I'll kick off this round's, in rbow's words, legendary roster selection thread. Note that all Team Stats in my post are not including mopups/scrubs (noteworthy mostly for the 120M theme).

65M - MH Broke Phi Broke - Dodger Stadium
Once I realized that I had to split the salary between the three cities, this theme became more difficult. I simply didn't see that many choices from LA teams that provided as much bang for the buck as their NY and CHI counterparts. However, since I needed to accumulate 20M, I decided to put together a list of acceptable choices from LA teams and use that as a baseline.

The real weakness of the LA teams is that there isn't any deadball pitching. In fact, my only pitcher from LA is 2006 Greg Maddux who, despite being a low cap stalwart, also almost didn't make the cut. I have decent fielding and ended up choosing a pitcher's park (Dodger Stadium), which allowed me to feel comfortable with < 1,350 quality IP. My team WHIP is actually lower than it was for my WS winning 70M team from Round 1, but I suppose that's to be expected since the perceived high value players were blacklisted from that league. My staff is led by two 300 IP pitchers, 1905 Al Orth and 1917 Phil Douglas who, at < $24,000/IP, are great values. Christy Mathewson and Ed Walsh also make appearances in the pen.

The hitting/fielding side is where I needed to let LA players shine. I went with 1997 Tony Phillips, 2004 Milton Bradley, 2008 Chone Figgins (better value than his .330 season at this point with price increases), 2009 Juan Pierre (who's splitting time with 1963 Mickey Mantle's monster partial season at one of the OF spots), and 2012 AJ Ellis behind the plate. I really wanted Roger Bresnahan and his slightly better arm but, after considering both the fact that I don't think SB teams will be as common in this league and the fact that having to use LA pitching would probably be a bigger hill to climb over, went with Ellis.

I played around with a lot of options for the offense here and think there are plenty of ways to win in this theme (Hilltop, Comiskey (I), and Dodger teams just to name three).

Hitting: .290/.370/.403
Pitching: 1,335 IP, 1.08 WHIP, 0.30 HR/9

80M - MH Noodle Eaters Anonymous - Oriole Park at Camden Yards
Undoubtedly the hardest theme, in my mind. Devious and genius in it's simplicity. I don't know if I made the right choices but here's my thinking.

First, the obvious thing was to minimize HR/9. I think anyone with a HR/9 over 0.90 or 1.00 will be in trouble. I looked for pitchers with well normalizing HR/9, and also wanted to minimize walks to avoid giving free passes to the base stealers (basically a single can equal a triple in this league).

Hitting was the tricky part. Do I emphasize SB%? No, since D- catchers won't be able to get anyone out even if their SB% isn't great. So, how do I balance guys with high raw SB totals and HR hitters? Again, since I see a single as good as a triple in this league, I went with Oriole Park (originally, Dodger Stadium).

Lots of options here. I went with Cy Williams and Tilly Walker over Gavvy Cravath. Almost took all three but needed to get some SBs in there too. Raines, Coleman, Wills, Lopes, Figgins ended up being my picks. Definitely wanted to avoid modern HR hitters for their poor normalization. They'll hit some in this league, but not as many as Cy, Tilly, Gavvy or Buck Freeman.

I think we'll see a lot of the Astrodome and Target Field in this league, and that a possible winning strategy. I also think Atlanta Fulton County style teams can win. Really though, this will probably be a league where we see a fair amount of runs scored but not a particularly inflated team AVG or pitches needed for your pitching staff. We'll see if that holds up. If it doesn't, I may be a bit low on IP.

Hitting: .288/.364/.443
Pitching: 1,364 IP, 1.04 WHIP, 0.79 HR/9

100M - MH Where's My Burrito, Chris? - Joe Robbie Stadium
The letters I wanted became clear pretty quickly after doing some searching in the database just based on available players who had names starting with various letters. I don't think there was any need to get too fancy with this one.

I went with high speed players and high quality pitching. M, W and C give me Maury Wills, Willie McGee, Max Carey, Melky Cabrera, Christy Mathewson, Cisco Carlos, Cla Meredith, and more. Adding in B gives me Bob Milacki, Mordecai Brown, Bill Bernhard, Wade Boggs.

Late in the game, after doing an experiment on how SBs translate to wins, I built I team where I swapped out W for G (George McQuillan, Bill George, George Brett, George Burns (x2) and Gary Carter over my other choice of Matt Wieters (also A+ arm)), but ended up liking the Performance History numbers of my original team better. We'll see if I regret it.

Hitting: .319/.391/.462
Pitching: 1,420 IP, 0.90 WHIP, 0.14 HR/9

110M - MH 1885-1933, Oddballs - Palace of the Fans
At first I had no idea what to do with this theme and thought I'd need to find time to build 10+ teams, but then I started considering N=2 for the first time and came to the conclusion that the best strategy here was to focus on either the modern era (speed, defense, RPs) or old timers (pitching, range, 3Bs). Why? Because focusing on an era builds a more cohesive team.

I started by trying 1885-1933 (aka Roger Connor to Carl Hubbell) and never fully built another team because I liked what I had so much. The odd numbers give me a textbook Palace of the Fans team; I have A or better range at all 8 positions, a plethora of XBH and, after some tweaking, the ability to fit 1909 Christy Mathewson, a true stud.

My pen is a little weak but it's serviceable, especially with our great range. I feel confident this will be either my best or second best team.

Hitting: .338/.412/.484
Pitching: 1,398 IP, 0.93 WHIP, 0.10 HR/9

120M - MH Brick Suppliers, Inc. - Target Field
This team is why I hesitate to say the 110M will be my best. I had played schwarze's 16x16 theme once before and was very thrown off by it (90+ losses), but it taught me how to succeed in it. Bottom line is that flexibility is key, pick players first who have a high variance in quality/salary between their best and worst seasons, and it plays more like a 100-110M league than a 120M league.

I got a poor draft spot, but then got incredibly lucky when tjefferson switched his pitching pick to Joe Wood, who could also qualify as a hitter. This allowed me to change to 12x12 star, the worst player possible for this theme (for other owners), Brickyard Kennedy. He's got 12 seasons (so all of them must be used), most of them are over 8M, and none of them are even slightly usable. This knocks everyone else's salary caps down before we even get started.

The choice was between his cheapest season, which would give me a Long RP in Joe McGinnity (183 meh IP) or his 1903 season where I could have a great Honus Wagner season in a draft that was short of SS talent, and/or 330 IP Deacon Phillippe. I had Phillippe locked into my roster until we were over halfway through the draft and I noticed that A) 1995 Maddux was still available via David Justice and B) I was 90% sure I'd be able to afford him.

mildnhazy had thrown Adonis Terry, another albatross, into the fray, so my first priority was taking the cheapest season of his available. Amazingly, no one took him before I did in Round 1, and I got his cheapest season. This, combined with my cheap Brickyard, put me in a great position salary wise right from the get go. I imagine that having to roster both of them caused a lot of headaches for the people who took expensive versions of other players.

My thoughts throughout the draft were just to stay as flexible as possible while acquiring as much bargain ($/IP) deadball pitching as possible. My entire staff ended up being only 6 pitchers (+ mopups), and I lucked out by grabbing the one useable Frank LaPorte season late in the draft. I knew there were plenty of usable George Kelly seasons, and while all the Varitek and Griffin seasons were bad, enough of them were cheap where I didn't have to worry about either of them until the late rounds.

I haven't looked at the other draft that much, but I would be shocked if this team didn't at least make the playoffs.

Hitting: .325/.402/.475
Pitching: 1,380 IP, 0.93 WHIP, 0.11 HR/9

160M - MH Decreasing Confidence Team - AT&T Park
Getting a top 4 drafting spot in this league was a huge win. Addie Joss is as dependable as it gets. However, this draft was marred a bit by missed opportunities due to not having time to do research (don't even do a draft while moving across the country). My strategy seemed to be a good one, though, and hopefully my team will still do okay.

In the past year, I've played in a couple of the DEAL draft leagues, which are essentially the same thing as this league without the season restriction and the decreasing salary requirement. I was surprised how much of a leg up that seemed to give me. There are so many good partial season players out there that platooning is a must, and that allowed me to skip down to the lower salaries quicker so that 1) I could have a better pick in the stadium draft and, more importantly, 2) I'd get the best platoon players and RPs (Fred Toney, Eckersley, Kimbrel).

This largely worked out but could have gone better, especially as other people seemed to catch wind of the strategy (also employed by tjefferson and duece_duece), and moved down to start picking the same players I was looking at. Having to double back and do secondary research was just impossible considering my situation at the time. The best example of this is unfortunate DP machine (24 speed) Earl Smith. when other, better C were available. Hopefully, since he's only a partial season player, it won't hurt too much.

Hitting: .353/.417/.527
Pitching: 1,479 IP, 0.88 WHIP, 0.10 HR/9

$65m: Generic Speed Team

This is exactly what it claims to be, a generic speed team playing in YS1. There are a few platoons and a Dave Kingman because there isn't really any usable 1B speed. The pitching is mostly deadball outside of a couple of relievers. My one extravagance was a mid-level Rickey Henderson. Bleh.

$80m: Return of the Kingmandome

My first goal was to get the best, most homer-suppressing pitching I could roster for $40m. Some of the Steroid Era pitchers just over 0.75 HR/9 actually normalize pretty well, so that's what I've got. I then went for the best-throwing PH good power catcher I could find, which was 1987 Matt Nokes and his 14 percent CS - hey, every little bit is going to matter here. I filled around with mostly power and speed guys, getting to use some goofy rare options like 1988 Bo Jackson and 2009 Mark Reynolds. And, of course, Dave Kingman.

$100m: Team BART Simpson

Here was my thought process: "B and R get me Bonds and Ruth, what other two letters give me a viable anti-dinger pitching staff?" Bill Bernhard and Bill Burns came free, A added Babe Adams (used 1920 over the now-overpriced 1919), and T added Tiny Bonham and Toad Ramsey. The offense filled out nicely, except at catcher where I'm stuck with a garbagey but A+ armed Alan Ashby. He'll hit 9th. It's fine.

$110m: 1967-2015 Treble IV

When in doubt with themes that allow it in higher level WIS competition, I tend to go with Mile High triples teams. So when assembling the targets for a Mile High team in the $160m draft, I noticed that enough of the key pieces were odd year players within the range of 1979-2011. Built a skeleton off those, then decided to try out the 2015 Eddie Rosario that does nothing but hit triples as a platoon piece with the Andres Torres that does nothing but hit triples. 1993 Olerud plays well in the non-triples aspects of MHS, and there was a nice Ted Simmons in the 1970s seasons I basically had to get rid of. Reached back to the 60s to pick up Joe Horlen and Mike Cuellar and then up to the 90s for a Pedro and a Maddux, and the pen and bench took the remaining years.

I suspect there was a way to game this with four or five year gaps to get deadball pitching and great more modern hitting but I just didn't have the time.

$120m: Joe Wood Gets Smoked

I'll be honest, I had no idea what the strategy should look like for this until at least two or three rounds of the player draft, by which point I realized I was already relatively screwed by the people picking Brickyard Kennedy and Adonis Terry. If I had a chance to make a run, this theme will be the death of me. I ended up building a team around 2001 Barry Bonds because I figured I was already screwed and I wanted to see how many dingers he'd hit of what should be intermittently awful league-wide pitching.

$160m: Draft Treble V

Picking late in the first was such a huge handicap here, and I compounded that by misreading the rules. This was a great theme to build a Silver King in Mile High team, and I had a strategy all picked out for it until when on the clock I reread the rules and realized it was 1901 and later players only. Panicking, I didn't look at the whole board and picked the highest IP good pitcher I could find (Joe Wood, again), passing up Barry Bonds because I didn't realize how underbudget switching off from the King would make me. By the time my next pick came up, Bonds/Williams were gone, and I still didn't realize how underbudget I would be. I should've taken George Brett, but I took Dutch Leonard instead. At least Leonard is really great, and coming in 15m lower than anticipated gave me high enough draft position to ensure Mile High, but I'd be lying if I said that was the actual goal.

I think I recovered pretty well with the larger original strategy, which was to rack the key triples and ~400 PA guys before anyone else could get to them, also nabbing higher end/higher IP relievers where possible like Dellin Betances and Dave Righetti. I'm happy everywhere but third base, where I've got triples superstar but defensive disaster 2004 Chone Figgins, who will be hit for and defensively replaced by A+++++ range Brett Lawrie whenever possible. I should've just nabbed a good third baseman that didn't hit triples at some point like I did at first, or at least another 300 PA one to use on the road. Live and learn.

I didn't bother looking at anything until the new salaries came out, then the two drafts started immediately and I was swamped with research, all during hurricane week in Florida. Some of my early picks might not be the best. Later I drafted my last couple teams without trying out a lot of combinations because I was draft weary by then. If I win then I've learned a new strategy, "Don't overthink it."

$65M Big Cities.
I did poorly in the lowcap last round. So did I change my strategy? Not much, it's worked before. Balanced team except for scrubs, most pitchers in the 60-115ip range. Access to deadballers made for better pitching and I used the savings to get less horrible defense. I can't get on board with the SB strategy many people use, cheap speedsters don't hit as well for the money and most teams have strong arm catchers.
LA was the problem city. No deadballers meant more HR without lower salary to show for it. I tried to load up on LA hitters but often they weren't the best. Adrian Gonzalez at 1B, parttime OFs Garret Anderson and Orlando Palmeiro, and all-purpose backup Hairston are ok. I paid too much for LoDuca but I do need an A+ arm against the plethora of speed teams. still needed nearly $6M of LA homerun pitching and went with 75ish innings from Maddux Frost and Niedlinger.
NY has the most pitching because 281ip Fred Toney is my only workhorse. He's joined by intermediate Clark Griffith and Hi Bell, along with Tex Neuer. 2008 Jeter at SS and 477pa Kent at 3B are the only Yankee swingers. Chicago's 2016 Zobrist looks underpriced as does 400pa Baines. 73 Billy Williams made the team over several equally qualified OFs for tactical reasons. Chicago has my best SP in 1905 Bob Wicker joined by Benz Wolfgang and Flaherty.
At lowcaps it's important to get enough innings without wasting money on excess. I dealt with that by drafting a mopup and a 2nd near mopup. Total PA is all about how much fatigue you're willing to put up with, I'm on the high end trying to keep hitters at 95-100% because fatigue affects defense too. Of course I chose the -3 rated ballpark.


$80M. Again the best speedsters are not the best hitters. What good are all those bags when you're not hitting? And an extreme
power team is not affordable at this cap. So I drafted a hybrid team. Five guys around 50 steals with high SB% and moderate power. Not too distracted by the theme I relied mostly on the basics Avg OBP and OPS#.
My speedsters are '93 Rickey Henderson, Mitchell Page, 3B Nunez, SS Larkin and backing up all 3 OFs Dave Roberts. To offset their slightly inflated costs I have 2016 Zobrist at 2B again, no steals just a good price tag. Catching is the duo of Greg Myers and Josh Bard, both at 20% CS which seems to be the maximum for a D- rating. Saved 1B for last to see how much money I could scrounge up, oldtimers Trosky and Konetchy share the job. Had another speedster in RF but had to downgrade to 1914 Gavvy Cravath, good for normalized HR not good for catching flyballs.
Pitching is less interesting. Searched by $/IP and found the best values I could. As usual my pitchers are all over the map with several centered around 100ip. Most are SP and can either start or relief. Mostly the same quality, a few are slightly better for Setup or key starts, a couple slightly cheaper for long B, and a mopup. If you want me to name names the 200ip pitchers are Haren and Jered Weaver, followed by 150ip Roger Craig and Bruce Howard, 80-100ip Dempster, Daniel Hudson,Willoughby, Roebuck and Woody Williams. 50ip level Haddix Elarton and Bob Stoddard.
158 hr, 249 sb and limited stamina don't qualify for any extreme stadiums here. Polo Grounds because people probably won't pay much attention to doubles.


$100M B - C - J - M
First I looked at deadball pitchers as usual. Mordecai Brown and Bill Bernhard, B and M looking like good choices. Christy Mathewson? wasn't sure about C until a brief search turned up enough good C prospects. including Jack Chesbro, J being my first try at a 4th letter because it's so prolific. Now I don't need Christy, Chesbro is more cost effective at this cap. 125ip Cy Morgan in the bullpen along with a coterie of 30ip pitchers. Jim Corsi and the killer M's (Mark Melancon, Mike Macdougal, Matt Miller). Chappie McFarland to get enough innings and Jim Moroney swirling a mop. not strong at setup so I may play 3-finger Brown there some of the time, your best pitchers should be throwing when the game is on the line.
There were enough suitable hitters in the proper price range for each position so I struck gold on my first combination try. Chipper Jones at SS, Max Bishop and Bobby Bonilla affordably priced at 2nd and 3rd, Brian McCann's bat at C with cheap Bob Montgomery backing up, staying healthy by batting #8 or #9 and being pinch hit for. 1B John Mayberry looked ok on paper but didn't feel right and with not many J players selected I briefly looked for another 4th letter. But Chipper was hard to match at SS, other positions may be equal but not much better so BCJM it is. Outfield consists of my trademark mishmash of not-quite fulltimers and little guys, good for platoons matchups and pinch hitting, and they seem to be better values too. Bob Caruthers, Melky Cabrera, Bernie Carbo, speedy Bake McBride and Jose Cruz. Buster Mills and Bob Bescher PHing and playing some too. Billy Cowan and Jack Brohamer keeping the bench warm in case I need them.
Robison Field because my whole lineup says Lefty or Switch, though I have enough Righties off the bench to take advantage of lefty pitchers. I voted this the team of mine that will do the best so watch them lose 90 games.


$110M 1894-1990 by Fours.
Deadball pitchers for sure. Not the ones whose salary skyrocketed, at this cap I want the previously neglected pitchers who are still value priced. 1902 and 1914 stood out. Hendrix and Bernhard. I can get there by 2's 3's or 4's. Twos or threes would give me a 1908 pitcher but then I'd get mired down in the weaker 20's thru 50's too long so I chose 4's to stretch out to the 90's.I chose 06 Mordecai 10 Bender and 18 Quinn. 1273 innings already. Then I looked for the best available players from the 4x+2 years at the right prices. Infield of Mize Avila and 1898 Jimmy Collins. No SS I liked and the salary cap is looming so I saved money with 1930 Travis Jackson and two little guys. Torre at C shuts down basestealers. Yaz in the OF. Latman closing.
I saw no need to complicate matters so I just used the remaining years to fill my roster, not trying out endless variations. Ott was the best I could do at 2nd OF. 3rd OF is split between 5 low PA hitters, I don't know if that's the best play but I didn't waste many roster spots. Cullenbine is the top pinch hitter, Kal Daniels can pinch run when not playing, cycle in Edwards Flagstead and Bradford. Ruffing Rozema and a mopup complete the bullpen. couldn't find much from 1994 so used 1894 for my last bench player. didn't use much from modern decades so maybe I should've tried 2's or 3's but I didn't feel like starting over. Kingdome because I'm not giving up HR.


$120M draft. Ed Walsh & Some Bozos
Worst theme of the draft, too wild and unpredictable for WiSC finals and there's something ugly about being forced to carry dead weight. Despite my complaints I was lucky enough to get the first pick but didn't foresee the level of destruction coming our way. I nominated a big deadball pitcher, choosing Ed Walsh because he had two career paths. If this were anything close to a legitimate $120M league I would've used his 1910 season. But after seeing the bozos some people nominated I went with Plan B, 1908 Walsh for an extra 100 innings along with teammate Frank Smith giving me over half my innings for a reasonable price. Now I'm freed up to deal with the problems at hand, or so I thought. Stuck with the last pick but not everybody saw the storm brewing so I escaped with "only" a $6.75m loss on Brickyard Kennedy.
I had planned to avoid dead weight again in round 2 but there didn't seem to be a frenzy to pick those guys and I thought I had time to grab 1904 Mordecai Brown for a strong pitching team. This turned out to be my downfall. Not only did it cost me an extra $7M in dead weight, he also made roster construction tricky as his only usable teammate was a $670k backup I might not even need. #3 I took a cheap Joe Wood hitter to avoid the worthless pitching years. He comes with a $10M Tris Speaker if I can afford him. By round 4 it was too late for Adonis Terry and I got stuck with one of the $10M wasted years. So I'll save him until the end of the draft, and now I know how much salary I'm dealing with. George Kelly may have been a hasty pick but I was impressed by his +25 range numbers and his teammates, taking a half-time Casey Stengel one of my best hitters. #5 I couldn't believe the best Jason Schmidt season was still available, pricey but better than getting one of his weaker versions. Several possible Schmidt teammates, the most useful being RP Herges. Everywhere I look I see good part-time Catchers so I have no use for Varitek, taking his cheap $669k year along with Beltre at 3B.
I have good pitching but with all the dead wood I have a low hitting budget and have to use some of the the turkeys that were nominated. Laporte is a decent hitter for $4M but his C-/C glove at 2B is scarey. He comes with a .385 hitting PH Rowan for under $600k. No way to avoid the weak hitting Griffin at SS so I held my nose and grabbed the best year available, with Moose Haas in the pen. Plenty of Outfielders so I took the $1M Donlin with his affordable A+ arm catcher Peitz. I chose 1895 Adonis for his teammate Lange if Speaker won't fit. Saved Justice for last because 4 seasons to choose from and not obvious what I needed until now. a $2M partial season which is not half bad, use my abundant bench along with Stengel in RF and I can have both Tris and Lange.
With over $20M in wasted salary I feel like I'm playing with a handicap. looks like a $90M league team at best. South Side park to minimize the use of bad backups.


$160M draft.
I felt "off my game" in this draft making several picks I later regretted. With the 19th pick I took Ted Williams over .600obp Barry Bonds, didn't think I needed the money I just don't think Bonds is any better then Teddy. As usual there was a run on SPs early. My typical reaction is to draft mostly hitters early, then load up on mid-inning pitchers who are as good or better than the watered down SPs others draft early. Sometimes it works better than others, here it seemed a good idea because other teams would be hovering around the $7-10M range for quite some time. I'll use part-timers at 2 hitting slots and that should give me a head start on the mid-priced arms.
I need a big inning SP to make this strategy work and took 390ip Frank Smith. In hindsight I should've taken Chesbro in round 1. #3 I drafted an illegal player, then hastily changed to Mike Schmidt because people behind me were already picking. A bad move that passed over several costlier players I could've used in the next 2 rounds. #4 Bill Terry good bat and glove but there are plenty of 1B. #5 Ernie Banks weak OBP but SS looks like a problem and I'm glad to get it over with. #6 called for a good OF, Chuck Klein may not be the best choice but some anomaly in his stats caught me at the time. #7 need a 2nd SP, Nolan Ryan too many walks but he hits over .200, an underrated pitcher stat. #8 Cano numbers look good at 2B even though he underperformed for me in round 1.
I didn't anticipate some people would steal the mid-priced pitchers so soon. I panicked and wrongly thought I would need more innings, taking a SP I don't want Jose Fernandez, tho he does hit over .200. In round 10 I get down to business dropping down to my target pitchers saving C and one OF for part timers. Uehara closing, Hearn starting, Burke in relief, Betancourt setting up. I paused to take OF Dick Wakefield, then the floodgates opened and all of the top RP disappeared. I can't drop down to the lower inning closers because I still have too many needs, exposing the flaw in my strategy. Now I'll get pitchers who are better than a lot of the SP others drafted early but worse than their bullpens. I learned my lesson and took several more pitchers before finishing my hitting, there's plenty of part time hitters out there. Needed 3 Catchers to fill that one position so late, and I'm running out of roster spots. Tenace to face the speediest teams and hitters elsewhere because I don't see many speed teams. 25th spot I'm not sure I have enough innings and I don't have a backup infielder. What to do? Took the pitcher my only Lefty and told my infielders not to get thrown out of any games.
Good doubles and will hit more HR than I give up, over half to right field so I chose Memorial Coliseum.

I built my teams a long time ago, so hopefully, I will remember what my strategy was...

65M: Chi > LA > NY (Polo Grounds V)
I am not a big fan of low cap leagues, so I typically use the same strategy to build teams (high SB% guys, play in pitcher's park). For round 2, I did something a little different. I figure that everybody knows the SB strategy and will draft an A+ arm. So instead, I went with another popular strategy, draft as many switch hitters as possible and focus on OBP. Also, since I built this team shortly after the new salaries were released, I focused on pitchers who didn't see a big increase in their salary. Other than that, the only other thing to figure out was how many IPs to draft. In recent years, I have tended to draft too many innings compared to the top owners, so I went a little lighter this time, with 1278 (1304 w/mopup). In retrospect, I feel that I don't have enough. I choose a somewhat neutral ballpark (0.98) that enhanced doubles (+3). Here is my lineup with OBP listed in parentheses: C-Downing (.351), 1B-Spiezio (.371), 2B-Zobrist (.386), 3B-Strang (.364), SS-Wills (.355), OF- Flack (.373), OF-Herman (.353 &.502 slug), OF-T.Phillips (.392). My four SP's (Drysdale, H.Vaughn, Rankin Johnson, Sallee) all have whips between 1.08 and 1.12 and my bullpen is mostly below 1.10. My defense is below average. Not a great team... just hoping for 82-85 wins, but expect something closer to 75.
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Hitting: .284/.368/.407
Pitching: 1,278 IP, 1.09 WHIP, 0.27 HR/9
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80M: Balanced Attack (Dodger Stadium)
I couldn't decide which strategy to focus on so I decided to create a balanced offense, with a mixture of power and speed, but no extremes. This way, I could be competitive in any type of park. I don't have any 40-HR players nor do I have any players with 50+ SBs. I drafted about 190 HR's and 170 SB's, which equates to about an average of 23 HR / 22 SB per starter. My starting hitters consist of V.Martinez, M.Vaughn, D.Lopes, Ch.Jones, E.Bonafacio, B.Abreu, K.Gibson, G.Cravath. My SP's all have HR/9 rates between 0.75 and 0.86. I spent big ($9.9M) on 1963 J.Marichal and his 1.00 whip. If I make to the playoffs, I will ride him. My other SP's are '01 Maddux, '06 Halladay and '95 D.Martinez. I have 5 decent RP's, all between 60-80 IPs, with whips generally in the 0.97 to 1.07 range. I only drafted 1332 of good IP's but did grab 3 mop-up pitchers to help with fatigue. My defense is below average. Also, I can't remember why I chose Dodger Stadium. After seeing the HR and SB totals of the other teams, I'm not feeling too good about this team.
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Hitting: .394/.388/.483
Pitching: 1,332 IP, 1.07 WHIP, 0.78 HR/9
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100M: MR. Joe Cool (Pro Player Stadium)
I didn't spend very much time on this theme. I knew right away I was going to use C, J, M & R. I didn't even really try any other combinations, although B & W would have been a solid choices too. Not much more to say, other than I wanted high OBP and lots of switch hitters and or lefty bats. My lineup: Joe Mauer (.413), Roger Conner (.420), Joe Morgan (.417), John McGraw (.475), Joe Cronin (.406, Chipper Jones (.435), Roy Cullenbine (.452), Minnie Minoso (.410). For pitchers, I also tried to stay away from the guys with the huge salary increases. My original lineup was built prior to the salary changes. After seeng the salary bumps, I got rid of low-IP studs JR Richard and Randy Johnson. My rotations looks like this: '05 C.Mathewson, '42 M.Cooper, '69 Cuellar, '18 R.Mitchell, '07 C.Morgan, '19 R.Caldwell, '27 Miljus, '42 Rigney, '46 Ruffing, '67 Carlos. I really don't spend a lot of time on my stadium choice so have no idea why I chose Pro Player Stadium.
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Hitting: .315/.429/.471
Pitching: 1,429 IP, 0.97 WHIP, 0.25 HR/9
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110M: Noah's Ark: 1968-2016 (Target Field)
Normally, when selecting eras, I like to mix the deadball (for pitching) and the 1920's (for hitting). I thought many of the others would certainly go deadball here, so when other zig, I decided to zag and go modern era, drafting low-HR, high-AVG, high-OBP guys. This would help my fielding as well, and I wouldn't really have to worry too much about HRs for my pitchers, because everybody knows HR hitters underachieve and so there won't be that many on rosters. I knew I wanted to include 2016 since no salary increase (yet). So how far back do I want to go? I decided to go every 2 years to avoid the 1950's, which might be the worst decade in the sim (50's and 30's are the worst, IMO). Also, following my pattern for other themes, I stayed away from the pitchers with the big salary increases (so no 00 Pedro, no 94 Maddux). My pitching staff is '72 Sutton, '96 K.Brown, '98 Maddux, '92 Schilling. The bullpen is a bunch of low-IP starters ('90 Z.Smith, '19 Oswalt, '14 Pineida, '16 R.Hill, '88 Milacki, '76 Holdsworth, '78 Frost). I really love my offense though and really feel they will be able to score on the many deadball pitchers I will be facing. '00 Kendall (.320/.412), '84 K.Hernandez (.311/.409), '74 Carew (.364/.433), '86 Boggs (.357/.453), '06 C.Guillen (.320/.400), '94 Gwynn (.394/.454), '02 B.Williams (.333/.415), '68 Rose (.335/.391). Since my pitching does allow a few HRs, we are playing in Target Field. This will probably be my best team. Hoping for 90 wins.
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Hitting: .341/.419/.486
Pitching: 1412 IP / 0.94 WHIP / 0.44 HR/9
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120M: Greinke in the Morning (SBC Park)
Man, I really screwed this draft up. I should know better. First, I should have researched more and maybe taken a cheaper player with a deadball stud pitcher teammate. Taking Greinke is fine since I get Kershaw too, but I was drafting last (or close to last) just about every round. Then in round 1, I absolutely should have take G.Mullin's cheap season instead of going for the stud pitcher with '05 Wiltse (C.Mathewson). As a result, I am stuck with Mullin's $9.9M season (which I took very late). I thought maybe I would use Mullin to get a stud Cobb, but all those Mullin seasons went earlier than I was willing to go. I still ended up with a decent Cobb (.350/.380/.468). I love my 2nd round pick ('12 Bender) since it got me my two best hitters (ECollins, F.Baker). I grabbed Charlie Hickman's best season (.361/.387/.539) and his A+++ fielding at 1B next. His teammate Buck Freeman will lead my team in HRs. I then did a salary projection and realized I was in trouble, so the next few rounds were for salary control... '88 Tudor (800K) w/J.Howell, '86 D.Lyons (525K) w/Stovey, '93 Belliard (250K) w/McMichael, '07 Torres (850K) w/Capps, '99 Barry (1.3M) w/D.Farrell. I realized that I was going to have to start a crappy Joe Tinker (.242/ 297/.320) at SS, but at least he's got A+ range. Anyway, I have three stud SP's, decent RPs and very good range on defense. My hitting is pretty below average though. When removing the deadweight, my salary is $103.7M. The stats below reflect just these players.
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Hitting: .319/.379/.457
Pitching: 1454 IP / 0.96 WHIP / 0.32 HR/9
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160M: Why Didn't I Platoon? (Fenway Park)
I really didn't have much of a "game plan" coming into this theme. Just let the draft dictate where I was going and keep my salary level high so I'd have more players to choose from. I didn't think about the platoon aspect until it was much too late - thus the team name. Picking 16th, I knew I wasn't going to get a stud pitcher so I was hoping for an expensive Hornsby or Lajoie. I was thrilled that Lajoie was still there. My goal was to grab Boudreau in round 2, but he went ONE pick in front of me. So my other hitting options were Brett, Foxx or Musial. Foxx's HR's would be suppressed so I passed on him. Musial plays 1B/OF and there are lots of options there so I passed. Maybe I should've taken Brett, but he never seems to perform up to his salary. So I went with a SP. I thought about Davenport but decided to go Sutton at $11.9M (Davenport went the pick after mine). A bunch of $10M guys went off the board, and at this point, I knew I was going to get Hubbell ($11.70M) and Drysdale ($11.68M) in the next two rounds - which I did. Each round, there were guys I wanted to take but their salaries were a bit too low, so I waited a round, and they'd always be gone by the time it got back to me. I let salary control my drafting way too much. My next few picks were hitters - A.Simmons, M.Ott, H.Greenberg... Wait - why am I taking power hitters? ARGGH - I'm doomed. Tommy Holmes and Robin Yount followed. Damn, why did I take Yount... I now have too many right handed hitters! What am I doing? I need LH bats - so I take Bill Dickey and Zack Wheat next. Still no relievers. My salary is still high relative to other teams - which means I missed guys like Gagne, Eckersley, etc. So I grab guys who are sure to underachieve at this cap level - Wilhelm, Pollet, W.Davis, Niedendfuer, Cormier, G.White, Pineda. My last few picks are pinch hitters and/or defensive replacements... Joe Harris Johnny Schulte, Ray Blades, Tex Wisterzil, Alex Escobar, Dave Hansen, Les Bell. I will be lucky to go .500 with this team.
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Hitting: .352/.430/.596
Pitching: 1616 IP / 0.93 WHIP / 0.38 HR/9

65m - It's Time For Dodger Baseball!

Honestly, the best thing about this team is that I read the team name in Vin Scully's voice every time I see it. This theme hurt my brain because I kept thinking I needed $20m worth of Dodgers, $20m worth of Giants, etc... instead of doing it by city. My 70m team in Coors, with crazy A++ range in the infield, worked really well in round 1, so I wanted to replicate it. Of course, the NY/LA/CHI teams weren't as cooperative, and there's no Coors Field among these stadiums, so this is a watered-down version of that team.

I still started with really low K/9# pitchers and somewhat low HRs, meaning I was going to end up with a deadball staff and have to fill in my LA players in the bullpen or on offense. I used a 5mil Carew at 1B and I wished I could get rid of him, but I needed the California money. I didn't end up with much power at all (Evers/Herr at 2B, Bancroft at SS, Baker at 3B, Pettis in CF) so I kind of had a team built for a park I couldn't pick. I thought about Comiskey 1 but then decided I didn't really have all that many extra base hits either, so went with Dodger Stadium. Other than generate + plays, this team does just about nothing well. We can't even really steal, which is usually the savior of a low-cap team. Hopefully they can keep us in games until we can scratch out a run.

80m - Bash Triplets

I didn't end up with as many 2016 pitchers as I expected. I was looking for the best HR9# pitchers, assuming that any edge I could get on keeping the ball in the park would help. I also tried to keep the OAV really low, because the more hits you give up, the more of them can be HRs (I think... my understanding of the decision tree isn't always the best). I also checked out the D- arm range and discovered that it went up to about 21% CS, so tried to get a catcher really close to that top end (hello, Mickey Tettleton).

My offense is based on the namesake trio of outfielders (Tilly Walker, Cy Williams, and Gavvy Cravath) who normalize way better than modern HR hitters. They're going to need to carry my offense. My infield is HoJo at SS and Soriano at 2B (the only guys on my team who can steal) and Pedro Alvarez and Lou Gehrig (sadly the 25 version) at the corners. I ended up having to downgrade my SP3 and SP4 considerably, but I've still got Pedro '05 and Kevin Brown '00 fronting the rotation.

I did not back away from the bombs, either, putting this team in Yankee III. Tiger or Safeco probably would have been more adviseable since I didn't actually draft that many innings (or PAs) but what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound.

100m - Turkey Stuffing Gravy Beer

I didn't spend as much time on this team as I expected. I wanted a generic XBH/Target Field-ish team with good defense. I made a list of all the infielders I'd want on a team like that (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS) and figured once I had a combo I liked, I could probably make the OF and pitching work. So I've got Ted Simmons, Bill Terry, Bill Sweeney (who I didn't love, but I couldn't find a 2B that I really did love), Garry Templeton and George Brett. That gave me TSGB to work with.

I really wanted to make E or F work (Easterly, Lindor, Everth Cabrera, Edd Roush, Berkman) but they didn't consistently pair well with one letter. So I filled out my outfield with Gore/Speaker and a pair of Turners (Tuck, and Trea... really this whole team is just an excuse to use Trea Turner) and then my rotation with Bernhard, Sabes, Braxton and Bill Gullickson (wasn't sure about him but I think he's OK as a 4). Having backed myself into a corner without even checking RPs, I had a tougher time building a bullpen than I expected, but I think I ended up OK.

110m - Smiths Squared, 1886-1934

My very good 110m team from round 1 used a mix of deadballers and liveballers (1907-24) so I figured this would be a similar team. I really wanted to use more 2016 players in the WISC but since I could only have one in this theme, I didn't bother. I started by finding deadball SPs who hadn't had their prices increase very much with recent updates, and ended up with Walsh 08 and Bernhard 02/Bender 10 in a 1/2a/2b setup. I spent a lot of time trying to find a SS better than Honus who I used last time - he didn't hit great, but considering how bad offense was in that league, he was ok - and decided to just stick with Honus. Went with a 16 Baker/14 Red Smith platoon at 3B, and couldn't find a 2B so I settled for Frisch 28. Started a catcher platoon with Johnny Bassler '24 and figured I'd get RPs wherever I could find them.

This team kind of ended up as a comedy of errors. I left open some 300k spots and then discovered there were no <300k players in some of the years I had blank.I had listed 26 spots (out till 1936) so I had to contract my team to get down to 25 players. I had to downgrade a few of my guys to make the salary work (goodbye Northrop '18, hello Carmen Hill as the world's shakiest closer). My bullpen is very shaky overall but my infield defense is outstanding and my top 4 bats (Gore, Griffin, Connor, Elmer Smith) can get on base and hit for AVG, so hopefully that's enough.

120m - Hail to the Chief

I feel like I was at a disadvantage since I've never done one of these before. After reviewing some of the previous drafts (thanks to schwarze for sharing the links) I picked a good player in Chief Bender. I wanted to leverage the "2 teammates" rule. What I didn't realize was that none of the other leagues had been as cutthroat or as ridiculous as this one ended up being. So in round 1 I took George Mullin 09, hoping to get a usable LR and a really good Cobb. I didn't want to get "stuck" with any dead money. How naive I was!

In round 2, I went with Wiltse05 to get Matty05 which basically filled out my rotation. Then I started looking for some scarce positions and decided SS was kind of a mess. I took one of the few usable Tinker seasons (1911) which gave me a good reliever. I didn't need to take a "bad" Tinker season to get a good deadballer for my rotation. Then I took one of the few non awful Hickman seasons (1907) to get a good reliever in Walter Johnson.

For round 5 I took 90 Schriver to get a good Billy Hamilton OF season. I hadn't even noticed that he came with a good Jack Clements too, so in round 6 I took Torres 02 to get Jason Kendall and fix my catching. Oops. In round 7 I couldn't manipulate the salary the way I wanted it, so I took some more bad innings in Tudor83 to get a great Boggs season. Then I took Lyons 94 in round 8 to play 1B (out of position, natch).

Right around round 9 I realized I was going to end up way over the cap, so I had to downgrade who I planned to use as my 2nd Bender teammate (goodby Jack Coombs, hello Eddie Plank). Oops! So I just took 89 Belliard and a decent Bob Kipper as a reliever. Then I had Greinke and Barry, and I could pick whichever terrible Greinke I wanted. I took the more expensive Greinke to get a better version of Soria as a teammate. I had to downgrade my Lyons teammate (Elmer Smith instead of Stenzel) to even get under the cap. So I have three wasted 200 IP guys in my bullpen, but my offense is pretty lean and mean. At least I have 2 good starters.

160m - Descending Salaries, Ascending Losses

I couldn't figure out how to game this league. Especially from pick 12. Try to get down into the 6-10 range first? Try to live in the 7-8 range longer than everyone else?

There's good news here - my offense is really good! I didn't get all the players I wanted but overall things are good. A Votto/Augie Galan platoon in RF (about 800 PAs of .475 OBP), a J.Ham/Manny platoon in LF, a solid infield of Chipper/Turner, Tulo/Scutaro, Gehringer and Pujols, and Buster Posey behind the plate. Tulo and Pujols are A+ range and Chipper and Gehringer aren't bad (B and B-). There's a lot of AVG and OBP on this team, and even a little power.

The bad news is that you also have to pitch. Cy Young might have been the worst 1st rounder of anyone. I had Ted Williams typed in but changed my mind. I thought about Gehrig but I thought he was overpriced. If only I had known I wasn't going to spend all my money!

I was going for Cy as an 81-game starter, with 2 outstanding pitchers for 2a/2b, and a bunch of 10mil hitters. But that plan didn't really come together as all the 10-12m pitchers went before I could do anything about it. I took Greinke for my 2a, passing on Sisler (who I had typed in). In round 3, there was nobody I liked so I went with Pujols, hitting 310/410/430 in a similar league, so hoping he'd be good enough even without his HRs. I flipped a coin between Sabes and Verlander for my 4th round pick, and by round 5 all the bats were gone. Luckily this kind of forced me into the platooning plan which worked out OK, but it led to bad pitching. I've got Eichhorn as an OK long man, and then a whole cabal of interchangeable medium to good WHIP, HR-prone righties in my bullpen (Dotel, J Zimm, Gregerson, etc). I don't feel that great about Verlander or Greinke either, and I felt obligated to go with a - HR park which hurts my hitters. Target Field made it to me, but I stupidly didn't take it and went with League Park II instead.

At least I spent most of my money, and hopefully my offense can win me some games.

I'm hoping others will post their strategies, comments, etc. here.

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)

I don’t do the WISC write-ups often (or ever). Usually I’m too busy, too superstitious, or just too lazy to submit something. But this year, I’ve got a random day off and a to do list that is seeming to be very easy to procrastinate on.

In round 1 I made the conscious decision to cut the PA’s and IP’s as close as possible to disaster, a plan of no wasted payroll. Of course, two weeks prior to the roster deadline with my teams all buttoned up, my company decided to ramp up their cybersecurity and blocked just about any and every external website. This did not bode well for my plan of micromanaging things…..at all. The round started out horribly and I quickly wrote off the 2016 WISC. Somehow I was able to come back, and then was able to get back around and manage myself to 5 early playoff exits. Woohoo! Anyway….I made round 2 and that’s where we’re finding ourselves now. I still don’t have access at the office and on top of that I was stuck in hearings for just about the last 7 weeks – not much leeway for setting lineups, missing draft slots, etc. in that arena. The IT embargo still stands, yet the WISC goes on! Enough of the excuses JB –on to round 2!
As an FYI, the stats below only reflect non-scrub players and salaries (f’n Brickyard Kennedy!).

$65M - Windy, Gotham and Smog, LLC.
I don’t like low caps. I don’t like high caps. Some probably call me a grumpy curmudgeon -- whatever, you all suck. Back to the low caps. I don’t like them and I don’t enjoy putting those teams together. Way too much cutting of corners (okay, to be fair I like them better than the $255M leagues where you just spend indiscriminately and let the Sim decide who wins.)

For this team, I just said f it, let’s take the three cities and see what the best low cap team I can build would be. Surprisingly it wasn’t too far off from legal – though like everyone else LA was a little thin. Really, who needs LA? Not sure why they needed to be involved. I ended up with Mathewson and Owen heading the rotation with a Tommy John/L.A. Maddux tandem rounding out the starters (that’ll never work)… As I’ll get into later, my bullpen is quite often the afterthought in my teambuilding – so onto the lineup! It’s been a while since I’ve looked back and this is interesting. It seems I drafted a 5 player platoon in the OF, decent offense, questionable defense/range, some SB potential with Rickey, Reggie (Smith), Rodney (Scott), Davey (Lopes), and Vince (not a good Vince). There’s Boggs at 3B, not a good/popular Boggs, just a Boggs, Wills at SS like everyone else, Downing at C – but not a Downing with an arm – hmmmm. It would be fun to go back and see what I was thinking with all these choices. Oh, and there’s also an Eddie Collins – in 1918 when all his teammates just hated him and hadn’t grown to despise him yet. Either way something was brewing as he was not good that year and was damn cheap – perfect for $65M. Someone named Larker is playing 1B. The bullpen is the bullpen, what do you expect from them really?

Hitting stats: .295/.381/.394, everything else is meh…
Pitchers: 1,301IP 2.42/.241/1.05/1.44 BB/9/0.36 HR/9

Prediction: Pain

$80M – Grand Theft Astro

Clearly I went with a HR hitting team. Oh, you’ve seen schwarze’s post already? I guess they were built to run and not impress the chicks with the long ball after all. Chicks are distractions, we need focus, we really need focus… Funny thing about this one, I built them early, really early, and left them alone. Then on Sunday night I decided to tinker. Why did I take Tettleton, sure he hit some home runs, but would you ever take him when normally building a team? On Sunday night I changed my mind and decided no, made a change to a C platoon of Don Pavletich and Chris Hoiles. (This was odd as the same day I started Matt Stafford over Kirk Cousins at the last minute due to wind in Washington – no more fantasy playoffs for me)… Have the typical power hitters in the OF – Coleman, Raines (’81), and Brock (’74). From there I took a bad Castillo (’99) at 2B, an interesting Larkin (’95) at SS, and then Dave Magadan at 1B – who really fits into this theme like a square peg in two sets of round holes – no power, no speed – perfect! For the pitching staff I took two 1968 SP’s, the always dependable (but never dominant) Dave McNally and the (never drafted, never considered) Denny McLain. I followed that with a Mussina to eat some innings and then an Eck from his mid-80’s booze and coke days. At this point I realized I was building a solid roster for my $100M four letters team, until I thought twice and decided these four would be a s*** storm even at $80M. Yet they stayed, go figure. Bullpen is meh…sensing a theme here.

Hitting: .303/.381/.419 442 SB @ 81% success rate
Pitching: 1,314 2.31/.207/0.94/1.76 0.85 HR/9 – uh oh…

Prediction: Contender?

$100M – Just Short Of Tolerable

Why did I take ‘O’? Really not liking this team and I know that I never did. This one was built as I was struggling with work and had zero time and energy to think about who to take. This whine flows into the $110M team too. It will take a crap load of WIS luck to get these two anywhere near where they should be.

So digging into this teams development leaves me puzzled. I almost exclusively start my teams with SP and then work my way down the roster. Not here. I don’t know why but I ended up with Jack Taylor (never met you before Jack, nice to meet you) and an $80M cap innings eater, Tully Sparks. Somehow those two are still better than my third SP, Orvall Overall. W—T—F…… The bullpen sucks too. I don’t know what I was doing here, though I do have a separate team built with a C, M, and G that feels much better than this JOTS nonsense. The offense is interesting - Shoeless and Tip O’Neill in the OF with my soulmate Tris Speaker. [A quick aside]

[aside]
I love me some Tris Speaker. When I first started this Whatifsports nonsense I was hooked on Willie McGee. We played many successful seasons together until my gaze fell upon Tris Speaker. From that time on I have not wavered. Me and Tris, Tris and I…we just mesh together. I find myself starting teams with Tris more often than I should admit. And before you left d-bags try to ruin my s*** by telling me Speaker was a horrible racist who would beat little girls on a daily basis for making eye contact with him – know this, I don’t give a s***. The likelihood of me running into Speaker on the street is very low these days, and if I did I just might agree with his abuse of your snotnosed whiny little kid. I love Tris and he always does well for me, so I have to assume the feeling is mutual. Let’s move on.
[end aside]

I took Speaker here and he may or may not have led to two of my four letter choices….may or MAY NOT HAVE! Don’t judge me! The rest I can’t explain….did I enter the wrong team?? At 1B is Tommy Tucker, who I’ve never actually heard of but cost me $7.3M. 2B is Junior Spivey who I have to figure was a mistake. 3B Joe Torre, sounds familiar but is not good with the ole glove. At SS is Ozzie Smith who might explain the ‘O’ being chosen – if so, what a god-awful decision! Jim O’Rourke at C rounds out the lineup, which doesn’t really raise my expectations for this squad. I’m starting to think I will have no playoff teams. In the bullpen there’s a guy named Oscar Tuero, nice to meet you Oscar.

Hitting: .335/.445/.473 no power, no speed, not many K’s
Pitching: 1,398 1.74/.212/0.97/1.81/0.17


$110M – Odds and eNds - 1901-1949

I built a really good team with this one, though this is not it. It was a n+4 team that took me from deadball to modern times, grabbing the best of all eras. It was grand and I was sold on it. I didn’t even look at an alternative. Until I did. And when I did it was this n+2 squad. From 1901 to 1949. I don’t know why I did, other than to affirm my original team. Here’s the kicker, the deadball team DID affirm my original pick. In SimMatchup the n+4 team just dominated this other joker, literally dominated. So why did I enter the n+2? I can’t answer that. I really don’t know. Maybe I have a brain tumor? Could that explain the inexplicable? What else does?

I guess you can chalk it up to a gut feeling. FYI, that gut feeling is no longer there. SP consists of a Mathewson – not the good one, not the next best one, keep looking, yeah that one, Babe Adams (1919, who someone just called overpriced – FU whoever that was!), and Roger Wolff (who the F is Roger Wolff???? This is a $110M league! Roger Wolff!!!!!)… Ugh. I see now why I don’t write these strategy posts now, it’s aggravating and I’m not getting comforted by my justifications.

Bullpen is the bullpen, a lot of familiar names who are more expensive today than they were when I was competitive in these things. WIS hates me too. Don’t even get me started on the hoops dynasty nonsense. Y’all should try out FC Dynasty though, WIS hasn’t paid attention to that free game since like 2009! Anarchy! As far as the lineup goes, we should be able to play some station to station baseball which is always a crowd pleaser. My boy Speaker is in center, flanked by Tyrus Cobb and Sam Crawford. Took Bancroft at SS since Ozzie wasn’t born in time, George Kell at 3B, post black sox Collins at 2B and the cheap Sisler at 1^st. Like I said, there’s some offense but enough, I can’t say. Cochrane is squatting behind the plate, so we’ve got that going for us… I dunno, maybe I’m not cut out to be a part of this afterall….

Hitting: .352/.428/.487, no power, no speed
Pitching: 1,419 1.73/.209/0.95/1.71/0.15


$120 – There Will Be Justice

Here’s where I get really fired up. Or not, I dunno, I’m getting tired. Prior to this draft starting I was under the impression that we were all part a fraternity of brothers who were striving to compete at a high level on an even playing field. I quickly discovered you are all d****. Knowing this now, all you f’rs can go right to hell where you belong. Oz, you seem like a good dude, but what the f with Brickyard Kennedy? That’s just wrong man. I guess my primary complaint here is that this was a bizarre choice for a WISC theme. I get it on the outside, but in the WISC it gave a huge advantage to those who were experienced with it. On top of that the whole screw your neighbor aspect rubbed me the wrong way as well. Whatever though, I’m not competing here anyway so I didn’t get too worked up by the whole thing. That is, until…..

The Brickyard Kennedy run took place. As I realized it was happening and there was nothing I could do about it, I was ready to turn my team into a Molotov cocktail thrown into this f’d up theme. I talked myself into submission and instead decided to just plan on accepting the worst Kennedy possible ($12.6M, 485 IP of s***). Luckily that Kennedy also came with a solid Dan Brouthers as a teammate. When you can get 430 PA of a pretty decent first baseman for $16.5M you have to count your lucky stars, right? F this theme. In the end, I am not totally disappointed with the team I ended up with. Maddux, Pedro, Cy Young, and a sorta decent 3-Fingers Brown makes for some good SP. The pen is headed by Nehf and Steele. Ed Walsh has seen better days, but if WIS smiles upon us, he’ll be ok. I was hoping for one more RP in 1915 Bailey, but the post-draft chaos ensued.

After the draft I realized my 3B PAs were lacking, and it wasn’t really close. From that point I started scrambling to pull the whole mess together. It didn’t really work, though it was damn close. Oh so close. I could have fit an ideal team under a $120,020,000 cap. Whoa…..did I just say ideal? HA! Not ideal, but ideal giving the circumstances. I could have spent a little extra on Aramis Ramirez at 3B, but that would have made me gut several other positions, so I ended up piecing together some 3B PA’s and convincing myself to deal with it. Have a s***** Varitek at C – but he brought me Pedro, Brouthers at 1B until he tires out, then I have ’22 Joe Wood, who will also fill some gaps in the OF rotation. More importantly Wood brought me and my bae (that’s what the kids say right?) together, me and Tris… Though he’s a short PA version in 1922, we’re still together which is all that matters. Dave Justice fills in another OF spot and the last is made up of God knows who. I really am still struggling to piece together where all these PAs fit. Honus at SS is one of the few solid pieces of the lineup. 2B is going to be manned by Frank Isbell (40 errors) and Frank LaPorte/Alfredo Griffin (ugh). 3B has Rance Mulliniks who I think I keep drafting for his name and childhood memories only. I did not enjoy this draft much at all which will tend to be the case when you have a $97M salary of useful players in a $120M league. If there was a WIS God, my Brickyard will be off the charts good – so, WIS, what will it be? Are you Gods or mere mortals???? Be Gods, I implore you, be GODS!!!!!

This might be telling, but I had a really hard time delineating who was a scrub and who wasn’t. It really could go many different ways and that’s always what you’re looking for in a 2^nd round team! $97M of usable salary….that’s the recipe for a playoff team! (I hope Oz’s team get’s on Marshall’s team plane….just sayin’…)

Hitters: .315/.392/.483, no speed, no power, no strikeouts, no walks – going to be a hoot. K
Pitchers: 1,445 1.78/.212/0.95/1.62/0.16 (Again, this is without the Albatrosses/Albatri)
W/”Scrubs”: 2,014 2.34/.223/1.07/2.19/0.25

$23M in wasted/useless/nothing/empty salary… Which feeds right into the $160M theme…..


$160M – Pennywise (and Pound foolish)

I actually like this team. I know it’s strange considering all the ******** I’ve done so far. It’s even more strange considering the team I ended up with. About 10 picks before my spot came up, I knew I wanted to take a stud starting pitcher. This is always the way I go. However, the footnote to that would have been, I do not want to have to draft Sandy Koufax. Not that I dislike the guy and I’m certainly not anti-semetic or anything. S*** he was thrown into my favorite movie of all time by Walter Sobchak… But wouldn’t you know it, each of my targets was snatched up as I watched helplessly. When my pick finally came, I was staring at “three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax…YOU’RE ******* RIGHT I’M LIVING IN THE F***** PAST!!” I just wish some options were there from deeper in the past…sigh. From this point on my focus was on keeping Sandy and Co. out of a HR friendly home park. In a strange throwback, I inadvertently was able to draft a starting rotation that would qualify for the $65M theme – by franchise and luckily not by salary (Koufax, Guidry, Kershaw and Horlen). I’m happy with the staff, though there are some definite weakspots…

The lineup is solid as well with Cash at 1B, Boggs at 3B, Rickey, Sherry Magee, Goslin and Valo in the OF. Hanley at SS, someone named DJ LaMahieu at 2B (I’m an A’s fan, our season ends in late May – bite me), and a Catching platoon of Chief Meyers and Earle Brucker. I was a little amazed how consistently my targets were snatched up right before my draft slot, but that’s just how it’s going to go when drafting against so so so many formidable players. Nice work all, I’m envious of many other teams. With only $138M spent I was toward the top of the ballpark draft and got my wish with Municipal’s -4/-4 HRs… On the downside (I know, I know, I’ve been so optimistic so far!) my division opponents spent between $10M and $17M more than the $138.4M I did on their teams….and I’m pretty sure none of them took Brickyard f’n Kennedy (still not bitter).

Hitters: .353/.445/.545
Pitchers: 1,569 1.90/.189/0.89/2.01/0.51

[FYI, I had Ken Burn’s doc on in the background, MLB network is playing it on a loop until next April, and I heard the narrator pronounce Nap Lajoie’s name for the first time. This literally blew my mind. It can’t be correct can it? In my head it’s been Nap La-hoy, but now I’m hearing Napolean Lah-joo-way, wtf???? At least my boy Tris was there, but still…]

On the bright side, I’m comforted knowing I will no longer be asked to chime in on these forum posts. J

Don't sell yourself short, JB... that was wonderful.

I was also blown away by Nap's name, though I thought it was actually Lah-Jah-Way, as opposed to La-Joy, which is how I always saw it.

LMFAO - best writeup yet.

BY the way, I love the Ken Burns doc. I watched the whole thing when it first came out, and probably watched it 2-3 times since then. I especially love the early years.

Posted by schwarze on 11/23/2016 9:01:00 AM (view original):
LMFAO - best writeup yet.

I will second that and I'm going to campaign schwarze to think about making a Brickyard Kennedy theme next WISC that omits Tris Speaker just to torment jbohrman to write another one

Possibly the best WISC writeup of all time

Posted by buddhagamer on 11/23/2016 10:34:00 AM (view original):

Posted by schwarze on 11/23/2016 9:01:00 AM (view original):
LMFAO - best writeup yet.

I will second that and I'm going to campaign schwarze to think about making a Brickyard Kennedy theme next WISC that omits Tris Speaker just to torment jbohrman to write another one

This gave me chills and then I dry heaved...twice.

$65M Discount Metropolis

Like others have said, you can't get any good pitching out of the Los Angeles/Anaheim city. Knowing this, I drafted quite a few Los Angeles/Anaheim hitters. This freed me up to pick reasonably good deadballers from the New York and Chicago Franchises like Mordecai Brown, Fred Toney and Frank Owen. I wasn't able to get many stolen bases on this team unfortunately - and it wouldn't surprise me if other owners did. At least I drafted a 47% CS Catcher in Randy Hundley to gun them down. Finally, I thought this league would be as good as any to test the theory that 2016 Ben Zobrist is going to become a staple cookie. So many previous versions of him did, and if I am right about him I will get him at a reasonable price before the run-away salary adjustment inflation kicks in and makes him less attractive.

Hitters 0.268/0.350/0.386
Pitchers 1,259 IP 2.37 ERA 1.04 WHIP

Prediction: This one will probably be a 85-90 win team that either barely makes the playoffs or barely misses it.

$80M No one will ever be left on base

I spent $48 Million on Hitting in this theme. Yes, you read that right - it's not a typo. The theory behind that is simple: money spent on Pitching in this theme is wasted. The problem is that considering the relatively small salary cap, having a minimum HR/9 of 0.75 on all pitchers and having all catchers with a D- arm makes it almost impossible to prevent the other team from scoring runs. Any one who gets on base is pretty much guaranteed to be on 3rd base after all. Having lots of strike-outs on a pitcher would be nice, but there's no way to afford a good strikeout pitcher at this salary cap. Rather than waste salary on my pitching, I invested as much as I could in hitting. Early on, I had to decide whether I valued stolen bases or home runs more. I think that Stolen bases are more important, because there is nothing the other team can do to stop base stealing, but they could pick pitchers with HR/9 closer to 0.75 that normalize well and a ballpark that discourages home runs.

This led me to draft Tim Raines, Vince Coleman, Rickey Henderson, and Roberto Alomar. However, I also suspected that some peeps would go the other way, and go all in on the home runs, so I wanted a couple of hitters who could hit the long ball if necessary. I think Hank Greenberg, Mike Schmidt and Howard Johnson will do the trick (Howard Johnson actually steals and hits home runs, which is a real nice thing - especially at SS). I picked the cheapest D- Arm catcher with PA that I could to save some dough. With the little left that I had for Pitching, I decided that minimizing walks was the most important thing, and that I would sacrifice OAV to do so. My reasoning was that since everyone else is going to be drafting hitters for their power or their speed, average was what they would lack. Once Schwarze's analysis came out, I saw that I was #4 in SBs but also #8 in Home runs. At least I got value for my $48 million.

Hitters 0.284/0.373/0.457 425 SBs @ 84% success rate, 172 HRs
Pitchers 1304 IP 3.04 ERA 1.06 WHIP 134 HRs allowed

Prediction: If my theory is correct, this team might win over 105 games. If not...maybe 75 wins.

$100M Adonis Terry is a BRAT

B is a mandatory letter in this league. There are just too many good players that have B as the starting letter of both their first and last name. I rostered Bill Bernhard, Bobby Bonilla, Bill Burns and even my catcher Bob Boone without using any other letter. Then I decided I wanted to roster Tim Raines, Roberto Alomar and Babe Adams. Right there, I had all 4 letters.

Then I just decided to try and fill in the rest of my roster. I got Bill Terry at 1B and then Babe Ruth and Bip Roberts in the outfield, so it was going good so far. Then I found that SS was a bit of a wasteland - my only option was Alex Rodriguez... and if I wanted the best one, that'll be $8.47 million. I swallowed hard and paid that price, which meant I had to pick a cheaper Babe Ruth, but I suppose it wasn't too bad. Pitching wasn't too hard, except I needed one more starter, but I couldn't seem to find another one that was good with the letters I had. Luckily, the $120M "draft trash for your conference" draft provided me a perfect idea: Adonis Terry! Too Bad I didn't pick K as a letter - otherwise I could have had Brickyard Kennedy (but then he doesn't have any good seasons so that wouldn't work...)

Hitters 0.311/0.387/0.487
Pitchers 1422 IP 1.96 ERA 0.96 WHIP

Prediction: This will probably be a low 90s win team playoff team.

$110M 1906-1954 Every Even Year

I was trying to fit both 1910 Ed Walsh and 1912 Walter Johnson, but I just couldn't make the salary work. In the end, I settled for 1910 Russ Ford but kept the 1912 Walter Johnson. I tried working with larger n, but I found it difficult to get the players I wanted when n was larger than 2 and I felt that I didn't need the late guys that much. I have some nice players on offense, with Roger Hornsby, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Harry Heilmann, Max Carey and Ripper Collins, but this does make me somewhat home run reliant, which isn't a good thing considering just how many deadballers there are.going to be. My Bullpen is a lot stronger than I would have thought, and that just might be enough to get a couple of late game comebacks.

Hitters 0.311/0.397/0.492
Pitchers 1429 IP 1.90 ERA 0.94 WHIP

Prediction: Low 90s for wins, just barely makes the playoffs

$120M Alfredo Griffin and the Albatrosses

I just want to say, I want to extend a major thank you for the mega dead weight provided by Brickyard Kennedy and Adonis Terry. When it was my turn to nominate a player, I wasn't even sure who I was going to choose. With Ed Walsh and Mordecai Brown already available, I knew I needed to nominate a player who provided me with some good position players. At the same time, I was laser focused on not giving up any great picks to anyone else, as if I wanted to win more games than the competition, I needed to be getting way more value out of my pick than everyone else was getting out of mine. I'm sure this is where the Adonis Terry Pick came from, but my complaint is that the pick didn't make any sense once Ed Walsh and Mordecai Brown were on the board.

Eventually I hit upon Alfredo Griffin, and boy was he a great pick. Not only did I get John Olerud and Roberto Alomar, I also only took on $241k in roster salary for the purposes of drafting in subsequent rounds, which was huge when Ed Walsh, Mordecai Brown and Christy Mathewson loomed. I have to admit, I was terrified that Waitnsee would screw me over by picking the $200k version of George Kelly and then steal the pick I had in mind (1905 Mike Donlin). I was also very surprised that the guy who nominated Mike Donlin didn't take the 1905 version, as the 1905 Mike Donlin is a way better hitter than the 1908 Mike Donlin. As for the rest of the draft, it was great: I had the 1910 Ed Walsh fall to me in the 3rd round, and finished with a killer line-up by getting Chipper Jones at SS, Lefty O'Doul and Tris Speaker in the OF, and Bill Mueller at 3B. I don't like my bullpen very much, but then again, nobody does in this league, and innings won't be a problem thanks to the hideous nominations. I don't have a backup catcher which sucks, but then why should Adonis Terry or Brickyard Kennedy get to pitch to a real catcher?

Hitters 0.315/0.386/0.481; but then there's a lot of dead weight plate appearances with poor offensive statistics that aren't going to see the field
Pitchers 2030 IP 2.88 ERA 1.20 WHIP, but then there's a lot of dead weight innings pitched

Prediction: This team will be one of my best teams and win 100-105 games.

$160M Salary Freefall

It was somewhat frustrating to have the #24 pick, and have most of the best players disappear before I even got to pick. I also didn't like the fact that I straight up whiffed on picking up Babe Herman with his 0.390+ average because I was trying to screen out hitters who were too reliant on the long ball - at high caps home runs don't fare that well in my experience. Nonetheless, I did manage to draft lots of high average hitters like I wanted. I'm less impressed with my starting pitching staff, which is probably worse than my $100M and $110M teams. My Bullpen is nice, but I had expected it to be better considering how low I went near the end of the draft. I had wanted to get both Bob Milacki and Rich Hill for epic Playoff emergency aces, but I discovered to my dismay that Rich Hill was drafted as a Long Reliever (even though he wasn't that good for that role) and Bob Milacki was jacked like two picks ahead of me.

Hitters 0.351/0.430/0.554
Pitchers 1611 IP 1.61 ERA 0.92 WHIP

Prediction: 85 wins and misses the playoffs. It's unrealistic to expect every one of my teams to make the playoffs, and this one along with the $65M are probably the ones that won't make it.