Really helpful schwarze, thanks very much for sharing this with the world.

happy to see this.. not because I would use this strategy but that it confirms there are now multiple ways to win in the SIM.

Grizzly,

You should post your fielding numbers. It would be interesting to see what kind of an effect the dead-ball pitchers had on your team's errors. Did your fielders overachieve or undersachieve?

Hey schwarze, did your guys have an obscene # of RL stolen bases? I was just playing around and made a similar team and noticed that all the old timers have 80+ stolen bases. Is that fatcored in on the pricing? or do they use sb%?

Schwarze, in your pitcher's table, you list Maddux 1998 65 ips, and Wilhelm 1964 44ips. I think you meant Maddux 1996 and Wilhelm 1958. Right ?

Half right tegesta, I mis-typed Maddux's innings...

Mike Maddux 1998 (56 IP)
Hoy Wilhelm 1958 (44 IP)

Trentonjoe,

In real life, yes, my hitters had lots of SBs.

McCarthy 112/171, 65%
Stovey 90/144, 63%
Glasscock 80/128, 63%
Anson 71/110, 65%
Burke 47/72, 65%
McPhee 47/83, 57%
Denny 37/72, 51%

In the sim, my team stole 10 bases out of 12 attempts (all from my AAA outfielder). I set my SB setting to 0. I don't like stealing bases with guys with success rates below 70%. It's bad strategy.

I just had an OL team finish up with a very different strategy. I went into it planning to build the team the same way you did, good fielding (relatively) and good-hitting deadballers with modern pitchers. When I started to look the player pool over, though, I realized that with the increase in the price of fielding the price of hitting really went down. You pointed out that money can be saved by using guys that are theoretically not very good fielders and making them better by normalizing their fielding against a modern pitcher. I would argue that you can save at least as much money if not more by using deadball pitchers who are now quite cheap for their ability. I decided to use the basic strategy of loading up on pitching and hitting with minimal consideration for fielding. Just beat A51Man in the world series. Guess my team rated pretty well. A few of the specs:

1st in the league in team average
3rd in the league in team OPS
5th in the league in runs scored
3rd in the league in ERA
22nd in the league in fielding (.975, 154 errors)
23rd in the league in + plays (16)
23rd in the league in - plays (97)
17th in the league in DPs turned

Starting pitchers were deadballers - Pete Alexander, Christy Mathewson, Sam Leever. Mostly modern relievers but with Babe Adams as the closer (Dizzy Dean is on the team, but from a fielding perspective I'd consider him at least relatively modern). I did have one of the best catcher's arms in the league. Other than that my defense was abysmal and obviously didn't stop my team from being quite successful.

Quote: 1st in the league in team average3rd in the league in team OPS
5th in the league in runs scored
3rd in the league in ERA
22nd in the league in fielding (.975, 154 errors)
23rd in the league in + plays (16)
23rd in the league in - plays (97)
17th in the league in DPs turned

Just a little sidebar note to an otherwise excellent thread...

3rd in the league in ERA

RA/9
Of course the ERA better reflects the pitching staff irrespective of it's defense behind them. I wish WIS would add a RA/9 stat either in the fielding or pitching sections. There are teams that rank high in low ERA but actually allow a lot more runs due to bad defense. Obviously it's easy enough to paste your league into a spreadsheet to get RA/9 but it'd be easier if WIS would add it to pitching or fielding section.

Just look at total runs allowed..... as long as everyone has played the same number of games you shouldn't really need to divide by 9.

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The point is dahsdebater is citing that his team was third in ERA all with a horrible defense. Fine, I am just advocating that RA/9 is more reflective of the bad defense not ERA. I doubt he was 3rd in RA (or RA/9) in that league.

Not a big deal.

6th in RA/9. That's sorta my point; really bad defense brings your RA/9 up, but not as much as putting that money into elite deadball pitchers brings it down.

Incidentally, the team played in League Park (II) - +2 singles, +3 doubles, 0 triples, -2/-2 HRs.

6th in RA/9 with bad defense makes that team all the more impressive. Nice.