Is there anyone who did not use Keppinger on the 130m team?

Maybe I am missing something but not sure I understand the appeal of Keppinger? Looks like he was a common pick ~15ish teams without looking too closely, but at 130M the last thing I want is a D- range guy with a SLG < .500

Very versatile, doesn't make errors, hits for good average. Seems like someone you can stick at the bottom of the lineup any time someone needs a day off and not really hurt yourself. I suppose he will collect a handful of minus plays, but he won't boot the ball either so to me that averages out some.

And though I can't recall if I looked harder for one here, I find that it's uncommon to find backup middle infielders with good range since the low-PA guys get punished for not playing as many full games.

Yeah, your only real bet is a starter who got injured, like Tulo. The way I built my team, I didn't really need to worry about versatility. Leaving responsibilities vague has always gotten me into trouble. Just not my style

Posted by redcped on 8/16/2018 11:18:00 PM (view original):
Is there anyone who did not use Keppinger on the 130m team?

Wow, I didn't even realized I used him until I just went back to check my team after looking at your post. I think his appeal is that he does not cost that much above the minimum and he can play any position. Since I lost a bench player because of the DH, I think that is what appealed to me when I starting filling out my bench. All my infield can play nearly every game, so I don't anticipate him playing in too many games for me. And as redcped said, for the 10 or so games he may have to start for me, the lack of errors will make up for the few bad plays in the field and his being an on-base guy at the bottom of the order when he does play should be enough offensively.

I didn't use Keppinger. Didn't need him. Most of my $2M players are pitchers. I only platooned at C and DH.

I took Keppinger. I have 4 full-time hitters at the top of my order, and then a mix of guys around the $2-3M mark. Keppinger was close to the minimum, knows which end of the bat to hold and is versatile. This team is going to have a lot of moving parts beyond the Top 4 hitters.

Posted by redcped on 8/16/2018 11:18:00 PM (view original):
Is there anyone who did not use Keppinger on the 130m team?

Backup infielders are for suckers. I've got Chipper at 3B (600pa, batting 9th), Luis CAstillo at 2B (630pa, batting 7th or 8th) and Jennnings at SS (678pa, batting 6th) and all my other hitters are OF, 1B or C.

What could possibly go wrong?

Posted by jfranco77 on 8/14/2018 7:04:00 PM (view original):
65m – Decades of Decadence
This was the first team I built and I really don’t remember it. Low cap leagues always mean steals and speed. And platoons, because you don’t want to waste 200k on a guy who won’t play. Get switch hitters where there aren’t platoons. Modern triples hitters are good, and deadball ones are bad, since they usually don’t hit triples like they should. Given all that I knew my 25^th man would be someone who played in a –HR park that was good for speed.

After that, I used the usual approach. Build the rotation, draft an offense, draft a bullpen, find it’s too expensive, cut the hitters down a bit.

I figured that my 3 decades would be the 70s and 90s and a deadball decade, plus some other filler. I started by looking for interesting hitters and I found a bunch, most of whom I didn’t end up using (Mike Kingery 94, who I did, but also Lance Johnson 93, Templeton 77, Gene Richards 81, Arky 37, etc). I ended up with Willie McGee as my 25^th man to give me Busch Stadium. I don’t feel particularly good about this team but that might just be because I don’t remember them.

90m – Coors, thE banquEt bEEr
How many innings? That’s the big question. I really don’t know. I’ve got 1512. I hope it’s enough. If I had to guess, I’d say it isn’t.

I wasn’t a big fan of this theme. Maybe that’s harsh. I’m curious how it will play out. It just wasn’t exciting to build. I’m just hoping to survive without getting my chances wrecked by this league. I suspect that the people who win this league will be those who are smart enough to estimate the pitches needed accurately.

How many D+/D+ guys are there, anyway? Not that many. And I didn’t really want to play anyone much worse than the “best” they could be. There were 42 guys rated D+/D+ at 2B, 29 at SS and 38 at 3B. And a lot of the 3Bs were rated at other positions that ruled them out.

Generally, I wanted hitters with speed, high AVG and not necessarily a lot of walks. I want the ball in play so we can get more errors. I wasn’t too worried about pitchers who allowed walks or homers because I figured everyone would have the same idea (and most of the D+/D+ guys are deadball hitters anyway, by nature of how baseball used to be played.) I wanted old time hitters to generate more errors from the opposing fielders.

I built a pitching staff with a LOT of Ks and another with relatively few. I calculated the pitches each could throw. The high K pitchers could throw about 300 less pitches despite having almost 90 less innings. I thought the high-K pitchers could prevent some errors. But in the end I was too tempted by the low K pitchers.

100m – Beltran for the HoF
Did you know that if I search for "Frisch" in my google docs, where I've kept all my roster building notes for the last few years, that pretty much every WISC comes up? I've been obsessed with him forever. Did you know that we ran something similar in the 2015 WISC? I went with Chipper Jones that time and made it to the LCS. Cesar Cedeno beat Rickey Henderson in my league’s World Series. There were TWO good Cedeno teams in that league. And a Willie McGee team won 99 games. But since then, speed has gotten more expensive. Or should I say, Frisch and McGee have gotten more expensive?
I tried building a Frisch team first. I liked them a lot. It had six Frisches. But I would have been relying on the sim loving speedy switch hitters, because his raw numbers were underwhelming for the price.

So then I tried Carlos Beltran. Speed? Check. Switch hitter? Check. Played with some good SPs? Sorta. Beltran had the benefit of some bench seasons so I could still get 8 Beltrans despite him being an outfielder. Beltran08 is playing out of position at 1B. The other positions are filled by Jose Offerman (fast switch hitter), Jose Reyes (ditto), Paul LoDuca (whose noodle arm will likely be a problem), and David Wright, who is fast for a 3B but will probably underperform since he’s a RH power hitter. I do worry about Beltran losing his HRs to low-HR pitchers and AT&T park, but I think he can hit triples. The rotation is fronted by Matt Cain, Masahiro Tanaka and Johan Santana.

I did try a Cedeno team but the OBP was very low and I couldn’t spend all the money. I tried a Max Carey team but they had no relievers. I would have loved to see how a Chipper team looked but I ran out of time. I also wanted to look at Kershaw but didn’t get a chance. I really like the Beltran team. I probably like them too much. Beltran is one of my all-time favorite players IRL and that never ends well.

110m – We all played in 1913
This was a fun theme. I knew right away that I’d be going deadball pitchers and hoping for a combination of good deadball and 1920s hitters. I do wish I’d had more time to see what a modern team might look like but I couldn’t even conceive of a good starting point.

A key point here is that you really only need players who played +/- 12 to 15 seasons from your base year – going 25 seasons in one direction would be nuts. I figured that it would be relatively easy to find players who stuck around forever to round out the fringes, and the bigger issue would be those middle years.

For my deadball-ish teams I always start with the infield (2B/3B/SS) since those are hard places to find competent fielders who can hit. Then the bullpen comes next since there aren’t a ton of different years with great RPs. (The war years, 1915 and 1918, are loaded with them, but the rest can be tough.)
My first draft was 1908 and I really liked that team, even though a ton of good players started in 1909. I thought I was done on the first try but I was using an ineligible player (Chief Myers) so I just decided to try a different year.

Using 1913 let me keep my core infield (Honus and Collins who could play a bunch of different years, and Art Devlin as a cheap 3B). I got Babe ’24, McQuillan ’07, Caldwell ’19, Quinn ’18, Falkenberg ’15 and Weilman ’12 to man the bullpen. I kept 3-Finger ’04 and Walsh ’09 and decided to run my new favorite rotation, a pair of tandems. Reb Russell ’16 filled a season that I didn’t have anyone for, and after a ton of searching I settled on Vean Gregg as my 4^th. That gives me lefty/righty pairs for both tandems. I got some long-time hitters to stretch the seasons (Cobb ’27, Schang ’26, Cy Williams ’25) and rounded out the outfield with Max Carey. Smokey Joe Wood in the outfield was a sneaky way to fill 1921 and get a platoon partner for Cy. I really had a heck of a time finding a 1B (always forget the deadball years don’t have many good ones) so I decided to pay up for Speaker ’14 and his great range. I like this team and I’ll be sad if they don’t do well.

130m – Too Rich to Shop at Target
Platoons. Like everyone is probably doing. Which means a tandem rotation. I looked at good pitchers in the 200-300 IP range who hadn’t had their prices inflated too much. The ever-popular Bill Bernhard pairs with Jack Pfiester, and with Garland Braxton a slam dunk for the other spot, I ultimately settled on Pete Alexander to be the 4^th. Then I drafted Kershaw’s crazy 149ip season for the bullpen. I filled out the bullpen with elite modern relievers (Chad Green, Kenley Jansen, Mike Adams) whose prices haven’t had a chance to go up too much, and a couple of setup B guys in Albers and Rigney.

With only 10 pitchers I had enough bats for 6 platoons. Infield spots are typically the hardest to fill, so I’ve just got Chipper, Luis Castillo and Hughie Jennings for 3B/2B/SS. Then I’ve got expensive Billy Hamilton and Cobb seasons paired with RH bats at the top of the order. Did I really draft Bill Joyce at 1B? That will be an adventure. But this was destined to be a Target Field type of team from the start. We’ll live (or die) by our pitching.

255m – Messing up two teams at once
This was another fun one. I built the two teams together. I like the 110m team a lot so I really hope I get to play them. I’m not great at 255m teams. Combine that with a team that is probably built too heavily on the 110m side and it might be a recipe for disaster.

I literally started with Tip O’Neill since I know he has a good platoon season and a monster season for 255m.

After that I knew the pitching would be the hardest thing to figure out. Kershaw’s crazy 149ip season worked at 255 and he had some usable seasons for 110m. Pedro had seasons for both caps. Ed Walsh could be a reliever at 110. Koufax had seasons for both caps. Maddux95 was worth the cost and I used one of his 2006 seasons as a setup B on the cheap side. Then I just had to fill out the relievers. Lots of relievers have an elite year and a pretty good year so that was easy enough.

I figured that with no DH I could still afford at least a couple of the players whose prices got mega-inflated. Cobb and Ruth had good platoon seasons for the 110m league. Lajoie had a solid season for the 110s and his crazy expensive year. At SS I decided to go with Lou Boudreau for the glove and the better 110m season (Honus and Jennings didn’t have great 110m years). I went with Roger Connor at 1B and George Brett at 3B to give me four A+ range infielders for the 255m league. Defense is the one thing that doesn’t really change when you change the cap. I just hope he hits enough. When it was all done I had about 10mil left on the 255m side. I could have upgraded Cobb or Ruth to their monster year. Ruth seemed the better impact guy so now I have Ruth23 as my #3 hitter on that team.

Other than the fact that I probably wouldn’t count on Koufax in a 255m league, even in Target Field, this doesn’t look that different than a regular 255m team. Whether that’s good or bad I’m not sure.

ah my cedeno team, one of my shining moments in the WISC...that was a fun one.

I just added mine to the first post in the thread (with a few typos, lol).

Posted by Jtpsops on 8/17/2018 10:23:00 AM (view original):
I took Keppinger. I have 4 full-time hitters at the top of my order, and then a mix of guys around the $2-3M mark. Keppinger was close to the minimum, knows which end of the bat to hold and is versatile. This team is going to have a lot of moving parts beyond the Top 4 hitters.

As it turns out, my league has a mere 5 Keppingers after all. He was just over-represented in the first set of write-ups.

It’s been 10 years since I last played in the WISC. Was much more active a decade ago, only do a handful of teams each year. Pre-ranking has me at 14 but there are a lot of rust on these WISC tires and don’t think I will come close to that ranking.

$65 -“The 10’s-30’s70’s-90’s Odd Squaders”
Spent the most amount of time on this team yet just got the team entered before the deadline and don’t like the team that much either. I have only done maybe three caps of $65 or less and I’m sure this team will be one of the worst teams entered in all of the tournament. Plus I’m sure there will be a lot of fatigue.
Went with three 10’s pitchers in ’14 Wood and Plank and ’19 Mays and ’91 Key and ’79 Blyleven. Blyleven I’ve never used, nor have I honestly seen him. Was targeting a certain $/ip for all the pitchers. Usually I go with a stud and stiff approach and overpay for an ace and ride him hard but all the pitchers on this team are similarly stinky and look the same. Goose Gossage is one of my favorite relievers to use for his high K and innings flexibility as a closer. Took rookie Walter Johnson for some spot start and relief flexibility.
Offensively Dave Kingman gave me a championship in a prior low cap WISC team so I took the 70s for him and hope he repeats, but he will face a lot of pitchers from the 00’s and 10’s to put him in his place. ’73 Billy Williams is my most expensive hitter but the main power threat is the scrub ’35 Babe Ruth for $465k, anxious to see if can knock a few pinch hit homers. Targeted good fielders at all positions and my searches didn’t lead to many. Hoping some of the 10’s hitters normalize up pretty well. The lineup doesn't really make sense. Going to be a long year. Low caps aren't for me.

$90 –“Davey Dunkle & The Coors Bumbinos $90”
Strategy for this one seems to be different than a lot of the write ups thus far. Typically favor high K pitchers so I enjoyed making this one. While there was limited players a lot of different strategies to go with.
Went with '07 Waddell, ’25 Vance, ’26 Grove, and ’79 Ryan. Knew those guys were going to be my targets. Wanted to get Koufax in there some how but couldn't. Bullpen highlighted by ’73 Fingers, ’83 Gossage, and ’93 Martinez and some deadball starters. Tried to get not only the highest K/9# but highest actual K/9 as I felt that would translate better in the matchup for extreme contact hitters. Penciled in from the beginning a $1m 80-100 inning mop up pitcher and fell in love with Davey Dunkle when he came up on my mop up pitcher search. What a name for a mop up pitcher! Think there will be a lot of blowouts from both sides so he should get good use and will give me enjoyment seeing him in the box score. Also drafted 1700 IPs and I felt that some owners were going to really throw the league out of whack, especially if people went with D-/D- fielders. Wanted to play it safe and knew I would be on the high end but comfortable with that.
Hitting search criteria was based primarily on contact percentage with some extreme ball in play hitters like ’93 McGraw and McKean and ’89 Sam Thompson. One exception was a flexible and cheap Ty Wigginton who played multiple positions and struck out a ton. After putting the team together felt that I didn’t have enough power so swapped in Thompson for some HR power for a contact hitter. Also targeted D+ fielders when possible. Wish I had more overall team speed. Took plenty of extra bench players with high PA's to combat those games that get away. Other teams will probably have more guys over $5 mil than me.

$100 –“6 Kershaws Molded Out of a Ton of Clay”
Ended up submitting my Kershaw team instead of Pedro because of the awesome name. I love naming teams and hope this name will be one of the best in the whole tournament, am I right?!?
Knew from the beginning I would go with pitching since I spend more $ on pitching than offense most of the time. Like the flexibility of the super season ’16 Kershaw and the fact that I would get a true closer in Jansen, which I didn’t get with the Pedro teams (except using him as a closer). Felt that the high HR’s from Kershaw would be offset to a small extent by Dodger Stadium. Liked the gloves of the teammates although there won’t be a lot of run support for Kershaw. While limited options, felt there was enough of everything plus a decent bench for substitutions. Could have taken Grienke but really wanted to run with the team of all Kershaws. Alright Kershaw, let's see what you got.

$110 –“1995 & The Back to Baseball Twisters”
One of the last two teams put together and knew in my mind I wanted to take this era as I like the flexibility of having a pretty diverse lineup that can do a little bit of everything and comfort with the pitchers. Since I was up against the gun I was going to put one team together and go with it. Also figured since I knew this era the best would be able to fill in the years pretty quickly.
1995 would give me pitchers of Maddux, Pedro, Big Unit, Eck and Rivera. 95 was Doc Gooden’s suspension year otherwise I would have taken him, ended up with Clemens instead. Put a lot of $ into the pitching staff. Dave Righetti was a surprise tail end of the career player.
Hitting was highlighted by 90 Bonds. Always like those early 90’s Bonds for all that Power/Speed/OBP combo. Ended up with a lot more platoons than originally planned with a Clark/McGwire 1B combo, Ozzie/Larkin SS and Larry Walker/Manny RF. Very good fielding and speed team, hope to win a lot of 1 run games with key pinch hitting and matchups. Wish I started this one early but it is a team I feel comfortable with all the big names represented from that era.

$130 –“Put Me in Coach & The Astrodomers $130”
One of the first teams put together, pretty quickly, and never went back to it. Looking back would have made a few tweaks and upgrades. Wanted to try a lot of platoons and different years of some of the more popular players. Built the pitching exclusively first then the offense. Somehow I ended up with 1902 Heinie Peitz C for $3.75 mill on my team?? Took a lot of players with multiple position flexibility and will keep pinch hitting, running, and defensive replacement settings on 4 or 5. ’40 Foxx, '33 Ruth, '98 Hamilton examples of those different year studs. A few $2 mill bench players- '35 Red Kress who plays good D all over, ’78 Cedeno in OF and super range ’11 Lawrie at 3B. Pitching led by ’09 Brown, ’85 Baldwin and ’99 Pedro, who is one of my favorite pitching seasons to use at this cap. Took the ’16 Kershaw and ’80 Richard in hopes this team can make the playoffs and can ride them there. Overall well balanced team, the lineup makes sense for each slot. High hopes, but so too do a lot of people for this theme. Probably spent more on the bench than a lot of people.

$255 –“On Target for a $255 Good Time.”
I assembled both teams at the same time. Surprised at how my picks fit for both but already had in mind a lot of guys that I knew could play at both caps.
Starting rotation is ’08 Joss, ’00 Pedro, and ’95 Maddux. Used to play a lot at this cap but a little worried with some strategies shifting from when I was more active a decade ago. Wanted one lefty starter and would have loved to use Koufax but couldn’t pull the trigger for fear of his HR’s, even though was mainly going to be a spot starter. Took Randy Johnson instead. Kershaw-Gagne-Eck-Rivera-Kimbrel-Wagner in the pen.
Offensively biggest surprise is taking ’12 Speaker. Somehow I haven’t used Speaker and a recent trip to the Hall of Fame had me swap him in as soon as I got home after seeing his glove. Ended up taking short season Teddy Ballgame instead of spending more on several positions. He better get a lot of pinch hits or else that will be a huge mistake. Gehrig, '20 Ruth, '24 Hornsby, Schmidt, ’95 Jennings, Dickey highlight other bats. Spent a lot more money on pitching than planned and the starting lineup reflects that. Hopefully the pen can show it was worth the investments. Bench players are Cesar Cedeno, Big Mac, Ryan Freel, Roy Cullenbine, Gene Tenace, all who seem to do at least one thing pretty well. Big Mac will be the only one that will see more playing time if we move to round 2.

First off, my apologies to everyone for having to wait for me to build teams. When I first signed up I envisioned being able to use my upcoming paternity time and late night baby-caring sessions to build teams. I wound up getting invited in pretty late - right around the time of the birth of our 4th, and (perhaps not surprisingly) found not even a few scattered moments to devote to team building. Ozo was great in his communication and supportive throughout the chasing-me-down phase. However, deadline came and went and to that point I had not teams built, having only read the rules for the low cap league. Last weekend I started back to working and was able to begin using some lunch time and some other scattered time to just throw teams together as fast as I could. I got the $65M built in probably an hour and a half, and that proved to be the longest I spent.

$65M (shuffles in)
I did some math (divided $35M by 1300 to get a rough goal for $/IP) and hunted the 1900’s for some low HR/low BB pitching. Didn’t mind high OAV. Then some more math ($35M/5200) and found some SB’s in the 80’s and then filled out the rest of the team with guys from the 20’s, 40’s 60’s.

Soon after schwarze offered to take on 3 of the teams, so I only needed to build two more.


$100M Who Zaun First?
I targeted Mike Redmond because of his many low salary but decent seasons at C and his Kevin Brown (I have a thing for Kevin Brown). Unfortunately I couldn’t find 2-3 more decent SP’s with Redmond, but I discovered that Greg Zaun was also a KB teammate from ’96. A search through Zaun’s career found me Mussina (’95), Oswalt (’02) and Halladay (’08). Not great, but good enough to throw $100M together with some switch hitters and a decent pen. Fielding is suspect at places (Sheffeild, Berkman, Zobrist) but we should give up plenty of HR’s so they won’t be tested that much. So that’s good.


$255M Weigh Tin C
I spent as much time on the bad pun as the team, but I've played high cap before. Low HR batters with A+ range (Kelly, Nap, Brett, Speaker, Cobb) and a Ruth, and relievers I’ve seen perform well in high cap leagues, and some who can start in the playoffs. Staff includes Pete, Addie, Pedro, Greg, Elton, Toney, Green, Adams, Kuo….
Team built itself in, I’m certain, under 20 minutes.


Good luck everyone! I'm happy to say everyone is doing well.

$65- 10507090
I’m staring at this team and can’t remember for the life of me what my strategy was. I knew I wanted deadball pitching but not sure why I chose 1910’s over 1900’s. I was hoping for 80’s hitters, but I never do well with 60’s players so had to go with the 90’s. I filled most of my pitching from the 10’s and hitting from the 90’s. Speed is the name of the game for me at low caps so naturally I have sloth ’96 Boggs at 3^rd….don’t even remember drafting him. I then used the 70’s to fill in more gaps..Tenace at C, cheap speed (and probably horrible) Gene Richards for last OF spot. Now here is where things went awry. I started to look at the 50’s to fill in my scrubs and kept running into ’56 Wally Moon. Like a child staring through the window at a toy store, I had to have him. To afford him I lowered my starting pitching innings and quality. To make up for it, I ended up with a weak 1920 140IP Slim Salee as my extra. Not enough quality IP may be my downfall in this league.

90M- D is for Diploma

I spent as much time on this theme as the others combined. To determine number of innings pitched needed, I usually just copy the number used by other more talented owners at similar caps. Unfortunately, there is no theme like this so I just guessed. Unlike Ozo, my chances of creating a working algorithm to calculate IP needed are equal to my chances of cloning my very own Charlize Theron…not gonna happen. I toyed with all of the strategies mentioned by other owners (high k..etc). Staring at my team now, I deployed no strategy whatsoever…It’s a hodgepodge of players with nothing in common but really poor defense. I honestly have no idea how this team will do….so far so good though.

100M – Man of Steal

I remember successfully using Rickey Henderson with a similar theme in the past, but that may have been at 80m or 90m. It may be a stretch at 100m given Rickey is a righty. In hindsight I would have went with a pitcher, but we’ll see. I like having ’02 Pedro and Lowe but they represent under 500 innings and ’02 Rickey is wasted salary. The ’89 A’s bullpen is a world beater but all 5 of my Rickey Hendersons may hover around the Mendoza line. I’ll have to work to be .500.

110M – Nobody Else will Choose 1915

I knew I wanted ’08 Walsh and worked from there. It felt way too easy to make a typical high performing 110m team. After hastily fixing all the roster violations, the team is less typical and high performance is questionable. I still like this team though.

130M – $2 Million Mayhem
This was my favorite team at the outset. I quickly knew I’d use several $2 - $2.5 million players for my bullpen, catcher, and DH. The pitching is cookie cutter deadball and most positions are typical $110 - $120 leaguers. At the last minute I decided on a Votto/McGwire 1b tandem. 2012 475PA Votto is a beast so I couldn’t pass it up. When I remember, I’ll plug McGwire in when I don’t face deadball pitchers. I likely won’t remember. Update: I’ve learned this team needs daily management which I struggle to find time for (******* cybersecurity at work has now blocked WIS). I foresee taking a look one day to see I’m playing Votto and several pitchers at 23%!

255M – Nuclear Options- I haven’t played a $255 league in years so decided to just create a team with all of the best available players (IMHO). I only needed to make a few changes for players that clearly had no viable $110M option. I assume there will be more similarity between teams in this theme than any other so I’ll be thrilled with 90 wins. I consider it house money if I make round 2 so will roll the dice at $110…at least I know I’ll have my good buddy 1908 Ed Walsh.

Good luck to all.

I took 2012 Votto in the 130M league too. He's slugging .314 so far, though admittedly it's pretty early still ... Hope he's doing better for you.