I guess now I'm on a mission to prove Schwarze's opinion wrong!

So for years I had been running basically the same plan. Pay for low HR/9 and BB/9 with pitchers, and high 2B, BB, speed and range with hitters, and let everything else take care of itself. And it worked pretty well until it became clear in last year's second round that it was not nearly good enough any more. So it is time for a new plan. A lot of what went into each of my teams is the same, so I may as well put it here rather than repeat it in every team.

* Batting average matters. This might be obvious, but I was trying to avoid it for as long as possible.
* Pitcher strikeouts matter, especially because they give you more pitches, and that is what matters for fatigue.
* WIS really messed up the dynamic pricing, partially in predictable ways, and partially in ways no one could have predicted.
* Putting all those together, it often turns out that recent pitchers are much better value than deadball pitchers. I am running largely 21st century pitchers in round one, and I think just a single deadballer. (I might regret this.)
* In the past I had always had big splits in how many IP I drafted at low and high caps. And I had always had fatigue problems at low but not high caps. So it was kind of obvious that I should have a much smaller gap in how many IP I drafted between low and high cap. And now I am drafting 1300 IP/162 at the lowest caps, and only 1400 at the high cap. (Though more in the DH league, because DH's do weird things to pitcher fatigue.) This means my rate stats are awesome, but I am taking wild risks.
* Unless they are batting 1 or 2, you just waste PAs by drafting someone with over 700 PA/162. So I have largely stopped doing that, and have way more players who will either get days off once a week or (if we hit well) play for a while at 95%. I can live with that, and I don't even feel it is a risk.
* Starters cost more per IP for the same performance level. So you just have to pay more. In the past I had aimed to pay roughly the same $/IP for every pitcher, and I was having my worst pitchers as starters. This was a mistake.

All that said, on with the teams.

70M: Carden Gillenwater All Stars
Hitting: 5453 PA, .282/.380/.382
Pitching: 1321 IP, 1.10 WHIP, 125 HR allowed

There just aren't that many full time hitters or starting pitchers in the pool, so lots of platoons here. Sometimes there was not even a good lefty/righty platoon, so I have an offence/defence platoon. And I have 5 starters who between them have 800 IP. But I feel pretty good about the team defence, and I have to hope that even if walks and doubles are not good enough at high caps, they still work here.

90M: deGrom pitches to Stan the Man
Hitting: 5467 PA, .311/.410/.446
Pitching: 1369 IP, 0.99 WHIP, 119 HR allowed

So this is the new strategy. Old me would never have allowed this many HR allowed, or this many IP to be drafted, at a cap like this. But I got the WHIP under 1, and the OBP for over .400, so maybe it will work.

deGrom was an easy enough choice, since he has not been dynamically priced out of range. I thought about taking Santana's best season, but was able to afford one of his other seasons anyway. I thought about taking Hendrix, and maybe I should have. I think I was getting too much into the new pitchers mantra at this point.

The hitters were tougher. I normally do not take anything like this kind of hitter at 90M. So I knew I wanted to minimise $/PA, and that meant making it a leadoff hitter. At first I thought Ichiro, because he is a great leadoff hitter and he brings Safeco. But he is overpriced, and Citi Field is almost as good as Safeco. I thought about Pujols, but that is just a few too many HR for leadoff. So I went with one of the Musial seasons who has surprisingly many plus plays in RF. I do not understand how RF defence works - CF and LF sort of make sense, but weird things happen in RF. So I just went with who has the best track record, namely Stan.

The rest of the team is basically a standard OL team, subject to the constraints I said at the start.

110M: Foulke has A pair of Sox
Hitting: 5422 PA, .310/.401/.478
Pitching: 1376 IP, 0.90 WHIP, 84 HR allowed

I tried Eck here, but his Cleveland years are just not good enough to start at this cap. And I could not make a Pedro team work, either with Expos or Dodgers. None of the OF players really appealed, nor any of the other starters, so it was on to relievers.
A few of them looked better on paper - they had fancier numbers than the ones I just listed. But none of them jumped out. Andrew Miller had not great stadia. Steve Reed looked great, but it just felt wrong to build a 110M team around a forgettable middle reliever. This team does not have any obvious holes, and the rotation (starting with 99 Pedro and 18 Sale) shortens up nicely for a playoff run.

120M: Four Pitchers and Seven Hitters
Hitting: 6220 PA, .333/.418/.489
Pitchers: 1506 IP, 0.96 WHIP, 61 HR

Old me would have picked 8 for the pitching without even thinking. And honestly, I am kind of regretting not doing that. My rotation is basically Claude Hendrix - my one deadballer in the whole round one - and Randy Johnson. After that it is odds and ends, though I hope this is the time I get decent value out of Willie Hernandez.

The hitting is not great, but it was the only number I did not feel unhappy with any position. Going back to Bill Joyce at 3B and leadoff is a bit of a throwback. I guessed there would be a lot of deadballers, so I did not pay for many HR. Reggie Smith has 32, and the rest of my team has not much more combined.

This should probably have been the team I said I was most worried about. I think I took 200 too many PA and 50 too many IP, and I could have used that $4M to get one more bopper in the middle of the line up.

I don't normally make predictions for my teams because ai expect them all to win 95 games and a playoff series. Not that they all do, but I feel that way at the start. This one feels a bit more like a typical team, so maybe just a .500 record?

130M: Grounders and pop-ups but no Home Runs
Hitters: 5542 PA, .345/.438/.466
Pitchers: 1409 IP, 0.92 WHIP, 46 HR allowed

Because I am happy to live with more HR allowed, I had a bit more flexibility here. I ended up with the cutoff for HR/9 being around 0.39. (The precise number matters; one of my round two pitchers differs in the fourth decimal place.) This let me have Kevin Brown, and 99 Pedro, and a bunch of long relievers to get through the middle innings.

The hitters were tougher. I ended up with a weird righty/righty platoon at 2B because I could not find anyone else I liked with a low enough HR total. But I have ended up with no one over 10, so I have some flexibility in round 2.

Variable Cap: Mickey Mantle's 152M team
Hitters: 5580 PA, .357/.455/.604
Pitchers: 1400 IP, 0.84 WHIP, 71 HR allowed

I went through a lot of permutatons for this, and looking back I cannot tell why I settled on this one.

Part of it was easy. Red Sox and Yankees had a combination of great modern relievers and old hitters. But I needed a bit more pitching, so I added Atlanta to get Maddux. Then the last team came down to either Cleveland, LA or Oakland. I wanted to go with Oakland for the relievers and the park, but LA fit better. Then it was the years.

I needed 94 and 99 for the two stars of the rotation. 1928 gave me Hornsby and Gehrig, which was nice. And 1957 gave me Williams and Mantle, who will do for the outfield corners. But then it got tricky. 2007 provided some ok pitching (Papelbon and Saito) plus Chipper at 3B and more importantly Posada behind the dish.

Then it came down to the modern years to fill out the bullpen and the rest of the team. And I took forever thinking about 2016, 2017 and 2018. For a while I was playing with taking all 3. But that was costing too much. So I had to cut one. And I cut 2018, but I do not know why. I should have left out 2017, and gone with Mookie plus Sale plus some other absurd pitching seasons from 2018. I think I just ran out of $$ for the bench that way, but I should have tried harder to get it to work.

So the upshot was 1928, 1957, 1994, 1999, 2007, 2016, 2017, with Atlanta, LA, Sox and Yankees.

As you might have noticed, I have very few IP. I also have a ridiculous number of strikeouts. I had one 2018 based team that I calculated had enough pitches to get by, but only 1385 IP. I literally could not believe the calculations. So I went back to 1400. If this works, it will upend a lot of what I believed about high cap leagues.

I am really looking forward to this one because (a) I love the variety in the strategies, and (b) my final team is more than 10 wins better than the teams I started with. If this team works, it could win a huge number of games. But it could also go into fatiue death spiral. Let's see what happens!

Posted by schwarze on 8/10/2019 9:36:00 PM (view original):
Great writeup jborhman! I was laughing out loud quite a bit.

No need to thank me for WISC anymore. It's all ozomatli these days. He's done a fantastic job running things. He's made a few tweaks here and there but has kept the general spirit of the contest true to my original concept.

Also, I have a team in that TOC 60M theme that's at least 6-8 years old (maybe even older - not sure). It was from a 60M WISC theme from long ago.

Me too - I think it was from 2012. I don't see how it's possible that it hasn't been filled. No 60 mil leagues at all in all these years to fill it up?....is it some kind of glitch?

I was fairly shocked when I saw your variable cap team when reviewing rosters, Brian. Will be keeping an eye on it.

In general, I've seen modern pitchers as more attractive lately, but not because of the pitches via Ks or even because of the positive impact on fielding -- for me, it is simply that people aren't drafting as many HRs as they used to in their lineups. I was still a bit too scared to test this in the WISC.

And, agreed with the point about 700+ PAs usually being a waste outside of the top 1 or lineup spots. I can't think of the last time I had a team that didn't run at least 1 or 2 hitters < 100 fatigue for most of the entire season.

This won't be true for 2019, but the great pitchers from 2016-2018 don't kill you with HR in the first place. A lot of them are still running under 0.5 per 9, and sometimes well under. That will still hurt if you face a lineup of all McGwire's or something, but as you say, no one is running that lineup any more.

This is my third WISC, and I’ve got a high bar to continue on an upwards trend. After missing the cut in the first year, I was preranked 22 then finished 16th in Round 1 last year, 12th in Round 2 and 14th overall. I’ve been rewarded with the 29th seed this year, which means the competition got a lot tougher (clearly it did) and I don’t have enough proven success yet to warrant better. So I think my plan is pretty simple: Get to Round 2, then start sacrificing goats and burning incense to appease the WIS gods.

The best route to Round 2 is not to screw up any of your rosters and get a few teams into the playoffs. My low-cap team in R1 last year only won 73 games, which could have been deadly, but I did manage three playoff teams. Nonetheless, my best team had only 91 wins and some of the owners at the top had 5-6 teams that good. Clearly I have to overcome the lack of experience some of you have and get a little lucky with division draws. I compete quite well in theme leagues of all types, so I have reasonable confidence that I understand the game about 85% as well as the best players. Who knows if I can close that gap, but in the meantime this is my favorite hobby and it distracts me from the wreckage of my personal life most of the time.

One of my personal goals is to spend more time writing. So this gives me the opportunity to achieve some actualization while fiddling with these code bits we call players. I feel better already. Game on!

$70M: First & Last
No Middle Ground

My low-cap confidence isn’t super-high still, even if I did save face somewhat in R2 last year with a 91-win team. I have a decent idea of what to target and what to avoid. I don’t worry if I have a few lousy innings-eating pitchers and cheap bench guys, and even a guy or two in the lineup who can’t hit much. Deadballers don’t waste money on strikeouts, so I knew I’d target them. It’s tough to afford a great defense at this cap or find first/last players who are outstanding anyway, so I just tried to be solid up the middle in error-reduction primarily and make sure my catcher could slow down the speedy teams reasonably. At this cap I worry less about pitchers with higher OAV, and with mostly deadball arms HR won’t really be an issue for me.

I almost always build pitching staffs first for some reason. My goal was to have 1000-1100 solid innings and not worry too much about the rest. At this cap you need some filler guys in those middle innings who are going to be just average. I used $/IP and ERC# sorting primarily to find some of the better values out there, and I think I’ve got a competitive staff out of it.

1899 Noodles Hahn and 1904 Fred Glade provide a solid 1-2 at just under $19M for 640 innings, and 1907 Walter Johnson and 1917 Eddie Plank (aka, guys you’ve actually heard of) give me another 250 innings at a bit over $6M. I’ve now got almost all the starts I’ll need. The rest of the decent innings will go to 1945 Boom-Boom Beck, 1905 Win Kellum, and 1918 Bob Steele. The remaining 300 innings are mediocre all the way.

1,427 innings (2.42 ERA, .244 OAV, 1.11 WHIP, 0.15 HR/9)

With the first/last restriction, there’s a real shortage of great options at some positions, so it’s tough to build a really speedy switch-hitting team for instance. I sorted to find the fastest decent affordable hitters and was able to fit two of them, 1888 Dummy Hoy (he was a deaf mute!) and 1977 Mitchell Page. 1933 Bob Johnson fills out the outfield with a potent bat. Up the middle I’ve got ‘96 Derek Jeter (I keep reminding myself it’s just code bits named “Derek Jeter” to stomach having him in there) and ‘84 Marty Barrett (was trying to fit Quilvio Veras in there for a speedy switch-hitter but couldn’t manage the extra $1.5M without cuts I didn’t like). At 1B is 1906 Tim Jordan and his “league-leading” 12 homers that normalize pretty well. At 3B there’s a platoon of ‘57 George Kell and ‘08 Jed Lowrie. ‘58 “Mean” Gene Green is behind the plate with a B arm and a little pop.

.289/.364/.426 slash line with 5,297 PA, 233 doubles, 47 triples, 97 HR, and 174/86 SB/CS.

We’ll play in Oakland Coliseum (-2 doubles and triples, -1 elsewhere) to keep the scoring down and stretch the pitching a little further. I’m just hoping for 85-90 wins and a shot at a playoff spot.

$90M: Double Eagle
Big Ed and Stan the Man

My theory on this was to find my key players in the $9M-$10M range but no higher because you only have about $45M to spend on each set. Also wanted a park from one of them that would fit the type of team I’d be building. With a virtually unlimited player pool aside from salaries (as in, all eras on the table), this called for a similar approach as most of these teams. Keep the homers down on the pitching side, get an infield to support balls in play, emphasize the doubles and triples, and get some speed in there.

First pitcher I tried to build around was 2018 DeGrom, because I haven’t used him and he’s awfully enticing. Only 6 SP come up in the $9-10M range with minimum $40K/IP and ERC# under 2 (DeGrom, 64 Koufax, 2004 Santana, 96 KBrown, 1906 Doc White, 1909 Walsh). Can’t really go wrong there, but Koufax and Santana have higher HR/9 rates so I backed off them. So I built my initial staff with DeGrom and found I was coming up a little light on innings and switched to ‘09 Walsh instead for 246 innings (he barely meets the $40K requirement) and his 0 HR/9. Figured I’d like to get more out of my best starter if possible.

The innings for the big guy set this up as a natural 4-man rotation. I shuffled a lot of options in there but ultimately went for slightly more innings when I could and took deadballers all across the board. I’ve got 3 guys in the $7.4-7.9M range: ‘05 Three Finger, ‘08 Eddie Plank, ‘15 Guy Morton. None walk too many guys or give up long balls or waste much on striking guys out. And all between 246-264 innings so the rotation should be really consistent.

The entire bullpen is from 1919 or earlier and most can be used as spot starters. I usually do prefer modern relievers, but I’ve already forgotten why I ended up with these guys instead. Not a lot of household names, but in these tournaments I find I use a lot more guys from 100 years ago than today. So welcome to ‘15 Mellie Wolfgang, ‘19 Ray Caldwell, ‘18 Bob Steele, ‘13 Hooks Wiltse, ‘18 Roy Mitchell and ‘05 Win Kellum.

1459 innings (2.10 ERA, .224 OAV, 1.03 WHIP, 0.11 HR/9).

I honestly can’t remember the other hitters I weighed because I forgot to note it at the time, but I went with ‘44 Musial. I always like Musial in my lineup, he brings me a +3 doubles park, he cost barely over the $9M, and he’s got everything except speed. I’ll need a couple guys to hit ahead of him who can get on base, score from first on doubles, and hit a few doubles of their own. Enter ‘27 Cobb and ‘36 Ben Chapman (50 doubles, A+ range) for under $11M combined. Behind Musial I’ll have 1894 Roger Connor and a very productive 3B in 2018 Anthony Rendon, who I think is good value at just over $5M and isn’t too dependent on HR for his productivity. Those two come in under $10M combined.

Up the middle I’ve got ‘82 Joe Morgan for the A defense and solid bat, though he’s a little low on PA and will sit a lot against LHP. He’ll pair with ‘98 Vizquel to handle the ground balls with minimal errors. Ideally I like my middle infield to have better range, too, but in this cap I couldn’t find anyone who had everything I wanted in the price range. I’ve got these two at a hair over $10M, and that leaves me about $5M for a catching platoon and a bench of scrubs. For some reason, I just love Wally Schang and slot him in any time he appears to fit my needs, so his 1916 season with 423 PA and A+ arm at a bit under $3M proves irresistible. He’s my catching man crush, what can I say? I’m filling the rest of the catching PA with a guy I never heard of, 1894 Frank Connaughton, who was primarily a SS and not much of a catcher but he can rake against LHP and cost under $1.5M for 232 PA. He’ll make up for the scrub who replaces Morgan in the order against most LH.

5415 PA with a .309/.393/.472 slash, 323 doubles, 87 triples and 86 homers, 151/95 SB/CS.

$110M: 3x Franchise
A Fine Set of Speakers

I started building three teams for this theme based on players who immediately struck me as good options: Greg Maddux, Pete Alexander, and Tris Speaker. All had usable seasons from three franchises with long histories to avoid limiting my choices too much. Alexander didn’t work as well as I’d hoped in creating a pitching staff I liked, and I struggled to get a lineup I liked for the Maddux team. I started with Speaker and ended up liking it the best anyway. I probably could have kept trying more options and would have for a R2 team, but I quite like how this one turned out. I feel pretty confident in mid-caps because I play so many themes in the $100-120M range and have figured out what seems to work most of the time.

With the Red Sox, Indians and A’s, I’ve got no shortage of choices to build a pitching staff. I knew I wanted deadball starters, and a rotation of ‘12 Joe Wood-’03 Addie Joss-’02 Bill Bernhard fits the bill. I believe the motto is: Always use Bernhard if you can use Bernhard. Right? I can’t figure out precisely why he seems to do better than guys with similar stats, but that’s where that 85% factor comes in. I know enough to know he belongs in this rotation. Wood can also really hit, which is a nice bonus.

I’ve added a 125-inning swingman Cy Morgan and a pen featuring 5 relievers from 51 to 83 innings (‘17 Sean Doolittle and Andrew Miller, 09 Andrew Bailey, 16 Dan Otero, and 1919 Ray Caldwell), plus 29 innings from ‘23 Dennis Burns, who’s been effective for me in an assortment of themes -- well, most of the time anyway, since a couple bad outings can kill an ERA when you’ve only got 29 innings to work with.

1,475 innings (2.09 ERA, .208 OAV, 0.97 WHIP, 0.21 HR/9).

It’s tough to go wrong starting a lineup off with two Speakers. I believe another motto is always use Speaker if you can use Speaker. Right, jbohrman? I’ve got the ‘13 and ‘23 in the lineup and a $1.48M ‘28 on the bench because it’s his only workable season from a third team. That’s a bit over $21M so the rest of my hitting needs to come in around $34M and that’s snug. I want to use modern low-error middle infielders because my pitchers will allow balls in play. ‘99 Roberto Alomar and ‘98 Omar Vizquel fit the bill nicely, both switch hitters who don’t rely on homers too much for their power, and both have good speed. That’s another $13M, so I have about $21M left for the rest of the lineup and bench.

I know I’m going to play in a plus doubles park to benefit Speaker (League II), so I found corner infielders to take full advantage and keep some balance in the lineup. At 3B, 2017 Jose Ramirez with his 56 doubles and A defense fits well at $6M. Across the diamond, ‘26 George Burns and his .358 AVG and 64 doubles give me a solid righty bat, with A- range too. But I’m down to $9M for an outfielder and catchers and a bench … Enter ‘20 Elmer Smith with 553 PA and .898 OPS# for $4M, which means I’ll use my 3rd Speaker as a backup for him. Behind the plate, a combination of ‘16 Wally Schang (he’s back, at a higher cap even!!) and ‘37 Billy Sullivan gets me just enough PA for about $4M. Fill the bench with scrubs and a couple PH, and we’re good to go.

5719 PA with a .324/.395/.502 slash, 400 doubles, 79 triples, 108 homers, 189/97 SB/CS.

$120M: Lucky Numbers
Ocho Quatro

I started out with the pitching staff by trying to find two deadball workhorses. I did think about building around Silver King (along with 2018 DeGrom) after a lot of success with him in a 120M theme draft this year, but I was sure I’d be wasting some of his innings ultimately. You cannot afford inefficiency in the WISC. I needed a little extra money for a DH in this one, too, so I couldn’t waste any pitching money.

Nonetheless, the 8s called to me and I started out with DeGrom in there. I decided on reliable ‘08 Ed Walsh and ‘18 Walter Johnson for 900 innings at under $36M, and suddenly I no longer needed DeGrom’s innings. Once again, DeGrom goes into the waste pile, just like most Mets seasons.

I grabbed a pair of 80-inning starters for swingmen in ‘38 Dizzy Dean and 1888 John Weyhing, plus 37-inning 1898 Sam Leever. The bullpen is anchored by a couple studs in ‘18 Sean Doolittle (a bonus for not keeping DeGrom) and ‘08 Joey Devine, both with miniscule ERC#. Sprinkle in ‘88 Eck, ‘98 Trevor Hoffman, ‘68 Steve Hamilton, and ‘58 Barry Latman (another favorite in this cap range).

Even in a hitter-friendly park, I feel this staff keeps me very competitive and flexible with a lot of relievers available. I only had 13 spots for hitters so I’m carrying 12 pitchers including a mopup. With a DH I didn’t want to go too low on innings, because these offenses should be loaded.

1,470 innings (1.52 ERA, .200 OAV, 0.92 WHIP, 0.14 HR/9)

The hitting side was much harder to build. The goal was a high-average team with good speed and defense and 2B and 3B emphasized. I tried a lot of combinations with Tris Speaker but couldn’t find the right mix (jbohrman will be disappointed in me, I’m sure). The “4” combinations ended up giving me more of what I wanted, and that left Tris out ultimately.

With 9 lineup spots to fill for about $60M, I only took two guys over $7M to ensure a deeper lineup: ‘14 Benny Kauff and ‘44 Musial (hey, he looks familiar … not sure it’s so great that he’s anchoring two teams with $30M cap difference, but too late now). They’ll be joined by ‘24 Heilmann DH’ing and 1894 Roger Connor in the core. Up the middle I wanted to keep the errors down for my deadballers and went with ‘74 Joe Morgan and 2004 Jimmy Rollins. ‘94 Boggs handles 3B, C platoon of 1904 Mike Grady and 1934 Bill Delancey, and I’ve got speedy ‘84 Willie Wilson covering CF and hitting 9th.

How did I miss getting Schang in there? User error. And how is ‘94 Connor my 1B in the 90M and 120M themes? And ‘44 Musial too? Just the DH factor, or more user error perhaps. Maybe those personal problems are causing me more brain drain than I realized. At least I didn’t put ‘98 Vizquel in there a third straight time.

Ideally I’d have a little more average and speed, but 4 guys in the lineup can run well. It’s not my favorite team, but it’s efficient and meets my goals. We’ll play at Kaufmann Stadium (+2 doubles and +3 triples with -2 homers) to take advantage of most of my hitters’ strengths. Hopefully it won’t strain the pitchers too much on the other side.

.322/.406/.499 with 359 doubles, 117 triples and 120 homers, 268/134 SB/CS.

$130M: Calm Before the Storm
Chicks Dig the Dead Ball

I wanted to leave myself the ability to build a strong R2 pitching staff that isn’t going to get crushed by homers and even be able to build a lineup that won’t depend on homers either. To some extent, I’ll cross that bridge later if I get there but I wanted flexibility. Same goes with hitting. Go too high with that HR number and you tie your hands a lot in the next round filling every spot.

So after some research on the staff I’d like now and preserving options for R2, I landed on 0.32 HR/9 as my pitching threshold and 14 HR for hitting. The guy who set the pitching cutoff was ‘68 Gibson, as there was no one a little higher who I wanted enough for this round, and there are tons of good SP seasons above that. I didn’t have any problem putting together a staff I liked with that limit.

I tried to work in ‘94 Maddux to pair a couple monster ace SP, but it’s tough to drop half your pitching money on 600 innings and still have a bullpen you like. So joining Gibson are ‘64 Dean Chance and ‘33 Carl Hubbell in a 3-man rotation, with fill-in starts from ‘43 Howie Pollet and ‘52 Stu Miller as needed. Splurged for 45-inning Joey Devine to anchor the pen, with a very solid quartet to set him up: ‘80 Joe Sambito, ‘87 Dave Smith. ‘10 Mariano, ‘76 Grant Jackson. (Side note: It’s trickier than usual to find a mopup with your remaining cash who isn’t over that HR/9 threshold. Fortunately I had two options without having to adjust other spots at the end and got one for 223K.)

I’ve got 1,476 innings (1.68 ERA, .202 OAV, 0.96 WHIP, 0.22 HR/9).

On the hitting side, I used a maximum of 15 HR in my searches and tried to build a speedy team with strong defense, with high averages and plus doubles and triples. My first attempt included seven hitters with at least 80 speed and most over 90, but I decided I was giving up too much elsewhere for that extra bit of speed. I pushed for higher AVG guys with the XBH to make up for the homers we won’t be hitting.

I started off with ‘22 George Sisler (.420/.467/.594) and his 60 combined 2B+3B and 94 speed, ‘20 Speaker (.388/.483/.562) with 50 2B and 81 speed, and ‘25 Harry Heilmann (.393/.457/.569) with 51 2B+3B though just 66 speed. Hitting behind them will be CF ‘41 Pete Reiser (.343/.406/.558) with 56 2B+3B and team-high 14 HR, 3B ‘49 George Kell (.343/.424/.467) with 38 2B, C ‘21 Schang (.316/.428/.453), SS ‘87 Tony Fernandez (.322/.379/.426) and 2B ‘96 Eric Young (.324/.393/.421). Oh yeah, Schang is back!

.353/.425/.501 slash, with 330 doubles, 89 triples, and just 68 homers, 175/84 SB/CS.

I know the next round will require the same park, and I’ll be looking at hitters with 15-plus homers. Since everyone else is in the same boat, we will all have more homer-prone pitchers and more homer-heavy lineups to some degree. Since I don’t envision building a team in R2 that would benefit from a major plus-homer park or one that totally killed them either, I had to stick with something moderate. I settled on Shibe Park to boost the singles (my best weapon) and be neutral on the rest. Maybe something extreme would have been smarter, but the logic made sense to me at the time. I’m sure when I see what other people did, I’ll be smacking myself in the head more than once.

Variable Cap: Minus XY
A Benjamin and Three Tubmans

Cap: $160 million (5 seasons x 4 franchises)
Teams: Phillies, Dodgers, Senators/Twins, Braves
Seasons: 1894. 1915, 1994, 2007, 2016

This roster underwent a lot of changes before I found a sweet spot for not losing too much salary and getting as many of my desired seasons as possible. The cap was sure to be high enough to take on some beastly salaries I otherwise wouldn’t consider at most of the caps I play. In fact, my initial attempt came up so low that I couldn’t use enough salary with the teams and seasons I picked without just piling on wasted PA and IP. Inefficiency kills in this tournament, however. So I went back to the drawing board.

Two seasons jumped to the fore as I went for some of the best possible players: 1894 for hitters and 1915 for pitching (I also tried to make 1930 for hitters and 1908 for pitchers work, but the franchise combinations didn’t work as well). With teams able to build dominant deadball pitching staffs, I didn’t want to frustrate myself with a homer-heavy team. So I went for very high averages, doubles, triples, and speed. Getting a decent bullpen with limited teams and seasons was definitely a challenge, and it took a lot of experimenting to pick the optimal combination for this group.

At this cap, I felt I needed a few of the best SP seasons possible to fend off the mighty lineups. So I’ve got 1915 Pete Alexander and 1994 Greg Maddux at the top along with 1915 Walter Johnson (not his best season, but under 2 ERC#). At one point I had 2015 Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw, but I eventually added Maddux, dumped Greinke and took 2016 Kershaw instead, along with teammates Rich Hill, Kenley Jansen and Grant Dayton for the pen. From 2007, I’ve got an excellent Takashi Saito. From 1915, a fine George Dumont. I’ve got a mop and a long man to avoid getting too much fatigue, too.

One worry is a lot of my relievers have low inning counts and will be hard to keep fresh. Going to need the starters to be workhorses and use some of them out of the pen too. Some active managing will be required, but I can usually get on between games to make moves.

1,498 innings (1.63 ERA, .196 OAV, 0.87 WHIP, 0.29 HR/9).

The 1894 Phillies gave me four starters in Billy Hamilton, Ed Delahanty, Sam Thompson and Lave Cross. Once I added the Braves, I could add Hugh Duffy’s monster 1894 from the ancestral Boston Beaneaters, the best of my four .400 hitters. I’ve never put together that much average in a lineup before, and it’s pretty exciting to see. Cross is no slouch at .386 either. I know all of them normalize about 30 points lower than that and will be facing stud pitchers, so my expectations aren’t out of control here.

I wanted to use modern middle infielders to help my deadball pitchers, and I found a fine combo on the 2007 Phillies with Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins. Catcher was the toughest spot with the seasons I had, but it wasn’t worth adding another season to lose $5M in salary. So I went with 1994 Darren Daulton platooning with 1894 Mike Grady (I don’t think I ever used Grady before, but somehow I have two versions of him in this tournament … and Wally Schang isn’t at all happy about that).

.368/.436/.564 slash, 360 doubles, 148 triples, 132 homers, 332/210 SB/CS

A little under $85M for hitting with a bit over 6000 PA (many wasted on Hamilton and Rollins, which was unavoidable). I’ll put them in the Metrodome, with +2 for 2B and 3B, 0s elsewhere. Will it work? I hope so!

After winning the tournament last year, I do feel more pressure than I did in previous years. Previously, I had improved my position each year I had participated. 45th back in 2006, as a teenager --> 29th in 2015, one month after returning to the site --> 9th in 2016 --> 3rd in 2017 --> and then 1st last year. I literally cannot continue on this path now, and being the favorite is less comfortable than being the challenger / underdog.

To build my teams, I look to find pitchers who score best on value. I create a metric I call Value Index in a spreadsheet for each pitcher, rank them, and then filter the sheet based on theme criteria and/or my preferences. I no longer look at any other stats for pitchers. For hitters, I have not figured out (or spent time on, really) how to do this, so I just use old school methods.

$70M: First & Last
Team Name: MH If U Ain't 1st Ur Last
Stadium: Target Field

This team pretty much follows my low cap formula for the WISC: good defense up the middle, more inside-the-park SLG than I expect my opponents to have, and a pitching staff that has been so optimized for value that it literally could not be better without spending more money.

As a result of this, I tend to spend a bit more on hitting at low caps than pitching, and that is true here. My SPs are my worst pitchers, but my pen is scary for this cap, with five guys who have a WHIP under 1.00.

I went with 1888 Dummy Hoy over the obvious Vince Coleman choice, for a few hundred thousand extra. He's got more PAs, A+ range and will steal just about as often if you let him. Our middle of the order "murderer's row lite" is 1909 Frank Baker, 1890 Dave Orr (who's D/D defense I can stomach at 1B), and 1924 Kiki Cuyler (who I don't think anyone else used for some reason -- too expensive maybe?) and should cause problems for opponents at this cap.

As usual for low caps, I am dangerously low on PAs, and will probably bat my pitcher 6th or 1st -- which is becoming a low-cap WISC tradition for me at this point.

Hitting: 4,743 PA, .307 / .375 / .426, $35.1M
Pitching: 1,321 IP, 1.04 WHIP, 0.28 HR/9, $34.2M
Outlook: Looks like my team WHIP is better than most, and so are my hitting stats. High hopes for this one. 95 wins +/- 3

$90M: Double Eagle
Team Name: MH de Brouthers Grom
Stadium: Citi Field

When dippedncrack joined, I told him this one was easy (and it sort of is) but it's the theme I'm most worried about. I hate managing unbalanced teams because it's harder to generate runs.

deGrom was the objectively right choice for pitcher, in my opinion. The average cost of an inning for a typical 90M league should be about $32K (90M / 2 / 1400 IP) if you are building a balanced team. $40K is considerably higher than this, and I'd venture a guess that most people (maybe excluding rbow923) wouldn't even roster a good value like 1908 Ed Walsh, who is slightly under $40K per inning in a normal 90M league. I know I wouldn't. So, the right pitcher is the one who meets the $40K/IP criteria while also A) being the best value and B) having as few IP as possible. This leaves two options: deGrom and Claude Hendrix. Hendrix scores slightly better on Value Index, but takes up almost double the innings that deGrom does, so deGrom is the pick.

Hitters was more difficult. Going above 10M seemed like a mistake to me, since having an even more unbalanced lineup would create difficulties. However, most of the 9M-10M options had challenges. My top picks (though there were other good options as well):

• 1885 Roger Connor, 1B, $9.9M -- Pro: Fast, switch hitter, A+ range. Con: Not a big XBH threat, expensive
• 1914 Tris Speaker, 1B/OF, $9.3M -- Pro: A+ range, left, fast. Con: Not a big XBH threat
• 1905 Cy Seymour, OF, $9.3M -- Pro: Lefty, A range, good SLG, decent speed. Con: Not the best at anything
• 1886 Dan Brouthers, 1B, $9.2M -- Pro: Monster XBH numbers, A range, lefty. Con: Slow AF, too many PAs
• Stan Musial, OF -- Pro: Couple seasons to choose from, good XBH numbers Con: Subpar range, not very fast

I don't know if this was the right pick, but I went with Brouthers because he was the best at what I needed the most -- XBH. It's simply too hard to find good SLG at this cap given the constraint of having to roster multiple albatrosses (albatroi? albatrix?). My next highest after Brouthers is .486.

Hitting: 5,139 PA, .310 / .398 / .454, $46.0M
Pitching: 1,395 IP, 0.97 WHIP, 0.23 HR/9, $42.9M
?Outlook: My bullpen is a bit weaker than I'd like, so I'll hedge a bit on this one and say 88 wins +/- 6

$110M: 3x Franchise
Team Name: MH McMahon Solo
Stadium: Comiskey Park (I)

I pretty much knew I was going to take a pitcher, since the only hitter I could see myself taking was Tris Speaker and I figured there'd be a better bet out there somewhere.

I started by making a list of franchises I was interested in (Giants, White Sox, Indians, Athletics, Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs). I then filtered for players who played for at least two of them, ranked by quality of their best season. The pitchers I ended up being interested in were:

• Don McMahon
• Andrew Miller
• Keith Foulke
• Steve Reed
• Bob Howry

I decided I wanted the Giants / White Sox combo, so that left me with Howry, McMahon and Foulke. McMahon and Foulke both gave me the Red Sox, which meant I got Tris Speaker anyway, and Rich Hill. McMahon has some seasons that are a good value but his Red Sox season is really bad, so I originally went with Foulke, only to realize later than Foulke's Giants seasons are both ineligible due to being under 1M.

Hitting: 5,222 PA, .343 / .423 / .486, $56.3M
Pitching: 1,458 IP, 0.92 WHIP, 0.22 HR/9, $52.7M
Outlook: I'm the only person to take McMahon's Red Sox season, which is interesting. I like this lineup a lot given the cap, but feel the pitching is a little under where I'd like it to be. Call it 90 wins +/- 4

Going to bed, will write up the other three tomorrow.

Guys - this little writeup by brianjw is worth the price of entering this contest.

* Batting average matters. This might be obvious, but I was trying to avoid it for as long as possible.
* Pitcher strikeouts matter, especially because they give you more pitches, and that is what matters for fatigue.
* WIS really messed up the dynamic pricing, partially in predictable ways, and partially in ways no one could have predicted.
* Putting all those together, it often turns out that recent pitchers are much better value than deadball pitchers. I am running largely 21st century pitchers in round one, and I think just a single deadballer. (I might regret this.)
* In the past I had always had big splits in how many IP I drafted at low and high caps. And I had always had fatigue problems at low but not high caps. So it was kind of obvious that I should have a much smaller gap in how many IP I drafted between low and high cap. And now I am drafting 1300 IP/162 at the lowest caps, and only 1400 at the high cap. (Though more in the DH league, because DH's do weird things to pitcher fatigue.) This means my rate stats are awesome, but I am taking wild risks.
* Unless they are batting 1 or 2, you just waste PAs by drafting someone with over 700 PA/162. So I have largely stopped doing that, and have way more players who will either get days off once a week or (if we hit well) play for a while at 95%. I can live with that, and I don't even feel it is a risk.
* Starters cost more per IP for the same performance level. So you just have to pay more. In the past I had aimed to pay roughly the same $/IP for every pitcher, and I was having my worst pitchers as starters. This was a mistake.

Kudos to brianjw for sharing his insight...

It wasn't so much that he was inventing a better mouse trap, it was more about efficiency. I was expecting something way over my head.

Apparently we are nowhere close to getting dynamic pricing back. Recently they replied that their January statement about an upcoming review has gotten no attention. We are no closer now than we were then. Looks like we are in an indefinite holding pattern. We are stuck with what we have...

Not surprising that we pay more for starters that can go deep into games. There are a bunch of good arms that can go 3-5 innings, and they are on the cheap. Tandems can be productive and cost effective.

Has anyone looked at the cost of high strikeout deadball pitchers? Wink...

Prologue

I’m happy to be entering my third WISC tournament. I made the second round in my first two tries, although if memory serves the second time was on a technicality: I finished 25^th in the first round but someone dropped out. That second effort seems to be roughly my level as an owner, as I will point out in my summary below, although I’m on a huge losing streak right now so who knows what my current level is. But this should be fun nonetheless. Thanks to ozomatli for running this. And now, on with the writeup…

Note: summary stats are normalized and for non-filler players only

$70M – Neophytes and Troglodytes

First off, this is definitely my favorite team name of this round. I’ve always liked the word “troglodyte” because it’s one of those words for which the sound made when saying it seems to fit what it’s describing. Other examples include “trudge” and “curmudgeon”.

That having been said, this team is only 20% troglodyte, although I’m guessing that’s going to be typical for this theme. But is it a good team? I think that, for a $70M team, it is. For me, the #1 goal with a low-cap team is to not waste salary. I believe that I got the PAs, IPs, and quality mix about right. This team is definitely low on defense (a theme you will hear oft-repeated in my writeups) and a little skimpy on power, but otherwise pretty solid. My thought is that a $70M de facto open league team should be able to compete for a championship in a 1980’s single-season progressive, and I think this one could.

I’m not sure what else to say except that I don’t remember ever having used Kevin Maas before, but doing so will allow me to reminisce about his magical summer of 1990, so I’m looking forward to it. And I wonder if Steve Brodie of the Boston Beaneaters is related to the police chief of Amity Island.

5,263 PA, .288/.388/.440
1,333 IP, 1.10 WHIP, .34 HR/9
Projected record: 86-76


$90M – Musial and deGrom, deployed with aplomb

My original name for this team was “deGrom and Musial and the rest are unusual”, but most of the rest aren’t all that unusual. While I don’t use them as often as many others do, Addie Joss and Babe Adams are absolute cookies, and I use the ‘95 Weiss and the ’90 Murray pretty much any chance I get. Besides, Musial and “unusual” only rhyme if you have lazy pronunciation.

The reasons for my titular characters? Well, $9M is way more than I’d normally spend for a position player in a $90M league, so I wanted someone as close to $9M as possible to mitigate the damage. I also wanted someone who could bat near the top of the order and competently play a premium defensive position. Musial seems to check all of the boxes, and should play well in those doubles/triples stadiums that you people always seem to use. The case of deGrom is similar in that $40K/IP was a tad more than I was comfortable spending for a high-IP guy in a $90M league. I also wanted a pitcher’s park, which Sportsman’s is not but Citi is.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about this offense. The presence of the $9M man meant spending less on the rest of the lineup, so something had to go. In this case that something was, much to my chagrin, home run power. This team can get on base (OBP# .421) and hit for some average (AVG# .306), but the .436 SLG# is downright anemic. I dunno. I’m looking forward to seeing how Marwin Gonzalez does. Switch-hitter, plays every position except catcher, and is one of my few guys with power. He might be the key to the team. Daniel Robertson fills a similar role against lefties, but not nearly as well offensively. But their versatility helped me to execute my pitching strategy, where I’m going with an unconventional (for me) 4-man rotation, with a more conventional (again, for me) tandem at the tail end. deGrom should be able to consistently give me 6 innings, Joss and the tandem should each give me 7, and Adams should get me into the 8th. This, and the aforementioned positional flexibility that allowed me to roster the minimum number of hitters, allowed me to fill my bullpen with low-IP guys, who are relatively underpriced. I also used the low-IP-guy strategy for my $70M and $110M teams.

I like my pitching staff just fine, but the potentially impotent offense is making me feel like this may be something like a low 80’s-win team, in which case almost every other team would have to go right for me to advance. In other words, my team name is an outright lie.

5,359 PA, .306/.421/.436
1,374 IP, 1.02 WHIP#, .23 HR/9+
Projected record: 83-79


$110M – Manny being Manny being Manny

So I take it I was supposed to use Tris Speaker then? Actually I did, but only once.

My first thought on how to tackle this one was to find a good relief pitcher who moved around a lot. Maybe one of those 1960’s guys. Because, after all, you need a lot of relief pitchers on your team. But then I thought finding a good value outfielder at a $110M cap. Someone who seriously rakes and doesn’t cost a lot of money. Of course, he wouldn’t play good defense or else he wouldn’t be a good value. Meaning he can only be used in left and right, and the third version would have to be a sub. It turns out that Manny Ramirez is perfect for this. He played for three (actually four, but who’s counting?) original 16 franchises so there are plenty of guys to fill out the rest of the team. He has two amazing ~500 PA seasons that average about $6M per. He has a competent backup version with a third franchise for $1.7M that can be used as a sub for the other two versions. For someone like me who doesn’t care nearly as much as he should about defense, and cares more than he should about home run power, he’s perfect! Except not exactly, because he’s a right-handed hitter, which likely will be a detriment because people tend to overwhelmingly use right-handed pitchers. But as soon as I thought of Manny I stopped thinking about anyone else.

The rest of the offense practically filled itself out. I was going to use Piazza, who I think is also a Manny-esque bargain at this cap, but he would make my lineup too right-handed so I’m platooning Babe Phelps with a surprisingly good switch-hitting 2006 Josh Bard. Speaker mans center between the two Manny statues, and ranges all the way over when a Manny heads behind the wall to relieve himself. My beloved 1990 Murray, plus Alomar, Lake and Boggs round out the infield, and super-sub Dave Hansen fills in at first, third and in the outfield.

Hansen’s versatility allows me to max out the number of pitchers on my roster. With a 3-man rotation of Cy Young, Bernhard (one of the best values in the sim IMO) and Gregg, along with long man extraordinaire Cy Morgan, I have 9 pitching spots left over. I use 8 of these on pitchers with fewer than 45 IP each, which again are good values. The ninth is the excellent 2016 Jansen.

The only decision left is the stadium. I really want to use Fenway, but do I have the PAs (5,467) and IPs (1,450) to do it? I think it’s close, but in a competitive tournament like this one a miss is as good as a mile. I then decided to use The Mistake by the Lake, where Manny played his rookie year. However, despite the rules having been written in such a way that I should’ve been allowed to use it, I wasn’t, so I settled for Dodger Stadium. That sound you just heard was Tris Speaker’s heart breaking. Dozens of them in fact. But only one of them is on my team, so maybe that’s OK.

As you’ve already guessed, I like this team. $110M is probably my favorite cap, and the one at which I’m most comfortable. If this team doesn’t win at least 90 games I’m not moving on. I think it will.

5,467 PA, .334/.427/.526
1,451 IP, .96 WHIP#, .21 HR/9+
Projected record: 91-71


$120M – Johnny 5 and the 7 Dwarfs

Number 5 is alive!!! No disassemble!!! What 1980’s teenager didn’t love themselves some Short Circuit? Johnny 5. Steve Guttenberg. Ally Sheedy. Mmmmmm …...................Ally Sheedy ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................OK, I’m back now.

Thinking about Short Circuit (did I mention Ally Sheedy?) is pretty much the only thing I like about this team. As much as I’m unsure about my $90M team, I vote this team most likely to knock me out of the tournament. I don’t know why I feel so much better about $110M caps than $120M. Maybe it’s because $120M seems to be everyone else’s wheelhouse but mine. But in theory my $120M team should be significantly better than my $110M one. OK, maybe not that much better, because this team has a DH. But I spent $5.8M on my DH, so this team should be about $4.2M better. Is it? Doubtful. My $110M team is a normalized .334/.427/.526, with 1451 IP of 1.85 ERC#. This team, minus the $200K guy, is .333/.434/.531 with 1481 IP of 1.81 ERC#. So I’m paying $4.2M for 7 points of OBP#, 5 points of SLG#, 4 points of ERC# and 30 more innings. Really? To quote Billy Joel’s line about Hackensack, “is that all you get for your money?” Maybe it’s not all that you get, but it’s apparently all that I get. Oh, and this team is worse defensively. I don’t understand it. And I played around with other numbers, both for hitting and pitching. Not every number, but a bunch. I suppose this theme is more restrictive than the $110M one, but still. I’m scratching my head.

The more I look at them I don’t even want to talk about these losers. What on God’s green earth is an Otis Climber? Whatever it is, it’s getting like 250 primetime PAs on this pathetic squad. He’s been used a grand total of twice in open league history, and I’m handing him a significant role on a $120M What If Sports Championship tournament team. Awesome. Hey, let’s play the ’77 Singleton full time in center field! Great idea! Oooh, the 1987 Kal Daniels who I loved in real life but always sucks for me in the sim? Sign him up! I’ve never used the 2017 Altuve. This seems like a great place to try!

I’ll end this diatribe by pointing out that, often times, I have a player on a team who always reminds me of something…like a line from a song or a movie or something…and every time I see that name I repeat that line in my head. For example, whenever I see the name of Kris Medlen I think “I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for those Medlen kids!” With this team that will undoubtedly happen with the 1927 Pid Purdy. Every time I look at this roster I’ll think “…he got a real purdy mouth…” Which seems appropriate somehow.

6,178 PA, .333/.434/.531
1,481 IP, .99 WHIP#, .21 HR/9
Projected record: 76-86

PS – surprisingly, in the owner poll, people are generally more confident in their $110M teams than in their $120M teams. I have no idea whether this should make me feel better or worse.


$130M – Savages in the Box

I just wish I were allowed to put the expletive in front of it…

Finally, a theme I can fully get behind: a post-1920’s theme. You see, I like home runs. Home runs are hard to come by in WifS land, largely because of deadball era pitchers. But this theme will have no deadball pitchers (right now you’re probably thinking: “Thanks, Captain Obvious!”) But given the constraints of this theme, and the one that will follow next round for those who advance, home runs will likely be suppressed as much as is humanly possible for a non-deadball theme. So what’s a dinger-loving owner to do? Throw up his hands and build a doubles-triples team like everyone else is likely to do? Heck no! Let’s try to hit some homers! Let’s use Bennett Park, where longballs are encouraged and triples go to die. Let’s use enough platoons that we can average about 20 HRs per position without going over 24 for any one player, in case we somehow qualify for Round 2. I haven’t yet attempted a Round 2 roster, but I’m fairly certain that I’m not going to have a problem with the 8-player home run floor of 25. After all, the ’76 Morgan hit 27, and I’m sure I can put together a 4-man outfield such that my shortstop will be allowed to be a slap-hitter.

But is this a good enough team that I can advance in the tournament? After all, I’m not completely confident in my $90M and $120M squads, so there’s not much room for error here. I think it is. Normalized .335/.446/.519 seems pretty good to me, these guys can play more than a modicum of defense, and I spent $66.1M on pitching which seems about right. I used my patented 3-man tandem with each duo alternating handedness in an attempt to thwart platoons. I have never tested whether this works but for some reason I enjoy it. I only drafted 1,450 innings, which seems on the low side, but I’m hoping that the salary spent means that I’ll have enough. The key to the staff is probably the ’26 Ehmke, who is not good enough to be proficient at this cap but who will hopefully eat just enough low-leverage innings to get the job done. It’s a risk, but one worth taking IMO.

Similar to my $110M team, this one needs to win 90+ for me to have a shot to advance. I’m cautiously optimistic that this team will “tighten this $#!% up” and get the job done.

5,611 PA, .335/.446/.519
1,450 IP, .95 WHIP#, .22 HR/9
Projected record: 93-69


Variable Cap – 166 Giant Cardinals and erstwhile Browns

“Erstwhile” is another of my favorite words.

I am out of my element when I play at higher caps, which is why I almost never do. I’m not even comfortable at 140, let alone 160+. But I really, really like this team. And the key to me is Silver King. Once you realize that his Browns were actually the Cardinals franchise I’m not sure that there has ever been a theme where it was more obviously advantageous to use him. A high cap where you want to limit the number of impact players that you need to use so as to maximize your salary cap. Throw in his teammate, the lights-out Elton Chamberlain, and the Cardinals/Browns was a no-brainer. The only question was whether to go Cards-only or to add a second franchise. I tried a St. Louis only squad at $170M but I like this Cards/Giants team better even though it’s $4M cheaper. Adding Barry Bonds to Rogers Hornsby gives me two .500+ OBP guys, which is nice, and Christy Mathewson’s ability to give me about 5 innings every other day opposite King will be much appreciated.

I really don’t know how many PAs and IPs are necessary at this sort of cap level. I find it difficult to imagine that in a non-DH league I’ll need more than the 6,038 non-filler PAs that I drafted, and .351/.443/.578 seems pretty awesome. Similarly, I have to think that 1,645 innings at 1.59 ERC# will get the job done. I’m going to be seriously disappointed, and in serious trouble, if this team doesn’t win 95 games.

PS – I put together a Yankees-only $167M team that would’ve been a ton of fun to have entered as a second team using new Yankee Stadium. The 305 HRs (including 1920 Ruth) and normalized .345/.448/.616 would’ve been most excellent, but I’m not sure if the 1,707 IP of 1.84 ERC# would’ve prevented enough runs to win consistently. But I would’ve loved the opportunity to have tried.

6,038 PA, .351/.443/.578
1,645 IP, .93 WHIP#, .15 HR/9+
Projected record: 97-65


Epilog (intentional misspelling courtesy of 1970’s television)

I’d put my 90% confidence interval of where I’ll rank at the end of this round of the tourney at between 18^th and 30^th place. In other words, I think it’s a coin toss as to whether I’ll advance. It’ll be fun finding out.

One final note: one of the reasons that I've remained stubbornly committed to drafting players who hit home runs, besides being inherently stubborn and liking home runs, is that I've always felt that as owners use fewer and fewer players who hit homers eventually people will try to cheat on home run prevention for their pitchers. Reading the previous writeups this appears to be happening. We'll see how much this helps me, if at all.

I'll join the others and add kudos for jborhman's writeup, and also say that before Boonie went on his epic meltdown rant my $130M team was also going to be called Storm Before the Storm.

Posted by ozomatli on 8/10/2019 11:44:00 PM (view original):
I was fairly shocked when I saw your variable cap team when reviewing rosters, Brian. Will be keeping an eye on it.

In general, I've seen modern pitchers as more attractive lately, but not because of the pitches via Ks or even because of the positive impact on fielding -- for me, it is simply that people aren't drafting as many HRs as they used to in their lineups. I was still a bit too scared to test this in the WISC.

And, agreed with the point about 700+ PAs usually being a waste outside of the top 1 or lineup spots. I can't think of the last time I had a team that didn't run at least 1 or 2 hitters < 100 fatigue for most of the entire season.

I find some 2017 and 2018 pitchers are also relatively underpriced now since they paused the pricing updates.

After reading these, I'm confident that my teams I had confidence in are actually garbage. I doubt any of my 6 teams will make the playoffs.

Posted by schwarze on 8/11/2019 11:54:00 AM (view original):
Guys - this little writeup by brianjw is worth the price of entering this contest.

* Batting average matters. This might be obvious, but I was trying to avoid it for as long as possible.
* Pitcher strikeouts matter, especially because they give you more pitches, and that is what matters for fatigue.
* WIS really messed up the dynamic pricing, partially in predictable ways, and partially in ways no one could have predicted.
* Putting all those together, it often turns out that recent pitchers are much better value than deadball pitchers. I am running largely 21st century pitchers in round one, and I think just a single deadballer. (I might regret this.)
* In the past I had always had big splits in how many IP I drafted at low and high caps. And I had always had fatigue problems at low but not high caps. So it was kind of obvious that I should have a much smaller gap in how many IP I drafted between low and high cap. And now I am drafting 1300 IP/162 at the lowest caps, and only 1400 at the high cap. (Though more in the DH league, because DH's do weird things to pitcher fatigue.) This means my rate stats are awesome, but I am taking wild risks.
* Unless they are batting 1 or 2, you just waste PAs by drafting someone with over 700 PA/162. So I have largely stopped doing that, and have way more players who will either get days off once a week or (if we hit well) play for a while at 95%. I can live with that, and I don't even feel it is a risk.
* Starters cost more per IP for the same performance level. So you just have to pay more. In the past I had aimed to pay roughly the same $/IP for every pitcher, and I was having my worst pitchers as starters. This was a mistake.

Yes, and I'm most appreciative. I put these items and insights others have shared into 3 categories personally.

1. Those I'd kind of figured out already (a small percentage of the above)
2. Those I understand and kind of intuited but have only started to figure out what to do with yet (a medium percentage)
3. Those I can barely grasp how to apply in actually drafting my own team and until I do will remain at a disadvantage (a big percentage)

I see references to value here and ozo's "Value Index" and jbohrman also drafting off spreadsheets, and I think, "I'm clearly doing this wrong."

One voice says to me: "Spreadsheets? We don't need no stinkin' spreadsheets."

The other voice says: "I suppose you could pick an easier hobby, like stamp collecting."

barracuda3. . . awesome and hilarious post! and I share your infatuation with 80's Ally Sheedy.