i feel much better about this team then my 16x16 team...
Joel Peralta (2015) was my selected player. I went in wanting to get quality pitchers and knew that i would have to eat some bad innings to do so. This guy came at short money (start high in the draft) and gave me 450+ innings with
Kershaw and
Greinke. My draft appraoch was to get the best pitching teammate and then wrap up as many of the cheap required pitchers as possible hoping to end up with usable hitters...
Round 1-
Germany Schafer (19121) gave me an immediate $19+M player (which fits way better with this cap, especially as a 394 IP starter). Welcome to the rotation Mr.
Walter Johnson. As an added benifit it also moved me to first selection in...
Round 2-
Dave McNally (1967) was a sunk cost mop-up/rest pitcher to avoid spending on a more expensive one. Was planing on using the 3b Robinson but ended up with
Frank Robinson "roaming" the outfield (in fact his weak range and fielding will be in center field against lefties as i inadvertantly forgot to pay attention to outfield D
Round 3- Spiked my salary with $9.6M
Bill Dinnenn (1903) brining my "usable" IP to 1200... unless you count his teammate
Cy Young and his 402 IP at the small cost of $14M. My origional plan looks to be working out nicely and I now have 1600 innings with a 3 day roation (Johnson/Young/Ninnenn) and a bulpen of Kershaw/Greinke. At this point less than $2M wasted with more to come.
Round 4- Cheapest pitcher I could take was another
Cy... Falkenburg (1917). $1.3M more wasted dollars, but all part of my plan so hopefully it works out for me. My origional thougt here was to bring along either Ping Bodie (what a name) or Amos Strunk for my outfield. He ended up bringing along a player listed as catcher who will never go behind the plate. Welcome to part time DH and reserve outfielder
Wally Schang. I was a little nervous about picking a guy I wasn't going to play and ending up with a bench teammate this early but it matched my plan...
Round 5- Back near the top of the draft I jumped away from pitching realizing that i would have to spend way too much on Orth but that amount wouldn't really change much no matter what one I ended up with.... so I grabbed a $2M platoon DH (I thought, now he's in the OF...)
Hank Bauer (1949) with three possible teammates in mind. Defensive minded shortstop Rizzuto, CF stud Dimagio or Left handed platoon catcher
Yogi Berra. For many more rounds I thougth it was going to be Rizzuto if I kept Cy Young, Dimagio if not. In the end I went with the catcher because there were so many bad defensive catchers as teammates in this draft.
Round 6- Thinking I would need two catchers with some ability to catch the ball I grabbed righty
Wilson Ramos (2014) as half of a potential platoon. I also was a fan of using teammate
Anthony Rendon with 2b and 3b flexability allowing me to look for either position later in the draft. Found myself wondering why Denard Span was so damn expensive (and then I ended up with a D+ range in center and thought... oh, that's why).
Round 7- Feeling good and worried about it. This is when I looked at catcher options remaining and panicked. Then I looked at SS options left and grabbed
Carlos Pena (2004) and his defensive capable friend who also had a switch hitting usable bat:
Carlos Guillen. Now I was set at catcher, short, most of 1st and either 2b or 3b with defense and bats I started looking at the last IF position and OF.
Round 8- I found my second baseman (though I was slso looking at a bad fielding of in Elmer Flick) in
Nap Lajoie. I could also move him to 3b is needed so in the end I could move on from him or Rendon if a better option appe
ared. This led me to pick the last of my mop up pitching and wasted $ in
Al Orth.
Round 9- Resident DH
Mike Tiernan (1891) who is also going to be at least a slow stone gloved corner outfielder for half of the games joins here. No longer really worried about draft spot and needing to get useful bats from the available players it seemed to make sense. I wish I had managed to keep him off the field, but it wasn't to be.
Buster Burrell at $200K came along with him so there is that too...
Round 10 and 11- Sitting hitting refresh over and over again hoping against hope that Bradsher would go somewhere other than the cheapest Lyon's with his round 9 pick which would allow me to get the higher inning center field defensive full season Erstad. He didn't. I figure that being severly disapointed for the first time this late in the draft should make me feel good about the whole thing. Ended up with
Darin Erstad (2003) and
Denny Lyons (1892). Lyons will be a platoon DH while Darrin will play as many games in center as he can without falling asleep on his feet.
Chone Figgins will help out everywhere while
Charley Bassett was the most expensive player on Lyons' team that fit under the cap.
In the end I feel like I have essentially what I planed for... good pitching with wasted $ and innings sitting next to them. I am hopeful that my hitting will be good enough. I am worried about my outfield D... hopefully my infield and pitching can make up for it.
Hitting: $53,797,595
Planning to use: $53,025,860 (6524 PA, .819 OPS)
Pitching: $76,190,472
Planning to use: $65,227,168 (1,602 IP, 1.89 ERA, .94 WHIP)
Total: $129,988,067
Planning to use: $118,253,028 (looks better than it is because hititng is on the weaker side... we shall see...)