Quote post by calhoop on 6/30/2026 1:27:00 AM:

140mm **deGrom remains the Same

In 1976, Led Zeppelin put out the concert movie “The Song Remains the Same”. Going down the alphabet, some pieces started to come together. This is what happened:

babe adams

Too bad that Zeppelin didn't foresee this theme and include Babe I'm Gonna Leave You on the soundtrack.

Posted by barracuda3 on 6/30/2026 12:38:00 PM (view original):

Quote post by calhoop on 6/30/2026 1:27:00 AM:

140mm **deGrom remains the Same

In 1976, Led Zeppelin put out the concert movie “The Song Remains the Same”. Going down the alphabet, some pieces started to come together. This is what happened:

babe adams

Too bad that Zeppelin didn't foresee this theme and include Babe I'm Gonna Leave You on the soundtrack.

You are so right!

I should have put an asterisk next to Babe Adams and added the footnote: * "Babe (Adams), I'm Gonna Leave You off the description column since you aren't in this soundtrack".

Thanks for the suggestion.

By the way, I always thoroughly enjoy your writeups. Good luck in Round 1.

I built most of these teams so long ago that I'm not sure remember all my rhyme-and-reason (and I somehow resisted the urge to tinker and basically went with my first crack at most of these), so here goes...

$70 MIL - Fries On A Sandwich
A nod to Primanti's, obvi... I've played a few $70M leagues recently thanks to dchase, though with not much success. After looking up the meaning of "lustrum", a name just popped into my head and that was my jump-off point: Paul Skenes. As a Tandem starter or bullpen option, I'm hoping his historical start translates to the WiS universe. I figured even the "small-market" Pirates were bound to have a decent low-cost option every 5 years, and that seemed to be the case for the most part. The defense is borderline frightening, and I'm going to have to hope I can stretch the IP and admirably manage the fatigue, but I'm hoping that my stars can shine and carry me.

$80 MIL - Mike Hessman All-Stars
A nod to the all time minor-league HR leader and real-life Crash Davis... Quick story: many years ago when Hessman was in the twilight of his career, he was in Triple-A and a bunch of my buddies rented a dugout suite that gave you an "enhanced" ability to interact with the players. As he was walking off the field in earshot of us, we gave Hessman a big ovation with one of the guys calling him a "Power-Hitting Fossil". He was good-natured about it and thought it was pretty funny. ANYHOO, as far as this team goes, it was not necessarily a challenge to get to the required HR threshold despite the price-point, but it will be interesting to see who's pitching can withstand the HR onslaught that is likely (if other leagues with similar requirements are any indication). My defense is (again) meh and I'm inclined to think my offense is going to have to over-perform for me to have any success. I do like my bench! (lol)

$100 MIL - Lovable Reunion
The podcast is great, BTW... This was an easy choice for me as I've been a lifelong Cubs fan (I mean, my youngest's middle name is Ryne). Hopefully the '16'ers will be competitive in this environment, but there were some amazing twist options available, notably Arrieta's generational season in '15 and Schwarber's monster year last season. Add some big-time twist seasons for Zobrist, Soler, Montero, Chapman, and Joe Nathan(!) and I'd really love to see this team have fantasy success that matches real life.

$110 MIL - St. Houston Tiger Twinkees
A: Tigers
B: Senators/Twins
C: Cardinals
D: Yankees
E: Astros

This one came together relatively quickly after a little bit of research. Huge offensive seasons from the emerging-from-the-deadball-era Tigers, the pitcher's era Cardinals, the Rivera-era Yankees with bullpen arms galore, the '19 era Astros that everyone loves to hate (cue trash can noise), and a splash of surprisingly quality Sena-Twins players, and this team has me intrigued. I'd like the back-end of my rotation to be better, but I'm hoping the bullpen can overcome that. Not very rangy on defense, but we should catch and throw it.

$125 Mil - Eagle Panda
Can you imagine a soft-fluffy bear with wings?!... I was in a couple of platoon leagues a while back, but unfortunately I'm not sure I built this team any better than I did those. Probably should've tweaked this one a bit, especially with improved positional flexibility, but hey...let it ride. I'm going with a tandem pitching staff and I'm hoping my bullpen's as ridiculous in fantasyland as it is on paper. I think one of my recurring themes in these builds is that I prioritized offense over defense. This one's not full barf, but it's close.

$140 Mil - I Once K'd Robb Quinlan
Despite playing for a Division III college, I had the opportunity to play in the Northwoods League against Division I talent before my senior year of school. (Juan Pierre is probably the most high-profile guy I competed against in that league...though I don't recall facing him.) My season highlight was making a spot-start against a line-up that featured Quinlan, taking a no-hitter into the 7th inning. I struck him out with a nasty hook in one of the at-bats. I believe he finished second in the MVP voting that summer, behind the SS who played for my team in Waterloo, IA. But I digress... I basically just started a list of the highest-profile names I could think of at each position and made a squad without any consideration of cost. From there, I whittled it down and made a few changes here-and-there, but frankly, it came together pretty quick. I did make an $80M team ahead of time to make sure it would work...but I'm sure that kiss-of-deathed me from advancing to Round 2. :) Fingers crossed!

alright... giving this a try... been so long and even my own notes are confusing me.

$140M: sesame street game
i love sesame street. recently watched a great documentary on it. when i was younger i wanted to work with jim henson. dream ended in high school with his passing. when i first saw this theme i started singing big birds "abcdefghi..." song.

thought process.
1. get pitching set. get big innings so i can have a small staff and leave a ton of freedom for the bats.
2. get high average bats. don't worry about home run power, but don't ignore power.
3. take a couple of stud bats that have usefull options at lower $ marks.
4. use many cheap bats rather than try and set platoons. that way if the crazy happens (round 2) i have a lot of options to set the bats up.

Roster:

a	-	1919 Babe Adams	long relief (one of 4 300+ ip on the team)
b	-	1908 Mordecai Brown	sp 1
c	-	2005 Deivi Cruz	cheep bench
d	-	2023 Josh Donaldson	cheep bench
e	-	2008 David Eckstein	cheep bench
f	-	1927 Frankie Frisch	second base and #2 hitter
g	-	1995 Tony Gwynn	left field and #6 hitter
h	-	1933 Carl Hubbell	sp 2
i	-	2008 Chris Iannetta	short side platoon catcher
j	-	1896 Hughie Jennings	short stop and leadoff hitter
k	-	1949 George Kell	third baseman and # 7 hitter
l	-	2011 DJ LeMahieu	cheep bench
m	-	2010 Joe Mauer	long side of plattoon at catcher
o	-	1942 Mel Ott	right field and #5 hitter
p	-	1906 Roy Patterson	bullpen
q	-	1918 Jack Quinn	bullpen
r	-	1926 Babe Ruth	first base and #4 hitter
s	-	1912 Tris Speaker	center field and #3 hitter
t	-	2007 Jim Thome	dh and #9 hitter
u	-	2015 Juan Uribe	cheep bench
v	-	2001 John Valentin	cheep bench
w	-	2010 Randy Winn	cheep bench
y	-	1908 Cy Young	sp 3
z	-	1962 Don Zimmer	cheep bench

$125M: Meritocracy Denier

i feel like this build would make many modern gm's happy. no stud starters. no stud bats. lots of interchangeble parts. no stars for the fans to get behind. so i leaned into that approach.

pitching: i went with 12 starting pitchers with between 100 and 200 ip. probably averaging about 125 ip/arm. no starters that could go deep all season. lots of "bulk arms." there will likely be 3 pitchers going each game. in a perfect computer driven approach they would pitch about 3 innings each and rarely facing oponents twice and never more than that. perfect way to destroy the merit involved with being a true starting pitcher. boo.

bats:
with the number of pitchers i have i can not platoon at every position. i also don't want to have weak players out there every day. solution- lots of guys in the 350ish-550ish pa range. to do this there needs to be some position flexability. some key players in that endevor:
*1928 foxx (c, 1b, 3b)
*2021 harper (1b, of)
*1899 lajoie (2b, of)
*1956 mcdouglad (2b, 3b, ss)
*1951 pesky (2b, 3b, ss)
*2011 sandoval (1b, 3b)

this team will need to be checked often. a vacation could wreck this team.

$110M: time will tell
i hated this build. not because it was bad, but because i missed things multiple times when first working on it. the minimum/ team killed some rosters i loved. not thinking about column e at that start killed some attempts. in the most amusing turn of events i ended up using what was almost my first build (with a couple of changes to meet the per team cost. every team i built did start with the giants for the first group and the pirates for the 4th.

A: 1920-1940 giants
(useful pieces)
1922 bancroft (ss, sh)
1923 frisch (3b, sh)
1931 terry (1b, lh)

B: 1940-1961 cardinals
(useful pieces)
1954 schoendienst (2b, sh)
1959 cunningham (of, lh)
1943 powlett (rp)
1944 munger (rp)

C: 1962-1982 astros
(useful pieces)
1981 sutton (sp)
1982 nikero (sp)
1972 gladding (rp)
1978 ruhle (rp)

D: 1983-2003 pirates
(useful pieces)
1985 reuschel (sp)
1992 bonds (cf, lh)
1999 giles (rf, lh)
1992 slaught (back-up catcher, rh)

E: 2004-2025 twins
(useful pieces)
2013 maur (starting catcher, lh)
1921 buxton (lf, rh)
2006 liriano (rp)
1923 gray (rp)

$100M: 14 and counting
i knew who i wanted right from the start for this one. 1914 boston red sox. tried a handful of others to check but came back to this one. it has lots of pitching options. it gives two stud bats and options for the others. downside... a lot of "exception" players (6) will leave me with a very weak bench.

1915 duffy lewis	+1
1916 Les Nunamaker	+2
1911 Joe Wood	-3
1910 Ray Collins	-4
1919 babe ruth	+5
1920 Harry Hooper	+6
1921 Larry Gardner	+7
1922 Everett Scott	+8

$80M: chicks did the longball at briggs
yes. lame name. i get it. i also hate reliance on home runs. in real life give me a gap-to-gap guy who hits some homeruns. i tried to create a team i liked. it never worked. so for this team i went with home runs and obp. i ignored ba... something very against my approach to most teams. i also went with pitchers who have swing-and-miss stuff without worrying about much else. not confident about this team at all.

$70M: long history
first build was last build. the only success i have ever had with a low-cap league is with the red sox. they have so many useful bats at low numbers. given my repeated failures at this level i just went with it. they also seem to come up with good pitching intermittently. i went through and filled my pitching staff first knowing that i would have plety of options for the field.

70M: Go Cubs Go!

Analysis: I figured I would pick the team where I could get the most bang for my buck for starting pitchers. I just ran a full search on pitchers that I felt had an appropriate number of innings at a reasonable salary and looked at which franchises offered the best options. From there, I would build offenses for the contenders and see which overall team I liked the most. Right out of the gate, I had my two finalists: The Cubs and the Giants. I really liked some of the rotation options from the Giants, as those cookie seasons from Joe McGinnity and Slim Sallee were calling my name. But after looking at my cap appropriate offensive options it was clear the Cubs were my team (Side note, there are way more Giants teams in my league than Cubs teams, so maybe I made the wrong decision?). For my rotation, I am going with my classic tandem style approach and found 6 arms that would pitch the bulk of my innings: ’26 Pete Alexander, ’06 Jack Taylor, ’05 Bob Wicker, ’36 Curt Davis, ’85 Dennis Eckersley, and ’16 Mike Prendergast. None are great, but all should be proficient given the overall lack of offense in lower caps. The bullpen features ’42 Warneke for bulk innings and ’11 Charlie Smith, ’92 Dennis Rasmussen, and ’24 Jesus Tinoco to pitch the leverage innings with a couple scrubs thrown in. The hitting was where I felt like the Cubs outdid the Giants. ’16 Ben Zobrist is automatic at this cap and ’88 Andre Dawson and ’54 Hank Sauer should provide some punch at Wrigley. Contributions from ’08 Ryan Theriot, ’73 Billy Williams, ’47 Bill Nicholson, and the rocket arm of catcher ’68 Randy Hundley should be at least league average.

Fun Fact: I flew out to Chicago and Wrigley Field for the first time this past April and saw a Cubs come from behind victory. I’m no Cubs fan, but it was cool singing Go Cubs Go and teaching my Fiancee about the tradition in real time. Her uncle is a bartender at Wrigley.

This Team Will Be Competitive If: My home run friendly stadium and lineup isn’t killed by dead ball pitching. If we don’t hit the ball over the wall with some consistency, we’re probably in for a long season

Confidence: B+

80M: Warning Track Meet

Analysis: It felt pretty clear there were going to be two clear strategies with this theme: Embrace the home runs or zig while the competition is zagging. I mostly went for the former option, with a couple exceptions. 3 of my favorite power bats are in this lineup in ’33 Babe Ruth, ’15 Gavvy Cravath, and ’46 Hank Greenberg. Putting ’19 Ketel Marte on you 80M team seems wise regardless of theme to generate some offense so I didn’t overthink that. From there I just added some power that I thought would translate well in ’87 HoJo, ’95 Tettleton, and ’17 Mike Zunino. I’m not true to myself if I don’t sneak Mariners legend Mike Zunino onto at least one team in this tourney and here was the obvious fit. For the pitching side of things, I concocted a strategy that I’m confident no one else would think of: Low BB pitchers who limit HRs as much as players could given the parameters. Genius, right? Hopefully the sarcasm comes through. I don’t need to list out all the modern pitchers on my staff, I know you likely looked through most of them yourself.

This Team Will Be Competitive If: I didn’t shoot myself in the foot by not drafting enough HRs. If I’m outslugged and lose a bunch of 9-7 games, we’ll quickly slide to the lower end of the standings.

Confidence: C+

100M: 1909 Cubs- Year 1 of the Curse

Analysis: Due to time constraints, I didn’t try many possibilities on this theme. Looking at who was commonly picked, I’m shocked I didn’t think of the 2021 Dodgers, considering I had 3 Dodger themed teams last year and used the 2021 team for last year’s twist theme. With that said, there are a few early Cubs teams, which is where my research led me (Though I’m using the 1909 Cubs and most others found the 1906 Cubs, did I miss something?). Th easily selling point was the pitching. The 1909 Cubs had great seasons from Mordecai Brown and Orval Overall, with solid bulk innings from Jack Pfiester, Rube Kroh and Irv Higginbotham (great last name). ’05 Ed Reulbach is my third anchor starter that came via the twist. The offense was almost entirely twisted. Good seasons from ’10 Sally Hoffman, ’11 Frank Schulte, ’12 Heinie Zimmerman, ’03 Frank Chance, and ’01 Jimmy Sheckard should put up a reasonable number of runs. The one concerning thing about these old dead ball teams is that I needed a ton of 300K exceptions, so I’m hoping I didn’t throw away good money that the Dodgers team likely didn’t have to. Here is my list of twists:

+1 ’10 Sally Hoffman
+2 ’11 Frank Schulte
+3 ’12 Heine Zimmerman
-4 ’05 Ed Reulbach
+5 ’14 Johnny Evers
-6 ’03 Frank Chance
-7 ’02 Pat Moran
-8 ’01 Jimmy Sheckard

This Team Will Be Competitive If: It can pitch well enough to get past the Dodger teams. Maybe some others I’m not giving enough love to. Either way, we’ll pitch pretty well, but hopefully that wasted money on scrubs doesn’t come back to bite me.

Confidence: B

110M: Tudor’s Down

Analysis: I’m really happy with the way this team came together. I started with the earliest era, thinking this would be the trickiest. I immediately latched on to the ’20-’40 Pirates, as they gave me a high-end starter in ’35 Cy Blanton, a rangy outfielder who can hit in ’21 Max Carey, and 3 leverage relievers in ’24 Babe Adams, ’31 Bill Harris, and ’27 Johnny Miljus. The next era that caught my eye was the ’83-’03 Cardinals. I added ace ’85 John Tudor (see team name), another rangy OF who can hit in super cookie ’90 Willie McGee, a solid DH in ’02 Albert Pujols who can hit the field if needed, and good reliever in ’93 Paul Kilgus, and bench scrub. Still looking for key pieces of my offense, the ’62-’82 Reds felt like a good place to find some talent. I originally had ’61 Frank Robinson as the anchor of the lineup, but it turns out I can’t read and the era actually started in 1962? Why did we do that again? Anyways, in an attempt to play by the rules, I switched to ’68 Pete Rose to give this team some hustle. ’69 Johnny Bench’s arm was welcomed, along with ’74 Joe Morgan, super reliver ’64 Bill Henry, and a good bench bat in ’78 Rick Auerbach. I knew I needed one more big arm starter, and the ’41-’61 Dodgers gave it to me in ’41 Whit Wyatt. I also added his 1941 teammates Dolph Camili and Johnny Allen. ’43 Fritz Ostermeuller can be used out of the bullpen in low leverage spots, and we also added a backup catcher here for low cost. That left the modern era with me needing a left side of the infield and some more leverage innings. I flirted with the Astros, but the Mets fit like a glove here. Another cookie in ’06 Jose Reyes and one of David Wright’s many quality seasons in 2005. ’22 Max Scherzer, ’22 Jacob deGrom and ’20 Erasmo Ramirez add critical bullpen depth

This Team Will Be Competitive If: Whit Wyatt and Cy Blanton are good enough to eat bulk innings at this cap. The bullpen should eat and this offense should be diverse enough to score runs. I just hope I’m not constantly trailing 5-3 while the crowd is singing take me out to the ballgame

Confidence: A

120M: 25 (Players) or 6 to 4 (Salary)

Analysis: This one definitely came together the quickest of any team. From an offense standpoint, it made sense to me (like so many others that have done write ups) that it would be wise not to waste any dollars with this theme. For me, that meant low-inning tandem starters and platoons. My three full-time offense players are ’19 Ketel Marte (The sky is blue too, huh?), ’20 Jose Ramirez, and ’90 Willie McGee. From there I just looked at the best platoon bats that fit the salary cap while also trying to balance the PAs so that the lefties would get a few more. I don’t feel like listing out all the platoon bats and arms because I know we all looked at the same names again here.

This Team Will Be Competitive If: I chose the right platoon partners. Pretty simple on this one. We all have a similar strategy, so I just hope I did it better than most others. Considering my relative lack of experience on this site compared to the titans I’m competing against, I won’t hold my breath.

Confidence: B-

140M: X Marks the Missing Player

Am I the only one who thought this was the toughest build by a mile? Balancing two themes at different caps with the same players and having the letter restrictions made this one a doozy for me. I attempted to build both at the same time and certainly didn’t punt the 80M theme, but I’ll set my expectations to be realistic should I be fortunate enough to make it to the next round. I’d like to say I had a defined strategy here, but I really didn’t. Just started with some anchors that I knew could carry my team at the 140M level and be useful at the 80M level. That got me about halfway through. From there it was a few hours’ worth of plug and play to see which non-scrub players I could get to make sense on both rosters given the letters I had left. Side note, I really wanted like 5 guys with the letter M, who would have thought that letter would be such bag of gold? Here’s what my final roster ended up looking like:

A- Babe Adams
B- Bill Bernhard
C- Gary Carter
D- Sean Doolittle
E- Steve Evans
F- Jimmie Foxx
G- Alfredo Griffin
H- Rogers Hornsby
J- Chipper Jones
K- Harmon Killebrew
L- Graeme Lloyd
M- Greg Maddux
N- Ron Northey
O- Mel Ott
P- Roy Patterson
Q- Kevin Quackenbush
R- Babe Ruth
S- Don Sutton
T- Fred Toney
U- Richard Urena
V- Omar Vizquel
W- Billy Wagner
X- N/A
Y- Kirby Yates
Z- Mike Zunino (Got him in twice!)

This Team Will Be Competitive If: My studs in Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Rogers Hornsby all earn that nice chunk of change they’re making this season. Disappointments form any of these three guys like does us in.

Confidence: C

As fun as these writeups are to read, I can recall very few times when anyone has revisited them after the season to discuss what worked and what didn't. So what follows are my exact writeups from P1, along with a brief summary of what actually happened:

70M: Not-So-Phabulous-Phillies
Everyone knows that at this cap level you have to compromise on something. My decision early on is that I would be willing to sacrifice on range. I love me some A+ range (as you will see in some of the other themes) but it's just too expensive at this cap. The other thing I decided to sacrifice was hitter PAs; I'm very willing to play guys at 90% or even lower fatigue at 70M.

Other design principles here:
-- I think every franchise can put together an acceptable bullpen at this cap, so I didn't really even look at my bullpen until I had the other pieces in place.
-- Power is a good strategy at 70M, and I expected that many teams would lean towards modern-era starters to take advantage of their PC boost (as detailed by just4me).
-- OBP is key; at 70M most pitchers will either give up HRs, walks, or OAV. High OBPs mean (a) more pitches for my opponent (b) better chances of HR driving in multiple runs/

With those concepts in mind, I looked at a few franchises, but quickly settled on the Phillies for a few reasons, starting with Gavvy Cravath and Tully Sparks, two players who generally do very well at this cap. I ended up with 5 starts with a .380+ OBP, and 2 others over .350.
Offense: .304/.372/.454
Pitching: 1309 IP, .219 OAV, 1.09 WHIP, 0.57 HR/9
Park: Connie Mack 0/-2/0/1/1; I though about Baker Bowl but decided the increased run scoring would only exacerbate the fatigue issues this team will face.
Prediction: 80 wins. Upside: 88

Actual: 83 wins, 4th place NLE, 12 games out, 11 games out of WC. This team was pretty bad in the first half (35-46), but won 13 of 15 after the break and ended the season on a 22-8 run to finish over .500.
What worked: Well, Cravath and Sparks, the two anchor players (and the reason I chose this franchise). Cravath was the league's Silver Slugger in CF: .272/.370/.479, 34 2B, 27 HR, 90 BB, 109 R, 86 RBI. Sparks won the Cy Young award: 17-12, 4 SHO, 2.41 ERA in 325 IP. Also, we certainly hit our share of homers, finishing 4th overall with 156. Six of the regulars hit well; in addition to Cravath: Chuck Klein, Buzz Arlett, Smoky Burgess, Don Hurst, and Cotton Tierney all were productive. Most of the pitching staff was pretty good, when I could keep them from being fatigued.
What didn't work: Despite my focus on OBP in drafting the team, we did not get on base particularly well. Our team OBP was only .324 compared to a league average of .326. Our 772 runs scored was barely above average. The big problem was having to rely on too many PAs from the bench, who were generally terrible. Then, Eppa Rixey, I was counting on him as my number 2 starter, and he was mediocre at best: 18-20, 4.93, and the league hit .307 against him. Pitching fatigue became a problem early on; I eventually solved it, but at the cost of burning way more mop up innings than I would have liked. My mopups combined to allow 128 runs in just 45 innings. Without them, we had an above-average pitching staff, but the mopups dropped us to 5th worst in the league in runs allowed. Our defense didn't help, the lack of range resulted in 120 minus plays.

80M: I Miss the Steroid Era
My primary strategies here were: (a) get at least some guys whose HRs will normalize well (b) modern pitchers with low BB/9 (c) A+ range wherever possible (d) a park that is negative for hits.
Four of my starters should normalize very well for HR: 1887 Billy O'Brien, 1914 Gavvy Cravath, 1945 Mel Ott, 1963 Willie McCovey (who has hit 60+ in multiple progressives). I have A+ range at all 4 infield positions. Every non mop-up pitcher as BB/9 less than 2.00, and most are well below that.

Offense: .282/.365/.491, 209 HR
Pitching: 1285 IP , .217 OAV, 0.98 WHIP, 0.85 HR/9, 1.39 BB/9
Park: Kingdome -2/1/-1/2/2
Prediction: 88 wins; Upside 95

Actual: 95 wins; 1st place ALW, won division by 6 games.
What worked: Pretty much everything. Our offense was above average. McCovey hit 70 HR and drove in 161. Ott hit 52 HR with a 1.017 OPS and won the silver slugger. O'Brien hit 61 HR. Our defense was very good; Odor and Longoria won the gold gloves at 2B and 3B respectively. The pitching staff was outstanding: we allowed the 2nd-fewest walks in the league, tied for the fewest runs allowed, outhomered our opponents by almost 100, and had the league's lowest ERA. Nola, Skubal, and Bieber finished 1st, 2nd, and 4th in the Cy Young race.
What didn't work: We didn't turn nearly as many plus plays as I would have hoped.

100M: 1916 White Sox
This was one of the first teams I looked at, and I liked them so much that other than looking at a few others, I didn't do much tinkering. I knew I wanted a late-teens team so that I could take advantage of deadball-pitching and twist some guys into the offense-rich 1920s. I also knew I wanted to find a way to roster 1908 Ed Walsh, who IMO is the absolute best value pitcher in all of SLB at 100M. Eddie Collins and Jack Fournier offered lots of flexibility with multiple excellent twist options. I was able to roster an A+ arm catcher, and B or better fielding at every position except for 1st base, which should help minimize the primary weakness of teams from this era: the errors. Plus, the 1916 ChiSox have a number of excellent pitchers in their base season (Benz, Russell, Cicotte, Faber).

My twists:
-1: 1915 Mellie Wolfgang
+2: 1918 Shano Collins
+3: 1919 John Cusack Buck Weaver
+4: 1920 Zeb Terry
-5: 1911 Eddie Collins
+6: 1922 Ray Schalk
+7: 1923 Jack Fournier
-8: 1908 Ed Walsh
The offense is not as strong as I would like (team OPS is lower than my 70M squad), but the pitching should be among the very best in the league.

Offense: .308/.364/.434 (and should normalize very well)
Pitching: 1394 IP, .202 OAV, 0.97 WHIP, 0.03 HR/9, 1.87 BB/9
Park: Comiskey1 1/0/1/-1/-2
Prediction: 85 wins; Upside: 95

Actual: 83 wins; tied for 2nd in the ALW, 4 games out; 5 games back of the WC. This league was insanely competitive. 15 of the 24 teams in the league won between 81 and 89 games. No one won more than 92. A few lucky breaks either way could have made the difference for almost any team.
What worked: Ed Walsh pitched 500 innings, won 30 games, had a 3.14 ERA, and won the Cy Young. Reb Russell was 20-12, 2.95, and finished 5th in the Cy Young. Eddie Collins had a .395 OBP and scored 104 runs. Jack Fournier was terrific: .304/.350/.465, 17 HR, 127 RBI.
What didn't work: The rest of the offense was terrible, and contrary to my assumption did not end up normalizing very well. Joe Jackson posted only .737 OPS and that was 3rd best on my team after Fournier and Collins. The bigger problem was the pitching staff. Despite great seasons from Walsh and Russell, we ended up below average in runs allowed. Like my 70M Phillies team, I had to use more mop up innings than I would have liked. But here the problem wasn't too few IP on the staff, per se, it was just a very imbalanced one. I only rostered 6 good pitchers, and Walsh was the only one with an IP/G over 6. I spent too much of the season juggling tandems to avoid fatigue. 116 runs allowed by my 2 mops in only 62 innings effectively killed this team's shot at a playoff berth.

110M: That's a Bingo (Homage to Christoph Waltz's incredible performance as Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds)
Not much to say here, and this team I really wish I spent more time on. I started with 3 picks that I thought were obvious: Modern Dodgers (for the pitching); 80s-90s Cardinals (for switch hitters, speed, and defense), and the 1960s-70s Astros (more pitching). I picked the remaining 2 teams based on who best filled the holes in the lineup: 1940s-50s Phillies and 1920s-30s Tigers. 5 switch hitters in the starting lineup, 3 players over .450 OBP. But not enough power, and the defense isn't nearly as good as I would like. I'm very confident this team will not do well.

C: 1938 Rudy York
1B: 1994 Gregg Jefferies
2B: 1985 Tommy Herr
SS: 1986 Ozzie
3B: 1936 Billy Rogell (ugh)
LF: 1990 Willie McGee
CF: 1955 Richie Ashburn
RF: 1921 Ty Cobb
DH: 1925 Harry Heilmann
SPs: 1981 Don Sutton, 1963 Turk Farrell, 2016 Clayton Kershaw, 1946 Schoolboy Rowe, 2020 Tony Gonsoulin

Offense: .326/.408/.468
Pitching: 1400 IP .199 OAV, 0.93 WHIP, 0.41 HR/9, 1.64 BB/9
Park: Astrodome -1/0/1/-4/-4
Prediction: 75 wins; Upside: 85

Actual: 90 wins; 2nd in the NLW, 2 games back. Missed the WC by 1 game. This one hurt; not making the playoffs here probably cost me a spot in round 2.
What worked: A lot, given how much they overperformed by expectations. The defense was excellent in range, with 86 plus plays compared to 39 minus plays. We scored 907 runs and allowed 796 against a league average of .885. Ashburn hit .321/.410/.411 with 97 BB, 45 2B, 140 R, and 23 + plays, finishing 5th in the MVP. Heilmann hit .356/.409/.465 with 252 H, 122 RBI, 114 R. Jefferies hit .325/.380/.443 with 218 H, 44 2B, 145 RBI. Tommy Herr went 28 for 32 in steals and scored 104 runs. Our patchwork rotation of 4-6 starters was generally very effective. Sambito, Jansen, and Hill were excellent out of the pen. Ty Cobb racked up 28 plus plays in RF and won the GG.
What didn't work: Stop me if you've heard this before - too many mop up innings. 140 runs allowed in about 100 innings took this from a near-league-best pitching staff to a middle-of-the-pack one. Turk Farrell was very ineffective as a starter: 29 HR in only 210 innings, 1.52 WHIP, 5.36 ERA. Cobb has 200 hits and drove in 110 runs, but delivered only a .770 OPS (I was expecting at least 100 points higher). Rudy York slugged .376.

125M: Dopplegangers (because I expect we will see much more roster similarity in this league than in any other)
As others have said, I think the key here is to avoid spending $ on PA and IP that you aren't going to use, so I focused primarily on that. No real surprises here. I have 2019 Ketel Marte, whom I suspect will be on at least 50% of rosters), 1990 Willie McGee (whom I expect we will also see a lot of), and then a bunch of platoons. Pitching is a hodgepodge of guys in the 120-170 IP range.

C: 1954 Smoky Burgess and 1889 Jock Milligan
1B: 1902 Charlie Hickman
2B: 1926 Eddie Collins and 1899 Nap Lajoie
SS: 2013 Hanley Ramirez and 2020 Jose Iglesias (why I didn't get a L/R platoon here or a SH...I'm an idiot)
3B: 1896 Bill Joyce and 2020 Ke'Bryan Hayes
LF: 1944 Dick Wakefield and 1987 Rickey Henderson
CF: 2019 Marte
RF: 1990 McGee
PH extraordinaire: 1953 Ted Williams
Sneaky good-hitting pitcher: 2019 Zack Greinke (.271/.300/.583)

Offense: 5822 PA, .348/.418/.547
Pitching: 1586 IP, .208 OAV, 0.95 WHIP, 0.45 HR/9, 1.44 BB/9
Park: WIS
Prediction: 88 wins; Upside 95

Actual: 90 wins; 1st place NLC, won a tight division by 4 games. Another VERY competitive league (in the NL only); 9 of 12 teams won 81-90 games and our 90 wins was the best record in the NL.
What worked: Schoolboy Rowe! He went 25-1 in a tandem starting role and won the Cy Young award. Nathan Eovaldi shuttled between a tandem role and a LR role and went 10-1 with 8 saves and a 1.17 ERA. Tony Gonsolin was used similarly with similar results: 9-4, 12 saves, 2.77. Our offense scored 808 runs, 4th overall and just 21 behind the overall league leader. Our platoon arrangements generally worked very well. Dick Wakefield (.330/.399/.526), Eddie Collins (,399 OBP), Ketel Marte (26 HR, 113 RBI) were some of the highlights. And a real joy was being able to see 1953 Ted Williams PH and make a few key starts in big games. Ted hit .397/.469/.976 for a 1.445 OPS, with 22 HR (!) and 55 RBI (!!) in only 145 PA. Overall, we "wasted" very few PA and IP, which was one of the goals in the roster build, and seems to have paid off.
What didn't work: Charlie Hickman, Nap Lajoie, Willie McGee, and Jose Iglesias all posted OPS below .700. Iglesias also made 16 minus plays while playing only about half of the defensive innings at SS. John Denny, Ray Prim, Slim Sallee, and Zack Greinke all pitched below expectations and turned a very good staff into a league-average one.

140M: X Gonna Give It To Ya
I didn't even bother building a round 2 team other than to general pick guys whom I knew had usable seasons at that cap. A few guys I knew I wanted right off the bat: Walsh, Maddux, Kershaw for pitchers. Ewing, Frisch, Reilly, Cobb, Speaker for hitters. Built everything else around that. Filled in relief pitchers last, as usual. I have A+ range at 2B, 3B, CF, but would have liked more. No idea how this team will do, which usually means "not well."

1963 Aaron DH
1913 Baker 3B
1910 Cobb RF
1897 G. Davis SS
1890 Ewing C
1927 Frisch 2B
2022 Phil Gosselin SCRUB
2015 R. Hill RP
2022 Iglesias RP
2017 Jansen RP
2015 Kershaw SP
1911 Lapp C
1994 Maddux SP
2017 Neshek RP
1932 O'Doul LF
2018 O. Perez RP
1918 Quinn RP
1888 Reilly 1B
1917 Speaker CF
1963 Tiefenauer RP
2015 Uehara RP
2017 Verlander RP
1908 Walsh SP
1914 Yerkes MIF
1999 Zimmerman RP

Offense: .344/.408/.519 (am I concerned that this team's offense is worse than my 125M? Yes, yes I am, thank you for asking)
Pitching: 1470 IP; .189 OAV, 0.85 WHIP, 0.31 HR/9, 1.38 BB/9
Park: Dodger Stadium 2/-4/-3/-1/-1
Prediction: 80 wins; Upside 85

Actual: 83 wins, 3rd place ALC, 8 games back, 5 games out of the WC.
What worked: Run prevention. 693 runs allowed, 4th best in the league. 153 plus plays (2nd best) against only 11 minus plays. Ed Walsh made 80 starts, pitched over 500 innings, won 29 games, had a 3.57 ERA, and finished 3rd in the Cy Young. Maddux went 20-12, 3.96. The bullpen other than Verlander (1.62 WHIP) and Zimmerman (5.06 ERA) was excellent. Frankie Frisch, Tris Speaker, and Ty Cobb combined good offense with excellent defense (45, 32, and 23 plus plays, respectively) to finish 1st, 4th, and 5th in the MVP voting.
What didn't work: Run production. The offense overall was very mediocre. 787 runs scored was below average. Guys I was really counting on (Reilly, Aaron, Baker) couldn't even manage a .700 OPS, and both halves of my catching platoon (Ewing, Lapp) were below .600.