ROUND 11
Owner________	Prev. Salary___	Player________	Salary_______	New Salary____
reddtrain	38,615,028	17 Verlander	5,485,172	44,100,200
moses_k	44,660,109	76 Dent	3,117,135	47,777,244
cholatse	46,001,799	02 Lofton	5,650,346	51,652,145
Jtpsops	47,599,357	08 Cano	4,335,158	51,934,515
calhoop	45,368,465	02 Loaiza	2,404,537	47,773,002
slainte	49,408,278	15 Mauer	4,023,314	53,431,592
barracuda3	49,888,659	69 Kaline	3,099,879	52,988,538
fatboydad54	53,631,138	04 Loaiza	2,410,839	56,041,977
mllama54	53,188,421	82 Perry	3,846,926	57,035,347
pedrocerrano	54,442,706	15 Hernandez	4,772,326	59,215,032
njbigwig	56,991,680	90 Johnson	5,023,867	62,015,547
schwarze	61,297,379	92 Wickman	916,204	62,213,583

I'll spend $4M on a 2015 Mauer I wont use at all just to get a 28 IP reliever in Kevin Jepsen. That's an expensive RH specialist!
End of the day: Offense $56M with 5700 PA .320/.391/.503. Pitching $50M with 1363 IP - .219 OAV - 1.03 WHIP - 2.06 BB - 0.52 HR/9.
I also have the 92 Unit to throw needed innings. I know his BB are off the chart, but with the OAV at .206 and low HR/9, he may be able to give me some meaningful innings as needed.

Draft recap time for team Donnie Photobomb...

Prologue:
Eager to erase the memory of my recent disastrous 16x16 draft, which produced what might be one of my very worst non-Progressive teams ever, I enthusiastically entered this league. In the post-draft writeup of that 16x16 disaster I noted that the lesson learned was “be flexible.” Did I learn that lesson? Tune in to find out…

Initial Selection – 1985 Don Mattingly, $6.2M
In these types of drafts I like sticking people with high-AB versions of weak-hitting first basemen. I’m not really sure why, but there’s probably a schadenfreudal element there. Somehow getting stuck with $4M of impotent offense at 1B hurts more than getting saddled with $4M of useless shortstop. At least to me it does. So who to choose? Why not take this opportunity to use one of my favorite real-life players, who I almost never use in the sim? Sure, even in his best season he’s not a typical $120M league first sacker; I like power, average and walks from that spot. And I ended up getting it, but not from Donnie (in the literary world this is known as foreshadowing). I decided to take one of his three usable, cost-effective seasons (’86 is a bit overpriced, and all the others except for ’84, ’85 and ’87 aren’t up to snuff IMO) who came along with one of my favorite CF / leadoff men in the sim, .420 OBP#, A++ range, 80/90 SBs Rickey Henderson. And by the way, the photo of barracuda3 as a youngster which inspired my team name, and the accompanying one of Rickey, were taken in…1985. It's almost like I was anticipating this league a third of a century before it happened.


Round 1 – 2010 Felix Hernandez, $8.2M
My modus operandi in these types of drafts tends to be “get the best lineup possible, and fill in the pitching staff with pitchers who are barely worse than the rest of the owners are willing to roster.” To this end it was clear to me that the key offensive player was the 1996 Alex Rodriguez. He provides the most marginal value over what will be the typical starting player at his position in this league. Heck, I thought, some people are going to use Dent as their starter, and there probably ain’t no Mike Torrez in this league for him to homer off of. The 1996 Johnson is a cheap relief-worthy version that saves you from some dogs toward the end of the draft and probably moves you closer to the top of the next round. I knew I had no shot at the ’78 Guidry Dent, who I figured would go first overall (and went second), but I was hoping that somehow the ’96 Unit would drop to me. And he dropped all right, right to the pick before mine. Crapola. So now what to do? At this point it’s clear that the best SS I can get is one of the Jeters, and most of those come with Canos that are good but not great. So do I reach for someone and go down that path, or do I learn the lesson of the previous draft and adjust my strategy to the circumstances? Thankfully I chose the latter. It seemed to me that there wasn’t THAT much elite talent available in this draft, especially at SP, so I went with the best available King Felix season, and one of the few Felixes that came with an elite teammate (Cliff Lee) to boot. And just like that I’m in the uncharted territory of caring about my starting pitching.

Round 2 – 2013 Justin Verlander, $5.0M
I’ll bet a lot of people thought that this was a reach. And maybe it was. Many people seemed be in money-saving mode. Who knows if anyone would’ve been willing to take on $5M in likely wasted salary in the second round for a guy with more useful, and also cheaper, seasons still available? Why was I? Because in my pre-draft research I felt like there wasn’t all THAT much elite talent available in this draft, and I thought this was my last chance to grab two such players in one swell foop. Or fell swoop. Whatever. Scherzer was perhaps the best SP left on the board, and after round two gave me three excellent starting pitchers. And while third base was perhaps the position with the most available talent in the draft, Miggy might be the best of the lot. As for wasting the salary, two points. One, my mantra of “it’s not wasted salary if you use it;” a 3.65 ERC# is pretty rough, but none of the component parts are too awful and I was willing to use Verlander as my 4^th starter if I had to, knowing that my top 3 were stellar and I wouldn’t have to use him in the playoffs if I made it that far. Two, I hadn’t yet projected a full roster but I started to suspect that surpassing the cap wasn’t going to be a very serious issue in this league. The next morning I assembled a very salary-aggressive version of a projected roster (choosing most of the best available starting players and using the 2^nd most expensive useless version of each of the three players I expected to draft toward the end) and found that I had about $8M of wiggle room. Right about that time Jtpsops posted a comment to this effect, but fortunately he agreed to remove it when I pointed out that perhaps not everyone else had figured this out yet.

Round 3 – 2009 Joe Mauer, $8.0M
Emboldened by my recent discovery that the cap probably wouldn’t be a big issue, the race was on to assemble the most talent possible, cost be damned. Mauer clearly had the most marginal offensive value available, and came with a good, albeit homer-prone, relief pitcher in Nathan.

Round 4 – 2009 Robinson Cano, $6.3M
This is the only pick in the draft that I wish I could take back. I don’t think it was a bad pick, but it was sub-optimal. The thought was that I wanted one of the few elite Jeters in my lineup, and I also wanted to start a good Cano at 2B. Between my third and fourth round picks, three good Canos were taken. My initial preference was to draft the 2006 Big Unit, who comes with a similar Jeter and would allow me to pick my preferred Cano later without worrying about whether it came with a good Jeter. But my mini-NYC vacation had already begun, and I didn’t have time to figure out whether I thought a good Cano would drop another round, so I took the sure thing with an OK Robbie along with a nice Jeets. Cano is going to be my #8 hitter so I’m not going to cry about it, but the fact that the far superior (and cheaper) 2013 version dropped all the way to the 9^th round stings a little. OK, a lot more than a little. You might’ve figured out by now that I like my team. I’d like it even more if I had the ’06 Jeter and the ’13 Cano.

Round 5 – 2007 Kenny Lofton, $2.8M
As much as I’m disappointed with my prior pick, I love love love this one. It’s the kind of pick that doesn’t look like much on the surface, but, with apologies to The Dude, really ties the draft together. I really didn’t like many of the Loftons available. Mega-Lofton (1994) was long gone, and while the 1993 Lofton is another of my favorite table-setters in the sim, I already had my CF/leadoff guy. Most of Lofton's other AL seasons aren’t all that great, and a bunch of them cost a lot of money. However, the 2007 Texas partial hits just enough, fields just enough, runs just enough, and has just enough plate appearances to be cost effective as a practically perfect fourth outfielder. And he comes with a cheap, closer-ish Otsuka. Love love love.

Round 6 – 2000 Bob Wickman, $2.4M
First off, I want to profusely and sincerely apologize for delaying the draft for most of that Saturday. It was not my intention. I was on vacation, but that morning I did some research and assembled a list of four players that I was targeting with my pick that day. I promptly forgot to bring that list with me when I left my hotel, but that didn’t end up mattering, because I never had a single solitary thought of this draft from that time until when I was leaving the bar to go back to the room just after midnight, and I had that “oh crap” feeling. It just completely slipped my mind. No excuse, I was wrong, but it was not intentional. My apology in another forum, to some guy who was threatening to kick me out of a league for failing to submit my team within 48 hours of him sending out the league number was less than sincere, but to the people of this league I truly apologize for screwing up the draft. You deserve better.

As for this pick, at this point I had one and a half outfielders on my roster so I went with the exceptional offensive Manny Ramirez that comes with this somewhat useful Wickman version. Lofton has enough PAs to cover for Manny’s 532 in addition to Rickey’s 650. So I had two OF spots filled, and I had an unconventional plan for the other one.

Round 7 – 2000 Esteban Loaiza, $2.0M
This is the decision that will determine whether my team is just OK or really good. I needed an outfielder. I hadn’t drafted my Kaline yet. There were still some pretty good Kaline seasons available. It would’ve been the easiest thing in the world to just take a pretty good Kaline here and spend the rest of the draft working on my bullpen or something. But “pretty good” doesn’t cut it for me, especially in the outfield. The problem: there weren’t many (if any) better than “pretty good” outfielders available. My solution: draft the most dominant offensive player still available, the Y2K Carlos Delgado (through a barely passable Long B version of Loaiza) and play either him or Mattingly (probably Mattingly) in the outfield. I now love my lineup. How much my OF defense suffers remains to be seen.

Round 8 – 1973 Bucky Dent, $0.7M
Remember what I said about not worrying about hitting the cap? Well, a couple of things had changed since then. One was that I wouldn’t be using whatever Kaline I ended up with, and the cheapest few were gone. Another was that I hatched an endgame plan which, if executed perfectly, would allow me to replace (and therefore waste the salary of) Verlander with a legitimate non-bellyitching pitcher. But I sure as all get-out couldn’t do that with a $3M albatross SS. This was the second-cheapest Dent available, but he plays a competent 3B so I don’t have to roster a backup for Miggy, and comes along with a cheap backup C which I’ll need for Mauer. All without making a big…DENT…in my available salary. See what I did there?

Round 9 – 1989 Randy Johnson, $2.7M
One of the #4 starters that I considered was the 1990 Erik Hanson, who would come with a $5M Johnson, which sounds like something out of Boogie Nights. But when the cheaper 1989 Unit was still available I took him here, as he includes either a partial season or full season Langston, the former of which is a solid reliever while the latter would still be an improvement on my Verlander. Flexibility is good, even if it wasn’t needed.

Round 10 – 1977 Gaylord Perry, $5.5M
Am I the only one who, upon seeing the name Perry, immediately thinks “the platypus?” Anyway, I’m surprised that this Perry lasted this long. Not only does he have multiple useful offensive teammates, but more importantly he has a Blyleven teammate who will probably be one of the better #4 starters in this league. And Agent P himself can get some guys out in a long relief role.

Round 11 – 1969 Al Kaline, $3.1M
I left enough cap space to be able to afford either of the two cheapest remaining Kalines, but I’m glad I ended up with the one who can play the outfield and hit a little, rather than the DH-only who can’t hit. He comes with a Gates Brown who can presumably play the OF a little better than Mattingly can.

Epilog
I like this team. This is by far my best starting staff ever in a league like this, and I like my lineup quite a bit. Power is going to play in this league and my team has it. My bullpen is a little weak and my bench outside of Lofton and Kaline is bad, but I only wasted around $12M in salary so I’m pretty pleased.

Projected lineup (arranged due to plate appearance preservation rather than quality) and pitching staff:

			B	PA/162	AVG#	OBP#	SLG#
CF	Henderson, Rickey	1985 New York Yankees	R	659	.315	.420	.503
SS	Jeter, Derek	2009 New York Yankees	R	716	.332	.402	.442
"RF"	Mattingly, Don	1985 New York Yankees	L	732	.324	.372	.555
1B	Delgado, Carlos	2000 Toronto Blue Jays	L	711	.337	.459	.635
LF	Ramirez, Manny	2000 Cleveland Indians	R	532	.343	.446	.670
3B	Cabrera, Miguel	2013 Detroit Tigers	R	652	.352	.447	.625
C	Mauer, Joe	2009 Minnesota Twins	L	602	.363	.440	.564
2B	Cano, Robinson	2009 New York Yankees	L	674	.318	.348	.496

	Team	T	IP/162	ERC#
Hernandez, Felix	2010 Seattle Mariners	R	250	2.34
Lee, Cliff	2010 Seattle Mariners	L	212	2.25
Scherzer, Max	2013 Detroit Tigers	R	214	2.05
Blyleven, Bert	1977 Texas Rangers	R	235	2.45
Otsuka, Akinori	2007 Texas Rangers	R	32	1.78
Nathan, Joe	2009 Minnesota Twins	R	68	1.74
Wickman, Bob	2000 Cleveland Indians	R	73	2.53
Langston, Mark	1989 Seattle Mariners	L	74	2.44
Perry, Gaylord	1977 Texas Rangers	R	238	3.37

The 1972 Indians might be the sorriest offensive team in modern history. Not a single player has an OBP over ..333 or a SLG over .400. They have only one $4 million dollar offensive player and that's only because of his defense (Nettles .253, .325, .395 B/A at $4.87M).

Why the hell did I nominate '72 Perry again?

I picked Loaiza because 80% of his seasons are wasted money. I thought I was being clever. Then I ended up with '91 Randy Johnson and now I'm sad. Clearly I was outdone on the "screw your neighbour" nomination approach.

That’s a ferocious offense cuda!

Posted by slainte on 2/5/2019 4:09:00 PM (view original):
That’s a ferocious offense cuda!

Thanks. Just please don't hit it to right field.

Looks like I may have screwed myself due to limited number of pitching slots in the draftcenter. I drafted 5 unusable pitchers (which I knew I was doing) to get teammates, but now I'm short one slot for all the teammates I want to include. I'll never understand why we're limited to drafting only 13 pitchers, but can draft 19 hitters if we want to.

I really messed this draft up. Being in both leagues was fun, but it reduced the amount of research time I spent on both teams, and I was all over the board with my draft strategy, often forgetting what my plan was or changing my mind after each pick. Unfortunately, I don't really remember all the details with every pick. Note to self... just do one team next time I run a 12x12.

My initial nomination of Gaylord Perry (356 ip, 0.98 whip) was a sentimental pick as his 1972 season does very well for me. I knew he had some other mediocre expensive seasons people would have to use. I didn't even consider the fact I am already behind the field due to no good teammate option in 1972. (I used some <300K scrub for his teammate)

Since I was picking last, and expected to pick last every round, I was going to draft the best seasons of players as frequently as possible and use teammates to fill the gaps (like relief pitcher, 3B, OF). So my first pick was 1993 Randy Johnson (256 ip, 1.11 whip) and he brought along a great teammate in Ken Griffey Jr. (.309, .408, .617).

I was happy to get 2016 Justin Verlander (228 ip, 1.00 whip) in round 2 considering he was a potential round 1 pick for me. He brings along a strong Miguel Cabrera at 1b (.316, .393, .563)

All the good Mauer catcher seasons went before my next pick, so I reached a little early for 2007 Robinson Cano (.306, .353, .488) because he brought Jorge Posada (.338, .426, .543) and a stud $8M season of 3B Alex Rodriguez (.314, .422, .645) It's not one of Cano's best hitting seasons, but he is usable. The problem is that I shut myself out of any good Jeter seasons. And shortstop would end up being a problem for me.

With Gaylord, RJ and Verlander, I only needed about 160 innings left at SP. The top guy on the list was a teammate of 1966 Al Kaline (.288, .392, .534) so I was happy to add Earl Wilson (164 ip, 1.00 whip) to my starting rotation.

In round 5, 1993 Kenny Lofton (.324, .408, .408) was still sitting there so I jumped on him. I realize he doesn't have any great teammates, so I would add a pinch hitter. At the end of the draft, I had enough salary left to add a full-time player 2B Carlos Baerga (.321, .355, .486). I am cosindering playing Cano or Baerga at SS.

Posada is short on plate appearances and I quickly realized there was only one Mauer partial season as a catcher left so I grabbed 2011 Joe Mauer (.387, .360, .368). Didn't want to waste a teammate on a backup catcher. He brings along a great pinch hitter and backup OF, Chris Parmelee (.355, .443, .592).

At this point in the draft, I thought salary would be an issue due to my expensive teammates, I didn't want to get stuck with an unusable expense Felix season, so I selected $1.5M 2017 Felix Hernandez. He comes with a decent reliever, Steve Cishek (45 ip, 0.90 whip).

I finally realized that I wasn't going to get a very good shortstop. There were some ok Vizquel seasons still available, but not that much better than Dent's best year, so I grabbed 1975 Bucky Dent (.261, .301, .341, A/B). And more importantly, I needed a big inning reliever, so this pick was really for Rich Gossage (143 ip, 1.19 whip, 0.19 hr/9).

My last three picks was all about what teammates I could get. I needed RPs. 1991 Don Mattingly brings along John Habyan (90 ip, 1.03 whip). 2001 Esteban Loaiza brings along Roy Halladay (142 ip, 1.16 whip, 0.26 hr/9). And finally, 1992 Bob Wickman brings along Steve Farr (52 ip, 1.02 whip)

If I play both Baerga and Cano (and only use Dent as a def replacement), my effective salary is $103.5 million.

Hitting: .315 avg, .395 obp, .536 slugging, $54.6 million
Pitching: 1439 IP, 1.05 whip, .208 oav, 0.62 hr/9, $48.9 million

I don't expect a lot from this team. Probably win about 78-80 games.

I've asked Doctorkz to randomly sort the 12 teams in this league. He will post here.

List Randomizer

There were 12 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. moses_k
2. cholatse
3. calhoop
4. slainte
5. schwarze
6. njbigwig
7. barracuda3
8. reddtrain
9. Jtpsops
10. mllama54
11. pedrocerrano
12. fatboydad54

IP: 2600:6c40:6300:379:9d0f:4f6b:d195:9c53
Timestamp: 2019-02-12 22:04:52 UTC