I had like 7 straight cycles of 4-2 or 5-1...but 3-9 in the last two. Hopefully that's not a sign of things to come.

Best team in the clone league by 3 games and 10 games later, 3 back and tied for 8th. It begins...

I think paying for high K pitchers like Dazzy Vance was a mistake in the 90M league. The increase in errors and minus plays is much lower than I expected, and I could have used some of that cash I would have saved to get better hitting or pitchers with better ERC#. I look at jmissirlis's team as a prime example here.

I really wanted Vance, but opted to go for mediocre starters and spend my money on a stacked pen. Has not worked out as I'd hoped. My starters are in the green but my pen is in the blue because the starters aren't eating enough innings.

2nd 0-6 of the tournament. Life is awesome.

And another 0-6, giving me one more than all of last WISC, despite having 3 Top-10 teams this season. Maybe one of these years this game will find some consistency. Unreal.

Three Top 10 teams?

The Top 10 teams as of now are

1. discodemo's 110M
2. ejstockman's 110M
3. jmissirlis's 90M
4. wink0094's 65M
5. jfranco77's 255M
6. ozomatli's 130M
7. jmissirlis's 255M
8. wink0094's 90M & buddhagamer's 90M
9. sprintracer's 130M
10. ozomatli's 65M (11th, really)

Top 10 by theme. Three of my teams were in the Top 10 in their theme a couple cycles ago.

**Max Salary (255mm) won their first two 1-run games. They have since lost 16 in a row.

I am working on finalizing Round 2 themes over the next week or so. Will be sharing them out when we hit the 2/3 mark so that people can get started working on their teams and we can make up for some of the extra time it took to get all teams entered for Round 1.

You're probably not using the cheat code like the rest of us.

How many 6-0 cycles have there been? I've yet to nail one down. I think I've maybe had 2 or 3 5-1's but also no 0-6's. Seems obvious that the players at the top would be the one's to have achieved the most 6-0 cycles, but I'm still curious. Given that 5 of my 6 teams managed to muster up winning records by roughly halfway through I'm feeling okay about no 6-0's. I'd rather them be consistent over 162 than streaky. It's been a grind to get them above .500 but I'm hopeful that they will continue to trend upward.

I have some team notes from the midpoint and wasn't sure if people share these or where to do it, so I put them in the roster analysis topics. Couldn't find the $90 mill analysis so I'll jot it down here.

$90 million: this team has really surprised me. They're not a great offensive team relative to the rest of the league but they've pitched pretty well. I've played some offensive theme leagues before and realized that starter innings are not nearly as important as bullpen innings. Starters get pulled from games so early and so often that they end up lighter on innings and pitches than I have anticipated. because of this I like to keep a starting pitcher as a super-reliever in the pen who is consistently at 100%. Depending on the league i'll use him in long relief, set-up, or closer role and swing him into the rotation if fatigue ever becomes an issue. This is a great stabilizer for a taxed pitching staff. It's worked for me before and helped me get a team into the playoffs in a challenging offensive league. In this case I'm using Matt Harvey and he's done pretty well. Also, my 3 hitter Tom Daly went on an absolute binge hitting over .500 for a long stretch of games. He was serioulsy underperforming and his ascension into .400 land has also helped a weak-hitting lineup put up enough runs to help us finally get over .500. Every team in the division is right with us though so this will be a sprint to the finish to see who gets into the playoffs.

This probably has everything to do with the flow of the schedule and team match-ups, but somehow they stink at "home" and are a solid "road" team, huh.

The 90M analysis begs to include things like innings and WHIP for each team. It took a while to get those numbers from other commissioners. Now I have them but, due to some team names having special characters in them, I’ve had issues getting the 90M stats organized in Excel. Going to look to finalize that today and get the analysis posted soon.

As for 6-0 cycles, I believe I’ve had 5 or 6.

Wow, 5 or 6 6-0's! You're putting a hurting on us all in round 1!