For the two franchise themes, you can refer to juice’s following post if you have questions about what teams belong to which franchise:
https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=463788

That $125M theme is beautiful.

Posted by Jtpsops on 4/22/2026 4:01:00 PM (view original):
That $125M theme is beautiful.

That one is all ronthegenius. We didn’t touch it.

Posted by redcped on 4/22/2026 4:47:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Jtpsops on 4/22/2026 4:01:00 PM (view original):
That $125M theme is beautiful.

That one is all ronthegenius. We didn’t touch it.

My favorite. And on my 1st pass build I ended up with a team that had a $125,006,831 salary…

Posted by redcped on 4/22/2026 1:09:00 PM (view original):

80M

Long Live the Long Ball

You must draft at least 200 home runs. All of your pitchers must have a HR/9 of 0.75 or higher.

DH: No

Seasons: All

Park: Must be at least +2 for HR to both LF and RF

Clones: No

300K exception: No

I feel like 200 is a little low for what the theme seems to be promoting. Would’ve loved to see the minimum set to/around 300.


themes look wonderful this year though! I am excited to start planning and building

Posted by chargingryno on 4/22/2026 6:21:00 PM (view original):

Posted by redcped on 4/22/2026 1:09:00 PM (view original):

80M

Long Live the Long Ball

You must draft at least 200 home runs. All of your pitchers must have a HR/9 of 0.75 or higher.

DH: No

Seasons: All

Park: Must be at least +2 for HR to both LF and RF

Clones: No

300K exception: No

I feel like 200 is a little low for what the theme seems to be promoting. Would’ve loved to see the minimum set to/around 300.


themes look wonderful this year though! I am excited to start planning and building

Possibly.
As always, there was a last minute flurry of minor tweaks to salary caps and limits and we ended up at 200 at the end.
However, I argue that if someone wants to stick around the minimum with a league full of fly ball pitchers and short fences they might be missing out.
We’ll see.

For the 300K exception in the 100M theme, can we use any <300K player in the database? Or are we limited to players from our chosen franchise?

Posted by barracuda3 on 4/23/2026 9:32:00 AM (view original):
For the 300K exception in the 100M theme, can we use any <300K player in the database? Or are we limited to players from our chosen franchise?

Any in the database.

Posted by redcped on 4/22/2026 3:19:00 PM (view original):

100M

Twisting in a Straight Line

Pick any historical team. You can twist as many players as you choose under this restriction: one player can be twisted one season, one can be twisted two seasons, one can be twisted three seasons, etc. You cannot skip numbers. You can twist in either direction. Everyone you don’t twist must use their season with the selected historical team. You may use <300k players either if your historical team doesn’t have enough eligible players or you just prefer them to fill out roster spots.

Any player who appears on the Baseball-Reference page with a game played or inning (or partial) pitched for that team is eligible to be twisted. They do not need to have a sim-eligible season to be used as a twist.

DH: No

Seasons: All

Park: Use your selected team’s home ballpark.

Clones: No

300K exception: Yes

Team name: Include your historical team

Example:
You choose the 1927 Yankees. You can use one twist to 1926 or 1928, then one to 1925 or 1929, then one to 1924 or 1930, etc. So twists could be:

11: 1916 Bob Shawkey

10: 1917 Herb Pennock

9: 1918 Urban Shocker

8: 1919 Dutch Ruether

7: 1920 Joe Dugan

6: 1921 Bob Meusel

5: 1922 Pat Collins

4: 1931 Babe Ruth

3: 1930 Lou Gehrig

2: 1929 Tony Lazzeri

1: 1926 Ray Morehart

this may be commonsense for twist themes but is it only players who played on the 27 yankees who can be twisted? or do you start with the 27 yankees - then your +4/-4 is anyone on the 23/31 yankees, even if they didn't appear on the 27 yankees roster? (and just using the 27 yanks as the example above...i know any team can be chosen)

Posted by chargingryno on 4/23/2026 1:24:00 PM (view original):

Posted by redcped on 4/22/2026 3:19:00 PM (view original):

100M

Twisting in a Straight Line

Pick any historical team. You can twist as many players as you choose under this restriction: one player can be twisted one season, one can be twisted two seasons, one can be twisted three seasons, etc. You cannot skip numbers. You can twist in either direction. Everyone you don’t twist must use their season with the selected historical team. You may use <300k players either if your historical team doesn’t have enough eligible players or you just prefer them to fill out roster spots.

Any player who appears on the Baseball-Reference page with a game played or inning (or partial) pitched for that team is eligible to be twisted. They do not need to have a sim-eligible season to be used as a twist.

DH: No

Seasons: All

Park: Use your selected team’s home ballpark.

Clones: No

300K exception: Yes

Team name: Include your historical team

Example:
You choose the 1927 Yankees. You can use one twist to 1926 or 1928, then one to 1925 or 1929, then one to 1924 or 1930, etc. So twists could be:

11: 1916 Bob Shawkey

10: 1917 Herb Pennock

9: 1918 Urban Shocker

8: 1919 Dutch Ruether

7: 1920 Joe Dugan

6: 1921 Bob Meusel

5: 1922 Pat Collins

4: 1931 Babe Ruth

3: 1930 Lou Gehrig

2: 1929 Tony Lazzeri

1: 1926 Ray Morehart

this may be commonsense for twist themes but is it only players who played on the 27 yankees who can be twisted? or do you start with the 27 yankees - then your +4/-4 is anyone on the 23/31 yankees, even if they didn't appear on the 27 yankees roster? (and just using the 27 yanks as the example above...i know any team can be chosen)

The former. You are only twisting players on the 27 Yankees in this example.

The 100m theme takes a bit to fully wrap your head around. Here’s how I approach it, if it helps:

I take the team I’m interested in, say the 1927 Yankees, and use the ‘draft from historical team’ feature to download the whole squad into the draft center. That’s the basis of your team. You can fill out any missing spots, or swap out as many players as you want for any <300k player in the WIS database (doesn’t matter team or year). You can also use partial or combined seasons for any of your team’s players that may have played for two or more teams that year.

You can then enter that team as is if you wanted.

However, you will likely improve it by taking any of those players (or any one of the players that baseball-reference shows made an appearance for your team that year, even if they don’t have enough at bats or innings pitched to show up on the WIS lineup for that year) and ‘twisting” them one year away from your chosen year. So in our example, you can take any of the players on the 1927 Yankees and use their 1926 or 1928 season (doesn’t matter if they played for another team or not). It also doesn’t matter if you go backwards or forwards in time.

Now, again, you can stop there if you are satisfied. Or you can then take any other (remember, no clones so you can’t twist or use the same player more than once) player from the 1927 Yankees and use their 1925 or 1929 season. Again, it doesn’t matter which way in time you go (and it doesn’t matter which way you went with your first twist) as long as the twisted player is 2 years away from your original squad.

And you keep going like that, or stopping when you are happy with your roster.

But, remember, only one twist per step - ie only one player from one year away, one player from two years away, etc.

And also remember you can’t skip a step. So you can’t twist Babe Ruth 7 years away and use his 1920 season unless you have previously twisted 6 other players 1-6 years away from 1927.

Hope this helps and happy hunting.

Very helpful, thank you!

Posted by redcped on 4/22/2026 1:24:00 PM (view original):

140M

From Aaron to Zwilling, Part I

Build your team using players whose last names all start with a different letter. In Round 2, you will build an $80M roster using the same 25 players. Round 1 will have a DH. Round 2 will have no DH.


DH: Yes

Seasons: All

Clones: No

Park: Any stadium any of your players called home

300K exception: No

Can the same version of a player be used in both rounds?

Posted by Jtpsops on 4/24/2026 12:05:00 PM (view original):

Posted by redcped on 4/22/2026 1:24:00 PM (view original):

140M

From Aaron to Zwilling, Part I

Build your team using players whose last names all start with a different letter. In Round 2, you will build an $80M roster using the same 25 players. Round 1 will have a DH. Round 2 will have no DH.


DH: Yes

Seasons: All

Clones: No

Park: Any stadium any of your players called home

300K exception: No

Can the same version of a player be used in both rounds?

Yes

I have added a bit more clarifying language to the 100M theme to explain how to think about your roster.

Start with the one historical season and use as many players from that actual season as you can/want. Let's say you have 10 you are happy with. Then you use your twists to fill as many spots as you can make work. Let's say you can go out 12 years to add 12 more players to your roster. That leaves you with 3 spots you can fill with 300K exceptions.

Hopefully that makes sense.