Was wondering if anyone has or seen a team that went all pitching and A/B rated defenders and won a championship in open leagues. Really want to build a team like this for fun but don't want to go 60-102. Just wondering if anyone has had luck.

Defense or range? Range yes, although good range and defense really just allow you to pay less for pitching and emphasize your hitting. Good pitching when you already have good defense is not the best investment

You can pick up adequate pitching for $30k per IP. A decent OL staff should not cost you more than $35-37M, if you are not too picky. Don't skimp too much on your pen. Draft a few more innings for a hitter's park. My 2 cents is that infield range is more important than outfield range, and speed is more important than stolen bases. I think strong up the middle works here, just as it does in real life.

We still have many ways to skin a cat. An expensive pitching staff could be the way to go. At $80M you will be sacrificing something...

As Harry Caray said, here's a guy...

The 2006 Roy Halladay...though he isn't lights out, his adjusted OAV is .245. You get 220 innings that keep you in the game for $6.08M. Perhaps he isn't your ace, but can be a worthy addition to a rotation. He is 158 ERC+, that ain't shabby.

The '75 and '76 Randy Jones are both under $30K/IP, and '78 Mike Caldwell is a hair over $30k, all good options for a 3 man rotation...

Speaking of Harry...here's a good one. Notice that Kevin Pollak, sitting next to him, who himself is great at voices, gets a kick out of this...

https://youtu.be/1UYPPdCuUcc

Posted by ozomatli on 5/11/2018 4:57:00 PM (view original):
Defense or range? Range yes, although good range and defense really just allow you to pay less for pitching and emphasize your hitting. Good pitching when you already have good defense is not the best investment

I disagree. That's like saying Hits aren't a good investment if your batters walk a lot. In low scoring games you have fewer opportunities for + play or non-error but each one has proportionally more impact.

Posted by rbow923 on 5/13/2018 1:08:00 AM (view original):

Posted by ozomatli on 5/11/2018 4:57:00 PM (view original):
Defense or range? Range yes, although good range and defense really just allow you to pay less for pitching and emphasize your hitting. Good pitching when you already have good defense is not the best investment

I disagree. That's like saying Hits aren't a good investment if your batters walk a lot. In low scoring games you have fewer opportunities for + play or non-error but each one has proportionally more impact.

That's true, but we shouldn't be comparing one to one in that case, we should be looking at the aggregate sum of the impact of all plus plays or non-errors in a low-scoring game vs a high-scoring game. I'd argue that the total impact of more + plays in high scoring games is more valuable than the total impact of fewer + plays in low scoring games.

Additionally, since we know good defense is less expensive than good pitching in most cases (or, at least, the kind of good pitching that is ok with bad defense -- namely high K pitching), we have to factor the additional benefit to your hitting that you're able to squeeze out of this tradeoff as part of our decision process here.

ozo said "the total impact of more + plays in high scoring games is more valuable than the total impact of fewer + plays in low scoring games". I agree 100%.

the more offense the more fielding opportunities but also less likelihood of a close games where one play makes a difference. Have there been any sabermetric studies on this topic? Evene a good simulation might answer the question. In the high scoring theme leagues I've seen the winning teams don't generally have great defense, though that might be because of limited selection.

That's a good point, and it's really impossible to know how that should be weighted in comparison to my above point without some deeper study. Anecdotal evidence won't tell us anything (i.e. I've won low cap leagues with bad D and high cap leagues with great D, and vice versa).

In a high-cap league the ability to have the very best offensive talent tends to dwarf the impact of the A+++ range fielders, many of whom don't have the offensive numbers to win in those leagues. Players such as '27 Gehrig, '01 Lajoie, '80 Brett, and '23 Ruth (at 1B) are exceptions. Recent salary changes have impacted the ability of teams at the $255M cap to have every stud possible at every position which has widened the range of players that can be used in those leagues. But, I'd definitely trade some defense for better offense in high-cap leagues because the pitching is so strong and better defense isn't likely to compensate for a 200+ point difference in OPS between two players. This is why elbirdo's strategy of having '34 Vaughan at SS with a very strong defensive backup in Coors could work when salaries were lower.

Overall, as the salary cap increases, the importance of defense is diminished. It's not zero of course. But, it's definitely a lot less important than in a lower cap league.

That seems to be based on the increase in the quality of the hitting and pitching you can afford being greater than the increase you can pay for (in the realm of possibility) on defense (i.e. '21 Ruth is a x % better hitter than any OF you could reasonably afford at 100M in terms of raw numbers, but there is no player in the database who is that same x % better on defense than a typical OF at that cap), rather than a reference to the importance of defense itself.

Said another way - there aren't players who are as dominant on defense in terms of preventing runs as '21 Ruth and others are in terms of creating runs offensively. At higher caps, defense can help on the margin. But I'd still rather have '41 TW in a higher cap league than any A+++ range OFer with a salary under $12M.