Team Building Process - After the fact comments - Page 3 - WIS Championship

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darthaudible

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Posted by cubbies84 on 8/2/2011 8:51:00 PM (view original):
$70mil
i thought about using an 80's Astros team but darthaudible had to be a jerk to me and take them, so then for some lazy reason i focused on 2010, i looked at the Rangers, Phillies, Mariners and Cardinals....I settled on the cardinals because I thouroughly hate them and i hate the $70 mil cap so i figured it was a perfect marriage, we'll see if carpenter whines about the shiny baseballs or not.....

$80mil decided i would be using enough deadballers in the other themes so i decided to go with 60's pitching with terrible tom seaver and sir walks alot joe horlon, never used sonny siebert before so that should interesting.....decided to go super cookie with my 80's hitting with raines, dilone etc, figuring the astrodome should be the perfect place for this mismatched crew.

$90mil im all about defense, i usually go as high as c- for most of my usual choices, so this was definitely a newer search for me.....went with joss ol pete and hendrix on the mound, and splurged on a high walk rickey henderson, chose petco cause it seemed like an absurd choice to try and have 19 inning 0-0 games, should be fun!

$100mil seemed like all the deadballer superstars had lousy hitting teammates, dutch leonard was my only oldie so i could get high innings in the bullpen with mays and shore, thought about 85 tudor and 86 clemens but decided against it...chose 34 mel harder (this is gonna cost me) 43 mort cooper whos not terrible and got me a cheap 3b and ended with 96 kevin brown who got me a cheap helling and rob nenn...dont hate it, dont love it....

$110mil came down to speaker and collins for me as well, seemed like a no brainer-- went with 1915 speaker which opened up the goodie room, we'll see how they hold in fenway park

$120mil definitely dont have enough innings, this one will cost me for sure....got the old timey pete joss and ciccotte, thin bullpen UGLY......went to PNC which shouldnt do me any favors, but my team didnt have any real HR power with underperforming hornsby and schlubs like piazza and chuck klein anyway, hoping guys like medwick hit enough doubles to keep me in some games....

a real learning experience this season, i get lazy in my selections which will cost me in the end.

Crying about me taking the 80 Astros?? Looks like you have already taken after your Cards team.

8/3/2011 8:43 AM

Jtpsops

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I can't believe all the guys shorting on innings in the $120mil league. I'm not sure if I drafted too many, or if I should feel better that everyone else will be battling fatigue and I won't.

8/3/2011 10:48 AM

toddcommish

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I'm definitely feeling better about the twist team, especially after seeing how many other people like the 2005 Yankees. The funny thing about that team is that I've already seen three different guys twisted off of it. However, I'm the only person stupid/naive/brilliant enough to pull Al Leiter out of them.

8/3/2011 12:00 PM

ballantine

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Another interesting option for the 2005 Yanks was the 1995 Indians as someone twisted back to them. Could have built an awesome lineup with guys like Belle, Ramirez, Giles, Thome added to all those Yankee hitters. However, only good pitcher was Hershiser so you would be stuck using Mussina or Denis Martinez as the 4th starter. Braves seemed the safer option but it will be interesting to see if anybody tried the indians.

8/3/2011 12:19 PM

schwarze

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We're all looking forward to your writeup ballantine...

8/3/2011 12:22 PM

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shaybee

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Normally I’d start this off by apologizing for being long-winded, but I won’t bother this time around. This is probably going to be long, so feel free to skip over it. Overall I really like the WISC and think Schwarze does a fantastic job of organizing, planning, executing, and analyzing this thing for about 6 months every year – as always, many thanks again this year.

For all my teams in this tournament, I tend to first focus on determining the right number of IP for each theme, taking into account the various key factors (DH, ballpark selection, fielding, etc.) After that, it’s all about bang for the buck, for both pitching and hitting. At times that means taking the players who are thought of as “cookies” more often that I might normally like, but they’re cookies for a reason (usually). So, as a result, you’ll probably see plenty of familiar names mentioned below. Also, I have a model that I’ve tinkered with over the years that attempts to combine hitting with fielding to spit out a “true” RC/$ (and RC/162/$) number for hitters, and something similar for pitchers as well – hopefully it helps here. Without further delay, here goes:

$70MM – I really enjoy playing leagues with caps under $80MM, and wish we’d have more in this event. That said, I certainly understand how that might severely limit some of the supremely creative (and frequently frustrating) themes that are always part of this. For this team, like many others have posted, I focused pretty much exclusively on teams from 1980-2010 with only a token look at a few decades before that (though I’m not kicking myself for not taking a hard look at those ’09 Tigers!)

I wanted to find a franchise that would get me as close to the $35MM requirement as possible at first (I failed on that count), but also provided me with strong pitching and maybe a token hitter or two, while also possibly squeezing in a high value regular or two. I also was hoping to go with some team speed and a pitcher friendly park for this team. In the end, I narrowed it down to two ideas, the 81 Astros, and the 89 Mets. Both got me a lot of what I wanted, but in the end, the Astros pitching won out, mostly because I couldn’t bear the HR/9 of some of the Mets pitching. I’m not using Ryan, but Niekro, Sutton, and Knepper should be OK at this cap, especially in the Eighth Wonder of the World. My lineup includes the ever popular Tim Raines, but also an infield that looks pretty suspect on paper in Mike Hargrove, an aging Joe Morgan, Craig Reynolds, and Hubie Brooks. Not a lot of slick fielders there.

$80MM – I didn’t look at any decade other than the 1900s for pitching, and ended up with what should be a pretty familiar group (Joss, Young, Summers, etc.) For hitting, like a lot of others, I focused on modern decades, and actually built teams with 80s, 90s, and 00s lineups that were very, very similar in stat lines. As above, I wanted speed and a pitcher friendly park, and found that the 80s just worked that angle the best. My lineup includes Raines (again), Dilone, Hojo, Alomar, and Coleman, so this team has a pretty “Open League” feel to it I guess. I figured a lot of people would be building similar teams around SBs, so I just looked for the catcher with the highest CS% I could stomach and settled on Bob Boone. He won’t hit a lick, but maybe he’ll make up for that with his arm.

$90MM – Fielding is really expensive. I just could not find a lot of “value” in this theme, but then again, I wasn’t smart enough to figure out the whole catcher arm loophole, which will no doubt doom this team. I wanted to squeeze as much money into the lineup as I could, and ended up with a pitching staff salary of $45,000,152 as a result (and I had to use a scrub at $206k to even make that happen!) My staff is eerily similar to that of my $80MM team, with a bit more focus on very low BB pitchers in the bullpen (Yay – Johnny Podgajny!).

My model, though still very much a work in progress, values fielding and range differently by position, so I used that to help me with my hitters. Once again Tim Raines makes an appearance, but not the same 81 season as in the above teams. Teixeira provides the only semblance of power, and the rest of my lineup seemed to stray toward triples, so I put this team in Comerica to hopefully accentuate that idea. I thought there would be a decent number of SB type teams, so I have the 75 Gary Carter behind the plate.

$100MM – This was a very enjoyable team to put together. So many moving pieces and frustrating outcomes – a stroke of brilliance by Schwarze here! Despite learning the hard way over the years more often than not, pitching seems to win in WIS just like in real life, so I set out to find four solid starters rather than skimp on the back end of my rotation. Finding a catcher and a shortstop proved to be difficult (as others have noted), so when I started trying to put the pieces together, I was often left with crumbs for those two positions. I built a list of SPs and their teammates and tried a number of permutations before settling on my team.

From the start, I really liked the ’03 Joss, since Lajoie and Bradley are both useful, and Glendon is a decent low IP arm that comes in at just over the $1MM minimum. Sure the '03‘Joss isn’t as good as ’08, but hopefully he should do an OK job. The ’24 Vance seems to be good value, and brings with him Fournier, Wheat, and Andy High (who can play the hard to find SS position – not well, but he can play there). The ’14 Dutch Leonard is tough, and Shore and Coumbe are competent bullpen adds. Finding room for Speaker’s salary was hard, but manageable. I filled out the rotation with ’03 Pedro since I didn’t need many more IP. He also brings Manny to the table, as well as Varitek, who I took mostly because I had to eat a lot of salary with Speaker.

I tried to work a number of other pitchers that many others have mentioned (Grove, Santana, Maddux, etc.) but liked how this team’s pitching came together in the end (notwithstanding the fact that Byung-Hyun Kim is on the squad!). Again, great theme…

$110MM – I had this theme narrowed down to three options pretty quickly, all of which I’m fairly sure will be pretty popular choices (Collins, Speaker, and Ruth), so I built the three teams then ignored this one for a while. When I had time to come back to it, I figured I should take one last look at a few other options, and in so doing, found one I liked even better (though based on the amount of Collins and Speaker write ups, I’m probably dead wrong.)

I settled on the 1910 Lajoie with the 1896 Phillies. Not having Ruth and/or Foxx & Gehrig is probably a mistake, but sound pitching and ballpark choice can go a long way to neutralize HR power to a certain extent (that’s my excuse, and I’ll stick with it for now.) I didn’t like the idea of Dykes at SS on the Speaker team (though using Bishop there may be a stroke of genius), and wasn’t too enamored with the bullpen on the Ruth team. I probably missed some obvious choices, but the Collins team I built only had 6 quality pitchers, and at some point in a tournament past I tried a team like that and failed miserably.

As it is, my team only has seven usable pitchers, and I may end up being short on IP. I am pretty pleased with my lineup, with Terry Turner being the obvious weak link. Playing in League Park will hopefully also highlight the lineup’s strengths, but I think those Collins and Speaker teams will be very tough…

$120MM – Another interesting theme, albeit with a more limited set of options than the $110MM one. I’m very concerned with the amount of IP I ended up with, and think that’ll probably be my downfall. Like many others, I went with plenty of familiar names (Joss, Cicotte, Bernard, Nehf, etc.) with a focus on lower OAVs than I normally would have. My .400 hitters are Thompson and Delahanty, and my .350 guys are Anson, Grimes (who’ll probably look like Buddy Biancalana in this league!), Boggs, Donlin (at DH), and Wagner. Yeah, that’s right, I read the rules wrong and though I needed an additional five hitters above .350. I should probably re-name my team to represent my own mental shortcomings. Perhaps ironically, Wagner is also my highest salaried hitter. Bah, I think this team will struggle mightily.

If you’ve read the above book cover to cover, I owe you a beer for your time. Good luck to everyone.

8/3/2011 3:15 PM

bardin

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70mil: Atlanta Braves ’97 (plus some help)

My research for this league guided me towards pitchers who had WHIPs in the 1.10s or so, which seemed reasonable and towards hitters who had mediocre (but not horrible) defense, who were bargains, and both of these paths dovetailed to… the 1997 Braves. This team has Blauser at SS, McGriff at 1B, and Chipper at 3B who fit this description to a T. They also have Smoltz, Glavine, and Neagle as SP who are about at the level I wanted (although it was a shame I had to ignore the ’97 Maddux).

And then, 1997 also had a good bargain year of Damion Easley at 2B, Todd Hundley at C, and probably my favorite: Jay Buhner in the OF. It was pretty clear that this seemed to be the makings of a pretty good team, so I went with it and completed the team… and then set about to try making a better team somehow. I saved this team for last so I had time… but I just couldn’t find a team that I liked any better… not even close. That’s not to say I particularly like this team very much, but I just couldn’t make one any better so I’m going with it. One thing I do like about this team is that they seem to have more power than one would expect for this level. Also, Turner field will protect my pitchers a bit with only a very small sacrifice to the power.

Hitting: 5103 PAs, .276 avg, .369 obp, .471 slg (includes < 300K scrubs)

Pitching: 1375 IPs, 3.44 era, 1.21 whip, .245 oav (includes mopup)

80mil: 1910s Hitters, 2000s Pitchers

It seemed pretty clear to me that, based on normalization values and such, that the 2000 pitchers were the best deal at this level. I just didn’t like the normalization numbers of the deadball pitchers that I felt I could afford at this level. So, I went with the Halladays and Carpenters and hope it will be good enough. I really didn’t spend much time on the pitching after making that decision.

As for the hitters, I *loved* the normalization values for the 10s hitters. Some of my favorite “cookies” at this salary level are from that era. I also figured I could concentrate on triples and pick a park that depresses homers. So… that’s what I did. Pretty basic team (I probably spent the least amount of time building this team). I frankly have no idea what to expect for this team.

Note: After reading some other comments, I now have an expectation for this team: pure suckitude. I’m sure I’ll be shocked to see how good the pitching staffs are for those deadballer pitching staffs. I think I was completely wrong about the 2000s pitchers being the best value at this level. I can only hope that normalization saves me somehow.

Hitting: 5301 PAs, .310 avg, .378 obp, .448 slg (includes < 300K scrubs)
Pitching: 1382 IPs, 2.94 era, 1.10 whip, .238 oav (includes mopup pitchers)

90mil: O Dog, Dots, and Duke

I had to build this team first because I was one of the league commissioners. I tried to pick hitters who had some power, including doubles power. The pitchers I chose were probably typical of other team’s choices, including the ’08 Joss. Nothing to see here, it will all come down to day-by-day management (which means I’m in trouble). I also appeared to pick a few more innings than many others; I’m expecting this league to be a bit more of a hitters league than what others are expecting (and hopefully I’m right).

Hitting: 5518 PAs, .266 avg, .349 obp, .427 slg (includes < 300K scrubs)

Pitching: 1417 IPs, 2.12 era, 0.95whip, .219 oav (includes mopup pitchers)

100mil: Grove, Lee, Vance, and Key

The good news: my team name rhymes. The bads news: I think I’m in trouble. Rather than picking 2 excellent and 2 mediocre starts, I decided to go with 4 starters of about the same quality. That will definitely be a big disadvantage come playoff time… if I make the playoffs, which is looking to be a rather dicey proposition.

My first choice was easy: Lefty Grove ’31. He normalizes well and provides a good bevy of teammates. I chose Cochrane, Bishop, and Foxx (C, 2B, and 3B). Next up: Dazzy Vance ’24, another nice normalization cookie, and he provided Jack Fournier and Zack Wheat as teammates (1B and OF) and threw in a decent reliever in Ehrhardt. Following that, I wanted to get a pitcher who had some stud relievers as teammates and the Lee ’10 with the Rangers got me two, Feliz and Day, plus another great OF in Josh Hamilton. I finally rounded out the team with the ’87 Jimmy Key, who provided my SS Tony Fernandez, my last OF George Bell and another good reliever in Henke. I had also considered Joe Horlen ’64 to try and get the Wilhelm/Fisher relievers, but it didn’t work out, so I went with this squad. But others have Dutch Leonard as their pitcher? Or better than that? Well… then I’m screwed. I am curious to see what those teams with those awesome pitchers look like, however. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised (but probably not). Again, I think this will be more of a hitters league than expected, so I have more innings than most.

Hitting: 5427 PAs, .323 avg, .396 obp, .522 slg (includes < 300K scrubs)

Pitching: 1548 IPs, 2.53 era, 1.04 whip, .224 oav (includes mopup pitchers)

110mil: EddieCollins ‘15 (with help from ’28)

See my arrogant comments on this team in an earlier post. However, after reading previous comments, I must mention that 1). The 2005 Yanks coupled with the 1995 Braves was probably a very good choice too, 2). Alleyviper also is going with my choice, meaning the top two owners from last year’s tournament (rbow and alleyviper) agree with my choice (so that’s encouraging), and 3). I should have considered using Maxie Bishop as a shortstop, although the defense will probably be a wash with Dykes anyway, but who knows.

120mil: I will *not* call this team “EachHit”

I spent a lot more time on this team than I expected to, considering schwarze had rated it “easy”. After reading the comments, it appears I went against the grain on nearly every point raised.

First, I tried to build what I thought was an appropriate pitching staff for 120mil. I thought I could do it for less than 60mil because I did feel that I needed to spend more on hitting. So, I didn’t bother with Addie Joss, but I feel my pitching staff is plenty good enough. I also absolutely felt I needed to get 1600 innings. This is going to be a hitters league overall, mainly because of the parks allowed.

Second, I absolutely believed that I needed really good range up the middle to counteract all the hits, so my 2B, SS, and CF all have great range numbers, some of them A++ level.

Third, I felt that I could find really good bargains at 1B and DH and I wanted to spend my money on the places where it would help me the most in the field. It seems I went the exact opposite than many others in this respect.

And fourth, I decided that I should have at least a little bit of power, since I figured *everyone* would probably focus on low homer teams, and quite of few of the other owners have done exactly that. I figured the value of a homer would be even higher in this sort of league, but I also knew I couldn’t tailor my team to the homer either. I just wanted a small bit more power than other teams, that’s all.

I decided to go with the .400 hitting Hughie Jennings, first of all, because of his range, and I felt, as long as I have to get a .400 hitter, I want one that will *really* help me. Hughie fits in as a great range SS and leadoff hitter. I went with Cupid Childs at 2B, also for his range, and Tris Speaker in CF for the same reason.

My other .400 hitter, I decided to go with Heilman for his combination of good power, ok defense, and good normalization value. I liked the value of Ted Williams as another OF. At 1B, I went with one of my favorite cookies John Kruk. At DH, I thought Edgar Martinez would fit in just fine, for a good price, and at C, the ’70 Dick Deitz is a bargain. Wade Boggs at 3B completes my team.

I don’t know what to expect, but usually, going against the grain is not good. We’ll see…

Hitting: 6138 PAs, .354 avg, .454 obp, .516 slg (includes < 300K scrubs)

Pitching: 1601 IPs, 2.06 era, 0.99 whip, .220 oav (includes mopup pitchers)

8/3/2011 3:27 PM (edited)

mildnhazy

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70MIL – I usually don’t have fun creating the lower cap teams so I wanted to get this one out of the way first. I started by doing a scan of single season teams that might have 2 or more SPs that were good value for this cap. I went with a short list of about 20 of them and tried to build teams. The only two teams I actually liked were the 1986 Cards (not ’85) and the 2005 Indians. I thought for sure I’d go with the Cards because I wanted a speed heavy team and they fit the bill. Then at the last moment I decided to go with the Indians team for reasons that escape me now. Aside from some potential fatigue issues at the higher caps this is the team that scares me the most. It is a team that is built on the homerun yet we play in a negative homer park. Thankfully it looks like there aren’t a lot of deadball teams in my league or we would be toast.

Hitting stat line (excluding all backups)
4915 PA, .282 AVG, .368 OBP, .484 SLG, $35.5 million

Pitching (excluding <300K)
1288IP, 3.10 ERA, .243 OAV, 1.18 WHIP, 0.76 HR/9, $33.35 million

80MIL – Like many I quickly gravitated to the deadball era for pitchers due to what seems like tremendous value there for RL stats. I wasn’t smart enough to think about the complex (convoluted?) pitcher era vs batter era affecting the defence of my own players (or whatever it is). I went with the aughts over the teens because I felt the value was better for the SPs of that decade – even though the RPs are certainly thin. I like to have a balanced pitching staff so I didn’t go with any of the top tier pitchers but still managed to get a seemingly dominant staff – I just hope I have enough innings. I chose the Oakland Coliseum to help in this matter and it would pair well with my plan to have ’80 hitters and their speed. I almost took a power team from the 40’s and 90’s but figured there was no sense given the amount of deadball pitching teams likely to be used. I have Porter behind the plate to cut down on opposing speed teams. I have Molitor, Raines, Smith, Dilone and Gibson adding SBs with ’84 Mattingly batting cleanup. I don’t often get to use players from the 80’s which is my fave decade so this team will be a fun one for me to follow.

Hitting stat line (excluding <300K players)
5121 PA, .297 AVG, .370 OBP, .429 SLG, B-/C+ fielding, $39.2 million

Pitching stat line (excluding <300K)
1270 IP, 1.52 ERA, .214 OAV, 0.95 WHIP, 0.08 HR/9, $39.0 million

90MIL – This was my least favourite of the themes. I usually like to have fun putting together my lineup and the restrictions here took a lot of that away. I started with my pitching staff. I knew I wanted to put a premium on pitchers who had very low bb/9#. I didn’t care as much about oavg given the defence my team would have. I actually did care about my hr/9 despite what most on here have already said. I figured that people would select hitters with pop to negate some of the defence. ’08 Joss and ’08 Brown anchor my staff with ’04 Noodles Hahn as my 3rd starter. After that I have a lot of low IP, low walk relievers – Podgajny, Wiltse, Winter, Ferrick, etc.... I have 1332 quality innings and probably don’t need that much in retrospect. For my hitters I tried to get some power, speed and walks to combat the defence but found it very difficult given the restrictions. So I have a couple speed guys in Raines and Rollins, some pop with Bonura and Doby and 550+ walks. I made sure not to grab high pa/162 guys since I wouldn’t need them and didn’t want to pay for them. Also for my A+ range guys I made sure to get upper tier A+ range. I don’t think it costs more and if it doesn’t there is obvious hidden value there. Not sure what to make of this team. I think it will depend on whether this combo of hitters was the right move – I kinda wish I went with some good hitting pitchers (like Caruthers) as others smartly did. Hopefully my pitching staff makes up for that miscue.

Hitting stat line (excluding <300K players)
4874 PA, .280 AVG, .370 OBP, .440 SLG, A-/A fielding, $44.0 million

Pitching stat line (excluding <300K)
1332 IP, 1.75 ERA, .216 OAV, 0.91 WHIP, 0.09 HR/9, $44.7 million

100MIL – a truly fun team to put together. Like others, I enjoyed the puzzle aspect of this. I developed a short list of pitchers I would like for this cap with at least 3 useable teammates. Then I mixed and matched until I came up with the team I liked best. I tried desperately to get Grove and his excellent teammates on a team but couldn’t get it to work and his RL stats scared me off a bit. I decided to make ’15 Pete Alexander the core of my team using Luderus, Cravath and McQuillan as teammates figuring Alexander would be dominant at this cap. ’85 Tudor filled some key holes at SS and 2B. I went with ’37 Gomez to get a great catcher in Dickey and a solid OF platoon of Selkirk and Henrich. I rounded out the team with ’91 Clemens to get a cheaper Boggs and a great pinch hitter/OF in Plantier. I tried about 30 different combinations but just couldn’t find a team that fit as well as this. My only concern is that I have only 6 non-mop-up pitchers to work with. We have 1370 innings but it will take some very hands-on management to avoid fatigue.

Hitting stat line (excluding <300K players)
5241 PA, .316 AVG, .393 OBP, .486 SLG, B-/B- fielding, $48.8 million

Pitching stat line (excluding <300K)
1371 IP, 1.98 ERA, .210 OAV, 0.98 WHIP, 0.34 HR/9, $48.9 million

110MIL – another theme I really enjoyed. I knew right away that I would take a player who spanned the deadball and 20/30’s eras. I also knew that I would likely end up with Collins. I have put that ’28 Philly A’s team to good use before in one of these tourneys. I started with Collins but I couldn’t get the ’15 Whitesox team to work like others did – I have had terrible experience with Reb Russell and didn’t like the pitching after Walsh and Cicotte. So I looked at the 1912 Philly A’s for Coveleski, Bender, Plank, etc... I was left with this choice and a Speaker team with Collins playing out of position at SS but with a pitching staff I liked a bit more than the Collins team. Since I couldn’t make a decision I decided to keep looking. For some reason it took me a lot of time to try him but I finally decided to see if Lajoie would work. His ’10 team seemed obvious for use with Joss, Young and Jackson and from there it was just a matter of finding an 1890’s team that filled enough holes. Sure enough 1896 did everything I hoped for. It gave me a big chunk of innings with Jack Taylor and all the hitting I would need. I have a platoon of Jack Clements and Nig Clarke, Brouthers , Lajoie, Peckinpaugh and Cross in the IF and a devastating OF of Delahanty, Thompson and Jackson. My staff is led by the big inning Cy Young and Joss. I should have more than enough innings in theory with 1450 but I only have 5 non-mop-up pitchers. If I can somehow figure out a way to make that work this team will be very solid. We are playing in League Park (II) just to make things more interesting. (**Note - just noticed that Shaybee put up his post just before mine and picked Lajoie too - nice pick dude! - will be interesting to see how our teams compare)

Hitting stat line (excluding <300K players)
5312 PA, .363 AVG, .435 OBP, .524 SLG, C+/C fielding, $57.8 million

Pitching stat line (excluding <300K)
1453 IP, 1.48 ERA, .215 OAV, 0.95 WHIP, 0.08 HR/9, $49.7 million

120MIL – I like high caps and this one was pretty fun to put together. The hardest part for me was figuring out how many innings I would need. I honestly still have no idea. I have 1536 non-mop-up IPs and I am concerned – all these hitting parks are scary. I know that extreme fatigue issues with one team can derail your entire WISC, although I am slightly comforted by the fact that it looks like some people took less innings (also some people took a lot more so.......). I revised my staff again and again, lowering quality at the expense of adding more innings, I finally put an end to it and decided on ’10 Walsh, ’08 Joss and ’05 Reulbach (at the expense of ’68 Gibson who I have still never used) to lead the charge. After that I have the usual quality relievers you would expect at this cap keeping oavg as the priority. For hitting I knew I wanted to get walks and extra base hits where possible given the restrictions and parks in play. I got the dirt cheap ’97 John McGraw to DH for me with a .471 obp. Ideally he would lead off for me but now that I think about it I doubt he can with only 632 pa/162 in this type of league. Anyway – from there it was deciding on my .400 hitters and I decided on two of the cheaper ones to maintain some semblance of balance with the rest of my lineup. I took ’94 Thompson and ’22 Cobb who seems like a good play with good XBH and decent D. I got my go to Boggs at 3B (’83 version), Carew at 2b and someone named Herman Long playing SS (good XBHs). To make things more fun for me to follow I get to use two of my fave players in ’57 Musial and ’29 Klein – both of whom usually disappoint me. I wanted some pop in the event that people took the + homer parks. I did not – I took American League park as I felt it was the park that would most help my staff.

Hitting stat line (excluding <300K players)
57351 PA, .356 AVG, .430 OBP, .535 SLG, C+/C+ fielding, $59.0 million

Pitching stat line (excluding <300K)
1536 IP, 1.38 ERA, .190 OAV, 0.86 WHIP, 0.15 HR/9, $59.9 million

Fun times as always putting these teams together – good luck to all!

8/3/2011 3:52 PM (edited)

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bheid408

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First off I'd like to give a big THANKS to schwarze for the work he puts into this Tourney!

This will be my first go-round and I have no idea what to expect going into this. My first thought is that if I can finish in the top half I'll be happy. After reading the previous thought building processes that everyone else put into building their teams my expectations have plummetted. I built 5 of my 6 teams within the first couple of weeks, didn't experiment much and mostly went with the first teams I tried. GULP!

$70M St.Louie 1985
Started with this team thinking I'd somehow fit McGee, Coleman, Oz, Herr, and Tudor into the mix. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get them all to work and still have enough $$$ left to fill other spots with the quality I wanted. I went on to other teams but kept coming back to the '85Cards. I ending up dropping Oz and Herr and added a bit of power with C.Cooper, J.Rice, and J.Presley. My pitching staff is heavy '85Cards with 8 of the 10 pitchers coming from that team. I added Twins HOFer Blyleven for Spot starter/Long relief and Henke for my closer. Go ahead, start laughing!

$80M Aces and Eights
When I saw this theme for $80M to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. I mean this isn't much different from an Open League. But what the heck, some of us don't play Open leagues. Anyway, I went with '00-'09 Pitching and '80-'89 hitting. Dilone, Rickey, and Rock will bat 1,2,3, and will be turned loose. Hopefully Schmidt and Carter can drive 'em in. Oh yeah, since every team in my division after the realignment has the same seasons this will be interesting. I think this was the easiest theme build, which means I'll finish last, probably due to my team name!

$90M Hit & Catch Boys
I think this was the toughest build. Defense is way too expensive. My offense is hodge-podge with a little speed, a little power, and not much else. I'm hoping my pitching will carry me. Bad part about that is, whenever I plan that way, my pitching is good but I can't score any runs and lose 1-0 or 2-1. I'm screwed in this theme.

$100M JT WH BS MM
I actually enjoyed building this theme the most. I probably spent the most time on this one looking at quite a few pitchers and what players they would get me. I kept coming back to the '85 Cards and Mr. Tudor. Of all the times I've used him he's only let me down once. With him being in 2 of the themes I'm counting on him heavy. He got me Mr. McGee again and I also kept the Oz and threw in Jack Clark at 1B. Ok, now I need a C, 2B and 3B. I went with '89 Saberhagen and got Boone, White, and Seitzer along with Montgomery for the pen. Speaking of pen, I don't have **** yet. How about them A's with Eckersley, Burns, Corsi, Plunk and Nelson along with outfielder Henderson compliments of '89 Mike Moore. As a 4th starter I went with '27 Waite Hoyt and added the Babe along with PT players at 2B and Catcher. I need the Babe to carry me thru on this one.

$110M Willie Mays 54 & 65
This was probably my second favorite build of the tourney. First I tried some pitchers, Maddux, Pedro, and a few deadballers but just didn't feel good about their teammates. Either their hitting sucked, their defense sucked, or they were missing a needed player at a tough to fill position. I ended up with '54 Mays which got me a rotation of '72 Gaylord Perry, '53 Warren Spahn, '69 Juan Marichal, and spot starter '68 Bobby Bolin. I had numerous choices in the outfield as I'm sure many of you did and settled on '59 Harvey Kuenn and '51 Monte Irwin to join Willie. '69McCovey plays 1B, '77Fuentes-2B, '67Hart-3B,'52Dark-SS and '56Bailey platoons at catcher with '71Hiatt. If they hit like in RL I think this is my sleeper team, which means they'll all probably take a nap at game time.

$120M Hit & Run Boys
This theme turned out to be tough too. Everytime I thought I had the hitters I wanted I didn't have enough money left for the type of pitching I wanted. I finally settled on '22Sisler and '94Thompson as my two .400 guys. Playing in Bank One Ballpark I wanted some speed so I added '85Ewing-C, '73Carew-2B, '85McGee(again), '88Henderson and never used him before '90Chicken Wolf in the OF. '01LaveCross and '41CecilTravis play 3B and SS respectively. '14 Hendrix bolsters my rotation with 381 innings. '68Siebert, '02Pedro, and '64Horlen join him. '08Devine is my closer. '68Nolan, '85Ramsey, '64Henry go to Setup-A. I'm hoping 1558 IP's is enough.

Good Luck everyone!

8/3/2011 4:22 PM

tjefferson

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Posted by rbow923 on 8/3/2011 3:36:00 PM (view original):
several people commented on Eddie Collins SS in the $110m theme. I used 17 Buck Weaver, a 3rd baseman with A+/A rating at SS.

I did the same thing AV did and am using the A-/B 2B Bishop season at SS, although with Speaker and not Eddie. I think either will play fine based on some experimenting I've been doing.

8/3/2011 4:36 PM

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