Well, here goes nothing...
$65M - Chavez & Co. in Chavez Ravine
My low cap team made the World Series in round 1, and I don’t really have much experience with low caps, so I decided to use the same basic formula: skimp on PAs, spend more on pitching than hitting, 3-man rotation (if memory serves I used a 3-man tandem in round 1 but I couldn’t make that work so I used 3 good high IP setup guys instead, which should come out to roughly the same), platoon where possible. I think I skimped too much on PAs in round 1; my hitters generally spent the season between 90%-95%, so I upped the PAs by about 5% this time. I like my team, although I may have skimped too much on IP this time. I guess I was counting on most people using pitcher’s parks.
.276/.367/.436
1,259 IP, 1.09 WHIP, 0.29 HR/9
$80M – Linguini Arms and Fred Grandy Balls
I like this team name. This is probably the only thing I like about this team.
I have little idea what I was thinking here. I know that I looked at normalized HR/9 for pitchers and CS% for catchers. I remember that whenever possible I selected guys who can run at least some. And I platooned at 5 positions. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. Yeah, they hit some HRs, but no more so than my typical teams, which tend to focus on power more than most owners’. And yeah, they steal bases, but not overwhelmingly so. I seem to have focused on guys who walk a lot, probably because I knew I would go pitcher’s park (Safeco). But seriously, WTF is up with 1916 Dave Bancroft? Really? He can’t hit and he sucks at stealing. It’s like I had $3M left over and didn’t have a SS yet and that’s the best I could do. Which it probably isn’t even. I have a feeling that if I had time to start from scratch I’d come up with something like 20 different players and like that team way better. I guess my pitching is halfway decent. I hope.
.268/.379/.426
1.353 IP, 1.02 WHIP, 0.84 HR/9
$100M – ABsCaM (nee Always Be Closing, Mate, which was a godawful name)
Why did I go with A as one of my letters? I think I looked at the type of SPs that I wanted, and decided that Babe Adams was one of them. I’m using the barracuda3 special 2-man tandem rotation here just because I can. And because I really like it, although admittedly it works marginally better in DH leagues because there you don’t have to worry about the B pitcher getting pinch-hit for before his time. Once I had the SPs I wanted, the rest just kind of fell into place. Platooned at a couple of OF spots with a bunch of low AB guys I’ve never heard of (Allie Clark? Buster Mills?). I got to use Max Bishop, who used to be a favorite of mine but who I’m guessing I haven’t used in about eight years. Who the heck is Cuckoo Christiansen? I love Bobby Abreu and Bret Barberie though. This is probably my most no-name bullpen ever outside of Cisco Carlos: Brett Anderson, Clay Condrey, Marty Bystrom, and Bobby Castillo. Speaking of Bobby, 24% of my team is named either Bob or Bobby. I would’ve called them Bob’s Country Bunker if it were allowed.
On paper I like this team. This is probably my bellwether team; if this team doesn’t do well I’m in serious trouble and will finish near the bottom overall. But, as always, did I draft enough pitching?
.314/.413/.474
1,376 IP, 0.91 WHIP, 0.09 HR/9
$110M – This Team Sucks from 1888 to 2008
And you thought my $80M team was bad…
I once heard a story about when “Spaceman” Bill Lee was pitching for the mid-70’s Red Sox. They were in a pennant race, and he was on the mound in a pivotal situation. Tie game, bases loaded, two outs, 9
th inning, or something to that effect. Anyway, Fisk puts down a sign. Lee shakes him off. Fisk puts down another sign. Lee shakes him off again. Fisk puts down a third sign, and a fourth, and Lee keeps shaking him off. So a perturbed Fisk runs out to the mound and yells “I just gave you every sign and you shook them all off, what the hell is going on?!?!” Lee calmly replies “…I’ve been working on this new pitch…”
Fast-forward to 2016. “Space-case” barracuda3 is participating in his first-ever WIS Championship. He defies the odds and makes it to the second round. He’s tasked with creating what should be a de facto $110M open league team. Should be 72 wins minimum for just signing his name. Layup. What does he do? “Gee, I’ve never used Silver King before…now seems like a great time!”
I literally have never used Silver King before. Never. As in, in over a decade of playing this game. I do not have the foggiest idea whether using him in this situation makes even a modicum of sense. All I can tell you is my reasoning: I know that when you take his 703 IP and multiply by 1.1 you get about 9.5 IP/g over 81 games, which is obviously more than a game’s worth of innings per game. But my thought is, given that this is a de facto $110M open league, the offenses will be good enough to make him throw enough pitches to roughly maximize his pitch counts without going over. And he’s, in theory, really good, so he’ll do as well or better than anyone else I could put there. I think this is a reasonable theory. I think it is worth testing. It’s just the fact that I chose this venue in which to do so that’s batshit insane.
There’s another elephant in the room here. Reading some of the previous commentary, it’s clear that many other owners are thinking on a much higher level in considering eras. I know that I have read about what happens in terms of fielding based on what eras the pitchers, hitters and fielders are from. I never paid this much mind. Not because I didn’t believe it was true, but because it usually doesn’t apply to me. I mostly play in progressives, and in what theme leagues I play I usually focus on having a team from a specific era, or else I just count on brute force superior resource management to gain a sufficient edge. Well that’s not gonna fly here with the big boys, and, Silver King or no Silver King, I’m about to get exposed. I hope to learn from this experience and do better next time.
.318/.394/.502 (not as good as my $100M team; maybe this should’ve been my first clue)
1,419 IP, 0.88 WHIP, 0.10 HR/9
$120M – Pop goes the Schriver
I love this theme. I loved researching my selected player. I loved drafting. I will love managing and playing against such unconventional rosters. I love the fact that another version is starting soon.
I had never participated in this type of league before. My strategy for picking a player was to maximize the value of his teammate, so I went with cheapo Pop Schriver and his 499 IP deadballer Charlie Buffinton. I was more concerned with not giving other owners great options than I was saddling them with huge useless salaries. I will not make the same mistake next time.
Having set up a spreadsheet which showed all of the possible choices for each player I had to draft, I noticed early on that George Mullin was going to be this league’s bugaboo in terms of wasted salary, so I used my first pick on a cheap version of him, gaining a nice Cobb in the process. For the second round I’d seen that most of the available versions of Chief Bender, while not horrible, were below the level of quality with which I’d be comfortable in my rotation, so I went with his 1909 and received an excellent Eddie Collins along with hm. At that point I was done with SPs (or so I thought; Schriver had a second high IP SP teammate who I was planning on using along with Buffinton) so I could focus on hitting. 1904 Hickman got me a very good Lajoie, and 1912 Wiltse was way cheaper than the alternatives and netted 2/3 of a season of excellent hitting from C Chief Meyers. After that I noticed that there were players who had good hitting teammates throughout (Belliard, Torres) so I focused on minimizing waste, to pretty good effect. My favorite pick was in the 8
th round, where I was able to snag 1890 Denny Lyons, whose normalized slash line of .360/.460/.558 is quite tasty (albeit in only 499 PA). In the end I used 1902 Tinker’s teammate Jack Taylor in my rotation, and I didn’t have room for one of the only good relievers I’d selected (1980 Burgmeier) but other than that the draft went roughly according to Hoyle.
So how did it all turn out? I like my team, I think. They’re not much at fielding (C-/D Lajoie is playing SS, ‘nuf ced) and I have virtually no bullpen to speak of outside of a very good 1990 Zane Smith, but they can rake and they can run. I don’t think there are going to be many A+ armed catchers in this league, so I like the SB% of Bay (21/22), Goldschmidt (32/37), Bonds (52/65) and maybe even Cobb (51/79). And while Cobb, Lyons and Meyers don’t have full seasons of PAs, they have enough that if I reach the playoffs they should be able to play almost every day, where my lineup, though not my batting order, would look like this:
|
|
B |
PA/162 |
HR |
AVG# |
OBP# |
SLG# |
C |
Meyers, Chief |
R |
467 |
6 |
.353 |
.435 |
.484 |
1B |
Goldschmidt, Paul |
R |
705 |
24 |
.302 |
.414 |
.473 |
2B |
Collins, Eddie |
L |
699 |
3 |
.358 |
.431 |
.490 |
SS |
Lajoie, Nap |
R |
638 |
6 |
.387 |
.432 |
.584 |
3B |
Lyons, Denny |
R |
499 |
7 |
.360 |
.460 |
.558 |
OF |
Cobb, Ty |
L |
531 |
4 |
.394 |
.469 |
.560 |
OF |
Bonds, Barry |
L |
621 |
33 |
.304 |
.410 |
.564 |
OF |
Bay, Jason |
R |
707 |
32 |
.306 |
.401 |
.543 |
I need this team to go deep into the postseason to have any chance of finishing in the top half of the final standings. I’m cautiously optimistic.
5979 PA, .332/.410/.508 (normalized and non-waste for this theme only, though including about 400 PAs of lousy Tinker that I won’t use. Estimating actual usage it’s more like .338/.420/.521)
1,413 IP, 1.05 WHIP#, 0.19 HR/9+ (Again, non-waste only. Non-normalized WHIP is 0.99)
$160M – The Fabulous Baker Bowl Boys
I’m very happy with my life right now. One of the nice things about it is that I’m able to take vacations like the 8 days I spent in Scotland in late October. It was wonderful; if you ever get the chance to go I highly recommend it. The one downside was that it took place in the middle of this draft. I believe that for something like the 5
th to the 13
th round or so, I had the last pick in almost every round due to not being on WiFi or being generally busy. I’m still OK with the way my team turned out, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it would’ve been better had I been around.
I had the 15
th pick overall, meaning that the good pitchers were gone. Deciding between Nap Lajoie and Rogers Hornsby, I went with Hornsby in part because he’s about $2M cheaper and I thought that might come into play. It did not, for me. I’m still OK with the pick, though, as I got Honus Wagner in round 3 after taking 400+ pretty good innings of Davenport in round 2. Reb Russell seemed like the last of the good deadballers available in round 4, and his low IP/g doesn’t bother me as I tend to use 2-man tandems a lot, and had already planned to do so because of Davenport.
I won’t bore you with the gory details of what happened while I was away. I haven’t analyzed most of the draft to determine who I would’ve ended up with if I could’ve picked on time each round, but one that stands out was the 12
th round where I chose 1970 Tom Hall, who will be my Long B. What a waste of a pick. Had I been picking on time I would’ve taken the much superior Kris Medlen.
As for the rest of my strategy, I had originally wanted at least one high-IP guy so I could fill my roster with as many good RPs as possible. And I think I was able to do that with Hoffman, Holland, Ontiveros, Soria, Neshek, and Joe Smith. And I considered mass platooning but quickly abandoned the thought when I doubted whether I’d be able to get all the guys I want. There’s only one Oscar Gamble, after all. I think I was right in that. I did end up platooning one OF spot, with Kal Daniels sharing a corner with Jack Clark. Meh.
So yeah, I think my team is OK. Not as good as it would’ve been, but all that whisky’s not gonna drink itself…
.353/.442/.585
1700 IP, 0.96 WHIP, 0.26 HR/9 (0.95, 0.21 without @$#%&! Tom Hall)