Take Two Draft - v2 (w/Blacklist) Topic

Max Carey
2/21/2019 6:30 PM
Posted by bheid408 on 2/21/2019 6:30:00 PM (view original):
Max Carey
Shucks. Have to change my roster now. ...
2/21/2019 6:49 PM
I’m going to have forgotten my draft strategy by the time I’m able to share it lol
2/21/2019 8:28 PM
Ben Zobrist
2/21/2019 8:40 PM
Finishing this draft off with Marco Hernandez.
2/21/2019 9:04 PM
Ok, here's my idea.

While a 100M league is not a "low cap" league, the need to extract value out of every dollar is higher than it was at 120M. I took Tris Speaker last time because, even though his second most expensive season is not a good value, 120M gives me enough flexibility to make up for it elsewhere by taking a hyper-value player (I believe I chose to do this in the bullpen, primarily). There are very few players whose two most expensive seasons are also both a good value from a cost-per-win-above-replacement perspective. Some notable ones who were selected are Jimmy Sheckard, who I considered taking both this time and last time, and Benny Kauff and Andy Rincon, who were taken last time. Cy Young and Carl Hubbell are also likely good picks at this cap, along with a few others.

Additionally, at a lower cap, the differentiation between Player A vs Player B is smaller, so the benefit of exclusivity is lower. So far, 3-5 players I'd consider using to fill out my roster with have been taken but, since it's at 100M, there are replacements who are equally good (if not better) values. 3-5 is also pretty low considering 46 players are chosen in this draft that I can't use, but that's more likely to happen at a cap like 100M where the useable player pool people are considering when making their picks is much larger than at higher caps. This ends up creating no incentive for me to worry about exclusivity, and tilts my decision making only towards extracting value from my roster.

Especially at 100M, spending 10% of your entire team's salary on less than 10% of your innings (Kimbrel, Jansen, etc.) or spending 15-20% of your entire team's salary on 25% of your lineup (Pujols, Kiner, etc.) scares me because I would have to sacrifice significant value elsewhere to fit under the cap. My hypothesis is that the sacrificed value will be higher than the value I would gain by having those players over using the leftovers from the draft.

To be fair, I normally wouldn't roster 2 mopup pitchers, so I do lose some Effective Salary by spending an additional ~220k in dead money on the more expensive Cody Martin season. Even so, I probably would normally spend that much additional cash on my pinch hitters, so I'll be able to compensate by getting a bit cheaper with my bench.

With all of this said, because (I feel) this strategy is likely to be a winning strategy, I would recommend either a higher cap or removing the "two most expensive seasons" piece, and implementing a minimum salary spent on drafted players for future seasons (likely for both hitters and pitchers, individually) regardless. But let's see how it plays out in the league.
2/21/2019 9:58 PM
Question - Are the players blacklisted in year one eligible to be used at all this year. I know that none of them could be drafted as exclusives this year but I am not sure if it is clear whether last season's exclusives are also off limits. Not that I am planning to use one, just want to get this out there.
2/21/2019 10:17 PM
Ozo, that's pretty much what I said.
2/21/2019 10:21 PM
Yeah, you were onto me!
2/21/2019 10:38 PM
My thinking was similar. Since I got to choose the salary cap, I wanted to make it "harder" by dropping it to $100M. It's tougher to find two seasons from the same player that are both his most expensive AND good values at $100M (damn you, 1917 George Dumont!). I played the first season more straight up with Mathewson and Carew because the $120M cap allowed more flexibility to fill in a roster, but at this lower cap I wanted to save as much salary as I could to fill in the roster with suitable players. I personally just didn't like any one hitter to justify two expensive seasons so I went with the $700k for Bill Bagwell. On the pitching side, I didn't want to waste roster spaces on two mop-up guys but my bullpens require a certain number of LHP so Jim Poole seemed a solid enough choice to start me out with two LHP already. Around 80 IP without going overboard on salary.
2/22/2019 12:27 AM
Lol, 1917 George Dumont was the worst discovery of this draft by far
2/22/2019 12:29 AM
Posted by redcped on 2/21/2019 6:49:00 PM (view original):
Posted by bheid408 on 2/21/2019 6:30:00 PM (view original):
Max Carey
Shucks. Have to change my roster now. ...
That's funny. When I picked Lorenzo Cain, I was thinking that Ozo had picked Carey last time and got him blacklisted. Have to compare the two again.

Edit: either would also make for a nice three-fer.
2/22/2019 2:44 AM (edited)
Hard to say no to Northrop. I thought about him last season but went with McCabe since he's a better value from a $/IP perspective and only a bit worse from a quality perspective (and I had already wasted money on Speaker).
2/22/2019 2:24 AM
Posted by ozomatli on 2/22/2019 2:24:00 AM (view original):
Hard to say no to Northrop. I thought about him last season but went with McCabe since he's a better value from a $/IP perspective and only a bit worse from a quality perspective (and I had already wasted money on Speaker).
Sorry to delete what I wrote just prior. Thought it might be too much table-talk. Mentioned that before I decided to shuck the entire season to see what two Ed Sewards would do, I was itching on picking the only two Jake Northrops, one of course used as the ace reliever and the other making for an excellent mop-up, funny enough.
2/22/2019 2:42 AM
It might be a little late for this, but a way to mitigate the Ozo/Skunk strategerization is to set divisions by combined salary for your 2x2.

2/22/2019 10:18 AM
◂ Prev 1...7|8|9|10|11 Next ▸
Take Two Draft - v2 (w/Blacklist) Topic

Search Criteria

Terms of Use Customer Support Privacy Statement

© 1999-2025 WhatIfSports.com, Inc. All rights reserved. WhatIfSports is a trademark of WhatIfSports.com, Inc. SimLeague, SimMatchup and iSimNow are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts, Inc. Used under license. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.