I might offer a little different perspective on some of these themes. I'm a grad student now and am actually working on 2 different projects right now, so I really didn't have a lot of time to devote to teambuilding. Even my team names reflect an abject lack of effort and creative thought. Right now I would have had more, but that's not how the schedule worked out. Such is life. Regardless, my research time was limited, so I had to rely heavily on things I knew or vaguely remembered from my SLB history. This is, then, an account of how the "other half" lives in the WISC. Here it is:
$70M - Philadelphia Phillies
I figured right off the bat that in a $70 million league consisting of all modern players there would be an opportunity to get some meaningful offense going. It's been a few years since walks + pop have been part of the winning equation in SLB, but if they're going to work anywhere this would be the place. So I just hopped on the team builder and put in some $/PA values I was comfortable paying, the league-allowed range of seasons, a minimum number of PAs that was meaningful to me (200 I think), and sorted by OPS#. There were Phillies jumped out at me all over the place in the search results, so I went with Philadelphia. Simple as that. I knew that there was an affordable Jim Bunning season I could use as my "ace" in a $70 million cap (turns out it's '64) and a Larry Jackson who could eat innings. I tossed in shorter seasons from Larry Christenson ('78) and Cory Lidle ('05) and there's a rotation. Bunning and Jackson are 1 and 3 and allowed to come in in relief. Unfortunately my starters are homer-prone, but the Vet is actually neutral for home runs, so I can live with it. My bullpen has 1.1-1.2 WHIPs with low HR/9 across the board, lot of similar looking guys. Fabio Castro will be a stud 32-inning closer at this cap.
The offense may have come together even better than I had hoped, albeit not exactly as I had pictured it. There are only 2 30-homer guys on the squad ('68 Dick Allen and '07 Pat Burrell), but there are a lot of doubles (+ doubles park!) and a lot of walks in there. Several platoons, and all my bench guys can hit. In fact, there are no mop-ups or scrub bats on this team, ever man on the roster can contribute. The PAs and IP are both a little low but not terribly low, I think livable in a -2 singles park. I have an A+ catcher arm against righties, D- vs. lefties. If you want to steal against me you should throw lefties and hope I don't notice and put Dalyrymple in against you. Otherwise I have pretty good infield defense and bad outfield defense. Overall I have:
5031 PAs, .271/.379/.456, 178 homers, no speed $34,657,563
1323 IP, 1.14 WHIP, 0.60 HR/9 $35,127,483
I left almost $215K on the table in this theme, which is a lot for me, but I didn't see anywhere where I thought I could spend it and make the team any better, although I suppose I could have added a few insurance PAs. Maybe I should have done that... Worst case scenario I can stop PHing for pitchers to save about 2-3 PAs per game from my hitters, which actually can make a significant difference in terms of bench fatigue. It's a good desperation strategy against teams you don't need to beat badly, but not too attractive in the WISC where every win counts for a point in the standings...
I'm hoping this team can win me 85-90 games, but I don't feel great about the pitching, so 75 may be more likely.
$80M - One Step Forwards and/or Back
I was dreading building this team, and did it the last night. Actually only took me about an hour, I can't believe how easily it came together. I did grab a few guys who are cheap a few seasons in a row. My original strategy for this was to just set the max cost search field to $200 or $225K and start putting in letters for the last name and wait to see repeats in back-to-back seasons, but I never got to that point. I only needed a handful of those guys. My two teams won't look identical at all, I'm not going to waste everyone's time outlining all the changes but here are two of interest:
In season 1, Aramis Ramirez will be a full-time 3rd baseman. In season 2 (in the unlikely event I make it), he'll be platooning with 1969 Rick Joseph. My season 1 Joseph is an overpriced scrub at $430K.
In season 1, '18 Toney is a stud long reliever. In season 2 he'll be a pretty solid starter. Dizzy Dean goes from setup to long relief to take his spot.
A lot of other pitchers change roles as well, but it's not really that interesting...
Anyway, this offense is built around power. It's not the ideal strategy for an $80 million league; power is next to worthless in OLs most of the time now. Nevertheless, I couldn't live with myself if I played a major SLB tournament without power hitting, as that's been my MO for many years of playing this game. Highlights of the team include Ted Williams, Manny Ramirez, Edgar Martinez, Ed Walsh, and Babe Adams (as a starter in both seasons).
Season 1 (scrubs removed):
5116 PAs, .298/.407/.509, 163 HR, no meaningful speed $39,384,693
1243 IP, 0.99 WHIP, 0.16 HR/9 $39,038,297
Season 2 (likewise):
5107 PAs, .302/.400/.503, 167 HR, nobody got faster $40,365,164
1371 IP, 1.09 WHIP, 0.25 HR/9 $38,516,020
The dropoff to in pitching to season 2 is really a product of the fact that I have no mop-up innings to remove, so everybody gets averaged a little bit more; in fact, I think I might like the season 2 staff a little bit better... The offense isn't quite as good, though. Obviously I shorted myself on PAs and IP a little bit again, but I'm in another -2 singles park. That will be a common theme throughout my teams. Two years ago I went a little safer and frankly didn't have the top-end talent to compete, made only 1 playoffs and was quickly dispatched from that. This year I decided to go for the throat. I don't have a ton of time to micromanage, but I should be able to check in once a day or so and try to keep things from getting to out of control.
I'm sure the average owner spent close to an order of magnitude more time on this league than me, and I'm sure there will be a lot of homer-limiting pitchers and parks. Seeing the previous respondents in here makes me even more sure of that than I already was, which was pretty darn sure. If this team wins 70 games I'll be happy, but we are good at walking and decent with non-HR XBH, so we may have a shot to steal games here and there even against the deadball teams.
$90 Million - 1992 Los Angeles Dodgers
Not much to say about this one. It was a true grad student special. As soon as I saw the theme I knew I was using the LA Dodgers, and once I built the team I was quite sure of it. I may have spent 20 minutes looking at other teams just for shitting and giggling, and I may yet explore other teams I could have used just for the fun of it. But I really didn't do a lot of research here, I knew the Dodgers had the guns and the losses to twist them into bigger guns and I ran with it. I'm using Piazza (C, A+, C-) out of position at first base so I can put Mike Scioscia behind the plate. No great-hitting first basemen on the team anyway, and while I felt like I needed Piazza's big bat it's hard to turn down a .400 OBP catcher with an A- arm in a theme like this. The rest of the offensive firepower comes from Darryl Strawberry, Eric Davis, Eric Young, and Brett Butler. As others have mentioned, SS isn't a strong position for this team, but you do get a .331 OBP with a D/D glove from '92 Offerman. Oh, that's not good? Oh well, he'll bat 7th (with Eric Young 9th, pitcher 8th) and try not to botch his defense too badly, he can play every day and he only costs $3 million. I'm running a 5-man rotation, the important pieces of which are Pedro, Hershiser, and Bob Ojeda. This team probably has my best single odds of making the playoffs, and shortening down to those 3 guys will give me a very strong postseason rotation. The bullpen (featuring '88 Jay Howell and '86 Candelaria) isn't exactly a strength, but it's not a weakness either.
With scrubs removed:
4707 PAs, .301/.392/.489, 146 home runs, 5 good thieves $44,915,326
1370 IP, 1.09 WHIP, 0.40 HR/9 $43,368,735
I have a decent number of scrub PAs to help with fatigue, though Dodger is actually +2 for hits. We'll see how that goes. The biggest issue is that the team isn't exactly tailor-made for the park. My bats are generally lower-hit, higher walk with good XBH, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what you'd like in Dodger. It is what it is, I like the talent on this team and as alluded to above feel that this team has a reasonable chance at a playoff berth.
$100 Million - 1929 Cin-Cle-NYY-Phi-Was
This is another under-researched team. Here is what I knew: 1) The Yankees still carried great offensive firepower after the official Bronx Bombers lineup of '27, but by '29 and '30 had fallen to well under .600, making them tenable for this league. 2) I didn't want to use the most offensively-biased season in history for any theme. 3) The '29 Phillies were pretty bad and carried a few very good hitters themselves.
I pretty much went with my first plan here as well. I figured, take those two teams, the losing squads must have a few pitchers here and there that I can use. Just find a losing squad with a couple of good arms. Turns out the Indians and Reds were my huckleberries there. The Senators rounded things out by providing me with both a quality SS and one of the few seasons of Firpo Marberry with enough IP/G to survive in a 3-man rotation. Here's my guys:
Yankees
|
$25,297,329
|
Phillies
|
$27,033,665
|
Indians
|
$15,127,981
|
Reds
|
$13,130,007
|
Senators
|
$19,189,301
|
Babe Ruth
|
$7,301,053
|
Lefty O'Doul
|
$9,299,385
|
Willis Hudlin
|
$7,613,512
|
Red Lucas
|
$8,659,814
|
Firpo Marberry
|
$8,115,340
|
Tony Lazzeri
|
$7,162,293
|
Chuck Klein
|
$7,547,093
|
Ken Holloway
|
$3,262,143
|
Clyde Sukeforth
|
$2,540,521
|
Sam Jones
|
$4,006,335
|
Lou Gehrig
|
$7,079,120
|
Pinky Whitney
|
$6,629,516
|
Ed Morgan
|
$2,503,632
|
Rube Ehrhardt
|
$815,329
|
Joe Cronin
|
$3,970,452
|
Fred Heimach
|
$3,554,863
|
Spud Davis
|
$2,640,672
|
Glenn Myatt
|
$1,073,116
|
Marv Gudat
|
$681,156
|
Ad Liska
|
$2,857,232
|
George Burns
|
$200,000
|
Cy Williams
|
$916,999
|
Milt Shoffner
|
$675,578
|
Billy Zitzmann
|
$433,187
|
Charlie Gooch
|
$239,942
|
And with the guys I hope to have see the field as infrequently as possible removed, the sum stats are as follows:
5947 PAs, .338/.417/.558, 206 HRs, no speed $57,590,736
1414 IP, 1.27 WHIP, 0.26 HR/9 $38,750,395
Obviously with these guys coming from the season before 1930 the offensive stats will be depressed a bit by normalization, and the pitchers should get a boost. Nevetheless, this lineup should HIT. The reality is that these were some of the best pitchers from 1929, with 1.2 WHIPs being near the league lead, but they'll probably still get hit harder than I'd prefer. My strategy for this league differed from a lot of other people's. I don't have any great teams, but as a result I didn't need to pull from any truly terrible teams either. This is a very different team than what a lot of other people seem to be fielding, so I really don't know what to expect from them. I do think that '29 Ruth, Gehrig, and O'Doul make a great core of hitters to build a team around at this cap, and I really like my platoon group of catchers as well as the rest of my bats. I'm hoping this team surprises me a little and makes a playoff run, but winning 70 or fewer games certainly isn't out of the question either. My league and division (which I haven't really analyzed yet) may be of vital importance to this team's success or lack thereof.
$110 Million - The Silver King Experience
That's right - I had the creativity here to name my team after the theme. Go team.
This was also my most poorly thought-out team. We're not specifically built to beat Silver King, but what we are built to do is abuse fatigue. I think a lot of teams in this theme may struggle with pitching fatigue (mine included), so I took a high-OBP group of hitters. A tired pitching staff is a walk-prone pitching staff. The first thought in this league is to take high-contact hitters to combat a deadball staff. I know most other SLB players are better at the high-contact, high-speed game than I am, so I decided to gamble on the opposite route to exploit fatigue. My lineup features walk specialists Ted Williams, Manny Ramirez, Todd Helton, and Walt Weiss as well as a pair of pretty darn good hitters in Edgar Martinez and Larry Walker. We generally play solid defense, and Gary Carter should easily control the running game of my opponents.
I paired a tandem of '95 Maddux and Ferdie Schupp with my Silver King. The bullpen is solid, with Toney, Dizzy Dean, Babe Adams closing, and '16 Chick Robitaille to help absorb inning after Maddux and Schupp. I'm guessing I went shorter on innings than at least 80 or 90% of managers. I feel very comfortable with King, and I know from experience that even on something like a 120-130 pitch count I can toss him for 4 straight games if I need to to help alleviate team fatigue. Granted, by start #3 he'll be terrible. But he'll help bring everybody else on the staff back into the green numbers, and after one day off he'll be back at least into the 90s and ready to go for me again. So that's my safety net. I'm figuring on getting something from 86-88 starts out of King, but if it has to be closer to 100 I'm perfectly comfortable going there. I'm betting I'll be among the leaders in terms of getting innings out of Silver, and I'll be pretty proud of it if I am. He's off to a good start with 18 shutout innings and 2 wins on day 1, and while my opponent was throwing scrub pitchers (a strategy I strongly disagree with, though I won't get into the math behind why it's really a silly illusion that makes it seem like a good idea), it looks like a regular lineup Silver held down. Of course, now that I'm forum jinxing him he'll suck for a week. As long as he gets his innings I'll live with it.
Scrubs removed:
5285 PAs, .323/.427/.543, 178 HRs, Biggio the main speed thread at 39/43 $51,151,270
1393 IP, 0.86 WHIP, 0.15 HR/9 $56,349,084
It's not a lot of innings for the cap, but they're of very high quality. Another team I'm not sure what to expect from, but I'd probably call this my 2nd-strongest shot to make the playoffs even though, as I said, it's not really all that well thought out. It just looks like a strong combination of bats+arms, and if fatigue doesn't get me the talent should shine through against any pitching, Silver included.
$125 Million - Three's Company - Honus, David, & Pedro
I really don't remember how I settled on Honus Wagner to cornerstone the offense on this team, but I did it pretty quickly. My initial thoughts ran to Foxx and Hornsby just like most people's did, but I've used both of those guys in clone leagues in the past with relatively modest success. My next thought was to use speedy outfielders, hoping for poor catchers. I ALMOST went this route, and may regret not doing so. In fact, I'm highly suspicious I'll wish I had Rickey in my outfield, but there's really no great speed guy who can cover nearly all the positions that Honus can. I decided to opt for the extra $5 million and take the guy who can play 8 positions with reasonable defense and an interesting bat. I was always suspicious we'd see modern pitchers in this league, but really I figured Pedro was the only one who's really homer-prone who would be popular. You'd need to hit a LOT of Pedro's to take full advantage of power hitting. On the other hand, Maddux and most deadballers are most susceptible to high average hitters, with deadballers obviously prone to the non-HR XBH. Honus fits that profile well, and was understandably popular.
My first instinct was to use Pedro as my pitcher, and once I built a staff of Pedros and saw how nice it looked I really didn't do any further exploring. At this point I had everything but catchers, so I wanted a guy who could hit reasonably well and play adequate defense behind the dish while also eating up some roster spots. David Ross fit the bill perfectly. Here's a guy who's got pretty much nothing BUT partial seasons, a decent bat, some years of decent arms, and a few extra guys I can stick on the bench for about $1 million apiece who are good enough pinch hitters to not be totally dead weight. I've got 5 Rosses on the team to man catcher, 4 of them can hit enough to be useful pinch-hitters in some capacity when they're not starting, and the whole group cost just a little over $9 million. This was just what I needed, and my team was done.
I just left everybody's stats in on this one, since the line between scrub and meaningful player is kinda blurry and I may have to use my scrub-hitting Ross as a defensive replacement, with my worst Pedros still likely to use at least most of their innings.
6687 PAs, .330/.397/.484, not much HR power, tons of steals but at horrible percentages $71,517,837
1511 IP, 1.03 WHIP, 0.70 HR/9 $53,307,456
If I cut down to the starting Honuses and 3 Rosses who will do the starting and cut the worst 2 Pedros I get lines of:
5214 PAs, .346/.412/.518 and
1438 IP, 1.01 WHIP, 0.69 HR/9
Not great pitching lines, but obviously Pedro normalizes very well and I'm hoping and thinking he should hold his own. Nevertheless, I don't really expect this team to do very well. There wound up being even more Foxxes and Rajahs out there than I had anticipated, and those guys are definitely going to get theirs against Pedro. I'm also disheartened by the sheer number of Pedros in the league - those guys are going to be tough for my Honuses to do damage against. This is my one team with a losing record on day 1, and if my Wagners don't start to step up their hitting this could be a long season for this group.