Posted by rbow923 on 8/8/2017 3:51:00 PM (view original):
With people using A++ arm catchers why are so many people still drafting speed teams at low cap? Doesn't the CS% and lower attempts make it a waste of money?

I think most figure a lot of owners won't spend the money on A+ arm catchers at low caps - though clearly some still are

Stolen bases don't matter that much (and aren't expensive). bigmc demonstrated that in last year's Round 1 by drafting a bunch of typical base-stealers (McGee etc.) and then setting their stolen base setting to 0 and ending up with the best record for that theme. I then followed that up over the winter by entering two identical copies of the same team into a league, setting SB to 0 for everyone on one and 5 for everyone who deserved it on the other. The no-SB team won the WS and the TOC (both teams won 105-115 games).

Speed on the basepaths, however...

Yes, that was a first for me...schwarze and I discussed that at length. What's he doing? But it sure did work...I didn't get to see if he took off the parking brake in the postseason...

Mike, regarding those identical teams, did you see a difference in fatigue between the running and non running teams?

Posted by DoctorKz on 8/8/2017 5:31:00 PM (view original):
Mike, regarding those identical teams, did you see a difference in fatigue between the running and non running teams?

Nope. The one team ended up getting more PAs due to weaker pitching in the AL compared to the NL, but overall fatigue was steady between the two. Admittedly, I didn't pay as close attention to it, though.

I'm curious what the difference in runs scored would look like. If the difference is minimal, we surely would see some price changes in players with 90+ speed, both the high SB/SBA% and low SB/SBA%...as well as catchers with both good and bad arms...

Yeah, looks like I gotta build a theme league for it. Whenever I get time. Chris and Boris are each running a draft for me while I remain swamped at work.

Posted by rbow923 on 8/8/2017 3:51:00 PM (view original):
With people using A++ arm catchers why are so many people still drafting speed teams at low cap? Doesn't the CS% and lower attempts make it a waste of money?

yes, paying for a great arm is a waste of money when people aren't stealing... it rarely makes sense in a low cap. Probably "never" makes sense.

70M - Hou 76 Mil92 LAA97

Goal was to build cheap pitching staff to be able to afford some DEF and OBP hitting. Wanted to spend around $32M on pitching, with a goal of building around a staff of solid WHIP with ERC+ 120. Therefore to get 1,350 innings I had to limit my $/IP to 24,000 and sort by ERC+ min of 120. Led me to Mil 92 for the starting rotation and Hou 76 for the rest of the staff, plus A range, power and steal threat Cedeno. Then looked for a team that could provide .360 OBP/ .425 SLG at 4 or 5 positions, plus able to play well above avg DEF, so that led to LAA 97. Used extra cash to fill out 2B, C and a pretty good bench to allow me to keep starters as close to 100 as possible. Strong DEF and ERC+ and Astrodome should lead to an over performing pitching staff.

5368 PA .289 AVG .359 OBP .443 SLG 134 SB $37.51M
1354 IP .244 OAVG 1.18 WHIP 0.64 HR/9 $32.49M

90M – 1943 New York Giants.

For some reason I thought best way to build was to pick a bad team and find 3 guys to clone – 1 pitcher and 2 hitters. Also wanted to spend about $42M on pitching to find strong SLG+ bats. Searched pitchers that had ERC+150 for $32,000 $/IP – Hubbell was quickly the guy, just had to find a bad team that he pitched for: 1943 Giants. Found they had Mel Ott who has great OBP and SLG+ seasons, and qualifies at OF, 3B, DH and some good bats off the best to manage fatigue. I have 6 pitchers with ERC+ 150 and a team SLG+ of 133. DEF not as strong as I like but do have A+ Dick Bartell at SS.

6311 PA .288 AVG .372 OBP .439 SLG $47.1M
1513 IP .240 OAVG 1.10 WHIP 0.58 HR/9 $42.9M

100M – Pirates 1906-1915

Since the season restricted was lifted I wanted to build a cheap staff with low ERA (under 2) low WHIP (1 or under) and low HR (low 20’s for a team). I can typically build an OL team that fits those requirements around $30,000 $/IP level. So I went up to $32K $/IP level and found the turn of the century Pirates. Plus plenty of high range on DEF (A or higher at 6 of the 7 IF/OF positions), strong OBP, high SLG+ guys to pick from.

5822 PA .304 AVG .363 OBP .426 SLG $52M
1539 IP .216 OAVG 1.00 WHIP 1.89 ERA 0.12 HR/9 $48M

Posted by redwingscup on 8/8/2017 6:36:00 PM (view original):

Posted by rbow923 on 8/8/2017 3:51:00 PM (view original):
With people using A++ arm catchers why are so many people still drafting speed teams at low cap? Doesn't the CS% and lower attempts make it a waste of money?

yes, paying for a great arm is a waste of money when people aren't stealing... it rarely makes sense in a low cap. Probably "never" makes sense.

Then maybe I did at least one thing right with that 70M team. I am platooning a B and a D+ arm. Hopefully I put the money to decent use elsewhere ...

My overall goal this year was to avoid being an idiot. In previous tournaments I've done mostly ok, but inevitably had one or two teams where I tried to be too clever, and failed miserably. I only barely survived my one calamity last year. So, I want to have zero calamities this year.

70m - 81 Angels, 06 Jays, 89 Expos.
I started by searching for 4 starting pitchers, each from different teams, in the right salary/performance/IP/etc. range. The idea was that I would use three of these four teams, and the fourth SP would be from the spare cash at the end. I made a spreadsheet with usable teammates (specifically position players) of each, and it was just a case of fitting together the three teams so that all the bases were covered within the right salary intervals. I filled the bullpen from the misc remaining cash. The team is a bit mediocre but I think the theme is pretty hard so the competition will be mediocre too.

90m - 1944 Cardinals
My first strategy was to be really clever and look for a low win teams where I could twist people. I ended up with the 1943 Giants, as used by sford above (also twisting Ott and Hubbel). But, I didn't like the team, and I thought I was being too clever. So, I went for the next most obvious strat, twist a single good pitcher around an existing good team, and I built a team with Maddux + 2003 Braves, which I entered. After a few weeks I realised that I had failed the Partial/Combined/Full season type thing, and there was no way this team could get under the cap. So, the third strat, was to just take a popular team from last year's 80m theme (which was very similar). After some inspection, it seems like the 1944 cardinals could work at this theme almost without any clones at all -- the challenge was finding a hitter that had cheap seasons to clone to stay under the cap while providing a DH. Danny Litwhiler seemed to work.

100m - 19--28 giants.
It seems like a lot of people went with something that achieved the ended at the lower end of this range, as 21 is a pretty good year. I liked some of the players in 27-28, and 19 seemed to provide reasonable enough pitching, so I ended up with this. But in hindsight I'm probably wrong. I initially built a team around the 81 Astros, but I was discouraged as last year I made an 81 Astros team and it was a calamity.

120m
I would be surprised if less than 90 of the 96 teams pick alphabet soup. I built a mostly generic team.

variable - C
I initially built a team with D, intending to spend the extra cash on luxurious players like 08 Joss etc. But I think that there were probably too few players that qualify, I ended up with weird annoying things like spending ~15m on Barry Bonds, platoons that I didn't want to deal with, etc.. Also I don't know how bad D defending actually is and that worried me. So, C seemed like a better option (I also don't know how bad C defending is...). I tried to focus on oav more than I normally would, on the assumption that this might help minimise errors. I think this theme depends a lot on how well you understand the sim, there is likely a correct answer I just don't know what it is.

140m triples
HRs seemed too ambitious. I think that often people who hit doubles also hit triples and vice versa so I suspect they would mostly be pretty similar. I tried to get just barely above the triples threshold while also maximising doubles (while staying under that threshold), with lots of emphasis on defense etc.. I think there will be a lot of runs scored in this league.

Posted by ozomatli on 8/8/2017 4:27:00 PM (view original):
Stolen bases don't matter that much (and aren't expensive). bigmc demonstrated that in last year's Round 1 by drafting a bunch of typical base-stealers (McGee etc.) and then setting their stolen base setting to 0 and ending up with the best record for that theme. I then followed that up over the winter by entering two identical copies of the same team into a league, setting SB to 0 for everyone on one and 5 for everyone who deserved it on the other. The no-SB team won the WS and the TOC (both teams won 105-115 games).

Speed on the basepaths, however...

Speed on the basepaths helps a fair bit. Staying out of double plays is a huge part of that - speedy players just don't hit into GDPs in WIS. That's why it's worth paying for speed even if the catchers will stop any stealing.

Is there mention in the formulas for players taking an extra base, and to what degree speed plays in the success/failure?

I had a lot of trouble building teams this go-round, because (a) I stupidly got going before the salary update, then had to rebuild and (b) I didn't read the instructions closely enough. For example...

$70 million: I built this team three times. Once before the salary update, once after, and a third time when I was informed combined seasons were ineligible. The one consistency between all three versions was the 1968 Mets, from which I selected all pitchers. 1968, otherwise known as the year Denny McLain recorded At The Organ, offers a lot of cheap, decent arms, even when accounting for normalization based on how ridiculously inflated pitcher stats were that year.

In terms of offense, I looked for any team that offered two affordable players who could bat 1-2 (685+ PA), with good OBP and decent glove. The 1992 Astros with Bagwell and Biggio fit that description. Finally, every team needs a good shortstop, and the 1982 Padres offered two of them.

I don't claim to know how this or any team will do, but unlike many who've posted here I'm looking forward to this league. I play a lot of low caps and like leagues best with few cookies. My team has hardly any, beyond the '03 Delgado that I assume is on everyone's bench.

$90 million: I realize it made sense to look for a sub .550 team, so I could clone both a hitter and pitcher, but I couldn't find one I liked. I ended up going with the 1964 Reds, who lamentably finished a hair above .550. But their staff is decent as is, and I get seven Pete Roses in my starting lineup: 1B 2B 3B LF CF RF DH, plus the '84 version to pinch-hit. Couldn't find a team with an ace shortstop, but Cardenas isn't terrible at C/B-.

$100 million: Unless a theme's pretty tough I don't draft and redraft, but go with the first reasonable option, which was in this case the 1914-23 New York Giants. The Toney and Nehf cookies are too expensive now, but there's still Jesse Barnes, Hooks Wiltsie, Fred Anderson, Ferdie Schupp, Slim Sallee etc. I built this team around pitching, while making sure the decade span included Frankie Frisch's tenure with the team.

$120 million: The least interesting theme by far. Alphabet is the toughest draft of the three, made sense to get it out of the way, as most folks did.

I will say I enjoyed barracuda3's description of his $120 million team, the only post I read word for word rather than skimming. I lived in NYC for 17 years (and named my team Alphabet Town, after the Elliott Smith song about the Alphabet City neighborhood). And while I don't remember the bar Lovers Of Today, I'm a huge fan of the first Pretenders record and glad to know some bar owner was inspired by it.

Variable: I figured either go with A+++ range or else stick with C, for mediocre fielding plus $10 million more to spend. So I built both, and the C team seemed vastly superior. I'm a proponent of the A+++ strategy as much as anyone, but it wasn't enough to offset the dough I wasn't spending on hitting.

I tried naming this team after a song from Elliott Smith, which would've been my third (my $90 million team is Coming Up Roses), but C+hristian Brothers looked too odd. I settled on C You In Hell, a nod to Beavis and Butthead. "Whoa, look at his face...his face sucks."

$140 million: Everyone's sure been quick to write off home runs as an option for this league, and as far as I can tell I'm the only one who went this route in my entire league. No regrets, though. If this were a deadball league I would've gone doubles for sure (never personally had any success trying to win with triples, though I remember WaitNSee cleaning up with the strategy last year.) But with deadballers ineligible I don't buy the going assumption that home runs can't win ballgames. I've won with home runs before, sometimes, and I like playing in Yankee Stadium III.

That said, I never play DH leagues except in this tournament, and I'm not great at drafting for them. Along with the $70 million team this was the roster I spent the most time on, and now that everything's live I'm still not thrilled by it. '91 Howard Johnson at SS? WTF? At least it'll be cool to use '16 Kershaw a few times before the salary update gets to him.

Prediction: pain. When in doubt, quote Clubber Lang.

Update on my $90 mil team. I just realized that I have 500 PA to split with my 8-9 hitters and I'm royally ******.

I enjoyed putting the themes this year. Mostly I think it's due to the fact I've played in enough of these to understand my limitations. If all goes well, I'll be one of the last owners to qualify for round 2. If not, ... well I'll be able to enjoy a stress free holiday season. LOL With that in mind, I tried to put together some effective teams but I didn't drive myself crazy looking for perfect combinations I'd never find in a million years.

$70M - Expansion Ball
65 Angels, 89 Expos, 90 Padres
Ballpark - Colt Stadium

I tinkered with this theme the longest but didn't make myself crazy. I started relatively early because I thought it would likely take the longest. I did some SP searches looking for effective starters in the right price range. The 89 Expos represented nicely with Bryn Smith, Dennis Martinez and P. Perez. They also had a couple of nice bullpen pieces in Tim Burke and Zane Smith. Offensively, new HOF Raines is solid for this cap and Spike Owen and Tim Wallach are good values. I knew I wouldn't use them all but it was a good start.

Next I looked at the Padres. Of course they had Gwynn and lots of good pitching and defense over many seasons. I was attracted by the pitching on the 1990 team with Whitson, Hurst and Lefferts. But when I put it all together, I ended up only pulling offense from them. Jack Clark, Bip Roberts, Gwynn and Alomar, all at good salaries for this cap.

It was a little hard to find the last team. Looked at the Mets, Astros, Marlins, Jays, Rays... but nothing worked enough to satisfy. Ironically, the versatility of the first two teams made it hard to find a match. There were too many moving parts. I almost decided to start over but at last I came across the 60's Angels. For an expansion team, they had surprisingly good pitching. The 65 team had the under-rated Fred Newman, George Brunet and Bob Lee for the pitching staff. They didn't have much offense but they did have a collection of low priced bench guys that fit perfectly with my plan to have $18M in salary from each team.

As constructed, I have $18.0, 18.3 and 18.4 from the three teams. With the remainder, I added a low cost Joe Morgan to fill out the last OF slot, a Molina brother for BU catcher and the rest of my pitching staff.

I only build low cap teams in this tourney so I don't have much confidence in this bunch. The pitching is solid but unspectacular. The offense is build around switch hitters, OBP, doubles and speed. There is a frightening lack of pop in the lineup but five of the starters are high volume, high efficiency base stealers. I'm short effective PAs at 1B and SS. I just hope these guys hold their own, anything beyond that is gravy.
Offense (including scrubs): .262/.353/.379 192 SBs at a 76% success rate for $34.5M
Pitching (including mopups): 1376 IP 2.88 era, .234 oav, 1.14 whip, 0.65 hr/9 for $35.5M

$90M - Real Team & Clones
1989 Expos... Again??
Ballpark - Olympic Stadium

This was the one team I really spent a lot of time on. I like clone leagues a lot, but they don't love me back. I'm barely mediocre at the team building. For no reason other than I thought it would be fun, I decided to try to cover as much of my offense as possible with clones. As I considered the theme, I focused initially on teams with a cloneable SP and a switch hitter (if the team qualified for two clones). I looked at the 1990 Yankees (only one clone but lots of SP candidates like Clemens, RJ and Brown); 1990-2000s Braves (Maddux, Smoltz and Chipper) and 2000s Astros (Clemens and Berkman). I liked the teams but I kept running out of money and downgrading my clones to fit the cap... and then I didn't like them that much anymore.

Then I thought of the Expos. That's where I came across the 1989 version (2 clones) with a young RJ and the great Tim Raines. I have a deep man-crush on Raines and his high SB percentage. Since there is a DH here, I have 6 versions of Raines in my regular line up (1B, 2B, DH, OF, OF, OF) and one on the bench. The 1989 team has a good Spike Owen at SS and Tim Wallach at 3B. Offensively and defensively, catcher is a weak point and, like my $70M team there isn't much slugging in the lineup.

I have two RJs in the rotation and 2 in the bullpen. My other starters are B. Smith, Perez and D. Martinez. Burke and Z. Smith round out a good bullpen. Despite my past failures at cloning, I like this team. Probably that's the kiss of death.
Offense (including scrubs): .276/.363/.398, 429 SB at an 82% success rate for $46.2M
Pitching (including mopups): 1456 IP 2.68 era, .224 oav, 1.10 whip, 0.69 hr/9 for $43.6M

$100M - Hitting the Limit Twist
Old, old BoSox 1912-21
Ballpark - Fenway Park

My initial thought was to build a dead ball team or a hybrid team that stretched into the 1920s. Right or wrong, I zeroed in on the 1900 Athletics and the 1910+ Red Sox. The Athletics had good pitching and an artful decade choice could put Collins, Baker and Joe Jackson in the same lineup. The Red Sox also offered great pitching (Leonard, Wood, Shore...) and a lineup with Ruth and Speaker. I tinkered up both teams but ended up liking the Red Sox a bit better.

I used the rosters from the 1913, 1916 and 1920 teams. I was able to add a good Ray Grimes, Schang and Hooper from 1921, the 1919 Ruth and 1912 Speaker. Like all deadball teams the defense is shaky and my middle infielders are weak. But Speaker and Ruth are very good. The pitching staff is strong with 1914 Leonard, 1912 Joe Wood and 1914 Rube Foster. I also got 2 very good short inning starters in 1917 Fred Anderson and 1914 Ernie Shore.

Without a 300K exception, this was a challenge. I like this team. Like I said above, likely the kiss of death.
Offense (including scrubs): .308/.395/.451 for $48.2M
Pitching (including mopups): 1503 IP 2.06 era, .218 oav, 1.06 whip, 0.10 hr/9 for $51.6M

$120M - Choose Your Soup
Everything but "X"
Ballpark - Sportsman's Park III

Like some of the rest of you, I went with the alphabet soup in this round because I thought it would be easier to build a round 2 team combining the team and decade soup requirements than either of the other two. As WISC teams go, I thought this was fairly easy to put together.

On the pitching side, I decided to go with a two man rotation to give me more letters to work with on offense and for the bullpen. So I added Tim Keefe and Lady Baldwin and almost 1200 IP. My 5 man bullpen is Frohwirth, Eichhorn, Okajima, Z. Smith and Mike Adams.

On offense, I went for high OBP. Catcher Fred Carroll, 1B Votto, 2B Hornsby, 3B Thome, SS Jennings, OF Ruth, Delahanty and a platoon of L. Walker and A. Galan. There's no speed on this team and little in the way of defense. Who knows how this team will fare in a league filled with teams just a good but I enjoyed putting it together.
Offense (including scrubs): .318/.436/.520 for $59.8M
Pitching (including mopups): 1581 IP 1.96 era, .201 oav, 0.95 whip, 0.24 hr/9 for $60.2M

Variable Cap ($120M) - Out of Range
Big B, little b, what begins with B?
Ballpark - Sportsman's Park III

I've never been one to emphasize defense in building my teams. I understand that defense is important in baseball, but I enjoy building high powered offenses so I tend to indulge my preferences and shortchange defense. Here though, I initially intended to build an "A++" defense team. Mostly just for the fun of doing something different. The more I thought about it though, I just didn't have the free time to teach myself about the best defenders for the salary. So I scrapped that idea. I also dismissed the idea of making a "D" team. Too many "-" plays and errors. So for no particularly good reason I decided to do a "C" team. Mostly it seemed the path of least resistance. I know it sounds lazy and I plead guilty to that. As I built the offense, I found myself wanting to roster some "B" defenders. Since I have poor impulse control I switched in mid-stream to a "B" team, without redrafting any of my previously chosen "C" guys. It's not pretty to admit and it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but then I just meandered through putting this together. If things run true to form this team will probably win the TOC. LOL

On the pitching side, I decided to look for underpriced strikeout pitchers who missed lots of bats. Almost all my pitchers averaged more than 10 Ks per 9 innings pitched. My starters are 97 Pedro, Mike Scott, RJ, Kershaw and Cal Eldred. The bullpen is B.J. Ryan, Rhodes, Gagne and M. Adams again.

My lineup is a mix of dead ball and the modern era and everything in between. Denny Lyons, Fred Carroll on one hand and Cullenbine, Ruth, Galan, and Cronin in the middle and Votto, Abreu and Joe Morgan from the modern era. Who knows how this mess will actually turn out but it appears to me that the end result isn't as good as my soup team. Not a good sign I'd say.
Offense (including scrubs): .312/.434/.506 for $53.3M
Pitching (including mopups): 1480 IP 2.10 era, .190 oav, 0.90 whip, 0.54 hr/9 for $66.6M

$140M - XBH Challenge with DH
Make Mine a Double
Ballpark - League Park II

This was an easy choice for me. HR teams don't seem to do all that well (even with deadball pitchers off the table). I'm sure someone could build a great triples team but I'm equally sure that guy isn't me. So I was building a doubles team from the start. I began by searching for high normalized doubles hitters and ended up with a team with about a million doubles. Seemed a bit excessive. So I re-calibrated and traded in some of the doubles hitters for guys with a more rounded hitting portfolio (but still a lot of doubles). My offense is Cochrane (who seldom performs to expectations for me), Votto (again), Molitor, Boggs, Speaker, Heilman, Cullenbine, E. Martinez and Rickey Henderson. Ozzie Smith is my light hitting, good field SS.

I overspent for 94 Maddux just because he's so good and I like him. Financially it was probably a waste. To balance that extravagance I added a lot of short IP starters because they seem like good values (Richard, Hernandez, Harvey, Arrieta, Kershaw, Hill). My only other high IP starter is 64 Chance and I'm somewhat pessimistic that he can perform at this cap. The bullpen is pretty good with lefty Britton and righties Rivera and Adams and all the other guys who aren't starting that game.
Offense (including scrubs): .343/.452/.521 for $69.0M
Pitching (including mopups): 1543 IP 1.86 era, .193 oav, 0.92 whip, 0.29 hr/9 for $71.0M

As usual, I don't know how any of these teams will perform once the shooting starts. But it was fun putting them together. It will probably be less fun to watch them get their brains beat in. Until the beating starts, a boy can still dream.