2010 WISC Team Building Process (38 owners posted) - Page 3 - WIS Championship

Posts: 5084 (0)

Hall of Famer

516 10 1 14 16 90

Prospect

I won’t make any pretense about being a SLB guru… I’ve always hung around .500 in various extreme theme leagues (i.e. Macabre Death) and progressives, while managing to still not understand the basics of how many innings to choose based on cap, and when to use cookies and A+ fielding. Against competition of this magnitude, I expect to average about 5-10 under .500. Early prediction 468-504 overall. Mediocrity, here I come!

Crap still costs $70M – I have NFI how to build a low-cap team, so I picked low walk pitchers and stuck them in a pitcher’s park (Busch), hoping the park would suppress the BABIP. The contest to watch is whether putting Edgar Martinez ’98 and Bobby Bo ’91 on the corners will combine for more homers than errors. Pretty sure this team will stink on ice. My pessimism appears to be well-founded after losing the opener 5-1. I’m just hoping to stay in double-digit losses.

Glavine and all that Yaz… $80M – I actually like the team name more than the team. I built it the same way most of you did, by looking for a SP with at least three very good (but budget-conscious) years with a couple of solid ones that could be used for long relief. For the money, I kept coming back to Glavine, but since nobody else did, I’ll assume I’m looking for the wrong stuff. I wanted a hitter that walked a lot, and hit during a pitcher’s era, and Yaz fit the bill. I actually tried multiple Yaz’s out in two exhibition seasons before settling on three from the early 70’s. BTW, those exhibition teams went 15-5, so I’m cautiously hoping to break .500 with this team.

Indecent 1997 EXPOSure $90M – Fun one to research. I started by looking for sub-.500 teams (because I wanted at least four optional players) with at least one superstar pitcher and one solid starter. My view might have been skewed by my progressive league where the 1997 Carlos Perez had a great year. Alongside a typical Pedro year, I had my two base pitchers that combined nicely with the ’97 Clemens/Maddux for a solid 4-man rotation. I dithered on the bats before deciding that Piazza would give me a bigger upgrade at catcher than Vinny Castilla would at third. Bonds was a given since Larry Walker was too pricey for this cap. Five Expos between 300-500 ABs mean this team will take some active managing.

Twisting the Or70les $100M – The hardest thing here was deciding between the 1970 and 1971 Oriole teams. Most of the core players used years from 68-73, so it came down to bench and bullpen depth for ‘67 vs.’74 as the deciding factor. I went with the bullpen from ’67 with 200 excellent innings from Moe Drabowsky and Jim Hardin. We’ll see if I went the right way since there is a team in my league with the ’71 team. This is a pretty solid team that I expect to be playoff contenders.

Rabbits and Roiders $120M – Another team name that I really like. Seriously, I spend way too much time trying to come up with cool names, which is one reason why I always liked the Macabre Death theme, where we spend most of our time trying to outdo each other’s tastelessness. Anyway, I kinda went a little whacko on this one, and screened players by HR/100 and SB%. I figured if they hit a lot of homers and stole a high percentage of bases, I could just crank up their running (up to 11), and steal a bazillion bases. I also took pitchers with HR/9 of > .5 but HR/9# of < .5, hoping normalization would hold down the homers. So naturally, Pedro ’97 went out and got ripped for three homers in the opener. Sigh.

Decades of Decadence $140M – I’m not used to higher caps and the incredible stats you can buy. After reading a few of the other articles, I’m afraid I went a little light on IP with 1450 real innings (and 50 mop-up). My offense has the usual suspects (Ruth, Gehrig, Bonds, Foxx), but one guy that I’ll be watching is Dick Allen ’66 at third. Amongst all the big names, I’ll be interested to see how he stacks up at this level. Big Train ’12 got lit up in the opener, but the offense bailed him out 8-7. I’m actually counting on some production from the pitchers at the plate with Johnson, Matty ’09, and Maddux ’94 able to “help their own cause”.

8/5/2010 1:10 PM

bardin

Posts: 284 (0)

Hall of Famer

335 20

Prospect

70mil (Totally Awesome 5-Way Action)

This was one of the first teams I built, and it was awhile ago so I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking (boy, that’s for sure ;-) ). But, what I see is a team with ok defense and offense across the board, that normalizes well, that hits a medium amount of homers and doesn’t steal many bases. I also decided that platooning was *not* necessary at this cap. I think beyond 60mil, I find that having 4 200K players is less of a waste than trying to platoon… but, I could be wrong…

The pitching staff has 5 guys with WHIPs around 1.15, all of whom normalize well. The bullpen has guys with WHIPs in the 1.00s except for closer Dennis Rasmussen who is under 1.00. I believe I have more innings than most; I think there will be enough hitting in this league to result in more innings than most are expecting, but maybe not.

In summary, a bland vanilla team which will hopefully win 87 games and sneak into the playoffs.

80mil (Mr. Giles Takes A Halladay)

This was the last team I built so I have it all fresh in my mind. There were lots of decent pitchers available to clone but I decided the best $/IP values (all other things being relatively equal) were either Mussina or Halladay. Both had their good and bad points, but ultimately, I went with Halladay because he had a bit more variety, which allows me to mix and match his matchups when needed. Mussina’s seasons were all very similar. Also, Halladay had a better overall HR/9, which could be a big issue in this league.

Choosing a hitter proved more difficult. First of all, I figured immediately that many would choose one of the speedsters so putting Carter at C was a no-brainer. I thought about Tony Phillips, but his desirable seasons were too expensive. I also decided that I didn’t want to pay too much for outfield defense, so the player couldn’t be too good, but nor could he be a complete butcher. Ken Singleton was a possibility; his offensive numbers and salary fit, but he was D+ range across the board, and still a bit too expensive anyway. At this point, I came to a decision: I wanted a lefty or switch hitter. The rest of my lineup was too right-handed to support a righty for my clone. I still believed there were plenty of options. I thought about John Kruk; there were 3 seasons in particular that fit just right, but 1). His defense was just too poor in the OF, and 2). I hated all the available parks for him and (Halladay (or Mussina). I went through a few more and finally came across Brian Giles, which I think is an inspired choice. His offense is excellent, his defense is acceptable in his affordable 3 seasons, and I can use Petco Park to protect my pitchers, who I think will need some protection. And I could still use Kruk at 1B too.

I’m not that enthused about this team though. Probably an 85-win team.

90mil (’65 Reds + Lotsa Pitching)

I am one of four who chose this team. Allow me now to expound upon the awesome virtues of this team for this theme. First of all, I would have liked to say it was by my brilliant genius that I went right to them, but no, it was pretty much trial and error. I remember the struggles I had with this theme last year and ended up just balking and going with the ’39 Yanks, who were ok, but I didn’t feel I got the full value of this theme. So… I stumbled around, and finally came across this gem of a team. They have a .549 winning percentage, but they were unlucky and actually should have had about 7 more wins. I was able to get 3 FAs because .549 was just under the max for that number of FAs.

The hitters on this team work brilliantly for this theme and cap. Every position is covered nicely with good hitting and defense. Catcher and 1B have platoons, that work out so perfectly, it’s mind-blowing. There is not a single hole on the team with the exception of one of the outfielders, but I decided to leave Tommy Harper in there, because he’s not bad and he has lots of Abs. Additionally, this is 1965 for heavens sake so they all normalize very well.

But the pitching isn’t bad either. There is about 400 innings of very useful pitching, including a bonus from Bill Henry, who had a partial season with the ’65 Reds but had a nice season in total. So, with my 3 FAs, I chose two obvious guys, Koufax and Marichal (who both had one of their best years in ’65). For the third FA, I chose another pitcher Don Cardwell, who wasn’t on the level of Koufax and Marichal, but it was a significant improvement over a mediocre SP on the ’65 Reds.

I am very pleased with this team. I think they will do very, very well. But, what do I know…

100mil (’40 Yanks +3/-3)

Since I had managed to find the ’65 Reds quickly, it afforded me more time to figure out a team for this theme. I first tried the 2000 Boston teams to try and get Lowe, Pedro, and Curt Schilling on the same team, and there was promise, but the hitting (and especially the defense) fell apart, since I couldn’t get Nomar in there. I looked at the ’96 Braves to get Maddux, Smoltz, and Millwood, but I didn’t like the middle infield defense at all, and in fact, 2B was a very, very black hole. The relief pitching wasn’t that great either. Too many problems, so I gave up on them. I looked at the ’09 Cubs to get some of the pitching, and also some of those big ’12 hitters but catching and shortstop were black holes and while the pitching was good, except for Mordecai Brown, it wasn’t *that* good, so… I gave up on them and kept coming back to the choice I finally went with: The ’40 Yanks.

I wanted to get ’43 Spud Chandler on the team to be sure, so it had to be at least 1940. The 1939 Yankees are one of my favorite teams of all time and I use them quite a bit in this tournament (in this and in past years). They have great hitting across the board except at 1B and SS, and even 1B has a part-time player in Tommy Henrich. Well, with this theme, hitting wasn’t going to be a problem since I could pick the even better years of those hitters. The only exception is SS, but Crosetti has a year in which he has a good OBP, good defense, and tons of Abs. So, I’ll stick him at leadoff and let him play forever, and I think he’ll be fine. The other hitters are great, anchored by one of Dimaggio’s best years, and the defense is very good too.

The pitching has the aforementioned Spud Chandler of course, and Tiny Bonham both of who had WHIPs under 1.00. The other starter, Lefty Gomez, normalizes very well. The bullpen has Marius Russo, Johnny Murphy, and Oral Hildebrand, all who normalize very well. Russo especially has done very well for me in the past.

In summary, the hitters are great, the defense is pretty good, the pitchers normalize well, ballantine and schwarze also picked this team, so… at least 100 wins for sure, right?

120mil (Some Fast, Some Strong, Some Neither)

Well, obviously homers are much more valuable than steals, so going with lots of homers seems clearly the way to go. I’d like to say that’s what I did but… I honestly don’t know what I was thinking! This team is an absolute disaster! I somehow managed to put together a team with a below average number of homers and combine it with a team that isn’t even very speedy. My middle infield for example, has Tony Phillips and Rogers Hornsby, who are good defensively and are usually good guys to have, except neither steal bases nor hit homers! Another odd thing about this team is that all my homers are from my lefties (McCovey, Mauer, Bonds, and JD Drew) so I chose a park that is -1 LF and +1 RF.

My pitchers are all guys who have HR/9+ as much above 100 as possible, in most cases. I don’t think they are particularly better than anyone else’s pitching staff. My catcher is the ’09 Joe Mauer who appears to be the best available choice defensively.

This team just plain sucks and will go 74-88, costing me a shot in the 2^nd round. Again, what was I thinking?

140mil (Each One, Teach One)

Let me first say right now that one pitcher I most definitely did *not* want was the ’08 Joss. I don’t like his normalization since ’08 was one of the most pitching friendly years of all time. I went with the ’13 Johnson, ’09 Matty, and of course the ’95 Maddux and ’00 Pedro. The bullpen was filled in with various goodies, including the ’88 Chamberlain who I chose to go with over the ’86 King Kelly for the 1880s decade.

As for the hitting, I eschewed that overrated loser Babe Ruth, whoever he was. Ok, seriously, I didn’t feel like I could afford him, so I went with the ’20 Tris Speaker instead. Jimmie Foxx is my catcher, Joe Morgan my 2B, Jennings my SS, Boggs my 3B (a very popular choice), Bonds and Ted Williams in my outfield (other popular choices). It appears however that my choice of Norm Cash at 1B was rather unique. I found that Norm certainly had one of best 1B seasons (if not the best 1B) in history and no one else was thrilling me enough in the 60s to be used, although I guess the ’67 Cisco Carlos (a popular choice) could have been an option too. I think my team is more or less equal to most anyone else’s, which means it will come down to team management, which means I’m in trouble, since I’m a decidedly average day-to-day team manager.

Overall, I think I’m in trouble this year. If I make the 2^nd round, it will be because I got some luck in the playoffs.

8/5/2010 1:32 PM

contrarian23

Posts: 23148 (2)

Hall of Famer

1919 1

Hall of Famer

70M (Shades of Mediocrity)

I have not tended to do well in the 60M and 70M leagues in the past; I really should play more themes at these caps so that I get more adept at building winning strategies. For this one, I didn't spend a lot of time; looked for 5 SP that would get just over the 900 IP requirement. Found several guys I like, including 84 Denny, 98 Mussina, 02 Wolf. Needed about 350 IP and then found 2008 Shaun Marcum, who looks like a potential steal at $3.8 M for 151 IP of 1.17 WHIP and .222 OAV. That enabled me to afford 89 Finley to round out the rotation, and I had enough cash left to build what I think will be a decent pen, with 86 Horton, 90 Nelson, 01 Woody Williams, and 81 Leach. Even found room for 88 Milacki.

On offense, I knew I wanted three things: 95 Boggs, 94 Walbeck (cheap A+ arm at catcher) and a bunch of switchhitters. Walbeck gave me one, and then a couple others were obvious: 95 Raines, 07 Castillo. The 93 Vizquel gives me A defense at SS, but with Walbeck means that 1/3 of my lineup can't hit at all. The 04 Hillenbrand and 4 Bip Roberts round out the team.

The pitching staff is a bit susceptible to the long ball, so sticking them in everyone's favorite cookie park (the Astrodome) seemed an obvious choice. I like this team better than any previous sub-80M team I've had in the WISC, but my own general ineptness probably means a .500 season at best for these guys.

80M (Red Raines Keep Fallin')

Didn't really know what to do with this one. Looked at lots of different combos and couldn't find anything I liked. Ultimately decided that the offense could look an awful lot like the cookie offenses that dominate most OLs these days - and I have no shame, so figured what the heck. That meant Raines was my clone (81, 86, 87), with 93 Jefferies, 00 Castillo, 96 Boggs. Grabbed 74 Tenace at catcher (I like him even more than 75 Carter). 37 Billy Jurges gave me an A shortstop for 3.5M, and a .298 average that normalizes much better than I expected for what I usually consider a high-offense era. I've never used him before, which is always risky in this tournament, so we'll see.

For the pitcher, I went around and around and finally decided to gamble on Red Lucas, hoping his good bat would still prove to be a decent value. I've got the 27, 29, 32, and 36 versions. and a halfway decent pen. Probably not enough IP (only 1333, including mops, which is probably not enough given that Lucas is not exactly a stud on the mound). Since no one else chose Lucas, I can safely assume this was a bad decision, and I don't expect much from this team.

90M (1908 Red Sox)

My search strategy was similar to pretty much everyone else's. Looked for 3 things: teams at the upper end of the winning percentage ranges for each bracket, teams that underperformed their Pythag W-L, and teams with partial season players that could be exploited. Every team I found ended up having at least one big hole that I couldn't fill, and I didn't fall in love with any of them. Probably built 30+ teams before I stumbled on the 1908 Sox. Cy Young, Eddie Cicotte, and Cy Morgan gave me 750 good IP, and I had to add Mr. Joss. Elmer Steele and Frank Arellanes add another 209IP of sub-1.00 WHIP in the pen. I think this team will do very well in the runs allowed department.

Will they score? That's the big quesion. I'm counting on massive normalization help, and the big 3 FAs of Wagner, Donlin, and Bresnahan. Doc Gessler contributes a .817 OPS that should normalize very well.

I could see these guys winning 90 games, and that may be enough to get to the postseason.

100M (1933 Yankees)

Pretty much the opposite of my 90M team in every way. Yanks vs Sox, offense vs defense, rabbit ball vs dead ball. These guys will score a lot of runs: Ruth, Gehrig, Dickey, Combs, Lazzeri, Chapman. The offense puts up a .316/.410/.514 line. As for the pitching, it's kind of Gomez and a prayer...but there's 1519 IP and if we fight a war of attrition, we may well win some games. Red Ruffing and George Uhle are on the mound and may add some offensive punch as well.

No else picked these guys, which is inevitably a bad sign :)

120M (The 100 Loss Experiment)

Well, the name tells you how I feel about this team. Speed seemed like the way to go, since the only way to minimize it in this league is to keep guys off base, whereas HRs can be tamped down at least a bit by using modern pitchers whose HR/9 normalizes well. So, I wanted speedsters who could get on base, and all six of my burners have .400+ OBPs: 15 Cobb, 1891 Hamilton, 87 Molitor, 83 Henderson, 93 Jefferies, and 73 Carew. 91 Boggs (man I'm using him a lot this year) is another OBP threat, so if we do get any power, there should be guys on base. The only real power hitter on the team is 2009 Mauer, who I expect to be a popular choice, along with Piazza.

For pitching, there were a lot of good choices even with the HR/9 restriction. I ended up going with 63 Koufax, 68 Tiant, 04 RJ, 00 Pedro. And I stuck them in the Astrodome. All told, there's 1434 IP of .185 OAV and 0.88 WHIP, and only 96 real life homers allowed. I really don't think we'll score enough to win in this league, hence the dismal prediction.

140M (Absence of Chemistry)

Boy I must have in a grumpy mood when I named these last 2 teams. I didn't have any unique strategy in mind for this team, just started with players that I know work well at this cap: 15 Alexander, 88 Chamberlain, 03 Gagne, 95 Maddux on the mound. 39 Foxx, 81 Schmidt, 26 Ruth, 09 Mauer on offense. And then filled in around those guys with players who could meet the decade/cap requirements. Not an exciting team, hence the name, along with the fact that I figure these guys from the 19th century just won't get along with anyone who played after about 1940.

Great to read everyone's descriptions - this is the most fun of the WIS year and I think the WSOP analogy someone made in another thread is very apt. I've made to the 2nd round once (in 2008), and that's still my proudest accomplishment in 4 years on the site. Good luck to all.

8/5/2010 3:35 PM

shaybee

Posts: 590 (0)

Hall of Famer

876 14

Rookie

I haven't been very active on the site for the last year, so I was happy that schwarze sent me an invite to jump back in. Before that, I had been down to two progressive league teams for about the last 8-12 months, so I figured I had better start reading the forums, doing some research, and throwing a bunch of Open League teams together to get a sense of what's currently working in the SIM. I think my status as a "has been" was confirmed pretty quickly as I was routinely getting crushed in those Open Leagues, but I enjoy building teams as much if not more than actually playing the games, so I got to work.

I know there are some guys who have played longer than I have (I'm talking about you Scott Ford), but bear in mind that my first teams came in the height of the Tony Phillips era (I guess the first iteration of the Tony Phillips era, since he appears to be back, or maybe he never left), when fielding ratings were A, B, or C and that's it. I enjoyed the era of the mispriced BB, when I had a team with Mike Naymick save over 50 games for me, and I also enjoyed the seemingly lost "what if" aspect of things, when you could utilize a player's IP or PAs in any way you saw fit - which is how I think I managed to have the immortal Silver King save 79 games one season, and win 110 games in another (although Scott managed to get ol’ Silver to win 111 once I think).

OK, enough about how ancient I am and how out of touch I am with the SIM these days. For what it's worth, here are some of my thought processes for each of my teams (apologies in advance for extreme longwindedness):

70MM - Modern Five Man Rotation League
I think one of my frustrations with this tournament in the past has been the lack of lower cap leagues. I generally enjoy lower cap leagues far more than the higher cap ones, and while I was disappointed to see that the average cap would once again be 100MM this year, I can understand and appreciate the reasoning. (It should probably be noted that my definition of a "low cap" league is 40MM, rather than 70MM, and a "high cap" is anything above 80MM) I think one of the main keys to every one of these leagues is to figure out the right number of IP for each cap and league, so much of my initial thinking for all of the leagues was to pin down an IP number to start. For this league I wanted 1300 serviceable innings, and ended up with 1301. I have always tended to build my pitching staff first, and I did the same here, ending up with 84 Alejandro Pena, 89 Candiotti, 95 Kevin Brown, and 01 Brad Penny as my starters, plus 92 Bill Swift as my 5^th starter / long reliever. My bullpen consists of eight 30-65 IP guys who each served mainly as starters in real life, mainly because I learned the lesson of IP/G and in-game fatigue from my open league disasters of late.

My batting order seems to include all the newest “cookies” with versions of Boggs, Alomar, Weiss, Raines, Henderson, Dilone, and the seemingly ubiquitous Bip Roberts. In the past I had fun with speed teams, and this one is definitely that. I’m concerned with the number of A and A+ armed catchers out there, but I’ll live and die by the SB in this league. That and a lack of PAs will probably be my undoing for this team. I put the team in the Astrodome to negate the power teams that I’m sure will have more success than this one…

80MM Clone League

Like a few of the folks above, my first thought for this league was to find a pitcher who had three big seasons to use rather than four. That said, seeing how pitching (again) seems to be quite successful at this cap, in Open Leagues at least, I tried to come up with a more comprehensive list of possibilities before deciding. So, to start, my not very exclusive list of possible choices included: Clemens, Kevin Brown, Pedro, Maddux, Grove, Lucas, Hubbell, Newhouser, Vance, Koufax, Whitey Ford, and Randy Johnson. I can’t remember the exact search criteria I used to narrow it to that group, so no clue as to how I narrowed it down to them, but I did set out to spend a fair amount on my pitching clones.

For hitters, I did something similar, and came up with an even larger and less exclusive list of about 30 (all of whom I’m guessing you could name if you were so inclined – again, not an altogether useful exercise for me to start with really). I’ve generally not been a fan of HR teams in the past (which will be a theme throughout this post, and which will also probably hurt me in the tournament), and like many of you, I was hoping to find a hitter that offered the flexibility of not simply taking up the three OF spots. I toyed with Frisch, but realized he’d be too expensive. I liked the idea of both Ott and Foxx, but hesitated because of my inherent dislike for power teams (that’s mention number two of that if you’re counting). I figured Rose would be popular, and also thought about going all out on one aspect (Willie Wilson, etc), but figured that might be too risky.

In the end, I built a few teams and entered them in Open Leagues – I tried Clemens/Frank Robinson, Lucas/Foxx, and Hubbell/Ott teams – none of which did or are doing particularly well, and then decided to go with Maddux and Raines. I figured I’d lean on pitching and speed very heavily, so I spent $36MM on my four Maddux clones (92, 96, 97, and 98) and went with three fairly cheap Raines clones (81, 82, and 90) for $12.3MM in total, which probably puts me near the bottom of the pile for money spent on hitting clones. The rest of my pitching staff consists of only 316 IP and is “led” by 38 Dizzy Dean. Hopefully the Madduxes (Madduxi?) eat a lot of innings, because I think the 1313 non-scrub IP I have in total are cutting it close. Using the 82 Raines at second allowed me to again find room for Dilone, who’s joined by David Segui (who’ll serve as the “big bat” in the lineup – scary I know), Weiss, yet another Bip Roberts, and Brandon Inge (04) behind the plate - in fact, my lineup in this league is strikingly similar to the one in my 70MM team. Raines hung on for quite a while at the end of his career, which widened my ballpark choices so I put the team in Pro Player Stadium to once again hopefully negate some power teams.

90MM GM Challenge League

I guess it’s theoretically possible to spend an unlimited amount of time building a team for this league – a fantastically challenging theme and one that schwarze should be praised for and/or shot as a result! Thankfully in looking back at old files, I did seem to spend a fair amount of researching this league for last year’s tournament (where I was roundly crushed, which is probably partially responsible for my lack of teams since). For reasons apparently known only to me last year, I chose the 1902 Orioles and used a four man pitching staff. No, not four starters, I mean four serviceable pitchers. Not surprisingly, fatigue and the need to constantly manage that kind of team absolutely killed me, and the team stunk as a result (it had company with my other teams last year though). In my files from building that team, I found that I seemed to have spent a lot of time building versions of the 1928 Senators, and in the dark recesses of my mind I seemed to remember really liking them. Again, no idea why I didn’t use them last time, but seeing that nobody else did either, I focused on that team for this year.

The team starts with a very useful Garland Braxton and decent seasons of Sam Jones and Firpo Marberry (great name), as well as a lineup led by Goose Goslin. One of the problems with this team is that they actually have too much hitting, or at least good hitters that play the same position as one another. I’m not using Sisler, Sam Rice, or Sam West, each of whom had very solid seasons. Instead, I added what should hopefully be a monster season from Hornsby at 2B, and Paul Waner in the OF (after trying desperately to squeeze the Babe in instead – alas, the Babe doesn’t squeeze in anywhere easily). For pitching, I added Vance and Grove and have 1415 relatively decent IP, which should hopefully suffice, but will be outclassed by a lot of other teams with much stronger pitching. Griffith Stadium seems to suit this team, but we shall see.

Even though I was happy with this team, I did toy with a few others that I liked: the aforementioned 44 Blue Jays being one, along with the 14 Reds, 17 Pirates, 65 Reds, and 89 Braves, all of which will probably be better than my Senators.

100MM Limited Twist

I spent by far the least amount of time building this team – I targeted 1425 IP, and started by searching Yankee, Braves, and Red Sox teams of the last 20 years in an effort to maximize the size of roster to twist. When I came upon the 2005 Yankees, I built the team and basically stopped my research after that. On paper, it should be a decent team, and the fact that it seems to be the most popular choice is both surprising and pleasing (albeit possibly frightening at the same time). The team’s weakness is definitely starting pitching – I went with a rotation of 02 Johnson, 04 Pavano, 03 Mussina, and 03 Brown. The bullpen should be good, with Quantrill, Gordon, Rivera, and Groom (yeah, Buddy Groom), and the lineup should be pretty useful too (07Posada, 02 Giambi, 07 Cano, 07 ARod, 06 Jeter, 02 Williams, 04 Matsui, and 03 Sheffield). Time will tell...

120MM Power/Speed

I played in a number of versions of Penn Quaker’s “Power, Speed, Whiffs” leagues years ago, and enjoyed them. As others have mentioned previously, I think the big fork in the road for this theme was the Power or Speed question. With the restrictions in place for this league, I felt as though there were ways to stifle power while there weren’t many (any?) ways to slow speed down. As I haven’t historically been a big fan of power (there it is again), I set out to build a team around speed and the best pitchers possible to minimize HRs. Also, my experience in the PSW leagues (and I guess to some extent common sense with most power hitters also being prone to the whiff - Rob Deer anyone?) led me to think that pitchers with relatively high K/9 numbers would help, so while expensive, I looked for a staff that would be able to strike out plenty of the big boppers they’d face.

Knowing that offense would be big in any case, I targeted 1500 IP for this team, and I think I like how it turned out. My rotation is 95 Johnson, 07 Peavy, 03 Hudson, and 02 Pedro, with 06 Clemens around to start games if necessary. In the bullpen I have 05 Felix (he is the King after all, and along with Ichiro he's basically the only reason for me to go to as many Mariner games as I do - Go Ms!), 09 Bailey, 04 Gagne, 00 White, 08 Rivera, 06 Meredith, and 09 Feliz. Hopefully the 1502 IP is enough and the high Ks don’t turn this staff into a fatigued mess early on… My weighted average HR/9+ number is 202, so that plus the fact that my home park is SBC Park should hopefully squelch some HRs.

For offense, I started with catcher, since that was the biggest restriction. 09 Mauer seems to be the choice here, and I’m actually surprised he wasn’t on even more rosters than he already is. Eschewing power for the most part, I went with 93 Jefferies, 76 Morgan, 06 Jeter, 87 Gwynn, 87 Raines, 90 Henderson, and they guy who seems to be everywhere – Bip Roberts (I needed to save some money at one position, plus I’ve grown fond of Bip during my fling with Open Leagues in preparation for this event). At DH, with less than $5MM left to spend, there was only ever one option for me – John McGraw (1897 vintage this time). The lineup is very BA and OBP focused, with 403 SBs and 142 HRs. I think I may get slugged out of a lot of games, but maybe some station to station baseball with plenty of SBs thrown in will do OK.

140MM Decades League

Despite not liking the very high cap leagues, this theme was/is a stroke of genius, and made for a lot of fun in team building – well done once again schwarze! In my admittedly limited experience with high caps, pitching seems to dictate, so I set out to find 1550-1600 of the best IP I could (which may not be enough in fact), basically ignoring the impact that those choices would have on my lineup in the process. Doing this pretty much eliminated the possibility of using any expensive hitters from the 1900s or 1910s because of the quality pitching in those decades. That was a tough blow, since I find Cobb to be one of the most useful players in the SIM for my purposes. I say my purposes because once again I focused on a team that wouldn’t be centered on HR power – meaning Cobb would be among the best fits of anyone for this group…

In my search of the “best of the best” in pitching, both the 12 Walter Johnson and 15 Alexander came up – I actually think those two seasons are close to a wash, so I ended up going with the Alexander season because it’s a bit cheaper. The 1900s came down to 08 and 09 Mordecai Brown (eerily similar except for the IP as best as I can tell), and the 09 Matty – I went with 09 Brown because I figured I’d come down to three starters and because Matty’s normalized HR numbers might hurt him here. To round out my starters, despite really wanting to find a 350+ IP to act as a “true” third starter, I went with the 94 Maddux and figured I’d load up on a good bullpen. I tried to do just that, with the 24 Babe Adams probably being the weak link (I couldn’t sacrifice the 20s on pitching too!). I have 38 Dean, 42 Leonard, 50 Spencer, 63 Jarvis, 77 Sutter, 91 Fingers, and 09 Mike Adams to go along with 200k scrub and team namesake 1890 Gus Krock.

For my batting order, whenever I see a super high cap league my first thought has almost always been, “King Kelly.” Same again this time. 1886 King Kelly, joined by 1891 Brouthers (I think I like Roger Connor better here, but oh well), 21 Hornsby (he edged out Cobb and Speaker to be the 20s hitter), 87 Boggs (maybe should have used one of his other years instead), 35 Vaughan, 48 Ted Williams, 51 Musial, and 67 Yaz. Yaz is actually the guy that fits this team the least, and I tried everything I could to get him off the team, but just couldn’t make it work. Hopefully he goes on a season long .350/.440/.600 tear to prove me wrong, but that seems pretty doubtful. While there’s not as much pop as I’m sure I’ll encounter with teams with Mantle, Bonds, etc., I like the lineup – not too many Ks (Yaz being the biggest free swinger in the group), solid extra base (non-HR) pop, and generally high BA and OBP again. I put the team in Exposition Park as well, but I’ve been burned by bad park choices in the past.

In summary, once again I apologize for being so longwinded. I don’t really have any illusions of finishing in the top half of this tournament, but I sincerely enjoyed building my teams, and the fact that schwarze’s invite once again spurred my interest in the site in general is a good thing – thanks again for that. I don’t have as much time as I would like on most days to adjust my teams mid-stream, so I’ll certainly be hurt by that, but I’m sure I’ll learn from the best again this year, and I’ll no doubt enjoy the leagues I’m in very much. If you’ve managed to read all the above without falling asleep, thank you. Good luck to you all.

8/5/2010 4:55 PM

schwarze

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"I guess it’s theoretically possible to spend an unlimited amount of time building a team for this league – a fantastically challenging theme and one that schwarze should be praised for and/or shot as a result! "

Thank you, thank you... This is the first and only time I've repeated a WIS Championship theme in consecutive years.

8/5/2010 5:45 PM

schwarze

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Great writeup shaybee. Glad you're back and I know you've got something to prove after last year's disappointing effort.

8/5/2010 5:51 PM

schwarze

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After reading some of these other strategies, I am already regretting some of my decisions. For example,

70M: Why didn't I take more of the OBP cookies? Many of my hitters are guys I've never used before. What was I thinking?
80M: I'm doomed with barely over 1200 IPs. I should have gone with a 3-man staff of Newhauser (my other choice) and used the extra cap for a real 3B.
90M: Why did I take a modern day team (99 KC)? They have started 0-2.
100M: I still like my 40 Yankees team, but too many folks took the 05 Yankees or 97 Braves. I am more concerned that I didn't even look at the 05 Yankees.
120M: As is the case with most of my teams, I spent zero time thinking about the ballpark which is why there is no mention of any park in my writeup. I just don't feel it makes a huge difference (as long as you don't do something stupid). This would've been a good league to consider it. Heck, I can't even tell you which park my 120M team is playing in.
140M: Addie Joss will be the downfall of this team. Why didn't I take Walter Johnson? Luis Tiant? Really? Was I on drugs too?

I'd like to adjust all my projections downward by 10 wins.

8/6/2010 10:28 AM (edited)

Oli35

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I am going to tackle this one team at a time. Trying to explain my convoluted logic about 6 teams at once will give me fatal brain cramps.

$90 Million

As aoon as I saw this theme one team came to mind. The '98 Yankees. They were the best balanced team I ever had the privilege to watch. They had a winning % of over .700 and went through the post season losing only 2 games. I felt if I could replace the "fat toad" Hideki Irabu with greg Maddux I would like to see how that team would fare.
Then came the inevitable "wait a minute". I am in a league "GM contraction 1994" which is very similar to this format but is limited to teams in 1994. Schwarze took the Yankees and added 1 player. I watched to see how it was going top work out for him before I entered my squad. He got off to a disastrous start. We are about halfway through and his winning % is over ..230 points south of where the actual '94 Yanks were. It got so bad for Jeff that he started to publicly apologize to teams he had managed to defeat. If this happens to the one of the owners I respect most, how could I possibly expect a better result. I looked at a couple of teams from 1905 that were interesting, the 72 Dodgers were a possibility for a long time but I kept coming back to the '98 Yanks.
With an infield of Tino Martinez, Chuck Knoblauch, Derek Jeter and Scott Brosius, an outfield of Bernie Williams, Paul O'Niell and a platoon of Strawberry/Raines, catcher Posada throws at A+. Super pinch hitter Shane Spencer with an OPS of 1.321. I have a very consistent line-up. Everyone has an OB% over .350. Nobody hit 30 homers but all 8 hit at least 15. I have 1375 quality innings. I will be disappointed if this team doesn't make the playoffs. But every time I start to feel good about their chances I look at the '94 Yanks and my palms get sweaty.

8/5/2010 6:36 PM

hagebono

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As per usual, I opened up a beer, which led to a few more. All my teams were drafted w/i about 5 hours, at which point I was buzzed and proceeded to go out and continue drinking. I then got home at about 5am and passed out. This process, minus the drafting, continued for a coupla more weeks until I finally got my league numbers and entered my teams.
I did dork up the chain league and totally revamped it. I was sober on that one so we'll see how that team goes.

8/5/2010 7:52 PM

dahsdebater

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Posted by schwarze on 8/5/2010 6:01:00 PM (view original):
After reading some of these other strategies, I am already regretting some of my decisions. For example,

70M: Why didn't I take more of the OBP cookies? Many of my hitters are guys I've never used before. What was I thinking?
80M: I'm doomed with barely over 1200 IPs. I should have gone with a 3-man staff of Newhauser (my other choice) and used the extra cap for a real 3B.
90M: Why did I take a modern day team (99 KC)? They have started 0-2. I should've gone with the '09 Cubs.
100M: I still like my 40 Yankees team, but too many folks took the 05 Yankees or 97 Braves. I am more concerned that I didn't even look at the 05 Yankees.
120M: As is the case with most of my teams, I spent zero time thinking about the ballpark which is why there is no mention of any park in my writeup. I just don't feel it makes a huge difference (as long as you don't do something stupid). This would've been a good league to consider it. Heck, I can't even tell you which park my 120M team is playing in.
140M: Addie Joss will be the downfall of this team. Why didn't I take Walter Johnson? Luis Tiant? Really? Was I on drugs too?

I'd like to adjust all my projections downward by 10 wins.

In response to your 140M question (since we can't bold or isolate what we want in the quotes anymore): Yeah, I was wondering that same thing when I read your initial writeup... Tiant? Really?

8/5/2010 8:00 PM

schwarze

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I have no excuse for the Tiant pick. I needed a SP from the 1960's. I almost took Horlen. I never considered Koufax b/c he gives up too many HRs in high cap leagues.

8/5/2010 8:22 PM

ctorkelson

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I never learn from my mistakes, and I often confuse a lucky experience with a valuable lesson. Also, the heavy move into almost exclusively progressives over the last year or so has made me prone to drafting "my guys" from those various teams.

$70M - 6-Man Acoustical Jam (nod to jfranco for a strikingly similar name...are we inspired by the original groove or the Tesla remake? Best to leave that unanswered...)

I've always liked experimenting with long rotations, going back several iterations in the sim, and more recently I've been experimenting with short-IP 6-man rotations (140-150 IP), with varied success. I couldn't use some of my favorite such gems (all under 150IP), but still felt comfortable with the strategy. As in last year's WISC, I abandoned the concept of middle relief, and settled for just two 70IP setup guys (06 Maddux and 03 Hasegawa) with a closer tandem of the great 92 Rasmussen and 95 Birkbeck. It still has about 1225 quality IP, which should be plenty. My 6-man rotation will allow my sub-180IP SPs, all set on a 1-pull setting, to go deep enough to either get the game to my few good pitchers late, or else be far enough behind to let the scrubs come in earlier and eat pointless innings. On offense, I went with speed, mostly because I seem to have had no success at all of late with HR teams. Out of my comfort zone with a speed team, frankly, so despite liking my strange pitching staff, this team worries me.

$80M - Yount & Mussina

Mussina was an easy choice for my pitching clone...he's one of "my guys" from a progressive team, and I knew I could easily find 4 or 5 seasons (I ended up with 4: 92, 95, 97, 98) of consistent value that should perform at this cap. I don't even remember what other pitchers I considered. Mussina is backed by a plus bullpen For my hitter, I knew I wanted a multi-position option, to keep some flexibility at OF, and that I wanted a guy that would help on defense. I looked at Banks, Phillips, Foxx, etc., but my top two choices were Pedro Guerrero (another one of my progressive guys) and Robin Yount. I really, really wanted to go with Pedro, but ended up going Yount for his defense and, oddly, ballpark. County Stadium seems like a good fit not just for Yount, but especially Mussina. I built the rest of the team to match the park, and ended up with a team that has only modest power (solid doubles), good AVG, decent speed, and good defense. In other words, boring as hell. And probably the team I am most interested to see if it works out.

$90M - 1919 Red Sox (+4)

I figured I would not be the only one to take this team, and I was right. But it is interesting to see how the other guys added to the solid core. I started by considering the 02 Rangers (my second choice last year), but I liked them even less this time around. I also considered the 44 Blue Jays, several 1924 options, and a bunch of other teams that might get me 4-5 FAs. I wish I had the guts to take one of the 40s Cubs teams...I was very tempted to get a Cavaretta team going. Once I settled on the Babe Ruth 1919 Red Sox, I knew I wanted Hornsby, and the exising Red Sox OFs (especially with the 1919 Ruth) were good enough to let me take Rogers over Cobb. For my second FA, I wavered between Peckinpaugh and Groh; I needed to upgrade both SS and 3B, but wanted to add two pitchers, too. I ended up going with the defense at SS in Peckinpaugh, and moved the existing Boston SS (Everett Scott) out of position to play 3B. His A fielding should not suffer at 3B, and I'm convinced defense at that position is far FAR less important than at SS. It's a good, versatile offense that will benefit from Fenway. On the pitching side, I added Walter Johnson (of course) and Pete Alexander to join Carl Mays and Herb Pennock. The bullpen is just going to be a weakness, but I have enough IP in the rotation that I'm hoping it will carry me. Surprisingly, I have over 1400 good IP, and a total team WHIP of 1.14. Based on last season's tournament, I think this will again play out like a lower cap that it actually is.

$100M - 1939(+/-3) Yankees

Another popular choice, and an easy one for me. I tried some 1990s Braves teams, the 2002-2005 Yankees, the 1924 Cardinals, and a few deadball options, but once I threw this offense into the draft center, I could not resist. The numbers are insane. I considered bumping it up to the 1940 version, but I just wanted to build around Gehrig's monster '36 season, so there you go. The pitching suffers in comparison to the offense, but I should benefit from being in a pitching park, even at this cap. I am very comfortable with a stud '37 Lefty Gomez as the anchor of my staff. I also get to use the '39 Russo for the first time in probably 3 years. I hope he's still good...

$120M - Asian Land War

Even as I drafted this team, I knew I was committing one of the classic blunders, and named my team accordingly. Specifically, I simply do not have enough IP (only 1394 total, including 27 mopup). I should face capital murder charges for what I am about to do to these poor pitchers. Not that they suck; like most, I went with modern SPs who will normalize well against HRs ('00 Maddux, '05 Santana, '01 Mussina, '00 Pedro), and my non-mopup pitchers tally a sub-1.00 WHIP. I also backed them with a deep bullpen, figuring more arms (7 +1 mopup total) will hopefully counterbalance the lack of total innings. Also, I refuse to acknowledge the dilemma of in-game fatigue; my guys will have stretched IP limits and 1-pull settings, and they will pitch in the blue plenty without any fear. Could get ugly. The offense was not very creative; I chose SBs over HRs, figuring it is easier to suppress power within these theme restrictions than it will be to kill speed. But I didn't go crazy; I still have over 200 HRs, and plenty of 2Bs and 3Bs, to give me a more balanced approach in the end. The OBP is huge on this lineup, and was much more of a consideration in player selection than either HR or SB. I am not sure about my ballpark selection; I took Busch Stadium to suppress HRs, and to increase 3B (not that I have many triples hitters, so it's hard to justify the thinking there). Busch could be an accomplice in the murder of my pitching staff...

$140M - Seize This, Honkus

In every year of this tournament, I have tried to use a Mel Brooks movie reference for the name of one of my high-cap teams. It took me longer to settle on this classic line for my team name than it did to actually build this team (not dumping on the theme, just my own complete lack of confidence at this cap). The only conscious decisions I recall were (1) wanting to be sure to waste massive salary slots on the 1923 Ruth and 1913 Walter Johnson; (2) going with a 1-2-3a-3b rotation, with '08 Joss as the quimby, and the '95 Maddux and '00 Pedro in the 3-holes (and available in relief); (3) get a good Delahanty on the team; and (4) switching out my original middle infield of Biggio/Ozzie Smith at the last second in favor of '96 A-Rod and '85 Herr. I also seem to remember putting some thought into why this team would be a great fit for Jefferson Street Grounds, which is why I cannot possibly explain how it ended up in the Metrodome. This team needs a Miracle. I'm just going to walk around in a circle here for a while...

8/5/2010 11:26 PM (edited)

ronthegenius

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Keeping with the recurring WSOP analogy I guess I'm the Chris Moneymaker of this lot - pudgy, got lucky once, pulled off a massive upset over better opposition to become champion, havent done much since, lives on long-past rep, etc....

....I should also ensure I write these post-draft analysis before the seasons start. Starting 0-3 kills any optimism about any team..

Anyhow, on to the teams:

70m (Low Caps drive me Fricking Bonkers)

For me, these low cap leagues are always the hardest teams to build. This time around I took 4 starters I've used before in higher caps and have a fair amount of confidence in - 85 Reuschel, 88 Ojeda, 98 Leiter, 09 Carpenter. I threw in 95 Brown and, voila, I have a decent five man rotation that shouldn't give up too many homers. However, throw in a middling bullpen and I'm already over 42 mill for pitchers. And thats for only 1300 ip - the lowest I've ever attempted in any league. I know all the real genius' of WIS brag all the time of making competitive teams with 1140 ip, or 1032, or 786 ip - I just can't do that. I start to get cold sweats if I enter a team that has less than 1450 ip. To make the nightmares worse, I was prevented from making the second round of the WISC tourney last year because my 140 mill team was slaughtered with fatigue issues (and they had over 1500 ip). By half way through the season my tired 94 Maddux was throwing as wild as a drunk Chuck Knoblauch and my 1909 Mordecai changed his nickname from 3 Finger to 3 % Brown. Pitcher fatigue wiped out any chances of going from Moneymaker to Johnny Chan.

Anyway, in addition to a lack of innings I was left with less than 28 mill for offence. With a lineup of Kittle, HoJo, Canseco, Kingman, Parrish, etc you can see what I was going for - the league lead in strikeouts. The defence is so bad and the team OBP is so ridiculously low that Vince F&#$9ing Coleman leads the team in OBP by over 40 points and is my centre fielder. Let me repeat that, because I had trouble believing it myself - Vince Coleman is my run-away OBP leader. 6 regulars have a D- range rating - and that's only because WIS hasn't started assigning H, I, or J ratings.

If I win a few games 1-0 on some solo homers I might win 52 games.

80m (3 Phillips is Rixey Business)

I wanted a pitcher that didn't give up too many home runs so I looked at Kevin Brown and Kevin Appier among others. I really, really liked Ed Reulbach but his post 1920 years weren't that good. I ended up settling on 4 seasons of Eppa Rixey with the idea of loading up on homers on offence, throwing the team in a homer friendly stadium, and then relying on Rixey to keep the opposition in the park. Unlike many others (see Shaybee above for example) I've always liked a home run offence and I've used high slugging teams to occasional success.

Cy Williams was, therefore, my first choice for offence clone as 23 Williams has always been a favourite cookie. Three Williams worked OK but I figured out I could get more homers for my money by using the clone to fill out the middle infield positions and bat lead off and then surround him with homer cookies like 23 Williams, 46 Greenberg, 22 Tilly Walker, etc. Tony Phillips worked well in this regard and I'm using him at 2nd, 3rd, and SS and batting 1st, 2nd, and 8th. I'm relying on everyone else to slug 80+ homers to make this team competitive.

Last year, my thinking-out-of-the-box //what-the-hell-was-I-thinking? moment was using the $12.7 mill 1927 Ruth in the 70 mill league. This year it has to be the bull pen for this team. The four Eppa Rixey's mentioned above are the only pitchers on the entire team over $910k. The entire team has a whip that would make the 1930 Phillies proud. And to top it off I'm worried about number of innings and pitcher fatigue with this team as well.

I think it can win at least 63 games because no matter how badly I can screw up a pitching staff 93 Phillips will get on base occasionally with 23 Williams, 46 Greenberg, and the boys knocking him in every now and then.

90m (Nineteen Oh Two Pirates)

In his 90 m commentary, Oli references Schwarze's GM Contraction leagues and I've learned some lessons from there as well. The times I've done well I've taken the best overall team (the 2009 Yankees, the 94 Indians, etc) despite the handicaps they faced in drafting and adding free agents. I tried the 1972 Phillies in the same league and despite being allowed to add the most free agents and having first choice at same they remained putrid. Chicken sh*t is chicken sh*t no matter how much mayonnaise you add to the salad.

Now, there are some major differences between the leagues but it did change my mindset and I started looking at good teams first this year rather than trying to find an awful team I could add a lot of free agents to. I used the 1902 Indians/Blues last year and have good succes with 1902 players in a lot of leagues. Therefore I started with the 1902 Pirates who had a ridiculous winning percentage of .741 which give me as many free agents as a team with a paltry winning percentage 140 points lower.

Chesbro, Phillippe, Leever, Tannehill, and Doheny give me 1401 stellar innings of 1.07 whip, 0.03 hr/9 pitching.   However, can I manage a 5 pitcher staff effectively - probably not, but we'll see.

Wagner, Beaumont, Clarke, etc. gave me a line up with a .300 average and decent defence but can I win without my usual sluggers - probably not, but we'll see.

My only free agent is a sub 5 million shortstop, Bobby Wallace, so this team will live and, likely, die entirely on its own roster.

I was the commisioner of this league so I stayed with my original thought and didn't get to research a lot of other teams. Nevertheless, I'm optimistic with this group and see 71 wins

100m (1909 Cubbies)

This team also went in quickly because I was the commisioner. I looked at the 1940 Yanks but for reasons I can't figure out now I opted instead for the 1909 Cubs. There's lots of good pitching but no dominant bullpen players and a decent offence with a mix of high OBP, and some normalized slugging.

It was the only team I had that started 2-0, as well, so I'm thinking this may be the one that breaks .500 for the year. Of course, imo, this team is in the hardest of all my divisions with perennial Ron killers Whiteslave, sgsmith, & boozerep so I'll still end up fourth in the division

120m (669 Homers & Swipes)

I started with trying to assemble the best possible pitching staff to try and prevent all the unstoppable speedsters in the league from reaching the basepaths in the first place. I ended up having to downgrade 2000 Pedro to 2002 Pedro and make a few other alterations in order to afford a little more offence but its still a solid pitching staff with 64 Koufax, 07 Peavy, 03 Schmidt & 04 Johnson joining Pedro in the rotation and a solid bullpen. As usual I wonder if my 1478 innings will be enough.

On offence I waffled back and forth on going with speedsters or with power. In the end I wimped and went with a little of both. I picked guys who's speed and stolen base percentage make them unstoppable even against good catchers - Maury Wills, Willie Wilson, and Vince Coleman and I picked guys who's normalized homer power make them unstoppable evan against low hr/9 pitchers - Babe Ruth, Cy Williams, and Hank Greenberg. Jack Clements is the catcher and Matt Williams the 3B. Not a lot of OBP and the defence is middle of the road.

Can't see this team losing more then 96 games though

140 m - (From Jocko to Gagne and In Between)

In addition to a stupid name this team has a stupid stadium - wasn't sure what I was thinking when I picked Municipal

Despite that I like this team because I loaded it with players that have starred for me in the past. No new faces here - only proven reliables that have led me to championships in the past, starting, of course, with my main man, Ed Delahanty.   Other Ron reliables include Nap Lajoie, Stan Musial, Jocko Milligan, and Joe Medwick who once had 258 RBIs for one of my 100 million teams - winning the league RBI race by over 100!

On the pitching side I went with my favourites Bill Bernhard, Bob Gibson, Ron Guidry and, who I consider the best starting pitching in the sim, 1994 Maddux. To each their own, but I've never had real success with 95 Maddux or 2000 Pedro so I could not consider them here on a team where I was rewarding past loyalty.

I considered 68 Tiant briefly...but then sobered up and came to my senses.

I think this team has a good chance in leading the league in doubles and possibly average. Will 1624 innings be enough this year?? If it isn't look for Silver King and John Clarkson in the bullpen for next years tourney

I'm hoping for 83 wins with this squad but they've already gone and done the unforgiveable and were swept by schwarze (with his Joss & Tiant of all people) in the opening series

8/5/2010 11:38 PM (edited)

schwarze

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"I considered 68 Tiant briefly...but then sobered up and came to my senses."

8/6/2010 12:17 AM

jfranco77

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Ahhhh ctorkelson, it seems like we really share a brain. I did name my 5-man rotation team after the Tesla album. And I do love the Princess Bride reference. And I really wanted to go 1-2-3a-3b in the decades league, even though I didn't end up doing it. But why oh why couldn't I have used the part of your brain where you picked Robin Yount as your clone? That's a brilliant choice and I have no idea how I missed it.

8/6/2010 7:48 AM

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