Let me start by saying that once again I really enjoyed these themes. This is my second WISC tournament and it’s really a lot of fun. Thanks to ozomatli for running it and to schwarze for the original idea.
$70M – 1981 Expos 2000 Mariners 2006 Blue Jays
I’m not sure why, but I probably spent the least amount of time on this theme. I went with the 1981 Expos because I figured that they had some usable pitching at this cap and because the ’81 Raines dominated for me at some point in the past year at what I remember being a higher cap ($80M? $90M?). I chose the 2000 Mariners in large part because I consider the versions of Edgar Martinez that are primarily DH but rated (albeit poorly) at 1B to be among the most underpriced players in the sim. I guess the 2006 Jays filled some holes, and have a decent Halladay. When filling in my additional players I originally made the mistake of including an Orioles version of Mark McLemore at 2B. This mistake was, thankfully, caught by the automated system when I tried to submit the team, so I was able to replace him with an interesting 1969 Joe Morgan who I’ve never used before. I’m looking forward to seeing how he does. He certainly walks a lot, as does the rest of this team, which I like when I’m using pitcher’s parks like Safeco. This team also runs more than a typical team of mine, which is weird since this is a relatively low cap and I usually don’t spend a lot of money on speed at any cap level. I dunno. I don’t have a good read on this team. They feel kinda meh to me but I suppose most teams at this cap level feel that way. We’ll see.
Offense - 5382 PA, .275/.372/.450, 205/258 SB
Pitching - 1296 IP, 1.21 WHIP, 0.56 HR/9 (help me, Safeco!)
Prediction: 74-88; the more I read these write-ups, the more I think I should've spent more time on this team.
$90M – 2012 Cards twisting Berkman, Wainwright
I went through several iterations with this one. I started by trying to find a team with good pitching and some good position players that just needed one stud to put it over the top. I found a decent early 70’s Orioles team that would’ve been made passable by several versions of Frank Robinson, but I didn’t love it. Then I looked at the 1984 Expos, cloning Pete Rose and Steve Rogers a bunch of times each. I thought that team was OK also, but I feared that Rogers wasn’t good enough to carry a $90M staff. I then decided that I needed a team with two clones whereby each was a player with multiple well-priced versions at this cap. When I saw the 2012 Cards with Berkman and Wainwright I knew I’d found my team. It’s not perfect; for one thing, the backup catcher costs $700k more than he should, which hurts my bench. Teams like this are rarely perfect. But they have several useful players at non-Berkman positions, and three good relievers in addition to the 28 IP Wainwright. I like the way this team feels. Having Berkman as 44.4% of your lineup does that.
Hitting - 6074 PA, .290/.379/.472, 81/122 SB
Pitching - 1376 IP, 1.11 WHIP, 0.60 HR/9
Prediction: 88-74; I love me some Berkman
$100M – 1998 - 2007 Dodgers
I tried to use a couple of Cardinals teams, but neither one worked all that well. I looked into 1963-1972 so I could have a 3-man starting staff of Gibson, Carlton and Cuellar. It was a pretty good team, except I thought my offense was a bit weak, primarily caused by the fact that I think that with all of the salary updates Gibson has gotten too expensive for this cap level. Then I tried some late 20’s to late 30’s iteration that had Dazzy Vance and Rogers Hornsby but there was a bit too much wasted salary or something.
So I decided to check in on good friend Greg Maddux, and re-discovered that he had some seasons with the Dodgers. His 1998 seems sufficient to get people out at this cap level, so I went 1998-2007. I only twisted two seasons to give me more seasons that I could use. The Dodgers always have good relievers so that wasn’t a problem. Besides Maddux I was able to twist Derek Lowe and Kevin Brown, which gives me ¾ of a good staff. Odalis Perez rounds it out; I don’t love him but if I make the postseason I can move him to LR. I like my lineup. Drew and Sheffield are favorites of mine, I haven’t used Jeff Kent in a while but he looks tasty, and Bill Mueller is pretty underrated IMO. I just wish there were a better choice than Eric Karros at 1B. I can’t stand him and his low OBP. But other than that I like this team. Plus I like the fact that I have Dodger Stadium, to turn all those doubles and triples hit by you girly-man deadball teams into lousy singles. Bwaaa haa haa! BWAAA HAA HAA HAAAAAAAA!!! <<twirls non-existent handlebar mustache>>
Speaking of which, while I’m not stunned given the lack of a chronological limit in this theme, I am a bit surprised that there are so many deadball teams. I didn’t consider going back that far given that there tend to be few low-salary seasons back then. I imagine that there’s some wasted salary on those teams. If I’m wrong then maybe I made a mistake not looking back that far.
Hitting - 5603 PA, .313/.399/.529, 93/142 SB
Pitching - 1415 IP, 1.04 WHIP, 0.61 HR/9 (stupid Odalis Perez...)
Prediction: 84-78; I liked this team a whole lot before seeing how many people used deadball teams. This team's HR power isn't going to play here, I fear. Eric Karros is going to be beyond useless. Still, I like my pitching staff enough that I think I'll be able to stay in the black. Barely.
$120M – Alphabet City
With apologies to GnR…
Take me down to the Alphabet City / where the craft cocktails cost $17.50
I need a home equity loan / yeah yeah
OK, so technically PDT (which I’ve never visited) and Death & Co. (which I have) are about a half a block from Alphabet City. The point still stands. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. D&C is really good, as is Cienfuegos which is on Avenue A so it counts. But if you’re looking for a good cocktail in that ‘hood that doesn’t break the bank, I really like Lovers of Today, which has half-price (so, $6) cocktails during their sufficiently long happy hour. And it’s a cool little spot. Emphasis on little. When I randomly stumbled upon it, before entering I thought “if this bar were anyplace else in the world other than NYC or Cleveland I’d think that the fact that it shares its name with an obscure Pretenders song is a total coincidence but I’m guessing it’s not.” And I was right. To wit, the drink list:
Oh wait, am I supposed to be writing about pretend baseball? Right. So it seemed to me that the alphabet soup would be the most difficult to pair with either of the other two soups if I make it to the next round, so I went with that. But let’s face it, this is a de facto $120M open league. And as such I don’t much care for it, in part because I don’t find it terribly interesting and in part because I’m not very good at it. If the WISC consisted of six open leagues with different caps I very much doubt I’d make it to the second round. I vote this team most likely to finish within 2 games of .500.
Hitting - 5615 PA, .341/.442/.525, 142/233 SB (with Hughie Jennings accounting for most of those on both sides of the ledger)
Pitching - 1484 PA, 0.92 WHIP, 0.14 HR/9
Prediction: 84-78; meh.
Variable Cap – Deez Nuts
My eyes lit up when I read this theme. This is my type of theme. I use poor fielding players all the time. Now I’m being rewarded for it? Sign me up!
J
I spent about five seconds considering making a C team. Those five seconds consisted of me thinking “ooh, 1935 Arky Vaughan…wait, I’m not sure I can fit him under a $125M cap…”
OK, so it’s true that I’d usually not play guys who are D+/D+ at 2B, SS or CF. But I’d play guys who are B/D+ at those positions, and I’d play D/Ds everyplace else. So this team will make 50 more errors than my typical team would. That fact is already factored into the salaries, and I’m being given an extra $5M-$15M which enabled me to create a .343/.457/.566 offense. Also, I’m guessing the good-hitting D fielders haven’t been dinged by the salary updates as much as their slick-fielding counterparts have been. To me this is a no-brainer. Still, I don’t expect to be facing many D teams. We’ll see how it all shakes out, but my expectation was 60% C, 25% B, 10% A, 5% D. I could be wrong in thinking this, but I’m hoping to face as many A and B teams as possible. While I recognize that the WhatIf salary determination mechanism is not perfect (if it were, salaries wouldn’t still be moving as much during each update) but I doubt it’s off by more than 10%. But we’ll see.
Ballpark was a bit of a tough call with this team. I didn’t want to choose a huge hitter’s park since my pitchers will already have to work a little harder than normal given my weak defense and I didn’t want to have to draft too many innings, but I didn’t want to choose a pitcher’s park and hurt my really good offense. I went with 1.02 Citizens Bank Park, with its -1 for triples to suppress those pesky deadballers a bit.
Hitting - 5438 PA, .343/.457/.566, 106/202 SB (steals, schmeals)
Pitching - 1458 IP, 0.91 WHIP, 0.17 HR/9
Prediction: 90-72; either I'm wrong or everyone else is. The latter seems unlikely, but I'm going to assume I'm right until proven otherwise.
$140M – Double, Double Toil and Trouble
They say you learn something new every day. I do not know whether that is true. However, the day I submitted this team I learned that in the original text the line is punctuated as it appears in my team name. I would’ve thought there was a second comma after the second “double” because that’s the way most people say it. Go figure. That wacky Willie the Shake…
This is another of what I refer to as de facto open leagues. Once you decide which stat to focus on the rest is pretty straightforward. Pitchers aren’t restricted at all (other than post-1920) and you can pretty much use any post-1920 hitters you want to as long as most of them are proficient in your chosen stat. To me the interesting decision here was which stat to focus on, especially given the ballpark restrictions. I will share my reasoning as to why I chose doubles.
My understanding from what I’ve read is that the only ballpark factor that affects whether a batted ball is a hit or an out is the singles factor. The other factors only affect what type of hit the hit is. In this theme, everyone has to use a ballpark that greatly increases the probability that a hit is of their chosen stat, so every ballpark in the league will greatly increase some type of extra-base hit. I’m thinking that if you choose a home run hitting team, home runs cannot be improved upon. If the hit is already a home run, it cannot become more of a home run. But if the hit is a double or a triple it can be turned into a home run. Therefore, it makes the least sense to have a home run focused team. Focusing on triples makes a bit more sense, because triples can be (presumably) turned into home runs. However, even triples-centric teams don’t hit all that many triples, as evidenced by the fact that the triples minimum was 37.5% that of the doubles minimum. Doubles, on the other hand, can (again, presumably) be turned into both triples and home runs. So it seems to me that there is more to gain by having a doubles team. I do not know whether this is valid reasoning, or even if my assumptions are correct, but this is why I chose doubles.
This team feels good, but for $140M it had better. I haven’t used my former cookie ’93 Olerud in what seems like forever. I also feel like I used to use the 1944 Bob Johnson early on in my WhatIf days but haven’t used him in many, many years. And how can you not love a guy named Coot Veal?
Hitting - 6287 PA, .338/.438/.552, 46/79 SB (you don't need to steal second base when you're already on second base)
Pitching - 1451 IP, 0.89 WHIP, 0.32 HR/9
Prediction: 87-75; I think doubles was the right play, and I think I executed the strategy pretty well.
Total prediction: 507-465, which would've ranked 32nd pre-playoffs in last year's round 1, leaving me with some work to do in the playoffs to advance to round 2. Sounds about right.
Anyway, let the games begin!