70M: Go Cubs Go!
Analysis: I figured I would pick the team where I could get the most bang for my buck for starting pitchers. I just ran a full search on pitchers that I felt had an appropriate number of innings at a reasonable salary and looked at which franchises offered the best options. From there, I would build offenses for the contenders and see which overall team I liked the most. Right out of the gate, I had my two finalists: The Cubs and the Giants. I really liked some of the rotation options from the Giants, as those cookie seasons from Joe McGinnity and Slim Sallee were calling my name. But after looking at my cap appropriate offensive options it was clear the Cubs were my team (Side note, there are way more Giants teams in my league than Cubs teams, so maybe I made the wrong decision?). For my rotation, I am going with my classic tandem style approach and found 6 arms that would pitch the bulk of my innings: ’26 Pete Alexander, ’06 Jack Taylor, ’05 Bob Wicker, ’36 Curt Davis, ’85 Dennis Eckersley, and ’16 Mike Prendergast. None are great, but all should be proficient given the overall lack of offense in lower caps. The bullpen features ’42 Warneke for bulk innings and ’11 Charlie Smith, ’92 Dennis Rasmussen, and ’24 Jesus Tinoco to pitch the leverage innings with a couple scrubs thrown in. The hitting was where I felt like the Cubs outdid the Giants. ’16 Ben Zobrist is automatic at this cap and ’88 Andre Dawson and ’54 Hank Sauer should provide some punch at Wrigley. Contributions from ’08 Ryan Theriot, ’73 Billy Williams, ’47 Bill Nicholson, and the rocket arm of catcher ’68 Randy Hundley should be at least league average.
Fun Fact: I flew out to Chicago and Wrigley Field for the first time this past April and saw a Cubs come from behind victory. I’m no Cubs fan, but it was cool singing Go Cubs Go and teaching my Fiancee about the tradition in real time. Her uncle is a bartender at Wrigley.
This Team Will Be Competitive If: My home run friendly stadium and lineup isn’t killed by dead ball pitching. If we don’t hit the ball over the wall with some consistency, we’re probably in for a long season
Confidence: B+
80M: Warning Track Meet
Analysis: It felt pretty clear there were going to be two clear strategies with this theme: Embrace the home runs or zig while the competition is zagging. I mostly went for the former option, with a couple exceptions. 3 of my favorite power bats are in this lineup in ’33 Babe Ruth, ’15 Gavvy Cravath, and ’46 Hank Greenberg. Putting ’19 Ketel Marte on you 80M team seems wise regardless of theme to generate some offense so I didn’t overthink that. From there I just added some power that I thought would translate well in ’87 HoJo, ’95 Tettleton, and ’17 Mike Zunino. I’m not true to myself if I don’t sneak Mariners legend Mike Zunino onto at least one team in this tourney and here was the obvious fit. For the pitching side of things, I concocted a strategy that I’m confident no one else would think of: Low BB pitchers who limit HRs as much as players could given the parameters. Genius, right? Hopefully the sarcasm comes through. I don’t need to list out all the modern pitchers on my staff, I know you likely looked through most of them yourself.
This Team Will Be Competitive If: I didn’t shoot myself in the foot by not drafting enough HRs. If I’m outslugged and lose a bunch of 9-7 games, we’ll quickly slide to the lower end of the standings.
Confidence: C+
100M: 1909 Cubs- Year 1 of the Curse
Analysis: Due to time constraints, I didn’t try many possibilities on this theme. Looking at who was commonly picked, I’m shocked I didn’t think of the 2021 Dodgers, considering I had 3 Dodger themed teams last year and used the 2021 team for last year’s twist theme. With that said, there are a few early Cubs teams, which is where my research led me (Though I’m using the 1909 Cubs and most others found the 1906 Cubs, did I miss something?). Th easily selling point was the pitching. The 1909 Cubs had great seasons from Mordecai Brown and Orval Overall, with solid bulk innings from Jack Pfiester, Rube Kroh and Irv Higginbotham (great last name). ’05 Ed Reulbach is my third anchor starter that came via the twist. The offense was almost entirely twisted. Good seasons from ’10 Sally Hoffman, ’11 Frank Schulte, ’12 Heinie Zimmerman, ’03 Frank Chance, and ’01 Jimmy Sheckard should put up a reasonable number of runs. The one concerning thing about these old dead ball teams is that I needed a ton of 300K exceptions, so I’m hoping I didn’t throw away good money that the Dodgers team likely didn’t have to. Here is my list of twists:
+1 ’10 Sally Hoffman
+2 ’11 Frank Schulte
+3 ’12 Heine Zimmerman
-4 ’05 Ed Reulbach
+5 ’14 Johnny Evers
-6 ’03 Frank Chance
-7 ’02 Pat Moran
-8 ’01 Jimmy Sheckard
This Team Will Be Competitive If: It can pitch well enough to get past the Dodger teams. Maybe some others I’m not giving enough love to. Either way, we’ll pitch pretty well, but hopefully that wasted money on scrubs doesn’t come back to bite me.
Confidence: B
110M: Tudor’s Down
Analysis: I’m really happy with the way this team came together. I started with the earliest era, thinking this would be the trickiest. I immediately latched on to the ’20-’40 Pirates, as they gave me a high-end starter in ’35 Cy Blanton, a rangy outfielder who can hit in ’21 Max Carey, and 3 leverage relievers in ’24 Babe Adams, ’31 Bill Harris, and ’27 Johnny Miljus. The next era that caught my eye was the ’83-’03 Cardinals. I added ace ’85 John Tudor (see team name), another rangy OF who can hit in super cookie ’90 Willie McGee, a solid DH in ’02 Albert Pujols who can hit the field if needed, and good reliever in ’93 Paul Kilgus, and bench scrub. Still looking for key pieces of my offense, the ’62-’82 Reds felt like a good place to find some talent. I originally had ’61 Frank Robinson as the anchor of the lineup, but it turns out I can’t read and the era actually started in 1962? Why did we do that again? Anyways, in an attempt to play by the rules, I switched to ’68 Pete Rose to give this team some hustle. ’69 Johnny Bench’s arm was welcomed, along with ’74 Joe Morgan, super reliver ’64 Bill Henry, and a good bench bat in ’78 Rick Auerbach. I knew I needed one more big arm starter, and the ’41-’61 Dodgers gave it to me in ’41 Whit Wyatt. I also added his 1941 teammates Dolph Camili and Johnny Allen. ’43 Fritz Ostermeuller can be used out of the bullpen in low leverage spots, and we also added a backup catcher here for low cost. That left the modern era with me needing a left side of the infield and some more leverage innings. I flirted with the Astros, but the Mets fit like a glove here. Another cookie in ’06 Jose Reyes and one of David Wright’s many quality seasons in 2005. ’22 Max Scherzer, ’22 Jacob deGrom and ’20 Erasmo Ramirez add critical bullpen depth
This Team Will Be Competitive If: Whit Wyatt and Cy Blanton are good enough to eat bulk innings at this cap. The bullpen should eat and this offense should be diverse enough to score runs. I just hope I’m not constantly trailing 5-3 while the crowd is singing take me out to the ballgame
Confidence: A
120M: 25 (Players) or 6 to 4 (Salary)
Analysis: This one definitely came together the quickest of any team. From an offense standpoint, it made sense to me (like so many others that have done write ups) that it would be wise not to waste any dollars with this theme. For me, that meant low-inning tandem starters and platoons. My three full-time offense players are ’19 Ketel Marte (The sky is blue too, huh?), ’20 Jose Ramirez, and ’90 Willie McGee. From there I just looked at the best platoon bats that fit the salary cap while also trying to balance the PAs so that the lefties would get a few more. I don’t feel like listing out all the platoon bats and arms because I know we all looked at the same names again here.
This Team Will Be Competitive If: I chose the right platoon partners. Pretty simple on this one. We all have a similar strategy, so I just hope I did it better than most others. Considering my relative lack of experience on this site compared to the titans I’m competing against, I won’t hold my breath.
Confidence: B-
140M: X Marks the Missing Player
Am I the only one who thought this was the toughest build by a mile? Balancing two themes at different caps with the same players and having the letter restrictions made this one a doozy for me. I attempted to build both at the same time and certainly didn’t punt the 80M theme, but I’ll set my expectations to be realistic should I be fortunate enough to make it to the next round. I’d like to say I had a defined strategy here, but I really didn’t. Just started with some anchors that I knew could carry my team at the 140M level and be useful at the 80M level. That got me about halfway through. From there it was a few hours’ worth of plug and play to see which non-scrub players I could get to make sense on both rosters given the letters I had left. Side note, I really wanted like 5 guys with the letter M, who would have thought that letter would be such bag of gold? Here’s what my final roster ended up looking like:
A- Babe Adams
B- Bill Bernhard
C- Gary Carter
D- Sean Doolittle
E- Steve Evans
F- Jimmie Foxx
G- Alfredo Griffin
H- Rogers Hornsby
J- Chipper Jones
K- Harmon Killebrew
L- Graeme Lloyd
M- Greg Maddux
N- Ron Northey
O- Mel Ott
P- Roy Patterson
Q- Kevin Quackenbush
R- Babe Ruth
S- Don Sutton
T- Fred Toney
U- Richard Urena
V- Omar Vizquel
W- Billy Wagner
X- N/A
Y- Kirby Yates
Z- Mike Zunino (Got him in twice!)
This Team Will Be Competitive If: My studs in Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Rogers Hornsby all earn that nice chunk of change they’re making this season. Disappointments form any of these three guys like does us in.
Confidence: C