie Zimmerman plays a mean First Base. I took the best hitter at each spot except for one overpriced Outfielder, taking Doc Miller instead. Killer rotation of Mordecai Overall Pfeister and Reulbach the 233ip version. Cubs have no bullpen so stretching to 1911 pulls in Fred Toney to pitch the last 2 innings of close games along with Cliff Curtis and Charlie Smith for bullpen innings. The tossup is which Mordecai to use, the one with 34 more innings or the one who is ever so slightly better. Since I now have a bullpen I took the better one. Pfeister is odd, the only lefty and the only SP who can't hit, you may seem him used differently. The bench gave me what I needed and more, no fatigue problems here. No stellar PHers but several ok ones.



$110M 1901-1918.
A tedious draft. Maybe if I selected a modern era it would have been easier with so many franchises to choose from. Trying to get every deadball team involved was a nightmare. I planned to try different eras for comparison but this was so much work and I was reasonably satisfied so I stopped. My first thought was 1907-1924 but switched to '01 because the early 20s didn't give me much beef, the early O's gave me an extra franchise to choose from, and I like Bill Bernhard for an affordable 3rd SP. Ed Walsh is the Ace. Claude Hendrix is the only big gun who survived salary inflation. I needed 2 Federal Leaguers so it's Claude and Falkenberg. 125ip Cy Morgan also didn't go up in salary like his brother Steele did. Jake Northrop closing and Dumont joins the bullpen as a rare Senator worth using.

I wanted to fit the big '08 SS Honus Wagner. I could do it but had to settle for the second best 3B Frank Baker season. That's ok I used 1912 for 2B Evers, a spot with slim pickings if you don't overpay for Nap or Collins. Sam Crawford at 1B gets a lot of + plays and the price is right. After changing years I ended up not using the Orioles anyway, choosing Big Ed Delahanty instead. Cy Seymour in CF, this team may make some errors but makes up for it in ++ plays. Mike Donlin completes my solid hitting outfield. I shuffled through many different Yankee Highlanders trying to solve this puzzle and ended up with Slow Joe Doyle for some Long B innings. I had to waste two millionaire slots on a mediocre backup/PH and a weak pitcher, hopefully I won't need to use them much. Catcher Mike Grady has only 384 PA and in all the confusion I lost his backup. I give up! I'll just use <$1M to fill it. Giants had enough cheap Catchers I could use, along with a PHer Joe Wilhoit and my favorite .080 hitter Sammy Strang (no kidding, try him in a low cap and play him against the highest BB/9 pitchers and his OBP may hit .500).


$140M Quicker draft this time because there weren't thousands of options to choose from. I did have to solve two dilemmas. First, since BB and K increase pitch counts how many extra innings do we need to draft? And second, since there will be fewer plays in the field is it still worth it to pay for super defense? I like these new themes with unique things to figure out.

So how many people started with Big Mac to get a jump start on the quotas? Not me, he's not good value and I don't expect a problem reaching the numbers. Giambi at 1st. Posada had the numbers at C and don't need A+ glove not expecting much running in this league. Thome looks like the ideal 3B tho I did try out better defenders. 2B had several options about equal, I chose Alomar because he's a Switch. SS came down to ARod's bat or Tulowitz's glove. Despite the 2nd dilemma I went with glove here for a number of reasons. Not much defense in the OF because it's less important there and I didn't find any A+ I wanted. Bryce Harper seems like an ideal OF for this theme. 1931 Babe Ruth in the starring role. 500pa Mantle looks good. I like using 300pa Gavvy Cravath in DH leagues, low K but I'll get there. With an eye on the budget I fill the OF with part timers Hank Greenberg and Phil Plantier.That's 1000 walks then a cheap utility backup gets my last 27 K.

Pitching needs low HR/9 and low BB more than usual. High K is also more useful than normal though not as essential as the other factors. My first two pitcher choices, Greg Maddux and Bob Gibson both have under 8 K/9. Refuse to pay for the big PJ, I need to keep some discipline with pitcher salaries before losing control. 2nd best PJ was tempting but got beat out by Arrieta for the extra 15 innings. Matt Harvey and Kevin Brown are the best SP I could find at a budget of $4m/100 ip. When not starting they'll show up at long B. Late in the draft I picked up Fister, high HR no BB, he'll start against select matchups. Avoided the real expensive RP and went with 48ip Adams closing. Smoltz fits the profile of K HR BB numbers, Mike Gonzalez to matchup against lefties. Higher inning RP with K's all are only good for 15 pitches so I gave up and took Tim Burke and Fister. Low inning Louis Coleman along with Carter Capps who may not be the best selection but I'm curious to see how many K's he gets. So how many extra innings? At first I figure about 7% increase due to extra BB and K, then cut this number because it looks like there will be fewer Plate Appearances than a normal $140M league, then add a little for mediocre defense.1560 ip + mopup. Chose a -2 ballpark just in case I underestimated, Veterans Stadium.


$255M I spent way too much time on this simple theme.
A- How can you not go with Babe Ruth? Any of these guys would improve the team a lot but none as much as the Babe. I took 1923, fewer HR and a bit more of everything else
B- Pete Alexander. Bonds and his .600 obp were tempting and I tried to make it work, but I needed an Ace while Bonds' HR and walks would be suppressed.
C- O'Neill or Mantle would improve the team more than Mordecai. Against my better judgement I took Tip over Mick for the hits.
D- Cobb or Gibson? Gibby isn't that much better than everybody else so I took Cobb.
E/F- Who's on Short? Wagner & Hendrix or Boudreau & Chamberlain? Honus is the better hitter but the difference in defense almost makes up for it. Came down to pitching. Despite his low IP Elton improves the team more than Hendrix would. There are an abundance of lower IP pitchers better than Claude and I plan to use all 13 pitching slots.
Best remaining SP is Babe Adams. For 3rd SP I chose Baldwin because of low hr/9 and the Lady can hit. I'd pinch-hit every time through the lineup if I could but Sparky won't do that. These two guys are my worst pitchers and I won't need all of their innings. Chamberlain and J.R Richard will spot start. Gagne Adams Kuo Devine and Wade Davis closing out, with Schupp Gossage Latman keeping my SP pitch counts low.
Sisler is a good 1B for this hitting team and nobody else I want is in his column. Not much left at 2B so I reconsider taking a 2Bman from group A for about 2 seconds before sticking with the Babe and taking the underrated Cano. Piazza is the best hitting C other than Cap Anson who gets a ton of passed balls, besides I want Manny Ramirez PHing and starting against Lefties. at 3B I went to the cheap seats, had to pass on Cammy again because of Manny, considered Bautista before switching to Beltre so I can have a pinch runner and defensive replacement Rickey Henderson. Brouthers is the most expensive pinch hitter I've ever drafted. Ozzie can't hit so Frisch at utility and possibly platooning with Cano.
This team belongs in a hitters ballpark and I don't need to suppress HR with team hr/9 of 0.10 so let's do Ameriquest.
7/30/2016 11:05 PM (edited)
70 mil - Agree with rbow that this was an exercise in search function. Went with the lowest ERC# guys I could find with decent innings. Went with dead ballers Prendergast; Rankin Johnson, Fred Anderson, and Dick Rudolph. Took Rick Aguillerra as my closer. 5 other ones plus 3 under 300k guys to fit under the cap. Built my team as I normally would. Bobby Bonds was my 30 HR 40+ SB guy. Palmerio has 38 HR. Conine, Hooper, Stanky, Laduca, and Blalock make up the offense. I added a low average high range Dave Bancroft at SS.

80 milc- I worked on this before the last salary update and was focusing on the 1940 Reds only to be screwed by the salary update. I needed to change. My theory was adding two players limited fixing any deficiencies a club may have. Also adding a decent player to an already decent team I would need to cut significant salary to make my additions. After doing some exploring I decided to search all years of all franchises on Baseball Reference. I looked at Runs Scored and Runs allowed. I found that if a team scored more than 750 runs they probably had at least one high priced stud that would cause multiple salary constrictions in other areas. Also if they scored less than 710 runs they probably needed more than a couple of hitters to fill their needs. Same thing on pitching if they allowed less than 550 runs they probably had more than one stud pitcher that I couldn't keep. And if they allowed more than 590 runs they probably needed bullpen help and or multiple starting pitchers. I was able to narrow the search to 4 or 5 teams. The salary adjustments actually impacted those teams. I focused in on the 1993 Braves. They needed a bump at catching so I added Darrin Daulton who had a career year. And of course anyone who watched the Braves knew they needed a closer. I added Duane Ward. Lineup of Nixon\Sanders, Blauser, Daulton, Justice, Gant, Pendleton, McGriff\Bream, and Lemke.

100 Mil - Went with 2006 - 2008 Dodgers. Pitching rich rotation of Kershaw, Maddux, Jason Schmidt, and Odaliz Perez. And Eric Gagne cleaning up. Because of salary upgrade couldn't use the best years of Maddux or Gagne. Lineup of Lofton, Furcal, Kemp\Drew, Manny Ramierez, Jeff Kent, Martin, Hildebrand, and Mueller. Weaker at first and third that I would like but both hit .300. With Dodger stadium as my home park should be able to take advantage of my pitching.

110 Mil - Went with 1950 - 1967. I know the discrimination WIS has against these years but I really wanted to use this team of my youth and I don't think I have a half bad team. In my rotation I have the career years of 1953 Spahn and 1964 Chance. I have a near career year of Koufax 1963. My bullpen has the career years 1962 Face, 1967 Abernathy, 1958 Wilhelm, 1966 Aker, 1952 Ramsdell, 1965 Roberts, and 1955 Rogovin. These are based on the ERC# not innings pitched ERA, or wins. Based on RC# I have the career years of 1950 Berra, 1954 year of Avilla, 1960 year of Aparicio, and 1959 year of Kuenn. Though not career years I have very good years of 1961 Mays(40 HRS), 1951 Ted Williams(.464. OBP), and 1957 Stan Musial(.351 avg). I filled out my 18 millioaires with the 151 walk Eddie Yost. Again speed and defense up the middle, high OBP and power. I went with Reds under 1 MM. With my 10 pitchers and 4 of my position players having career years, and my other 4 players being good, my expectations are high.

140 Mil - Went with a pitching rotation of Maddux, Koufax, Horlen, Martinez, and Kershaw. High strikeouts in my bullpen. Two years ago in the Coors theme where homeruns were king. I went with high strikeout guys. It proved valuable as high strikeout guys actually had more pitches available per game than the low K guys of early eras. In this theme I also built my teams as normal as I could. Good defense up the middle, with speed at the top and high BA in the second position. Therefore I have Cobb 96 SB and .486 OBP. Frisch .328 but can play good defense at 2b, SS, and 3b. Tulowiski at SS. Trout in CF with good range and defense in the OF. Boggs at 3B with a .365 average. Between them they only have 66 HR. The rest of my strting team is Mantle, Bagwell, Thome, and Bench. I added Killebrew, Majeski, and Schroeder to put me over my threshholds. Having Frish play multiple positions allows me to have only 12 position players and 13 pitchers.

225 mil - Went with my dream outfield of Ruth, Mantle, and Cobb. Raines in reserve. My infield is Sisler\Pujols, Frisch\Childs, Tulowiski, Boggs\Beltre, and Mauer\Molina behind the plate. Against left handers I can bat an all right handed lineup and Ruth. Against right handers I can bat all left handers if I put Frish at SS. Went for defense. All A range outfielders. Against left handers if I keep Tulo in I can have A\A+ range. My pitching is Joss and Cicotte from the right side and Guidry and Leonard from the left. 8 relievers headed by Gagne, Kimbrel, and Nathan. With us all using the same players I believe flexibility and able to adjust strategies for matchups as the season goes on is the key.


I have made the cage only once and usually finish somewhere between 35 and 50. Normally the 70 and 80 mil teams sink me. This time I went with my heart rather than anything else. Especially in the 80 and 110 themes. If the 70 and 80 mil average out to 81 - 85 points I feel lucky.

7/30/2016 2:56 PM
Unwanted Whitelisters ($70M Theme)
This one was a big shot in the dark. SBs again were a focus with a selection of 24 Max Carey to lead off. Having a good pair of middle infielders of 01 Rey Sanchez (A+/A-) @ SS and 95 Mike Lansing (A/A-) @ 2B for run prevention seem like a good way to go.
Pitching staff of 05 Sam Leever, 06 Deacon Phillippe, 18 Phil Douglas and 11 Ray Collins with 11 Elmer Steele. Non-descript bullpen to stretch IP to only 1270.
PA is a definite concern with only 5240 along with IP so had to go with Petco as my ball park.

Batting: .280/.349/.404/.753 OPS, 73 HRs, 466 BBs, 493 SOs, 161 SBs, 5240 PAs
Pitching: 2.63ERA/.247OAV/1.13WHIP, 256 BBs, 28 HRs, 1270 IPs

Feeling optimistic about this team if the PA/IP can hold up over 162 games.

All in the Cards 85 ($80M Theme)
The 1985 St. Louis Cardinals was the first team I thought of when I saw this theme. Low enough cap that SBs would play a strong factor and starting off with John Tudor, Willie McGee, Ozzie Smith, Tom Herr along with Vince Coleman was a good base to start with. Try as I might, I thought of adding Dwight Gooden as a second ace but the cap wouldn’t allow it so opted for cheaper options of Orel Hershiser and Bret Saberhagen. Weak hitting, a suspect bullpen, low PAs at OF and catcher is a concern but hopefully the top of the lineups are good enough to hold up.
Playing home games at Busch Stadium.

Batting: .270/.343/.384/.727 OPS, 75 HRs, 532 BBs, 672 SOs, 307 SBs, 5404 PAs
Pitching: 273ERA/.237OAV/1.14WHIP, 362 BBs, 88 HRs, 1371 IPs

Teams with a strong arm catcher is going to give this team fits so depending how other owners approach that will dictate how successful this team ends up being.

Cour Four Yankees 97-99 ($100M Theme)
First team I constructed was 06-08 Dodgers which gave you Maddux, Pedro, Lowe, Kershaw so SP would be elite. Hitting was another matter and even though I actually was all set to go with them, my son ran some Sim Matchup and they just couldn’t hit. He suggested I look at the 97-99 Yankees which had way better hitters but less pitching with 85 Dwight Gooden/97 Roger Clemens anchoring the rotation. The Yankees have always been my favorite MLB team so it didn’t take much convincing to build a team.
Added 05 Andy Pettitte and 94 David Cone for a 4-man rotation with the 2010 version of the Sandman to close things out.
Hitting was fairly straight forward with 99 Derek Jeter, add a great leadoff man in 85 Tim Raines, 95 Chuck Knoblauch, 97 Tino Martinez, 02 Bernie Williams, 97 Paul O’Neill, 95 Wade Boggs to save some cash and 03 Jorge Posada behind the plate.
Playing home games in old Yankee Stadium where they won so many of their 27 World Championships.

Batting: .310/.395/.485/.880 OPS, 171 HRs, 694 BBs, 805 SOs, 174 SBs, 5773 PAs
Pitching: 2.28ERA/.213OAV/1.03WHIP, 362 BBs, 89 HRs, 1420 IPs

Don’t know how this team is going to do but will enjoy managing them, remembering how the Core Four started a dynasty…

Patchwork Millionaires 83-00 ($110M Theme)
This was a fairly easy one to construct once I figured who I wanted to start with as my core and quickly identified additional pieces off teams I hadn’t used yet (I decided early on that going with multiple franchises was what I wanted to do).
For hitting, it was looking for 99 Roberto Alomar (Indians), some version of Tim Raines (Expos), I-Rod (Rangers) for his CS%. Added Barry Bonds (Pirates), Tony Gwynn (Padres), John Olerud (Mets), Ozzie Smith (Cards), and Wade Boggs (Yankees).
For the pitching staff, started with 95 Greg Maddux (Braves), 00 Pedro Martinez (Red Sox), added 96 Kevin Brown (Marlins) so those would be 3 excellent playoff starters. To save cash, had to use 85 Jimmy Key (Blue Jays) and 91 Scott Erickson (Twins) as my #4 and #5 starters.
In the end, this team ended up with almost 300 SBs and a fairly low HR total so added Danny Darwin (Astros) so we could use Astrodome for our ballpark.

Batting: .310/.392/.454/.846 OPS, 119 HRs, 672 BBs, 600 SOs, 291 SBs, 5707 PAs
Pitching: 2.24ERA/.212OAV/0.97WHIP, 272 BBs, 91 HRs, 1376 IPs

Probably a playoff caliber team depending on how effective SBs will be at this cap and how many teams pick up a good CSPCT arm.

Not About Fielding ($140M Theme)
I decided early on to go with a strategy of finding some bench players with a high amount of 3 true outcomes. Decided to go with 99 Jay Buhner (14 HR, 69 BB, 100 SO) and 2012 Cody Ransom (11 HR, 30 BB, 109 SO) at the cost of 1.74M/1.31M. Having used up almost 300 SO on bench players allowed me to roster some fairly good players with high AVG/OBP while maintaining a very low SO ratio (49 Ted Williams, 30 Babe Ruth, 69 Willie McCovey, 93 Barry Bonds). Only full-time player to have over 100 SO is 07 Tulo who I mainly added for his defensive fielding @ SS.
For pitching, having low BBs and HRs was a primary focus. Wanted to have 4 elite aces who didn’t give up HRs and BBs so went with the quartet of 95 Maddux, 96 Brown, 15 Kershaw, 15 Arietta. Added 2010 Cliff Lee, 08 Rivera and 2014 Andrew Miller as a SO reliever.
Playing in Petco as we have a somewhat low IP total.

Batting: .310/.420/.564/.984 OPS, 354 HRs, 1095 BBs, 1012 SOs, 204 SBs, 7058 PAs
Pitching: 1.94ERA/.200OAV/0.88WHIP, 226 BBs, 62 HRs, 1376 IPs

Probably the team I have the most optimism about its chances.

Multiple Choice ($255M Theme)
My first instinct was to go with elite pitching but with such an extreme cap, 1921 Bate Ruth was too elite to pass up. Was a toss-up between 10 Walsh and 15 Alexander so went with Petey. With so many teams likely to have dead-ballers, HRs would likely be suppressed so having only Ruth and 1 other elite HR hitter seem to be the way to go so picked 32 Jimmy Foxx to be the other part of the duo. Once those two were in place, it means going with a high OAV lineup was the way to go so 12 Tris Speaker seemed to be an ideal choice. 88 Elton Chamberlain would tandem with 14 Dutch Leonard and throw in 17 Eddie Cicotte to give me my starting rotation. Having a silly amount of PAs, it would make sense to add some SBs, we went with 87 Tim Raines along with 99 Roberto Alomar. If the other team had a good arm, we’d swap Raines out for 1894 Joe Kelley (.393/.502/.602). PH will likely be crucial in the late innings so added 08 Manny Ramirez (.396/.489/.743) and 30 Bill Terry (.401/.452/.619) to fill the RHB/LHB roles. Added 07 Tulo for his fielding at SS, 85 Boggs, and 13 Joe Mauer for his arm.
Went with Target Field for our home park since we only had Ruth/Foxx for power. My fear is that a high percentage of owners with such large PAs/IPs decide to go with Coors Park and having 1662 IP just isn’t enough here.

Batting: .357/.447/.580/1.027 OPS, 304 HRs, 1208 BBs, 881 SOs, 299 SBs, 9067 PAs
Pitching: 1.36ERA/.182OAV/0.84WHIP, 338 BBs, 25 HRs, 1662 IPs

Have no clue how this team will do but I expect some fairly high scoring slugfests and BSVs galore.
7/30/2016 7:48 PM (edited)
I can't possibly write in the detail we've seen so far, but this thread is interesting.

$70 - Most of my WS appearances have been low caps. I do best below $100 mil for whatever reason. I look for pitchers who are marginally good enough, focusing on low walks and HR/9, and spend the majority of my dough on hitting and MIF range. Stuck 'em in PNC Park, my favorite WIS venue. Highest hopes for this team.

$80 - it's been said already that $80 mil doesn't allow for significant changes, so I looked for a team that had decent WHIP but without the low OBP of the 60's and 70's teams. Ended up with the first place '94 Expos, swapped Marquis Grissom for Gwynn who might have hit .400 had the season gone the distance. What could have been! I spent the longest time trying to improve this choice but never managed it.

Had to tweak this one some after the salary update, and discovered that due to the proration of numbers for the strike shortened season 1994 has apparently no sub $300k pitchers to mop up.

$100 - 1916-18 Giants. Mathewson, Schupp, Toney...killer pitching. This was a b*tch to rebuild after the salary update, but I hardly considered any other teams/seasons.

$110 - the combination of qualities I look for in teams (WHIP, OBP, good SS defense) are commonly found in recent years, so 1998-2015 was an easy choice. I think I built the team around Marco Scutaro, which sounds odd as I write it but hey, A/A fielding and a solid bat. I typically lean towards slight hitter's parks but went with a pitcher's park here in Cinergy Field. I forget why but I typically draft a bunch of long relievers and couldn't manage it here, so maybe that's it.

$140 - I have zero confidence in this theme. I'm weaker at high caps and the restrictions were most severe. I'm thinking the rosters will look awfully similar (24 Bryce Harpers per league?) Ballpark choice might settle it, I went for National League Park-suppress homers slightly, big boost to doubles. If I can manage 82 wins in this theme I'll be happy.

$255 - don't know if this is lunacy but I figured taters would be hard to come by and picked Lajoie over Ruth. I generally went for super high averages, Tip O Neill Cobb Lajoie etc. Starters are Walsh/Hendrix/Russ Ford, who knows how they'll do against $255 cap style hitters but at least I have an insane number of quality bullpen innings. Went with Palace Of The Fans, many hits and few homers.
7/31/2016 3:05 AM (edited)
70M - MH Aladdins
I was surprised how easily this team came together. It is essentially an OL, so finding good values was not difficult. The key, for me, was a focus on OBP for hitters (it's cheap) and range (also cheap), and limiting BBs for pitchers.

To that point, we have Burt Shotton leading off, 1942 Cullenbine checks off both marks at 3B, 1920 Bancroft's great range at SS, Cy Perkins at C just to keep the sure-to-be-found SB teams in check, and some 1800's guys (Delahanty and Elmer Smith) to drive in runs. This, though, comes at the cost of PAs, and we are definitely short on them. However, I reached the WS in last year's 70M league with similarly fatigued players, and I'm not a big believer that it's as damning as some think.

Oh, almost forgot, while I would've loved to exploit the advantage platooning provides in this league (many good part time players never get used), being away for the first week of the season, when fatigue strikes hardest, stopped me from being able to do this. Kudos to those who did, though.

A bunch of deadball pitching, though I think I found better values in terms of $/IP than some others did. 1918 Pol Perritt and 1914 Babe Adams leading the way. Not really much more to say here, as this draft is the most straightforward of the six. I think this team will contend for a playoff spot, though we are in a tough decision. We'll see. NEXT!

Hitting: .289/.379/.404
Pitching: 1,381 IP 1.11 WHIP, 0.22 HR/9


80M - MH 1944 Cardinals + 2
This theme screams out for the 1985 Cardinals. They are the obvious choice and I'm sure some of the people who picked them will get good results. I am wary of how one dimensional they are, though. Going up against an A+ arm catcher could end their season very quickly. So, I explored and came up with a Big Four that included the 1981 Astros (great pitching, Astrodome as my park, A+ arm catcher, bad hitting but could be rectified with the rich 1981 pool), the 1944 Cardinals (truly an abundance of riches, though fielding could be a weakness), the 1997 Braves (Lofton is the key here), and the 1967 White Sox (liked them less the more I played with other teams).

Eventually, I choice the Astros mainly for the A+ arm catcher. I was ready to go. But I had forgotten the rule about combined season players not being allowed at the 11th hour and did not have time to do more research and re-fit the puzzle pieces, so I went to my second option. My Cardinals team is good, with great pitching and hitting. I was able to drop Johnny Hodapp and still put a formidable lineup together, with the newly added Cullenbine setting the table for Musial. Dutch Leonard jumps is as a good value SP.

This team should make the playoffs, but could lose out on some victories if their defense doesn't holdup in spacious Sportsman's Park (III).

Hitting: .288/.361/.429
Pitching: 1,372 IP 1.14 WHIP, 0.30 HR/9


100M - MH 1910-1912 Elysian Cubs
I run a 100M twist league and, over three seasons, have averaged 100 wins with the 1910, 1911, and 1912 Cubs. So, I knew I only had one team to really build for this theme. Why 1912 over 1909? Cy Williams. I know from experience that Frank Schulte does not do as well as you'd expect in this league, and the same goes for Cy Williams's 1923 season with 41 HRs (normalization be damned). No, the best choice here is 1924 Williams. Solid value, decent glove (he will be OF3 after Solly Hofman's A+ range and Jimmy Sheckard's A range), and an OBP over .400. I also prefer 1901 Sheckard to 1903 in this league due to his XBHs. Sheckard does not need to be an OBP guy for me, as I have Frank Chance and Johnny Evers.

The tough part with this team is the pitching. With great defense, I don't think the two best Mordecai Brown seasons are worth the money in a post-dynamic pricing world. I go with the incredibly underpriced 1907 version, which allows me to grab the best Pfiester season, the best Reulbach season, and 1918 Fred Toney for the pen. Charlie Smith and Orlie Weaver will provide short inning relief. Throw in 1910 Ed Moyer as a sub-300K Long B and we'll be well rested for the playoffs.

For what it's worth, I'm amazed only one person took the 1911-1913 Pirates. What a great team. I almost (almost) regret not taking them myself. I built the 2006-2008 Dodgers for fun, also, but their pitchers have been hurt so much by dynamic pricing that they don't look like a great choice to me. Even though their hitting is ok for Dodger Stadium, they are going to have a lot of trouble scoring runs.

I realize I missed out on Roger Bresnahan from the 1913 Cubs, but am happy with my choices overall. I would be shocked if this team won less than 95 games. We are in a tough division, though, so that may not be enough.

Hitting: .330/.401/.476
Pitching: 1,438 IP, 0.96 WHIP, 0.08 HR/9


110M - MH 1985-2002 Local Max
There were only two choices for this theme, in my mind. 1980s-2000s or 1900s-1920s. The advantages of the former are speed, switch hitters, and the fielding benefits of modern pitching. The advantages of the latter are good XBH rates, good range (though sometimes at the expense of fielding), and dominant pitching.

I prefer the latter, but had to put this team together quickly and did not have time to play around too much, so I went with the easier draft of the former. The obvious attractions of this time period are 1995 Maddux and 2000 Pedro. However, once again, dynamic pricing has made them semi-poor choices at this cap. The sacrifice in other areas is not worth it, to me. For our hitting, we have switch hitters at 6 positions, with 1994 Tony Gwynn (for obvious reasons) and 2001 Paul Lo Duca (and his canon A+ arm). Like the 80M theme, I believe a strong armed catcher will be key in this theme.

For pitching, the 1989 Saberhagen is a great fit for this theme, the 1997 Maddux is a great value, as is the 1996 Brown. Pair them with the cheaper 2002 Pedro and the surprising find of 1988 Bob Ojeda, and there's a solid rotation with no real holes. On the back end, 1990 Eck will anchor the pen (I know, he was hurt by dynamic pricing too, but with only 74 IP to inflate, the hit isn't as bad as it would be for an SP).

I believe I have found the best combination in this range, and my team should compete with the deadball teams (though, with WaitNSee's great looking 1905-1922 squad in my division, we may be hoping for a WC). This is the team I am least confident about.

Hitting: .337/.406/.479
Pitching: 1,399 IP 0.93 WHIP, 0.40 HR/9


140M - MH Glittering Lures
DoctorKz ran a league a few months ago with a similar emphasis on HRs and a similar cap. What was true of both that league and is of this one is that the true usable player pool is extremely small. In this league, hitting the minimums is not a given. What does that mean? Well, it means that the composition of most rosters and the goal of most lineups is going to be similar, which will leave fewer exploitable advantages. Hitting these advantages and not falling into honeypots (note my team name) will be the key to success.

So, what are these advantages? Well, they sure aren't getting a bunch of HR guys like Sosa and McGwire (most smart teams will have elite pitching that gets as close to 0.25 as possible), getting a bunch of high BB guys (same reason), or getting a bunch of high K pitchers (K's are so overpriced, especially in a league like this where defense won't be as important anyway since a higher percentage of PAs will end in a K, BB, or HR already!). I wanted to avoid those things at all cost and just hit the minimums. Instead, the exploitable advantages are featuring switch hitters predominantly (that 5% kick they get will really add up in a league like this), not worry too much about defense (but don't ignore it entirely, just play in a park like Dodger Stadium instead), and get a good leadoff duo to set the table.

Most people, myself included, aren't going to be using an A+ arm catcher in a league like this, as the choices are slim (and Bench is ridiculously overpriced), so a guy like 1985 Rickey Henderson with 80 steals, .419 OBP, and 24 HRs (as well as A+ range for CF as a bonus) will run rampant. Put him with 1993 Tony Phillips and boom, runs galore. The pitching was easy. Anyone without Maddux, Gibson, etc. is going to have a lot of problems here. No need to get too many innings either, as I'm sure will unfortunately happen to some. The bump up will not be that huge, and 1,500 will be ok.

Seeing as I won around 110 games in Doc's league, I am confident this will be my best team.

Hitting: .311/.427/.571
Pitching: 1,494 IP 0.85 WHIP, 0.35 HR/9


255M - MH There Is No Box
This theme had a high but finite level of mathematical complexity, so the draft was easy but time consuming. In order to limit the number of possible choices, it was important to identify Key Boxes that, when a player was taken from them, would have domino effects on the rest of my roster. I did this based on weaknesses in the player pool (C, 2B) and key positions (SP, SS). I identified boxes A, B, E and the choice between Connor and Sisler. I ended up making 11 teams.

This theme also is obviously able to be exploited with a proven-to-demolish-mostly-everything Municipal Stadium team with high AVG and XBH guys. I like these types of teams and know the ins and outs of them, so I decided early on to go down this route.

Ruth is another "glittering lure" here, as there are many capable OFs in the player pool, and other batters who will produce runs. His 1923 season fits with Municipal to a degree, sure, but the choice in Box A was between Nap Lajoie and Silver King. Silver King. Silver King. Silver King. How many times can I say it? Getting 700 high quality IP from one box is impossible to pass on, at the end of the day.

Getting King allowed me to pass on SPs in Box B (so now I have the best C by FAR in King Kelly, and ALSO let me grab Frank Baker over Joe Mauer), Box C (Tip O'Neill), and Box D (Ty Cobb). Hughie Jennings ultimately won out over Wagner in Box E due to his OBP and A+ range. 2B is a weak point with Frankie Frisch but he is mainly there for his speed and range.

Ultimately, I wanted the best lineup for this league, and King allowed me to create it. My only over pitcher with more IP than 1918 Fred Toney is 1885 Lady Baldwin with 269. He will be the SP2 and start 81 games with a low pitch count. I have enough experience getting the most out of King to feel good about this, though I considered taking Mordecai Brown instead (and maybe I should've). So many great bullpen choices. I used at 13 slots. But how many innings to get in a league like this? I did not want to miss out on a great hitter to have too-many IP. I compared my roster to the teams in the multiple high cap leagues I'm in and determined that 1,600 should be more than enough.

If we can get through the early season pitching fatigue trap (pray for no extra inning games), we will do well. No one is going to be able to out-hit us, that's for sure.

Hitting: .388/.457/.548
Pitching: 1,604 IP 0.83 WHIP, 0.11 HR/9
7/31/2016 4:51 PM (edited)
WISC $70M: Unpopular Players Whitelist - Guess we'll just keep beating ourselves
This is the theme I built the least amount of teams for. Five teams all with different hitting and pitching strategies. Offensively, I looked at all speed, speed/power, obp/speed, avg/spd and settled for a more rounded team, with our offense centering around Tom Goodwin, Sam Crawford, Gavvy Cravath, and Jake Beckley. Playing in Safeco, they won’t be an offensive juggernaut. Hopefully they’ll score more than our pitchers allow. Defensively, we won’t have the most errors but we will collect minus plays like a fat kid collects candy wrappers.

For my pitching staff, I knew I wanted to get as close to 1300 IP’s as I could, ultimately drafting 1293. I looked at several different pitching combos, 3-man, 5-man, 2-man, and a couple 4-man rotations, with one of the 4-man rotations winning out. Decided on building around staff ace Fred Anderson who cost more than 10% of my total salary and 30% of what I budgeted for my starting staff. We ended up going over budget a little ($1.2M) to get Dutch Leonard, Alex Fernandez, and Kevin Appier. No lefty starter.

Going over budget on starters meant I was going to be short on bullpen help. I originally wanted to carry 9 relief pitchers but decided to cut it to 8 to compensate for the salary shortage. This also meant I would need to pick up an extra 30 IP’s or so amongst those 8 pitchers. Not a fearsome bullpen, we’re hoping Safeco helps keep our fatigue in check to allow my starters to go a little deeper. Craig Lefferts and Fernando Cabrera will set-up closer Stan Belinda.


Not very optimistic. Never really put together a team that I liked. I’ve put together $60M teams that I think are better than this one. We’ll see…
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
1332 5370 4725 691 1353 186 63 75 601 495 722 131 101 0.286 0.356 0.400 0.756
GP GS W L SV IP BFP H ER HR BB SO OAV WHIP ERA
429 129 84 62 25 1293.0 5302 1134 465 79 424 848 0.238 1.20 3.24

WISC $80M: Improve a Real Team – 2015 Hollywood Dodgers
There were so many teams and possibilities to explore I could spend months researching this theme. Knowing I didn’t have time to do that, I decided to narrow it down by years with at least 2 stud starting pitchers available. This narrowed my choices to: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2005, 2004, 2002, 2000, 1999, 1997, 1995, 1986, 1985, 1972, 1966, and 1964. Ultimately, I put together 29 teams out of those years and would have like to put together another 30 or so. Most of the teams I chose to build from met one of the following 3 criteria: Top hitting team during the year (WAR), top pitching team during the year (WAR) or had one of the pitchers I was targeting.

My first goal was to solidify my rotation, which was easy to do for most teams with how I narrowed my selections. The harder part was getting a bullpen that I could be satisfied with. I wanted at least two aces, one all-star caliber starter, two solid set-up men and a capable closer. Offensively, well, score more runs than our pitching staff is going to allow, which is my usual goal. Ideally, I would find a team with a good offense and bullpen with an all-star pitcher and add the two studs for that era. The problem I had with this concept was salary. The teams I could find that met these criteria did not have the cap room for both starters (ie. 2005 NYY or 1995 CLE). I found that to get two aces I would have to draft a team short in one area or already had one of the pitchers I was targeting.

There were only two teams who had two aces (by my criteria) on their staff, 2002 Red Sox (Martinez and Lowe) and 2015 Dodgers (Kershaw, Greinke). With the Red Sox team I added Randy Johnson and Mark Prior to go with Martinez, Lowe, and Wakefield. The offense was fine as is. But I just couldn’t pull the trigger on a team that centered their bullpen around Urbina, Embree, and Banks in hitter friendly Fenway. Nope, not going there.

So I went back to work on the 2015 Dodgers, whom I had found myself constantly thinking about different strategies for throughout my research. First I tried to get Arrieta on my team and then add an offensive player (the Dodgers glaring weakness is run production) but I couldn’t get anything better than Nelson Cruz or Michael Brantley. So I dumped the Arrieta idea and added Max Scherzer instead. That gave me enough to add Bryce Harper (dropping Puig) which will hopefully produce some runs.

Other teams I really considered were the 2015 Cubs, 1986 Astros, 1985 Cardinals, and my personal favorite, the 1995 Mariners with Barry Bonds (dropping an injured Griffey Jr) and Greg Maddux. Maybe I’ll try that team another time.

I really like this team but there are a lot of good team possibilities in this theme, many I never got to research. It’s hard to gauge how well we’ll do but in the right placement, I think this team can be competitive.
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
1468 5133 4482 641 1179 226 18 189 581 562 999 41 31 0.263 0.350 0.448 0.798
GP GS W L SV IP BFP H ER HR BB SO OAV WHIP ERA
469 143 81 55 42 1245.3 4961 1016 394 112 277 1304 0.221 1.04 2.85

WISC $100M: Three Year Franchise Twist – Ghosts of the 27-29 Washington Senators
This is another theme that I could spend months researching for. I really didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked on this one. I narrowed my search to pitchers I wanted to build my team around: Pedro, Kershaw, Maddux, Sutton, Clemens, Gibson, Scott, Gooden, Tudor, Joss, etc., the typical $100M cookies. Then I tried to match up two of them on the same team. From those I searched for offenses I could twist. This time I put the bullpen 3rd as I typically don’t have a hard time putting together a core pen in a twist league.

Although I found more than 40 teams that fell into the criteria I was looking at, I only had time to put together 15 teams. Of those, my top five were: 2006-2008 Dodgers, 1977-1979 Boston Red Sox, 1966-1968 Dodgers, 1908-1910 New York Giants, and the 1927-1929 Senators. I decided on the Senators whom I could twist and build around Walter Johnson, Stan Coveleski, Garland Braxton, George Sisler, Joe Cronin, Goose Goslin, Tris Speaker, and Sam Rice.


I don’t normally choose to build teams during this era of baseball, mostly because I don’t fare very well. This team has no real bullpen so hopefully we’ll build up leads that we can hang on to. We’ll see if the Big Train and Co. can lead us to victory or if we’ll be sitting in regret of not taking that staff of Maddux, Kershaw, Schmidt, Lowe, and Perez with the 06-08 Dodgers.
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
1404 5454 4723 756 1546 297 66 63 703 552 273 120 79 0.327 0.402 0.458 0.860
GP GS W L SV IP BFP H ER HR BB SO OAV WHIP ERA
270 159 102 67 27 1510.0 6055 1270 423 30 401 776 0.230 1.11 2.52

WISC $110M: 18 Millionaires – 1891-1908: I guess I wasn’t ready
And yet another theme I could spend months building teams for and probably the most fun to draft. I decided to start with individual franchises first with an expectation that I probably wasn’t going to go that route in the end. I ended up only making a few teams as these were really difficult to put together the further away from the modern era I got. Overall I only finished 11 teams: seven single franchise teams (98-15 Dodgers, 64-81 Dodgers, 85-02 Red Sox, 94-11 Braves, 68-85 Cardinals, 69-86 Astros, 84-01 Expos) and four franchise soup teams (1998-2015, 1981-1998, 1985-2002, 1891-1908).

Because I am a lifelong Dodger fan, I have a tendency to pick Dodger teams and I did like both of them. But neither were as good as the soup teams I put together, as I had originally suspected. From the eras I put together, 1998-2015 gave me the best all-around pitching by far but I have a hard time with the steroid era offenses. The other two modern era teams were fairly similar for both pitching and offense.

Running out of time, I decided to try and build a team around 1891 Billy Hamilton and 1908 Addie Joss. This proved to be a difficult task (I ended up with an error and had to pull the team for correction after it was originally submitted) due to the lack of franchises and the years they were actually available. But I managed to put together a pitching staff of Joss, Cy Young, and Christy Mathewson and a better offense than any of the modern soup teams, centering around Hamilton, Willie Keeler, Cupid Childs, Joe Kelley, and Jake Beckley.

On paper I like the looks of this team but as I said before, I don’t fare well in this era so we’ll see if I chose wisely or should have chosen the team on the other end of the spectrum.
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
1674 7234 6302 1170 2030 300 112 46 899 731 444 399 376 0.322 0.399 0.427 0.826
GP GS W L SV IP BFP H ER HR BB SO OAV WHIP ERA
182 153 108 48 4 1433.0 5564 1186 270 18 230 627 0.223 0.99 1.70

WISC $140M: Three True Outcomes - The Whole Enchilada
I strategized this one a little differently than all of the others although these teams all had one common theme: their benches would be worthless. First, I tried to make a ”rebellious” team, a team built around base hits and OBP in a hitter-friendly, no-HR ballpark (i.e Astrodome), while minimizing strikeouts and HR’s. I drafted four players who had high HR and K counts (Mike Zunino, Melvin Nieves, Bo Jackson, Adam Dunn). I spent $8.4M on 75 HR’s and 650 K’s. I still needed 225 HR’s and 350 K’s from my 9 starters, as well as 839 BB’s, so I didn’t get as many SB’s as I wanted. In the end, I felt I wasted too much money on a throw away bench so I adjusted my bench budget down to below $5M, $3.5M, $1.0M, and finally settling at $1.5M to get the most bang for my buck in throw away PA’s on the bench. That resulted in four throw away roster positions to suck up 185 K’s out of the 1000 needed.

Now that I had my final numbers/salary to work with, I decided to build an offense centered on Hank Greenberg, Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, and Mickey Mantle. I found Porter with a strong A+ arm and high BB’s to man catcher, put Joe Morgan and Pee Wee Reese with their high BB counts manning the middle infield, and added Miguel Cabrera and Willie Stargell to complete the HR and BB requirements. That gave me 369 HR’s, 1079 BB’s, and 1020 K’s.

The only challenge I have with pitching is the salary cap. I don’t usually play caps this high and don’t really know how well the pitchers fare with hitting of this caliber. Then again, most of the pitchers I like to use on a regular basis meet the theme requirements (Sutton, Maddux, Scott, Pedro, Big Unit, Gibson, etc.) so I only had to decide how much I wanted to focus on OAV+ vs K/9+. I ended up going with a more balanced approach with a 5-man staff of Maddux, Pedro, Arrieta, Greinke, and Kershaw. The bullpen consists of the usual stud relievers: Kimbrel, McGee, Meredith, Street, Sanchez, Hill, and Charlton.

On paper, these higher cap teams always look great and I have no idea how well they will perform. I anticipate this will be a learning lesson.
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
1545 6433 5255 1125 1573 252 38 369 1091 1079 1020 123 47 0.299 0.420 0.572 0.992
GP GS W L SV IP BFP H ER HR BB SO OAV WHIP ERA
434 157 127 27 84 1423.3 5382 923 268 67 256 1593 0.183 0.83 1.69

WISC $225M: Think Inside the Box – Payroll still less than the Yankees
Because I don’t play high cap themes, there were a lot of players available here that I have never used before. I started off building a team of personal cookies which consists of players such as: Maddux, Arrieta, Chamberlain, Gagne, Kuo, Gossage, Betancourt, Hamilton, Connor, Baker, Cobb, Raines, and Smith. I added players I don’t use as much: Joss, Harvey, Richard, Carew, and Gwynn. Then I started having 2nd thoughts on the modern era SP’s. After playing with a few different rosters I decided to go with a rotation of Walter Johnson, Claude Hendrix, and Bob Gibson. Hendrix will be new for me. In the pen we added Chamberlain, Gossage, Nehf, Kuo, Kimbrel, Papelbon, Smyly, and Devine.

Offensively, I decided to disregard the righty vs lefty match-ups and just draft the best hitters from the boxes left. I still got some of my personal cookies: Baker, Hamilton, Raines, Smith, and Connor. I also ended up with a few more .400 hitters (Sisler, Jackson, Keeler, and O’Neill) and added King Kelly, Eddie Collins, and Luke Appling.

I always wondered what it would be like to play one of these unlimited cap themes. This is the team I feel least optimistic about. I guess at the very least, I shouldn’t be disappointed with a last place finish.
G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
2152 9736 8479 2006 3176 539 206 123 1399 1070 594 738 432 0.375 0.447 0.530 0.977
GP GS W L SV IP BFP H ER HR BB SO OAV WHIP ERA
443 149 138 41 127 1659.3 6239 1049 240 43 329 1249 0.179 0.83 1.30

7/31/2016 6:20 PM
This is my first WISC. Since I came back to SLB in 2014, I have focused on double progressives using a rating system for each player season. It works well for double progressives, and I hope it worked well in the WISC. I think my teams are OK (with one glaring exception I will note below). I tried to start with SP with good HR/9 and OAV, and favored OPS and RC over BA for my hitters. I also covet OF range. I was honored to be seeded #22 by schwarze, based on my track record of 90 wins per season and over .500 in playoffs. I tried hard to live up to that seed, but I’m afraid I have less than a 50% chance of finishing in the cage. I will be delighted if I move on to Round 2, and I will chalk it up to experience if I don’t.

70M I’m just a poor boy nobody loves me.
I agree with rbow923 that this taxes your ability with the search engine. I started with SP – Willie Sudhoff 1903, Weldon Henley 1904, Barney Pelty 1907 – low HR/9, good WHIP, poor OAV and low K’s - and a mediocre bullpen. Lineup has Curt Welch 1890 at leadoff, Quite a bit of power in the middle (Earl Torgeson, one of my guilty pleasures, Jason Bay, Tim Wallach, Ty Wigginton at 2B, and Michael Barrett) and Lyn Lary at SS to provide some defense. I also have over 1000 PA worth of scrubs. Put them in Busch II to exploit my deadball pitchers. This is one of my better teams.
.270 BA/.360 OBP/.442 SLG/.802 OPS/159 HR/595 BB/760 SO/160 SB/5397 PA
2.71 ERA/.236 OAV/1.10 WHIP/322 BB/26 HR/1369 IP
80M 1969 Baltimore Orioles
I looked for a team with lots of usable players regardless of team payroll. I preferred to take a team over 80M and cut payroll to fit under the cap. I started with the 2015 Blue Jays but quickly moved on the 1969 Orioles. This team has a lot of talent and two high-priced stars (Cuellar and Blair) who were good candidates for “improvement”. Gary Gentry replaced Cuellar and Tony Gonzalez replaced Blair. I used a combined season for Gonzalez but since he was a replacement player that was OK. I could have used Johnny Callison but he would have to play CF and Gonzalez is two grades better range (B+ vs. B-) so I’m glad I was able to keep Gonzalez. I briefly toyed with the 1930 Senators who had a good offense and wonderful HR/9 since they played in Griffith Stadium. I was worried that the hitters would be normed way down, so I didn’t want to make that gamble. This should be a good team as well. Memorial Stadium works well here.

.273 BA/.355 OBP/.418 SLG/.773 OPS/146 HR/577 BB/566 SO/57 SB/5390 PA
3.04 ERA/.226 OAV/1.18 WHIP/480 BB/121 HR/1383 IP
100M 1952-1954 Cleveland Indians
I am really worried about this team. I built my pitching staff around ERC+ rather than ERC#, which I believe was a huge mistake. Feller, Lemon and Mike Garcia each had a season above 160 ERC+, but I am afraid they are not nearly good enough. Early Wynn is the worst of the bunch. I had a chance to add Hal Newhouser and passed on him. Bullpen is pretty good but this team could allow lots of runs. Offense is above average but I don’t think I can outscore my opponents often enough. I wish I had taken deadball Cubs or 21st century Dodgers but it’s too late. If I miss out on Round 2 this team will probably be the reason. If they get over 75 wins, that will be a success. I think sentiment played a part in my choice. My dad grew up in Akron, OH in the early 50s. He suggested I look at 53-55 to pick up Herb Score and Rocky Colavito, but they were not good fits for this team. I like Cleveland Stadium.

.281 BA/.364 OBP/.443 SLG/.807 OPS/183 HR/649 BB/648 SO/44 SB/6021 PA
2.78 ERA/.212 OAV/1.16 WHIP/600 BB/86 HR/1534 IP

110M 1996-2013 18 and I don’t know what I want
This was a tough theme. I tried 1986-2003, but 1988 and 1990 was a bottleneck so I moved into the future to get more choices. I didn’t like the 2014 and 2015 choices, so I stopped with 2013. I think the franchise soup option with 30 teams to choose from was the best way to go. Big Unit 99, Verlander 11, Maddux 97, Pedro 05 and Brown 00 make a strong rotation, my position players ranked #1 or #2 at their position for that season (using my ratings) except for 01 Beltran, who was #6, but Bonds, Sosa, Ichiro meant #6 was quite acceptable. 03 A-Rod and 09 Prince Fielder give me plenty of thump in the middle. Bullpen was fill-in-the-blank, so it is not very good. Dodger bench will provide almost no help. I chose Miller Park to help my power and put a crimp into high BA teams. This should be a decent team.
.295 BA/.385 OBP/.508 SLG/.893 OPS/234 HR/725 BB/1035 SO/130 SB/6060 PA
2.46 ERA/.207 OAV/0.97 WHIP/324 BB/122 HR/1433 IP
140M Three True Outcomes are a Crowd
I didn’t even look at Bryce Harper because I love OF range. 85 Rickey Henderson, 1929 Mel Ott and 2011 Matt Kemp (really liked Kemp’s combination of high BA with lots of Ks). I have 38 Greenberg, 73 Joe Morgan, 02 A-Rod, 87 Boggs around the infield and 96 Edgar at DH. I had to add Chris Carter to get enough Ks. SPs are strong, although they may not be strong enough HR/9. 63 Koufax, 72 Sutton, 68 Tiant and 2015 Arrieta. Bullpen is extremely good HR/9 (1 in 36 IP or 2 in 73 IP). Tiger Stadium means plenty of HRs. This team will not be my best team or my worst.

.310 BA/.414 OBP/.563 SLG/.977 OPS/362 HR/1024 BB/1045 SO/227 SB/6994 PA
1.85 ERA/.185 OAV/0.88 WHIP/344 BB/73 HR/1550 IP
255M cogito ergo sim
Just like I ignored Harper in 140M theme, I never gave Ruth much consideration. I like getting outfielders who are #3, #4 or #5 because they are not much worse and I want the best at other positions. I thought about getting Bonds and Duffy along with Mike Scott, Doc Gooden and John Tudor, but did not because I wanted better pitching rather than great outfielders. So Johnson, Joss and M. Brown are the mainstays. I nearly got 12 Johnson instead of 13 Johnson, but I avoided that mistake. I didn’t know how many innings I would need, but I thought it was a lot, so I added Russ Ford as insurance to get me over 1750 IP. Bullpen is very good. OF consists of Billy Hamilton (1894), Pete Browning and Stan Musial. The one hitter I think I stretched to get was 1927 Lou Gehrig, as he seemed to be quite a bit better than the alternatives. I have Gehringer at 2B, Caminiti at 3B, Boudreau at SS, Mauer at C and seven bench players with loads of PA. I like backups who can step in if the starter falters. This is the only cap where that was possible, so I went for it. Cochrane, Alomar, Pujols, Petrocelli, Schmidt, Ashburn and Heilmann could be called into service. This probably won’t be my best team, but not my worst either. Kingdome will mean lots of HR. At least stamina will not be a problem. Kudos to those of you who get the Latin pun on “cogito ergo sum” in my team name – “I think, therefore I sim”
.356 BA/.450 OBP/.586 SLG/1.036 OPS/395 HR/1471 BB/837 SO/401 HR/10431 PA
1.30 ERA/.184 OAV/0.81 WHIP/295 BB/34 HR/1774 IP
7/31/2016 7:26 PM
The Untouchables ($70M Theme)

There's a pretty simple formula for dealing with low cap leagues: for hitting, prioritize SB's first and foremost, then worry about on base percentage. For Pitching, pick deadballers who don't tend to give up home runs or walks because this allows you to get out of innings much faster (throwing fewer pitches). Take advantage of this fact by drafting fewer Innings Pitched and play in a Pitcher's park like Petco to avoid being punished for having fewer innings pitched.

Hitting: 0.261/0.345/0.348/0.693 OPS 47 HR 563 BB 654 SO 252 SB 92 CS
Pitching: 1196 IP 2.55 ERA 1.07 WHIP 0.233 OAV 29 HR 221 BB 532 SO

85 Cookie Cutter Cards ($80M Theme)

I don't know why I didn't think of this team right away, given what I just wrote about SB's in low caps for the $70M theme. The truth was, I got too hung up on improving the single season team with 2 Free Agents, so I immediately tried to build a team where I added Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez to it in an attempt to get maximum value out of the Free Agents. Along these lines, I picked the 1997 NYY - except that when I finally remembered about these guys and used Sim Matchup to figure out which team was better, the 85 Cards won in a landslide.

Hitting: 0.277/0.349/0.393/0.742 OPS 75 HR 553BB 688 SO 326 SB 85 CS
Pitching: 1283 IP 2.86 ERA 1.16 WHIP 0.238 OAV 80 HR 353 BB 747 SO

1916-1918 CWS ($100M Theme)

I think a lot of people thought of the 2006-2008 Los Angeles Dodgers because of the allure of Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez. The problem is, the LAD teams don't have very much good hitting. The 1997-1999 NYY were tempting due to the quality of that offense (it was even possible to add Tim Raines) combined with Roger Clemens, Dwight Gooden, and Mariano Rivera, but when I was able to build an elite deadball pitching staff (Ed Walsh and Eddie Cicotte) with a pretty solid offense (Joe Jackson, Jack Fournier, and Eddie Collins) I knew what I was going to pick. Out of all of my teams, this is the one that I feel will be my strongest team.

Hitting: 0.311/0.383/0.415/0.798 OPS 48 HR 556BB 374 SO 192 SB 164 CS
Pitching: 1445 IP 1.77 ERA 0.97 WHIP 0.215 OAV 12 HR 301 BB 684 SO

1996-2013 Defensive Aces ($110M Theme)

I tried in vain to make a deadball era team work with this theme, but I never could build one that was legal and to my satisfaction. Since I've always been partial to building all defensive teams, and I found that this theme was too constricting to make my ideas for standard rosters work, I decided to give the idea a whirl (having the new salaries will certainly help in limiting the potency of other more conventional rosters). With Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, and Kevin Brown backed up by this incredible defense, I believe teams will struggle mightily to manage any hits, and they certainly won't be walking given how good these pitchers are at avoiding free passes. A nice benefit of this is that I was able to underdraft Innings Pitched again due to the nature of the team I was building. The weaknesses of this team will be opposing hitters' home runs and my own team's very mediocre to bad offense, so I'm counting on other teams either having less than stellar pitching or lots of hitters with little power. Since this team is in effect, one massive experiment, I'm really interested to see how this team does.

Hitting: 0.286/0.363/0.460/0.823 OPS 181 HR 573BB 908 SO 100 SB 42 CS
Pitching: 1299.33 IP 2.22 ERA 0.94 WHIP 0.215 OAV 73 HR 196 BB 1154 SO

Who Needs Defense? ($140M Theme)

For someone who loves defense, the Three True outcomes theme is just downright depressing. I don't like my Pitchers giving up homeruns, and this theme demands that they do. The Pitchers also have to be good at striking out batters, because that is the required weakness of the hitters. (Obviously they must not walk batters, given that hitters will be incredibly good at walking) Given my views on the virtue of minimizing pitch counts (Strikeouts are incredibly inefficient pitch count wise at getting batters out), this also sucks. The worst thing, though, is the 1000 BB and 1000 SO requirements on the hitters. Holy crap is that onerous and limiting on what you can do offense wise. It pretty much forces an all home run oriented strategy, as every hitter has to have like 100+ BB and SOs on average in order to make the requirements, I didn't want to waste $3M rostering bench players who whiff like crazy, but man - maybe I should have. Anyways, I winded up rostering a whole bunch of players that are typically good in such themes (Greg Maddux, Babe Ruth, Pedro Martinez, Kevin Brown, etc.), but this is the team that I am absolutely the least confident in.

Hitting: 0.304/0.424/0.597/1.021 OPS 398 HR 1066BB 1075 SO 84 SB 39 CS
Pitching: 1505 IP 1.93 ERA 0.89 WHIP 0.208 OAV 74 HR 207 BB 1193 SO

Think Outside the Box (Unlimited Cap)

If I recall correctly, I managed to roster about $225M in player salaries here. There are pretty much two strategies here: You can choose to emphasize hitting when picking players from the boxes or choose to emphasize pitching when picking players from the boxes. I chose to do the former, since it's hard to get more than $80-$90M in real value from a Pitching staff. That means that I don't have any elite pitchers on my roster, so I budgeted to have more Innings Pitched and plenty of PA to survive the shootouts that are sure to follow. I still winded up picking Petco Park, because I was afraid that many people would take my idea to the extreme and attempt to all play in Coors and use the fatigue strategy. In retrospect, I probably could have picked a different ballpark and been just fine.

Hitting: 9726 PA (holy crap!) .354/0.436/0.598/1.034 OPS 378 HR 1187BB 1003 SO 363 SB 244 CS
Pitching: 1887.67 IP 1.54 ERA 0.90 WHIP 0.192 OAV 27 HR 411 BB 1146 SO






7/31/2016 7:41 PM

70mil - Unpopular Sovereignty - Target Field

I play in a number of lower-cap leagues so I have some experience here. My first thought, totally unoriginal as it is, was speed/high SB guys. The issue here is that there aren’t many guys that fit the bill in this player pool. Too many of the speedier guys were deadballers with poor SB%. So I moved on the build a more balanced team.

I was able to include a few speed guys - Reggie Willits, Mark McLemore, Bob Bescher, and Willie Bloomquist. Nick Johnson, Chris Brown, and Chuck Klein hopefully drive in runs. Ramon Vazquez/Garciaparra split SS. Rick Ferrell can hopefully help limit SBs from those teams that do try the SB strategy. Graffanino, Shealy, Wilson, and Cangelosi round out the bench. The lineup should be OK for the cap.

My “ace” is Harry Howell. I first learned of Howell a few tournaments ago when I got the bright idea to use the 1905 St. Louis Browns. Not a ton of “ace” material to choose from so I think Howell will be OK. A couple of tandems will round out the rotation - Travis Wood/Matt Cain, and Bill Travers/Jason Hammel. The bullpen is manned by Baez, McClellan, Guerrier, and Fraser. Frank Francisco will close and Alex Wood is the long man. I drafted 1442 innings, which should be more than enough if I manage it correctly. I chose Target Field to combat against HR-type teams, if there are any. I think this team will do OK. It’s hard to judge using this specific player pool for the first time. That being said, I kept trying to build a speed team right up until I submitted. I just couldn’t make it work. The best one was still 12 points worse in both BA/OBP than this team, which was just too much. The player pool makes this team feel more like a $60mil team than a $70mil team.


80mil 2009 Yankees, Kings, and Freaks, Oh My! - Yankee Stdium III
I looked at teams as having 3 units - starting pitching, bullpen, and lineup. I wanted to find a team that would give me at least 2 of these 3. To research I went back a read the Good, Bad, Ugly roster strategies from last year, went back to the X+Y=Z theme from a few years ago, and then used B-R. After all that I ended up loading about 25 teams in the draft center as possibilities. I settled on the 2009 Yankees fairly quickly after that (maybe too quickly).

The Yankees had one of the best lineups of teams I researched, and was able to use them without any additions. Good years from Jeter, Cano, Tex, and ARod anchor the lineup. Solid years from Damon, Posada, Swisher, and Melky/Gardner round it out. Originally my bench was all <300K guys but I was able to re-work the bullpen to add Molina and Pena - not game changers in any way, but better than I had. The bullpen was the second area that was pretty good as-is, with Mariano, Hughes, Aceves, and Coke. David Robertson walks too many guys but could be somewhat useful in certain spots. Gaudin, Mitre, and Balester provide the long relief.

Starting pitching was the area that needed the additions on this team, It has a solid season from Sabathia, and a usable 4th starter in Pettitte. The team needed two, top of the rotation starters. Enter King Felix Hernandez and the Freak, Tim Lincecum. While I think this rotation is solid, I do think it hurts that I don’t have a lights-out ace like Pedro or Maddux. There are 3 2015 Dodger teams in my league - 2 in my division - that have both Kershaw and Greinke. (EDIT: Both also added Arrieta, so yeah). As I said, I settled on this team pretty quickly as it met my 2/3 requirement. I just don’t know if the Yankee “strengths” are stong enough. I usually like teams with strong SP and work from there, so this team is almost the opposite. We’ll see but I already have doubts.


100mil 1918-1920 Yankees- Polo Grounds IV

Right around the time the themes were announced, I had read a book about the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees. I knew I wanted to use a Yankee/Ruth team. Using 1918-1920 allowed me to use players spanning the dead(ish) ball period into the live(ish) ball era. The offense on this team should produce runs. Ruth, O’Doul, Fournier, Meusel, Baker, and Pratt all have really strong seasons. A solid Peckinpaugh will lead off and Muddy Ruel will handle the catching duties.

The Yanks will have a solid, but not spectacular 3 man rotation of Carl Mays, Dazzy Vance, and Bob Shawkey. No real “ace” among them, but hopefully strong enough to let the offense do its thing and carry the team. Ernie Shore, Ray Caldwell, and Jack Quinn will lead the bullpen, along with Russell and Mogridge. Overall the pitching staff is OK - normalization is going to hurt it a bit. I am expecting the offense to carry this team. If the Yankees live up to their Bronx Bombers nickname, I think this team can be pretty good. If not, it could be long season.

110mil 1907-1924 Souper Stars- Yankee Stadium I

After messing with a couple of franchises (Yankees, Giants) I settled on the franchise soup option. Again, I knew I wanted to use Ruth, because I believe you can never go wrong starting a team with the Babe. Like the twist team I also wanted a combo of dead/live ball players. I settled on 24 Ruth and went to work from there. My SPs are 08 Brown, 18 Grimes, and 14 Hendrix, who is both my best pitcher and from a Federal League team, which helped make the whole team work. 07 Cy Morgan, 10 Frank Smith,17 Chief Bender, 16 Bill Evans, 19 Dolph Luque, 23 Dennis Burns will man the relief corps. Similar to the Yankee team above, I believe this is a solid but not great pitching staff. It’s job will be to keep us in games and let the bats do their job.

Besides 24 Ruth, the OF consists of 11 Clyde Milan and 15 Benny Kauff. 12 Lajoie, 13 Huggins, 23 Bancroft, and 21 Boeckel cover the infield. 22 Johnny Bassler is the catcher. As you might expect in a league like this, nothing of note on the bench, where I used the A’s for my sub $1mil players. Also similar to the Yankee team above, I think this is a pretty strong offense, although maybe not quite as strong as that Ruth team. I am interested to see how many different eras were used in this theme, along with the franchise/soup distribution. I think this team could be decent, but it also is the type of team I could kick myself for building so quick after seeing some of the other teams. I find in this tournament I have a tendency to either under or over think my teams. As I said above, I am usually a pitching first guy, and while the pitching on these 2 teams is not bad by any measure, I believe these are teams that will go as far as the bats take them.That doesn’t make me entirely comfortable.

140mil Hey Batter Batter, Swing Batter- Jacobs Field

I don’t usually play higher cap leagues. In fact, I tend to gravitate more to the lower cap leagues.There were several comments in the forum from people about the challenges with the 70mil team. Not me. My issues were here and at 255mil. I saw people writing about their strategy for this team. I don’t know that I built this team with any coherent strategy other than a) I wanted to limit HRs as much as possible (HR/9+ >150) b) I didn’t want my offense to rely on HRs and c) I wanted be as close to the required #’s as possible, to maximize value.

I went with a 4 man rotation with guys I’ve used many times before at lower cap levels - Guidry, Pedro, Kevin Brown, and Kershaw. The ‘pen has Andrew Bailey, Doug Fister, Goose Gossage, Mo Rivera, Hoyt Wilhelm, and Jay Tibbs as the long man. As a staff we strike out just about a batter/inning while the BB/9 is just over 2, which, as I look at other teams, might be a bit too high. Not sure how these ratios will play out against these lineups. I know this staff would be pretty good at $100mil, maybe even $120mil. I have no idea how it will be at $140mil.

I used 24 Ruth again, along with 56 Mantle to lead the offense. Lance Berkman, Robbie Alomar, Larry Walker, Chipper Jones (only one this year) Edgar Martinez, and Jorge Posada look good on paper. A solid bench is lead by V. Martinez, Raburn, and Robb Quinlan. This offense looks good to me on paper, but I don’t know how that translates to the higher cap. I think this team should be competitive, but I won’t be shocked if it is not.


255mil Man in the Box(es) - Target Field

Like I mentioned with the $140mil league, this one might as well be another planet for me. I don’t think I’ve played a $200+mil league in over 10 years, and I’m sure the results were terrible. I have seen people talk about strategy at this cap, but I couldn’t actually find much about these strategies. I do think the players being put in “boxes” actually helped me. It made me focus on building a team and filling certain roles. Like the $140mil team, I also knew I didn’t want to rely on HRs.

Before looking at the boxes, 2 players came to mind - Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson. Of course, they both were in box A. So, I went with Ruth again, this time using the $19mil 23 Ruth because when else does it make sense to use him? I do remember quite a few people using Jimmy Foxx at catcher so I went with that here too. I used >.400 batting seasons from Hughie Jennings and Billy Hamilton, again players I really have never been able to use. Shoeless Joe, Larry Walker, Chipper Jones and Frank Frisch complete the starting lineup. As to be expected, lots of quality on the bench - Pujols, Miggy Cabrera, Posey, Joyce, Raines, and Frank Thomas.

Missing out on Big Train Johnson, I went Pete Alexander instead. Claude Hendrix, who I’ve never used before (and am also using at $110mil) normalizes well for a deadball pitcher. Sandy Koufax is starter #3. The bullpen is insane, at least by my standards. Hearn, Randy Johnson, Nehf, Meredith, Gagne, Rivera, Wade Davis, and Drew Smyly.


.368/.464/.585 on offense looks good to me but I have no context to put it in.

0.85 WHIP, .183 OAV, and 1.55 ERA similarly look strong.

My goal is that this team does not totally kill any (haha) small chance I might have to get out of the first round. I can totally see this team lose 90+ games.
8/1/2016 4:36 PM (edited)
I spent far less time on picking teams this year than I did last year. Hopefully, that will be a good sign. I'm very happy that there are some higher cap themes this year. Combined with the impact of dynamic salaries, I think that people will be forced out of their comfort zones in order to build strong teams.

Mr Unpopularity ($70M theme)
Since I know that many people like to draft speed in low cap leagues, I drafted Cy Perkins at C. I tried to build a balanced offense with a little bit of everything. '14 Evers and '45 Grimes gave me strong normalized OBP. '17 Cravath and '02 Floyd gave me strong OPS. 1887 Schomberg gave me A+ range at 1B and along with '12 Moeller gives me some triples in pitcher's parks that are likely to be favorable for them. '95 Bell gives me few errors at SS with some pop in his bat.

The pitching is a combination of deadball pitchers with strong ERC#, modern relievers, and 1939 Dutch Leonard. Leonard normalizes very well but gives up more HR than normal but with a HR+ of 123.

I am by far the most nervous about this team because it doesn't have any single demonstrable strength and won't steal tons of bases. But, the offense will normalize well and the pitchers shouldn't throw too many pitches. I chose Huntington Avenue Grounds for the park to help my offense slightly and to put pressure on opponents who may not have drafted many IP.

Hitting: .272/.364/.406 .760 OPS
Pitching: 1,311 IP/162, .244 OAVG, 1.14 WHIP, 0.29 HR/9


1928 A's ($80M Theme)
I spent by far the most time on this theme. I focused on finding teams with strong pitching because it's usually easier to fill in 1-2 positions on offense affordably than it is to do the same for a pitching staff. I narrowed my choices to four teams: 1928 A's, 1942 Yankees, 1943 Cardinals, and the 1997 Braves. The Braves had by far the best normalized WHIP of any team that I built but they gave up too many HR/9 with a mediocre bullpen and defense as well as a normalized OPS that was well below the other three teams. The Cardinals were eliminated next as I had to get rid of Musial (replacing him with Keller and Nicholson) to make the team fit but that left me with 122 IP of Murry Dickson with a normalized WHIP of 1.47 needing to pitch at least some meaningful innings.

The Yankees and A's were virtually identical in normalized performance. But, I needed to have some weak PA at 3B and C in order to fill out the Yankee season. The A's have enough solid depth so that I only needed to add Mel Ott to round out a very solid outfield. A key will be to minimize the amount which SS Joe Boley needs to play. Adding Dazzy Vance gave this team six strong pitchers (Vance, Grove, Rommel, Walberg, Ehmke, and Quinn) who combine for 1,381 IP and will normalize well. The HR/9 is also relatively low for a post-1920 team.

Shibe Park (+2 for singles) will help this team's offense but I usually don't like to have a park with no negative park factors in a lower cap theme. Again, I hope that this will help me against teams that skimped on IP.

Hitting: .302/.376/.453 .829 OPS
Pitching: 1,455 IP/162, .257 OAVG, 1.22 WHIP, 0.44 HR/9

1909-11 Cubs ($100M Theme)

Like others, I focused on strong teams that had roster movement to provide a good selection of players. I only made four teams for this theme: 1909-11 Cubs, 1970-72 Orioles, 1996-98 Braves, and the 2004-06 Red Sox. Not only did the Cubs team have the best combination of normalized WHIP, OAVG, and HR/9 but it had the best normalized OPS as well.

I chose '07 Brown, '06 Pfiester, and '05 Reulbach for my 3-man rotation. '18 Toney and '07 Overall will throw the bulk of the bullpen innings with '09 Curtis and '11 Charlie Smith rounding out the useful pitchers.

For the non-pitchers, I chose strong defense with '03 Pat Moran (A+ arm at C) and '08 Joe Tinker (B/B+ defense at SS) both of whom will normalize well offensively. The rest of the infield is '03 Chance, '12 Evers, and '12 Zimmerman. Each will hit well, has solid range, but will make some errors defensively. The OF is '11 Schulte, '01 Sheckard, and '03 Beaumont. I couldn't justify the higher salary for Solly Hoffman's weaker offense, fewer PA, but stronger defense. I didn't go with 1910-12 because I'm not convinced that Cy Williams will hit enough HR against deadfall pitchers at this cap level.

This is a team that can do well in a low HR/high 2B-3B park but has a little HR power with Schultz, Zimmerman, Sheckard, and even Moran to hurt higher HR/9 modern pitchers. And, the deadball pitchers can shut down the power of the modern offenses.

Hitters: .314/.382/.454 .836 OPS
Pitchers: 1,482 IP/162, .205 OAVG, 0.97 WHIP, 0.09 HR/9

1964-81 Season Soup w/ Cardinals Bench ($110M Theme)

I couldn't build a deadball era team that had enough offensive balance to satisfy me at this cap level. So, I focused on the post-1960 period as well as on the Yankees. My logic was that the greatest franchise in MLB history should be able to support a strong team at this cap level. But, I quickly settled on the 1964-81 season soup team because I could get both strong pitching and a consistent offense top to bottom. In general, my experience is that winning in WIS is driven in no small part by being at least average at every position rather than riding a few superstars who will in theory compensate for below average performers elsewhere.

For pitching, I built a big three of Gibson, Koufax, and Carlton. Grant Jackson, Bill Henry, Cisco Carlos, John Butcher, Andy Rincon, Stu Miller, and Dale Murray are the workhorses of a deep bullpen that shouldn't give up many HR. On offense, this time period has some strong performers who should normalize well. Gene Tenace is solid with a B+ arm at C and along with McCovey and Petrocelli drew over 100 BB and has HR power. Carew and Paul Schaal round out an infield that has strong normalized offensive stats. The outfield has three strong hitters in Dave Parker, Sixto Lezcano, and Cesar Cedeno. I needed to draft '77 Greg Gross (.322/.397/.460) to give me an additional millionaire and some extra OF plate appearances.

I chose Dodger Stadium because I've had success there with this kind of team - strong pitching with power and walks on offense. And, it helps to compensate for very average OF defense.

Hitting: .303/.401/.505 .906 OPS
Pitching: 1,451 IP/162, .198 OAVG, 0.95 WHIP, 0.37 HR/9


3 Outcomes at $140M
This was my favorite team to draft. This theme is very similar to the Power/Speed/Whiffs theme that I've run many times over the years. I like offense that fits more with how teams score runs in the real world rather than how they're often manufactured in the sim. IMHO, the June salary changes impacted this theme significantly because '00 Pedro Martinez would have been an almost automatic selection prior to that. Like this year's $70M theme, this theme likely pushed most people outside of their comfort zones.

I always start by drafting pitchers first. '95 Maddux and '68 Gibson were easy choices. 2015 Arrieta was my third starter. Then, I gambled and drafted '24 Dazzy Vance because of the hope that his very high 15.27 K/9# will offset a relatively weak (for this cap level) WHIP# of 1.01. In a league with so many batter Ks, I'm hoping that Vance can eat some innings and be effective because of his high K rate. But, since no one else in my league drafted him, I wonder if this gamble will backfire. If it does, I have 2014 Kershaw as a Long A who will switch roles with Vance. The rest of the bullpen is Soriano, Howe, Meredith, Adams, Smyly, and Birkbeck. I focused on low OAVG, low BB/9, low WHIP pitchers who met the theme requirements affordably rather than trying to keep everyone as close to 0.25 HR/9 as possible.

For the offense, I spent a little over $1.2M on five bench players who gave me 126 Ks which gave me some flexibility in choosing my nine starters. I didn't want to burn extra salary to pick up extra Ks on the bench that wouldn't help me during the season. As I mentioned earlier, I like to build balanced teams and this theme was no exception. Defense is definitely less important in this theme but I never like to be horrible. '35 Foxx is my C with an IF of 2015 Votto, '73 Morgan, '96 Chipper Jones, and '67 Ron Santo. These players will normalize well offensively and defensively are two defensive studs, one average defender, and two tolerable players.

Also, since we could choose any ballpark for this theme, I knew that most people wouldn't be picking strong offensive parks so I didn't have to go overboard on IP with the higher cap and DH in play. The outfield consists of 2015 Harper, '58 Mantle, and 2002 Giles. I wanted to be certain that these players had high enough BA to generate singles as I've had problems getting production with high BB/HR offensive seasons that didn't have enough 1B/100#. Rounding out the team as the DH is '96 Frank Thomas. Without really trying five of my nine starting hitters steal bases effectively, which won't hurt in this theme. But, it can be hard to get Sparky to steal bases with a team like this.

I chose Camden Yards as my home park to help a mediocre defensive outfield while being 0 for singles should help the pitching staff and not hurt the offense too much.

Hitting: .305/.423/.553 .976 OPS, 330 HR, 1105 BB, 1024 K (all per 162 games)
Pitching: 1,592 IP/162, .192 OAVG, 0.87 WHIP, 0.39 HR/9

Bennett Bashers ($255M Cap)

I liked this theme and found the draft to be relatively straightforward. However, player performance in higher cap leagues tends to be much more random than in lower cap leagues because every position has a real stud if an owner has drafted well.

Babe Ruth was an easy choice for Box A because his value dwarfs everyone else's in that box for a full season. I chose 1923 Ruth because it's his highest BA season combined with tons of walks and slightly less HR power to lose to the deadball pitchers who are likely to proliferate in this theme.

Once I chose Ruth that took the two best modern SP in Maddux and Pedro off the table. That compelled me to draft the best deadball SP that I could, which I did by drafting '15 Alexander, '09 Brown, and '01 Young. Young was the hard choice to make over Gehrig but I like a lot of IP, low HR/9, and low BB/9 in any league and there were plenty of other hitters out there to select. That said, Young is my weakest pitcher and will need to be decent if this team is to make the playoffs.

As I said earlier, I build my pitching staff first. I went with deadball pitchers as much as I could for the bullpen as well. Nehf, Toney, and Northrop were the choices here. 2009 Mike Adams is my low-IP stud closer with Betancourt, Gossage, and A. Chapman rounding out the staff. Since Chapman's 4 BB/9 terrifies me at this cap level, he'll be the LH specialist with a Call Bullpen setting of 5.

The offense took a little more effort. With this cap, it was easy to take '80 George Brett from Box E because he's the best real full-time 3B there is. And, I could draft 2008 Chipper Jones from Box L to platoon with him. Since Joe Morgan never seems to do well in higher cap leagues, it was easy for me to pick 1893 Billy Hamilton from Box G as another great season that needs some platoon help. I wanted '35 Arky Vaughan's bat so I chose him over Eckersley/Gagne in Box H then drafted 2014 Tulowitzki from Box T to be his platoon buddy and defensive replacement. Box K was one of the least appealing to me but I went with '31 Al Simmons rather than gamble on a steroid era Mike Piazza.

From Box N, I chose Bill Dickey over Frank Thomas or one of the modern relievers. I love Kuo's WHIP and HR/9 but he walks far too many people at this cap level. When I looked at Box V and saw that I needed to pick a 19th century player, I drafted 1889 C Fred Carroll and hope the defense won't kill me until I can get Dickey into the game as a defensive replacement and part-time starter. I went with '43 Dickey because of strong defense and great normalized OBP. I chose Norm Cash from Box O because I've found him to hit well in higher cap leagues because his stats usually normalize well. And, I didn't like the relatively high BB/9 of the pitchers in that box.

Box R was another box that didn't thrill me but I chose '67 Yaz because of strong normalized offense and the belief that Devine and Milacki are too vulnerable to walks at this cap level. Rickey Henderson's 1990 season gave me speed, solid OPS, and a defensive backup from Box U. Second base is this team's weakest position with '99 Alomar from Box X giving me power, speed, some BB with a tolerable .916 normalized OPS. But, I don't want his C- range on the field in late innings so I drafted '27 Frisch from Box W to be his defensive replacement. Finally, I chose 2008 Manny Ramirez from Box Y as a pinch-hitter and platoon player against left-handed pitchers.

I chose Bennett Park (+3 for HR) because this team has power and I wanted to make it more difficult for the modern pitchers who give up more HR as well as deadball pitchers with HR/9+ of less than 100.

Hitting: .358/.459/.595 1.054 OPS, 331 HR, 1,250 BB, 719 K (all per 162)
Pitching: 1,733 IP/162, .199 OAVG, 0.86 WHIP, 0.12 HR/9
8/1/2016 11:07 AM (edited)
As usual, reading these makes me realize how generally out of my league I am here (which is why I'm usually in the 35-50th place range). But, maybe you can take these as lessons what not to do.

70 mil - Who the Hell Are These Guys?
Well, it isn't a cookie team, that's for sure. I always emphasize speed at low caps and this team was no different (how else could I have ended up with the immortal Jack Perconte?) Seven of my eight hitters have 25 or more SB (including my "power" hitter 1983 Willie Upshaw) and the 8th is 21 Cy Perkins and his A+ arm. But you gotta wonder about a team with Billy Werber batting cleanup. I didn't overthink the pitching--finding five 200 IP guys with good ERC+ (14 Rankin Johnson, 46 Mort Cooper, 58 Portocarrero, 51 Rogovin, 2007 Ted Lilly) that I can rotate between starting and the 'pen. Maybe should have looked harder at old-timers. Playing in Safeco (shocking!). Probably lucky to win 75 games with this bunch.
Hitters: 265/338/387, 81 HR, 272 SB
Pitchers: 1339 IP, 1.14 WHIP, .233 OAV

80 mil--2005 Astros plus Miggy and Pedro
I tried a lot of different combinations on this one (the popular 85 Cards, 81 Astros, 42 Yankees, 15 Dodgers, 80 A's and a bunch of others I can't even remember now). None seemed to fit the cap well. The 05 Astros already have good seasons from Clemens and Pettitte and I could add Pedro so that gives me three starters with 1.03 WHIP or better and Oswalt is serviceable as a 4th starter. The pen is good enough for this cap (I think) with Wheeler as the closer. The lineup isn't exceptional, but it has balance and Miggy's bat solidifies the outfield. Brad Ausmus and A+ arm Raul Chavez should help dampen some of the 05 Cards teams. I'm more confident in this team.
HItters: 274/343/444, 173 HR, 94 SB
Pitchers: 1367 IP, 1.12 WHIP, .232 OAV

100 mil--1927-29 Senators
Man, I agonized over this one forever. It was so easy to find great combos, but all of them seemed to be 105-110 mil and less appealing when I tried to boil them down to 100 mil. I liked the mid-00s Yanks teams and 08-10 Dodgers but getting them down to 100 mil was too difficult. I liked the mid-90s Tribe too but thought I could upgrade the pitching and even an early 70s Red Sox team with Marichal and Tiant but I worried about that team in Fenway. Had pretty much convinced myself I was taking the 16-18 White Sox because their pitching is ridiculous and Fournier, Collins and Jackson make for a good offense. But then I was tipped off about the late 20s Sens--who even had a pinch hitting appearance by a 52-year old Nick Altrock. So--I could throw him the rotation with Coveleski and 1913 Big Train and use 28 Braxton out of the 'pen. I only have five usable arms, though, which will probably end up biting me in the ***. Great balance in the lineup with Speaker, Goslin, Sam Rice, Cronin and Sisler. This team could be good if I don't mishandle the pitching staff (so, 50-50).
Hitters: 325/400/463, 80 HR, 114 SB
Pitchers: 1385 IP, 1.01 WHIP, .217 OAV

110 mil--1905-22 Federales
I was tired from trying all the 80 and 100 mil combos so I didn't attempt as many things here. In fact, I decided to go dead ball and just try to make that work instead of comparing it to other eras. Started with the Federal Leaguers and took 15 Falkenberg to close and 14 Art Wilson as a solid enough catcher with a good arm. Going back to '05 got me Matty, who I've paired with 10 Russ Ford and Pfeister's best season in the rotation with 08 Steele and 09 Babe Adams as 100+ IP guys in the 'pen. Cobb, Speaker and Zach Wheat make for a formidable OF and the infield is solid enough with Hornsby's one shortstop season plus Heinie Groh, Sisler and Eddie Collins. Playing in Expo Park to minimize modern HR hitters. Team looks good on paper anyways.
Hitters: 336/403/485, 71 HR, 224 SB
Pitchers: 1456 IP, 0.92 WHIP, .200 OAV

140 mil--Chicks Dig the Longball
I am nothing if not consistent. Every year, I build the team in the DH league without realizing it's a DH league and this team was no different. Fortunately, it wasn't as time consuming to fix. I started with the pitching because that was the easiest--five starters again--95 Maddux, 13 Kershaw, 15 Arrieta, 99 Pedro, 64 Horlen...I'm guessing I'm not alone with some of those guys...plus four good arms in the 'pen. Wasn't sure whether to go high-K or not with pitchers so I split the difference. I went "traditional" with the hitters--just finding high Slug guys that also K'd a lot (hello Ryan Howard and Sammy Sosa)...we'll see if that was the way to go. Also took a Ruth and a Hornsby because that seemed smart. Playing in Miller Park.
Hitters: 321/432/618, 392 HR, 77 SB
Pitchers: 1464 IP, 0.88 WHIP, .190 OAV

255 mil--WISC in a box
This was an entertaining one. At first, I had Hornsby out of Box A but it seemed like that there was hitter value in the later boxes so I changed up. I also thought that trying to pinch-hit more than usual might be a good strategy for this theme since most of the great pitchers can't hit so that coupled with the ability to take multiple strong 100-150 IP led me to a 2 SP gambit (10 Walsh and 13 Train). Then I have six 100-150 guys (Schupp, Hearn, Babe Adams, Nehf, Steele, Toney) to pitch the middle innings and Kuo, Chapman and Mike Adams to close. Then I just tried to find the best hitters in the remaining boxes, ending up with Foxx and Posey at C, Bill Terry as a late round 1b (one of three .400 hitters on the team, although I know the 1930 season won't normalize well), Collins and Ryno at 2b, Nomah and Ozzie at SS, Brett and Miggy at 3B, and an OF of Joe Kelley, Heilmann, Larry Walker, Pete Browning and Speaker. Provides good lefty-righty balance. Hope the average defense doesn't cost me. Playing in Great American to help my HR hitters.
Hitting: 364/443/581, 298 HR, 350 SB
Pitching: 1701 IP, 0.81 WHIP, .182 OAV
8/1/2016 8:54 AM (edited)
70m - Vote for Pedro (nobody else did)

I started by seeing what was available. I figured maybe I would find a common thread that would give me enough similar players to build a team around, but it didn't really work out that way. There weren't a ton of deadball pitchers, and those that were out there gave up a lot of hits. There weren't a ton of good HR/100# hitters either. There were still a few basestealers which surprised me. I liked some of the deadball hitters, but combining them with deadball pitchers seemed like an errorfest waiting to happen.

So I decided to grab mostly modern pitchers and build a mishmash on offense. The modern-ish pitchers (5-man rotation of Fitz '38, Tudor 88, Newman '64, Spud '38 and Honeycutt '83) allowed me to take a pair of A+++ deadballers up the middle (Herman Long and Lou Bierbauer). They can hit a little, and get on base via errors. At catcher I used a guy I can't believe didn't go up in price (Gary Alexander) and went with platoons at 1B/3B. Both of the strong side guys (Pedro Alvarez and Russell Branyan) are A+++ range and bad gloves. Paul Hines is another guy who has A+++ range, an iffy glove and comes from 1885 so he'll get on base a lot. My corner outfielders don't have much range or glove. I decided to put the whole thing in Coors and see what happens - lots of range to take away hits, and a little bit of power as well.

80m - National Treasure 2014

Maybe I should have named this team National Disaster instead. I started with a 20s Reds team because I've always liked them, but the 24 Reds didn't quite measure up (absolutely no power). My other go-to teams (2010 As, 2006 Angels) weren't expensive enough. It never even occurred to me that a classic team like the 85 Cards or the 97 Braves would work at this cap. Oops. I built a 2013 Cards team that I liked a lot, but they had Kershaw, Wainwright and then 2 pretty bad SPs, so I wasn't sure they'd win enough to get into the playoffs, even though they would have been great if they did. I looked at the 2013 Tigers but they were burned by the partial season restriction - the full season of Jose Iglesias makes them a juggernaut.

I didn't want to abandon the older teams so I built a 72 Pirates team that I liked, but they just didn't walk enough. I looked at all the teams in the 20s that I could add 2 big-IP starters to, but didn't like any of them. So I was driving home and listening to some baseball podcast and they were talking about the Nationals and Strasburg, and I remembered the '14 Nats who had 5 good SPs and Stras was actually the worst of them. So I built the team and liked them a lot. Two other owners picked the same team and both added an ace. I didn't - I just added Altuve and Lucroy and trusted their staff to be good enough. This team should be good in the regular season but they'll be heavy underdogs in the playoffs if they get there.

100m - Believeland 96-98

The first thing I wrote in my notes when I started was "deadball Cubs seems like an obvious answer." And maybe it was, but I didn't go there. I liked the 09-11 version with Zimm at 1B and Chase platooning at catcher. I liked having Toney in the bullpen. I just didn't love their offense when I actually saw how it stacked up against the Indians. Before I got to the Indians I also tried the 27-29 Giants with Hubbell and Carl Mays and a not awful bullpen, but couldn't make it work. I also really liked the 18-20 Tigers - did you know Hughie Jennings made a comeback? I was also close with the 01-03 Red Sox - Rickey, Sabes and David Cone plus all the usual Boston suspects. They were my 2nd choice - their WHIP# and ERC# were better than the Cubs, and their offense was a little better too.

In the end, I went with the Indians, even using a team without Robbie Alomar. They have Gooden and Hersheiser anchoring their rotation and a really strong #3 in El Presidente. They have the deadly Manny/Belle combo and with Thome at 3B, have room to add Eddie Murray. Up the middle we have Julio (over Jeff Kent who was also an option), Vizquel and Lofton. Their weighted average OBP# is 408. I hope they can even come close to that in the sim. They also have a ton of doubles so hopefully they won't be impotent against deadballers. I almost went with Boston (who would be a better playoff team if they got there) because I already had one "regular season only" team in the tourney, but then I thought about all the deadballers again and went with the AVG/OBP the Indians bring to the table over Boston's HRs. Not many people took the Red Sox so I won't really get to see how they would have done.

110m - Millionaires Row 1907-24

I didn't put a ton of thought into starting this one. I knew I wanted deadballers. I was 99% sure that I'd be doing franchise soup, just because I knew no one franchise could fill all the positions I wanted. I knew I would have Federales in 14 and 15. I knew I wanted really good defense including A+ range where I could find it in the infield.

I started by looking at the tough positions to fill - 2B/3B/SS and RP. I didn't love the SS options so I grabbed Honus '12. That limited my options pretty severely for 2B so I took Collins '10. I wanted a 3B who could really field so that left me with Groh '19. I had no idea how many Reds I would want down the road when I took Heinie! Then I went to work on the bullpen - skipping 1918 because I knew I'd have someone from that year. I grabbed Falkenberg '15 for one of my Fed years, Schupp '16 since there weren't any other good '16ers, and then decided to take Northrop for '18. Then I filled out the rest of my offense - Easterly '14 for my other Fed, Pipp 22, Ken Williams 23, Heilmann 24, Speaker 13. I grabbed '20 Duster Mails for another bullpen arm.

Then I grabbed all the remaining years (17, 19, 11, 07, 08, 09) that I specifically left for the end because they had tons of good SP options. I figured I could easily patch together my rotation from those years (I did consciously stay away from the Cubs and White Sox since I figured they'd play a big role). The least interesting years for SPs were 17 and 19 so I grabbed bullpen help (Mamaux and Goodwin) and then filled in the rotation with Frank Smith, Overall and Walter. I filled in one more RP in '07 with Mcquillan. I think these guys can hit enough to hang with the deadball teams and pitch enough to hang with the modern teams, but they don't do either one exceptionally well. We'll need a lot of help from our infield defense.

140m - Predetermined Outcome

How many people started with Mark Reynolds? He won't hit much at this cap but I sure appreciated the 223 Ks. At first I had it in my head that this league was 300 HR, 300 SB, 1000 K and 1000 BB. I couldn't make that work. Then I noticed steals weren't a requirement. Whew!

I have a theory that WHIP is more important than HR/9 in a league like this. Not that I didn't focus on HRs (Maddux, Greinke, Arrieta and Randy Johnson are my starting 4) but I paid up for Ks I didn't want because I wanted the low WHIPs from my starters. I knew this league would lead to a lot of pitches being thrown so I wanted to be prepared. I knew I couldn't help myself from focusing on preventing HRs so I went with Tiger Stadium, which keeps the hits down even more. Tiger Stadium was a hedge - I was initially thinking Yankee III but couldn't pull the trigger. We are going to give up a lot of solo HRs but we will not allow many baserunners.

On offense, I've got A-Rod at SS, Ruth 27, a big Kiner season, Cy Williams (couldn't get enough Ks and BBs elsewhere to get both Cy and Gavvy), Hafner, Jimmy Wynn, Joe Morgan, Reynolds and Mickey Tettleton. I tried to stay away from the pure steroid era guys as much as I could - their HRs just get neutralized into Bolivian, as Mike Tyson would say. I've "only" got 390 HR/162 on my offense which is probably less than some. I do have 4 guys who can run if we find a noodle-armed catcher.

255M - Kings of the High Cap

I haven't done may 255m leagues. I don't expect this to go all that well. I went with A+++ range in the infield (Frisch, Gehrig and Brett) but then couldn't find a SS to pair with them so I've just got A-Rod. Poor Frisch is going to hit .210 if he's lucky. But he'll make 30 + plays. I went with OBP like crazy so I've got King Kelly and Billy Hamilton. I decided to go with Duffy over Tip O'Neill in group C. I've got Larry Walker and Pete Browning platooning in my 3rd OF slot.

Oh yeah, and I went crazy and took Silver King. I just couldn't find enough great pitching otherwise. I figured I'd take Silver and then I could use the rest of B/C/D/E on hitting. My other SPs are Dutch Leonard and Randy Johnson, though I have Horlen and Gooden as LRs who can start if the lefties aren't doing well. I have a good bullpen - but so does everyone else! I've got Todd Helton's 370/456/676 line as a PH. I've got Rickey to pinch run. I've got Buster Posey because I need his good looks and charm. We're playing in Municipal Stadium, so no, your Ruths won't be hitting many HRs against us. I just hope our OBP translates into some runs.
8/1/2016 9:08 AM
70M - Who Are These Guys?
Ballpark: Safeco Field
At first, I was going to load up on players with high% SBs, but there just aren't that many choices once the standard cookies are excluded. Then I decided to simply go with players with a decent OBP, while blowing off HRs. I also wanted a lot of switch hitters (so I rostered 5). You will recognize a lot of these names, albeit not their best seasons... My lineup consists of C '43 Ray Mueller (.347 obp, A arm), 1B '99 Dan McGann (.389), 2B '06 Claude Ritchey (.369), 3B '42 Roy Cullenbine (.405, A+ range), SS '06 George Davis (.338, A- range), OFs '72 Ken Singleton (.363), '47 Phil Cavaretta (.391) and '17 Gavvy Cravath (.369 & .473 slug). My pitching staff consists mostly of guys with whips in the 1.10 to 1.17 range. SPs are '18 Toney (1.09 whp), '19 Doak (1.17), '39 Passeau (1.19) and '06 Maddux (1.22). My seven RPs are pretty much interchangeable. I drafted 1358 (non scrub) innings, which is probably too much. I didn't draft any 200K pitching scrubs.
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Hitting: 5208 PA, .280 avg, .371 obp, .397 slug, below average defense, $34.7 million
Pitching: 1358 IP, 1.15 whip, .242 oav, 0.39 hr/9, $35.3 million
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Outlook:
I drew a really tough division with jbohrman, ballantine and nocomm999. I doubt this team will be any good. Hoping for 81 wins. Will probably be closer to 74 wins.

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80M - Stan's '44 Cardinals
Ballpark: Sportsman Park III
Keep in mind that I have to have all six of my teams built very early, so I didn't research dozens of options here. I started with the '85 Cardinals but couldn't get it to work to my liking. I see others did though - I already regret not choosing them. I tried some of the 90's Yankees teams, as well as the '81 Astros. I still have '97 Braves team (+ Doug Jones & Jeff Shaw) in my team center that I was very close to using but I feared that the power hitters would underachieve. I know those early 40's Cardinals teams were loaded, so I found 1944. I liked the fact there are no terrible starting pitchers that I will be forced to use (Cooper, Lanier, Brecheen, Wilks all with whips at or below 1.17). Red Munger can be my late inning setup/closer. The worse pitchers I have to use have whips in the 1.24-1.28 range, which is better than a lot of teams' worse pitchers. The team is fine offensively. In fact, I had to drop some salary. The easiest fix was to drop Johnny Hopp's $7.3M (.404 obp) season (he's a bit overpriced because of his A+/C+ and A/B defense at 1B and OF). I added a much more economical Roy Cullenbine and his .380 obp for $4.5M. I had enough left over to add a partial season of '44 Al Zarilla (.375 obp) who will platoon with Augie Bergamo & Pepper Martin in the OF.
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Hitting: 5416 PA, .288 avg, .363 obp, .429 slug, slightly above average defense, $41.6 million (excluding <300K players)
Pitching: 1332 IP, 1.16 whip, .232 oav, 0.31 hr/9, $37.0 million (excluding <300K players)

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Outlook: I still think the '85 Cardinals was the way to go, and sure enough one of the two '85 Cardinals teams in league 2B is in my division (NL East). The other is in a different division but in the same league (NL West). Neither of my catchers has an arm better than B-. That doesn't bode well for this team. Best case scenario is 85 wins. What was I thinking?
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$100M - Giants of Industry, 1918-20
Ballpark: Polo Grounds V

I didn't really do a whole lot of research with this theme. I knew I wanted a team that spanned both deadball seasons and the 1920's. I also wanted a couple of stud pitchers I could use to pitch the 6th-9th innings. That led me to the 1918-20 Giants, with Fred Toney, Ferdie Schupp & Art Nehf. The starting pitchers (Tesreau, Barnes, Douglas, Sallee) aren't as great as those early Cubs or White Sox teams, but if we're tied or have the lead in the 6th or later, I like my chances. The offense is solid with C-platoon Frank Snyder (.382 obp) & Lew McCarty (.405), 1B George Kelly (.363, A+ range), 2B Frankie Frisch (.407), 3B Heinie Zimmerman (.418), SS Dave Bancroft (.400, A+ range), OFs Benny Kauff (.446, A+ range), Ross Youngs (.441) & Curt Walker (.399).
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Hitting: 5620 PA, .339 avg, .405 obp, .491 slug, very good range, $52.5 million (excluding <300K players)
Pitching: 1392 IP, 0.98 whip, .221 oav, 0.08 hr/9, $47.0 million (excluding <300K players)
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Outlook: I probably should have spent more time looking at other teams. Maybe I would have taken one of the Cubs teams. Then again, it sure would suck taking the same team as WaitNSee (1911-13 Cubs), only to have them win 25 fewer games than WaitNSee's team. I'm the only person with the 18-20 Giants. Two owners took the 16-18 Giants (w/Mathewson). Maybe I should've gone that route in order to get at least one stud pitcher. I predict 89 wins and a first round playoff loss to a team with a stud SP.
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$110M - Walter, Walsh & Mordecai 07-24
Ballpark: Exposition Park III

Once again, I knew I wanted years to overlap the 1910's and 1920's. Of course, that meant taking two Federal league players. But that would be no problem, as I like Benny Kauff ('15) and Rankin Johnson ('14). 1912 Walter Johnson and 1910 Ed Walsh give me almost 800 stud IPs. Add the reasonably priced '07 Mordecai Brown and I love my starting pitching staff. The bullpen isn't as strong with '16 Sallee, '18 Northrop, '08 Coveleski, '11 C.Smith (along with Rankin Johnson mentioned earlier). But I also love my hitting... C '22 Steve O'Neill (.423 obp), 1B '23 Lu Blue (.402), 2B '20 Rogers Hornsby (.431), 3B '13 Frank Baker (.413, A+ range), SS '19 Roger Peckinpaugh (.390, A+ range), OFs '15 Kauff (.446, A+ range), '24 Wheat (.428) & '21 K.Willians (.429).
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Hitting: 5309 PA, .335 avg, .418 obp, .486 slug, very good range, $52.0 million (excluding <300K players)
Pitching: 1468 IP, 0.90 whip, .204 oav, 0.11 hr/9, $56.7 million (excluding <300K players)
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Outlook: Just realized that my hitting for this team is worse than for my 100M team. Of course, the pitching is way better. I have three modern era teams in my division (NL Central 1971-88, 1987-03, 1998-15), so I like my chances to at least make the playoffs. Also, there is a 1907-24 team in the NL West (dougpalm). His team is very different than mine. Should be interesting.
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140M - Earl Weaver's Dream Offense
Ballpark: Riverfront Stadium
I didn't really have a specified strategy coming in, other than trying to get a bunch of switch hitters. '58 Mickey Mantle, '77 Ken Singleton, '00 Jorge Posada and '98 Chipper Jones seemed like obvious choices. I was able to get enough HRs to add '93 Tony Phillips as my leadoff hitter (and 5th switch hitter). The rest of the lineup includes '15 Bryce Harper, .'28 Babe Ruth, '02 Jason Giambi and '09 Hanley Ramirez. On the pitching side, I spent a lot and went with 1576 good innings, including five of the top six most popular SPs ('95 Maddux, '15 Arrieta, '99 Pedro, '68 Gibson, '14 Kershaw).
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Hitting: 6104 PA, .317 avg, .435 obp, .562 slug, below average defense, $65.3 million (excluding <300K players)
Pitching: 1576 IP, 0.84 whip, .191 oav, 0.40 hr/9, 6-to1 K/BB ratio, $73.7 million (excluding <300K players)
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Outlook:
I don't play in many leagues with caps above $120M, so I'm not sure how my team really differentiates itself from all the other great teams. I ended up having the highest "cookie ratio" in this theme, which is probably a good sign. I have no idea why I decided to play in Riverfront. It appears I am on the higher end for innings, but I'd rather have a little too many than a little too few. Maybe I spent too much on pitching? This feels like another 85-win team.
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255M - Babe & Great Pitching
Ballpark: Fenway Park
The decisions in the early boxes really dictated how your team would be built. Do I go with stud pitchers or stud hitters in the early boxes? I knew I wanted Babe Ruth since he's about the only guy who can hit a decent number of HRs given all the deadball pitchers who will be in this league. I also wanted Cobb (Group D). There is so many good hitters in the later groups that I ended up going pitching in groups B (Walsh), C (M.Brown), E (Chamberlain), F (Toney), G (Schupp), H (Gagne) and I (B.Adams). That's 7 pitchers in the top 9 groups. Besides Ruth & Cobb, my other hitters include: C: Mauer/Carroll, 1B: Anson/McGwire, 2B: Gehringer, 3B: Ch.Jones/Beltre, SS: Tolowitzki/Nomar, OF: J.Kelley/K.Williams/Ashburn. The remaining pitchers include: R.Johnson, Gossage, Adams & Kuo.
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Hitting: 9046 PA, .361 avg, .454 obp, .498 slug, above average defense, $134,5 million
Pitching: 1956 IP, 0.83 whip, .186 oav, 0.17 hr/9, $91.3 million
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Outlook:
Playing in Fenway Park should improve what is certainly one of the weaker offenses. But my pitching is very strong. I wonder how many people took 7 pitchers in the first 9 groups. My offense is not HR-oriented so we should be decent against the plethora of deadball pitchers. I have the third highest cookie factor in this theme, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. I really have no clue how this team will do. Anywhere between 75-90 wins
8/1/2016 11:32 PM (edited)

70Mil (Fat, Ugly, and Stupid… but Cheap!)

I honestly don’t remember the details of building this team. I guess I just set up some search parameters that I like for the hitters and pitchers, and tried to find the bargains. Why the 1905 Irv Smith and Sam Leever popped out as good bargains… I don’t remember. It doesn’t seem to have done so for anyone else, so maybe my search parameters suck. All I know is that Irv and Sam and the rest of my pitchers all have reasonable hits, walks, and homers allowed rates considering the cap level. I have 1393 innings, which I think should be plenty.

For the hitters, I’ve never cared much about stolen bases at this cap level in the past. I prefer grabbing the best hitters I can, period. Usually, my low cap teams hit lots of doubles and hopefully this one won’t be any different. I also figured that the stolen base freaks that are typically available at this level won’t be, due to their popularity.

I have platoons at C, 1B, and 3B and a three-headed monster playing 2B and SS, all to try and maximize at bats and value as best I can. I put this team in Busch to maximize my high OBP and especially my lack of homers. I figure this team will win about 88 games and probably make the playoffs with reasonably good fortune.

Hitting: .295 AVG, .383 OBP, .418 SLG, 57 HRs, 84/166 SBs
Pitching: 1,393 IP/162, .235 OAVG, 1.10 WHIP, 0.45 HR/9

80Mil (Two Guys Walk Into the 2014 Nats)

This was the last team I put together because it wasn’t easy. I usually have a few go-to teams for this sort of theme, but the 80mil cap eliminated those options. After some research it became clear to me that the team would have to be well balanced both in hitting and in pitching… but not *too* well balanced or they’d be too expensive. A team with a solid hitter at most every position was required AND a team that had mostly enough pitching. Otherwise, there were just too many holes to fill. I originally settled on a Texas Rangers team that had a solid lineup and… C.J. Wilson as a starter (but a pretty solid bullpen), but the team ended up being illegal due to a Tommy Hunter’s combined season issue. So instead, I went for the 2014 Washington Nationals because I remember that they were a good team (they won 98 games) and they had a solid 1-5 starting pitching staff and I needed all of them (Strasbourg, Zimmerman, Roark, Fister, and Gio Gonzalez). There were some good bullpen arms too (Clippard, Soriano, and Storen). They needed about 200 more innings though so welcome Clayton Kershaw to the team!

As for the hitting, the team had solid outfielders in Denard Span, Jason Werth, and a platoon of Brian Harper and Ryan Zimmerman. None of them were great, but that was fine because that meant they weren’t too expensive. 1B, 3B, and SS were covered by Adam Laroche, Anthony Rendon, and Ian Desmond, all of whom were again solid players but not great, keeping their expense down. Catcher is covered by the Wilson Ramos and Jose Lobaton platoon who are not good hitters, but their arms are very good (needed to combat an ’85 Cardinals team in my division). Ramos is not a terrible hitter, just kind of bad (although he does have some pop). Ok, Lobaton is actually a terrible hitter.

But the worst hitter on the team is Danny Espinosa at 2B. That’s the guy I replaced… with Robinson Cano. The end result is a team with a solidly boring lineup. They don’t steal that many bases, but they do have a good stolen-base percentage so I might be able to take advantage of that.

I am the most worried about this team. I’m not sure the offense is good enough and they very possibly may give up too many homers (although fortunately, those pesky 85 Cards teams don’t hit many of them). It’s never good when a 70mil team looks better than an 80mil team!

Hitting: .279 AVG, .347 OBP, .433 SLG, 142 HRs, 97/118 SBs
Pitching: 1,401 IP/162, .235 OAVG, 1.09 WHIP, 0.73 HR/9

100Mil (Very Twisted 1916-1918 Braves)

For this theme, I knew I wanted a deadball team because the pitching is just so dominant, and it is easier to find pitching when many of the good ones have pitched 300+ innings. There is also excellent hitting available that normalizes very well. I didn’t bother at all with the modern era, not when Mordecai Brown, Pete Alexander, Ed Walsh, and Christy Mathewson were singing their siren songs…

So… I looked at the Giants which always has amazing pitching, but the hitting just wasn’t good enough. Then I looked at the Cubs and their collection of amazing pitchers, but again, the hitting just wasn’t working. Joe Tinker at SS was not cutting it for me, no way. The White Sox also, with Walsh and Cicotte, and some bullpen pieces, and Shoeless Joe, Eddie Collins, and Jack Fournier were tempting, but I just couldn’t make the team work out with the salary cap.

Then… I literally stumbled on the Boston Braves of 1916-1918. I see that I am the only owner who chose any semblance of this team, so that’s a bit worrisome, but I was surprised how many players they had that I really liked: Ed Walsh, Ed Ruelbach, Art Nehf, and Jake Northrop, plus Tom L. Hughes all combine for 1275 innings of excellent deadball pitching (I’m using the 495 inning 1908 version of Ed Walsh). The rest of the pitching staff I cobbled together from some mediocre arms, but that’s ok; 1275 innings of dominant pitching numbers will be plenty to carry the whole staff. These pitchers give up almost no homers whatsoever!

As for the hitting, the team had some surprising players: Fred Snodgrass, Sherry Magee, Chief Meyers, Art Wilson, and Johnny Evers are some of my favorite players to use. Ed Konetchy contributes solid numbers at 1B and Ray Powell and Joe Connelly, players I’ve never heard of before, man the OF with very nice numbers that will look even better after normalization. Red Smith is the worst hitter on the team playing 3B, but even he isn’t bad at all. I’m planning to stick poor Art Wilson and/or Chief Meyers in LF sometimes (or maybe 1B) to fill out my lineup every now and then. Overall, the hitting is surprising good, especially for a bunch of deadballers.

I think this team is going to do pretty well, probably high 80s wins. I was pleasantly surprised with the players I had available to work with. I didn’t know that Snodgrass once played for the Braves, for example. I thought he was a Giant for life!

Hitting: .314 AVG, .400 OBP, .447 SLG, 66 HRs, 182/413 SBs (um, they aren’t going to be running much)
Pitching: 1,505 IP/162, .211 OAVG, 0.94 WHIP, 0.07 HR/9

110Mil (1907-1924 Smorgasbord Millionaires)

Again, I knew this theme called for a significant deadball era range, with maybe some players in the 20s, or maybe in the early aughts… I figured I’d see how it all played out, but definitely that 1908-1919 range was a requirement. Furthermore, I never considered using a single team. I believe that the options of picking a player from each team provided far greater variety, resulting in far better teams.

For pitching, the ’13 Walter Johnson seemed like a good choice, considering that there was really no one else on the Senators that excited me during the deadball era. Ditto Russ Ford from the ’10 Yankees. That was 686 innings of dominant pitching right there. Adding the ’08 Steele, the ’09 Babe Adams, and the ’16 Schupp allowed for some spreading out the innings, but still keeping the pitching pretty dominant. The ’18 Northrop from the Braves (another team with mostly unexciting options) will be the closer. The ’07 McQuillan and ’19 Caldwell rounds out the pitching staff, although it was cool to be able to take the ’08 Jack Ryan as one of my non-millionaires.

For the hitting, The 1915 Benny Kauff fills a Federal League need; he is one of my favorites and is great in CF. I decided to stretch to 1924 to pick up the ’24 Jack Fournier, another one of my favorite cookies. I also like the ’17 Hornsby to play SS and the ’14 Kenworthy to play 2B (filling the other Federal League need). It doesn’t hurt having Shoeless Joe and Ty Cobb on the team (although this isn’t one of Cobb’s superstar seasons). I have a three-headed monster platoon to handle catching, with Jack Lapp, Pat Collins, and Bubbles Hargrave. This was nice in that it allowed some spreading out of the millionaires. Heinie Zimmerman is a monster at 3B although his defense is subpar (to say the least), but his hitting makes him worth it, I think.

This team will occupy Exposition Park, which is neutral for everything but homers (-2 suppression), and that is desired since this team doesn’t hit that many of them. I think this team will be fine and make the playoffs with 90 wins.

Hitting: .336 AVG, .406 OBP, .510 SLG, 110 HRs, 177/345 SBs
Pitching: 1,415 IP/162, .196 OAVG, 0.89 WHIP, 0.16 HR/9

140Mil (Da Boyzsh of Mesopotamia)

I believe this theme is going to result in many similar teams. I started this team with the pitching. I wanted pitchers as close to the .25 hr restriction as possible, with the best possible hr+ numbers possible. The result was the usual guys: Maddux, Kershaw, Arrieta, and Greinke. I deemed Pedro Martinez too expensive to use for what he provided so I passed on him. I added Jim Hearn, one of my favorites, to man the middle innings. The rest of the staff is filled with kick-*** modern closers, again, with numbers as close to the restriction as possible. The pitching staff took about 10 minutes to fill out.

For the hitters, I didn’t want to waste any money on the bench to try and fill up the three true outcome stats. I wanted to maximize every dollar. I, like many, found the ’15 Bryce Harper too irresistible to pass up, considering his numbers are terrific but he fills up those three true outcome stats very nicely. This is also true with the ’15 Joey Votto. The ’71 Willie Mays sure walked and struck a lot in only 417 at bats so I selected him too. It seemed clear that Jim Thome was the best choice for 3B so he was selected. That partial Mark McGwire season seemed to good (especially for this theme) to pass up. Bobby Abreu and J. D. Drew provide excellent outfield numbers, with solid defense with again, plenty of walks and strikeouts. My one weird choice was picking Joe Morgan to play 2B, but I could since I had enough strikeouts everywhere else, and I wanted to maximize my hitting as much as possible. The other secret about my team is that they can steal some bases. Morgan, Mays, Abreu, even Votto and Drew all steal bases at an excellent percentage rate. Catching had to be Piazza, right? Just had to be. I have Red Wilson backing up Piazza and Damion Easley backing up everything else. The hitting took about 20 minutes to assemble.

My team is probably pretty similar to many others. I expect my incredible managing acumen to carry me through (meaning… I’m screwed ;-). I put this team in Memorial Stadium, which suppresses singles and triples and is neutral on doubles and homers, since that seems to be my team strength (as is probably everyone’s). Another worry however is that I have only 1448 innings. I *think* that will be enough? Not sure though…

Hitting: .310 AVG, .432 OBP, .564 SLG, 303 HRs, 184/243 SBs
Pitching: 1,448 IP/162, .181 OAVG, 0.81 WHIP, 0.49 HR/9

255Mil (Shiny Metal Boxes)

Big home run teams never work at this level, not against those elite deadball pitchers. So I knew I wanted a high average, low homer team. Additionally, after some research, it appeared that I could take a couple starters, and fill up the rest of the team with super-awesome relievers and still have plenty of innings. Now, here was my big decision: I decided I wanted to have a team with excellent defense. Not just good defense… excellent defense.

Nap Lajoie at 2B and Honus Wagner at SS have the two highest range factor seasons in the database, so I decided that’s who I was getting. I decided that Roger Connor at 1B and Jose Bautista at 3B would round out my infield because both of them also have super-plus-awesome range at their positions too. CF was a choice between Ty Cobb or Tris Speaker (both were in the same group). Both also had excellent A+++ range in the OF. I chose Cobb because his 1911 season was stupendously awesome. The rest of the choices all sort of fell into place. Because I’m a huge geek at this, I will go through them one by one:

A: Nap Lajoie– Amazing hitting season of course, but also ridiculous range at 2B).

B: Pete Alexander– Choice between Pete and Ed Walsh; decided Pete was just a tiny bit better (lower hr/9+) and provided just a few more innings too.

C: Hugh Duffy– Great hitting season without too many homers, but also provides very good defense.

D: Ty Cobb - Awesome CF with one of the best hitting seasons ever.

E: Honus Wager – Chose him over Jennings because his range in his best defensive season was off the charts amazing, maybe the best defensive season ever.

F: Dutch Leonard – My #2 starter. Excellent enough to handle this cap level.

G: Ferdie Schupp – Don’t need another starter. Didn’t need a CF. Was going a different direction for 3B, so Schupp was the best option, and a great pitcher at this cap level.

H: Koji Uehera – Supergod reliever #1.

I: Joe Jackson – Left Fielder and one of the best hitting seasons ever, without many homers.

J: Art Nehf – The best of the bunch, and a serviceable long reliever at this level.

K: Randy Johnson – Had Cisco Carlos in some variations of my team, but decided I needed some innings. Randy Johnson will be my worst pitcher! I’m using him in mopup, mostly, until I need him to soak up innings.

L: Vida Blue – Supergod reliever #2.

M: Mariano Rivera – Supergod reliever #3. Plus has provides more innings than some of these other relievers.

N: Hong-Chih Kuo – Supergod reliever #4.

O: George McQuillan – Supergod reliever #5.

P: Joe Mauer – I’ve got enough supergod relievers, but I need a catcher. So Mauer seemed like a good choice here.

Q: Rich Gossage – Supergod reliever #6.

R: Bob Milacki – Supergod reliever #7.

S: Rafael Betancourt – Supergod reliever #8.

T: Roger Connor – Fits perfectly for my team. Hits no homers, but his stats otherwise are fantastic and normalize beautifully. Plus, his defense at 1B is off the charts.

U: Jose Bautista – Starting him at 3B, where his defense is fantastic. There was no other 3B available with this defense, so he fits my team strategy. He hits too many homers though, which will probably be wasted. I really wanted him here for his defense more than anything.

V: Cupid Childs – Don’t really need him, but he can be my backup middle infielder and a pinch hitter, etc. His defense is excellent at 2B.

W: Richie Ashburn – My backup and superdefensive sub outfielder. Ashburn has arguably the best defensive outfield season there is. He’s going to be playing lots of 8th and 9th innings to protect leads.

X: Buster Posey – My backup catcher. Nothing else made much sense here.

Y: Manny Ramirez – I have everything else I need. Manny can be a pinch hitter extraordinaire.

So there you have it: For pitching, I have 2 great starters, 1 very good starter, 2 great middle relievers, and 8 supergod short relievers. For hitting, I have great stats (like everyone else) but short on homers, which is my preferred strategy, but also have stupendous defense at 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, and CF, good defense in RF, and a backup outfielder with A+++++ range.

Naturally, this team started 0-2. Nevertheless, this may be the team I’m most confident about.

Hitting: .378 AVG, .452 OBP, .564 SLG, 177 HRs, 430/736 SBs
Pitching: 1,621 IP/162, .177 OAVG, 0.82 WHIP, 0.24 HR/9

8/2/2016 9:05 PM (edited)
$70M - Big Papi & His Little Sisters
Pitching and Defense was the way I decided to go for this one. Low ERA’s and WHIP’s while making sure the Performance History on each pitcher looked pretty good. In order to help them even more, I put the team in Safeco Field which suppresses every kind of offense imaginable. Couple that with some good up-the-middle infield defense that has a lot of “+” plays and I’m hoping to keep the other team from scoring too many runs. My only two issues will be: (1) whether this rag-tag offense of mine can score any for me; and (2) hoping that the other team doesn’t hit the ball to any of my outfielders. I kind of get the feeling that they’ll be out there picking and blowing dandelions during the game so it could get ugly.

Overall Offense: Around $32.9+M / 4899 AB’s / 112 HR’s / 73-65 SB-CS / .268 AVG / .333 OBP / .416 SLG
Overall Pitching: Around $37.0+M – 1401 IP’s / 2.45 ERA / .236 OAV / 1.16 WHIP / .30 HR-9
Overall Defense: C/C-

Expectations: Another example of why I shouldn’t even waste my time playing with the big boys. At most, maybe 70 Wins.


$80M - 1971 Baltimore Orioles
I had a feeling that the ’85 Cardinals were the way to go – and I figured that half of the teams in this theme would be those guys. I just wanted something different (hence, why my Winning Percentage is what it is). I wanted a team that was either stacked on hitting that had two decent pitchers or vice-versa – a team with stacked pitching and a few decent bats. After looking at several, I settled on the Orioles. They had four 20-game winners that totaled over 1100 innings of quality Starting Pitching (highest ERA of the four is 3.08 and the highest OAV of the four was .235). The bullpen might be a bit shaky but I’m hoping they don’t see too many innings. If there was a lower number than “1” for the Starting Pitchers “Call Bullpen” level, I’d probably use it. The offense was already fairly solid but I was able to add Hank Aaron’s monster ’71 season. I went against the Baltimore grain and benched Brooks Robinson for the upgraded Bill Melton.

Overall Offense: Around $45.4+M / 4464 AB’s / 182 HR’s / 53-32 SB-CS / .281 AVG / .372 OBP / .456 SLG
Overall Pitching: Around $34.3+M – 1411 IP’s / 2.97 ERA / .236 OAV / 1.16 WHIP / .79 HR-9
Overall Defense: B-/C

Expectations: I’ll give this team a fighting chance – should finish somewhere around .500 or a tad bit better.


$100M – 2008-2010 Los Angeles Dodgers
Spent a lot of time working on this one. I knew from past experiences that the Dodgers were one of the teams that at one time had several of the top arms on their roster so, after looking through many of their rosters, I settled on this three-year period. Playing in Dodger Stadium, I obviously wanted to go with a strong pitching unit and I believe a rotation of ’96 Maddux, ’11 Kershaw, ’03 Schmidt and ’02 Lowe will do fine – especially with a strong bullpen to back them up. On offense, things look really good with over 200 HR’s and 119 SB’s – considering that most of my money went towards pitching. The only things that scare me are (1) these guys probably won’t normalize well against all of the deadball pitchers in the league, and (2) while Maddux and Kershaw are “normally” alright, you never know which 2003 Schmidt and 2002 Lowe you’re going to get. If they can hold their own, I may be alright. If not, this could be another disaster waiting to happen.

Overall Offense: Around $46.1+M / 4846 AB’s / 205 HR’s / 119-39 SB-CS / .297 AVG / .373 OBP / .495 SLG
Overall Pitching: Around $53.4+M – 1509 IP’s / 2.57 ERA / .212 OAV / 0.99 WHIP / .57 HR-9
Overall Defense: B/C

Expectations: Flip a coin – we’ll either finish with a .550, .500 or .450 Winning Percentage. With my luck, my money would be on .450.


THE OTHER THREE WILL HAVE TO COME LATER...


8/1/2016 7:53 PM (edited)
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