Accidentally deleted my post when trying to add in my 120M writeup.
70M - Expansion Ball
MH '81 Astros / '86 Mets / '97 Angels
Safeco Field
A lot of times, if you put enough time into researching a theme, you can find what is truly the best option. This is even true of some of the themes in this year's tournament. I wanted this league to be the antithesis of that. With the tight restriction on salary per team, and the sheer amount of possible three-team combinations (well into the millions), I doubt anyone found the truly optimal solution even with hours of searching. Rather, this theme is all about who found the best local max.
The first question I asked myself when building my team was how I wanted to use my additional salary. That is, the 10-16M in salary that I could take from any expansion team. I did not want to be stuck picking three teams that provided me with an A+ arm catcher or a decent SS (at such a low cap, these guys are few and far between, especially ones with $/IP or $/PA value). I toyed around with using the majority of it on 9M+ 1978 Mike Caldwell, but ultimately thought my C/SS angle was the way to go. I ended up taking Gene Tenace and Walt Weiss, two great values. I left the rest of my additional salary to fill in the gaps (bullpen? last starter? platoon guys / bench?) wherever my three chosen teams ended up falling short.
For me, though, this is all about the 1981 Astros. My team could probably have the subtitle The Revenge of the 1981 Astros, due to the fact that by second guessing myself and not using them in last year's Round 1, I probably cost myself 3-5 spots in the final standings. That's really my rational for leading with them (well, that and the fact that they have great value pitching with low HR/9#.
Speed and getting the switch-hitter advantage is also more important at low caps, and the '81 Astros also have some of that, but I used up all my available salary of their great pitching. So, my next step was to find another team that had a balance of hitting / fielding, led by more of those switch hitters. After a lot of brute force searching, I stumbled onto the 1997 Angels by way of looking at Tony Phillips seasons. They give me multiple switch hitting starters and the surprisingly-not-awful-looking duo of Darin Erstad and Tim Salmon (at this cap, hopefully they'll be ok). That gave me most of my lineup (the rest could be filled in by additional salary players), so now I needed some pitching.
The 1986 Mets were an easy-to-find choice. I had briefly considered Gooden as an additional salary player, and had noticed they had both some hitting and more pitching at that time. I ended up using Gooden, Dykstra, Roger McDowell, Rick Anderson, and some bench players. I filled out the rest of the pen with additional salary. Doing so (rather than using it on my bench) allowed me to get some top tier relievers like Marcus Stroman (who could also spot start for me in the playoffs, should I make it). Went with Safeco after finding an 11th hour error on my own team (damn you, combined season rule) and no longer having anyone who could hit. They get on base ok though, so Safeco it is.
Obviously, in a theme like this, I considered many other options along the way to landing with these teams (almost used the 1989 Expos, 1997 Marlins, 1978 Brewers and a few others), but the pieces fit together too well to go elsewhere.
Hitting: 4888 PAs, .276 AVG, .374 OBP, .420 SLG, 150 SBs, $32.2M
Pitching: 1,289 IP, 1.11 WHIP, 0.52 HR/9, $36.8M
Prediction: 92-68. I have made the World Series in both of the last two years' Round 1 low cap leagues. Not that past performance is any indicator of success here, but I also feel better about this team than I did about either of those two. I think 92 wins may be conservative here, but don't want to count my chickens in case we run into some bad luck fatigue.
90M - Real Team + Clones w/ DH
MH 1989 Montreal Expos
Olympic Stadium
I could not make up my mind on this theme and, even after seeing everyone's rosters, I have very little idea how I'm going to do in this league.
My first thought with this theme was to find the best bad team I could and make a roster of little more than three clones. Eventually, after having difficult staying under the cap with this method (at least partially due to the DH), I switched courses and looked for middle of the road teams that would allow me to clone a pitcher and a hitter. I did this, rather than switch to great teams with one clone (like the '69 Orioles) because I thought there'd be less dead salary with two clones. Generally, on any team, there are full time players who would take up a couple million and just be awful either as hitters or fielders. With cash at a premium, this didn't seem like a great place to compromise to me.
After seeing ArlenWilliam win 112 games in Round 1 with a bunch of Tim Raines clones two years ago, I wanted to at least explore the option here. Raines can take up OF, 1B, 2B, DH, and has a cheap scrub season. Of all of his teams, the 1989 Expos are solid due to also having a decent (and cheap) SS, 3B, and C. Also, I had looked at the 1989 Expos during my research for the 70M theme, and noticed they had Randy Johnson and Dennis Martinez, in addition to Raines.
I ended up using Martinez clones rather than Johnson to make up the majority of my pitching staff due to both the cap and the high pitch counts Johnson would hit (high walks and strikeouts is not a great idea at < 100M). I am not crazy (see: super uncomfortable) about Martinez due to his generally high HR/9, which makes me worried that this team will weight down my win total, but I was more willing to compromise here than on wasted salary.
I almost entered a 2008 Dodgers twist here (my favorite of the Maddux teams) with a few Manny Ramirez clones patrolling the (thankfully tiny) OF at Chavez Ravine. Other team I really wanted to enter was the 1927 Yankees with four sub-10M Ruth's (and no Gehrig). Unfortunately, the pitching was just too bad to be able to justify. Were this a regular theme and not the WISC, I totally would've gone for it.
Hitting: 5747 PAs, .281 AVG, .369 OBP, .408 SLG, 388 SBs, $46.4M
Pitching: 1,453 IP, 1.10 WHIP, 0.56 HR/9, $41.0M
Prediction: 82-80. Tim Raines isn't quite the value he was two years ago, but I'm optimistic that this team should still due at least halfway decent since we are in a stadium that negates HRs. I am sort of worried that a Maddux team was the obvious choice that I missed.
100M - Hitting the Limit Twist
MH 1912-1921 New York Giants
Polo Grounds (V)
I thought deadball years would dominate this theme. However, my league has only six deadball teams in it. With that said, my normal go to at this cap, the deadball Cubs, have been hit by dynamic pricing, and also are frustrating not quite suited for this theme. You cannot have both 1903 Sheckard and 1914 Hendrix, or 1907 Brown and 1918 Vaughn. So, after toying around with them for a bit, I took a look at a few other deadball teams (Pirates, A's, Naps, White Sox, Red Sox). What I found was that, surprisingly, none looked dominant at 100M. So maybe my initial hypothesis was wrong. Maybe there wasn't a dominant deadball team in this theme.
However, then I looked at the Giants, who I had initially ignored due to Mathewson's most affordable seasons (1905 & 1907) being frustratingly out of reach of the late-teens years of Nehf, Toney, Schupp, Sallee, and Frisch. Maybe, with dynamic pricing having impacted top-tier deadball pitchers, I didn't need Mathewson. Maybe I could settle for his 1913 short-inning relief season, or maybe I could ignore him altogether. Maybe I didn't need 300+ great innings from one guy, and could instead get some better and some worse. It was a recalibration, of sorts.
Using Heinie Zimmerman (1912) and Frisch (1921) as tentpoles, I built the team, eventually settling on 1913, 1916, and 1920 as twist years. 1913 let me play Zimmerman at 1B (where he has A range) rather than 3B, and have Heinie Groh's A/A defense at the hot corner. 1915 Kauff was a no-brainer for the OF. A tough choice was between '21 Bancroft with his superior fielding (and offense) at SS vs 1920 Edd Roush and his A+ range and speed in the OF. I ended up going with Roush, due to having to spend half the season in the hated Polo Grounds with it's +3 doubles, and settling for a lesser Bancroft season. I tried every which way to fit '21 Bancroft, looking at worse seasons of Groh, some truly poor RPs, and alternative options at C (other than Chief Meyers) but couldn't make it work.
I skimped a bit on innings here but, due to having both A- or better range at every position and some truly top tier pitching (Toney, Nehf, Anderson, Sallee, etc.) for this cap from years that normalize better than those aughts Cubs, I think we'll be ok. We do have a mopup if worst comes to worst.
Hitting: 5384 PAs, .320 AVG, .389 OBP, .442 SLG, $50.8M
Pitching: 1,360 IP, 0.98 WHIP, 0.10 HR/9, $47.5M
Prediction: 95-67. Getting lucky and going up against mostly modern teams will help me here, especially if the divisional alignment is favorable. This team will probably overperform a bit due to that. I am anxious to see how my result compares with doctorcc, discodemo and jfranco77, who ended up with similar teams.
120M - Choose Your Soup
MH & Omega
Kauffman Stadium
Hoping to improve on last year's 9th place finish, I started this team by planning for Round 2. There were three combinations between the three options possible for Round 2. I immediately ruled out Alphabet / Decade and built the other two. There will be a round of dynamic pricing between now and then, so my Round 2 test teams were built to around 115M.
I liked my Decade / Franchise team the best, so Alphabet it is for Round 1.
Some letters provided tougher choices than others, and acted as inflection points. These were: K (Kershaw, Kerins, Kauff), F (Frisch, Fister, Foxx), C (Connor, Cobb, Cicotte, Carey, Collins), and R (Roush, Reilly, Reyes). Additionally, while pitching was easy with Walsh and Hendrix leading the way, some positions had fewer viable options than others. These were: 3B (Baker, Joyce, Travis), 2B (Frisch, Phillips, Collins, Morgan, Young - not Stirnweiss since Tris Speaker was a lock for this team), and C (Kerins, Foxx, Ewing, Inge, Peitz).
The Kerins vs. Kershaw / Foxx vs. Frisch conundrum took a while to sort out, and I ran through many different iterations of my team (I think I spent more time on this one than most people).
My least favorite part of this theme was having to stomach overpriced RPs. Northrop is really the only option at N (Niggeling walks too many people, Nehf is equally overpriced as Northrop), but $3.1M for 51 IP is a tough pill to swallow at 120M.
My team compares well against recent 120M no-restrictions teams I've put together, with slightly better pitching and slightly worse SLG than I am used to. If this teams gets lucky in terms of not many extra inning games early in the season, it will challenge for 100 wins.
Hitting: 5422 PAs, .333 AVG, .400 OBP, .472 SLG, $59.5M
Pitching: 1,414 IP, .88 WHIP, 0.16 HR/9, $58.0M
Prediction: 95-67. This team will do well, but I do wish I'd been able to squeeze some more SLG out of the lineup.
Variable Cap - Out of Range
MH A... Large Defecit
Hilltop Park
When I first came up with this theme, I was worried it may be too gimmicky for the WISC. As the idea developed, though, it became my favorite theme. Whether that translates to wins has yet to be seen.
Anyway, this is a 115M league where you're able to add on additional salary if you believe strongly that you'll be able to score more incremental runs than you'll be forced to give up due to worse defense, after accounting for the fact that you will need to use some of that money to either pay for more or higher quality innings to combat this fact. I think it's important to frame the league that way, rather than having to "pay for good defense twice." The difference is not as large as it seems like many approached it to be and, combined with the fact that range is underpriced, my hypothesis was that A is the best choice.
To test that, my first step here was to do research on each of the four options. Strangely, C had better offensive options than D, so that meant D was out right off the bat (as someone who knows they're going to like A, I was working backwards). B was ok but, as others have noted, the difference between B and C is not that great, and C's hitting was (again) better. I came really close to using my C team, since the slash was drool-worthy. To help make the final call, I built out a Bayesian model using a methodology similar to jfranco77's, but with factoring in pitching. I estimated runs scored using OPS# and added the total to an estimate for runs suppressed by ERC# and HR/9#, and then compared the absolute sum to an estimate for runs saved by RRF and FLDG%. My model is definitely rudimentary, but I am going with it. The thing that really sold me was that, with the most recent round of dynamic pricing, there are some really amazing values for pitching out there right now; the pitching on my A team was barely worse than my pitching on the C team.
As noted above, I've seen people make the comment that they don't want to pay for defense twice (i.e. once baked into the salary and then again with a lower cap). This would be a great argument if top flight range wasn't incredibly underpriced in the sim. Getting 200-250 + plays in a season is not unheard of, and the cost is minimal since all A+'s are priced the same. I can further exploit this by playing in a cavernous ballpark (I went with Hilltop after coming super close to pulling the trigger on Mile High - this may have been the smarter call since we don't hit many doubles, but I wanted to make sure the ball stayed in the park) where the C and D teams will really struggle to keep runs off the board.
Unlike the three other leagues, my league has only two total A teams. This is actually fortuitous for me, since I made sure to stock up on innings as much as possible within the cap restrictions.
Also - shoutout to Win Kellum for making my A team possible. The value of a bad long reliever is so high in this game, and he is a perfect fit for that role.
Hitting: 5457 PAs, .320 AVG, .397 OBP, .481 SLG, $57.7M
Pitching: 1,446 IP, .90 WHIP, 0.19 HR/9, $55.9M
Prediction: 90-72. I am a lot less worried about this team than I was when I built it. My one remaining worry is that the lower cap meant I didn't have the leeway to use modern SPs unless I wanted to sacrifice quality. After gauging both, I went with quality deadballers. We'll see if that was the right move.
140M - XBH Challenge
MH Stopping @ 2nd
Olympic Stadium
First, I tried all three stats. I agree with doctorcc's point that HRs may be viable in this league. Bighooze and justinlee_24 have HR teams in my league that look terrifying. However...
for me it came down to doubles and triples. Without deadball seasons, justifying triples was surprisingly difficult (did I really want Kiki Cuyler patrolling the OF in a league centered around XBHs and XBH friendly stadiums?). A lot of the good, liveball era triples hitters have been hit hard by dynamic pricing (9.2M for Willie McGee?). So, contrary to the popular belief (of d_rock97) that I'd go for triples, I went for doubles (as much as it pains me). Knowing there would be some triples teams, I wanted at least some triples and ended up with just over 100. There are less triples teams than I anticipated, so this point may be moot.
My biggest problem with doubles teams is that it's hard to find good-value doubles hitters who have good range, despite needing good range to be successful in doubles-friendly parks. I decided to say forget the INF, since there are stadiums with -1 for singles, let's instead focus on OF range only. Cue Stan Musial, Milton Bradley, and Max Carey (EDIT: I originally wrote Tris Speaker here. Speaker is playing 1B for me, not OF).
There are a lot of good partial season players who hit a lot of doubles (Enter Earl Bruckner and Terry Shumpert) though, and my offense is really solid. Hopefully solid enough.
For pitching, minimizing HRs was an easy call. Finding short inning SPs from the liveball era who A) haven't been hit with dynamic pricing too hard and B) don't walk a lot of people was tough. I eventually carved out some salary for Cisco Carlos and called it a day.
Hitting: 5839 PAs, .356 AVG, .431 OBP, .547 SLG, 422 doubles, 111 triples, 106 HRs, $73.3M
Pitching: 1,475 IP, .88 WHIP, 0.29 HR/9, $66.5M
Prediction: 86-76. This feels like a good-not-great team. Not sure I got this one on the nose, feels like I missed something. Maybe I just miss triples.