I'd like to open up theme creation for (at least) one theme for next year's Round 1. I know that schwarze did this once before (for Round 2, though) and got a lot of great ideas so I think it'd be fun to try again.

Themes can be any cap, as I haven't finalized what any of the themes for next year's Round 1 should be yet. Looking forward to hearing what people come up with. Feel free to post your ideas here. The only restriction is that Round 1 cannot have any live draft leagues.

I haven't played in a couple of years (though I may next year), so feel free to disregard any of this.

My favorite themes are ones that:
a.) Require research and a knowledge of baseball history, not just how to search the WIS database
b.) Have relatively simple rules...if it takes you more than 3 sentences to explain the theme, someone is going to screw it up.
c.) Force owners to go outside the normal strategies that succeed at any given cap

It's tough to come up with a theme that hits all 3, but getting 1 or 2 out of the 3 usually makes for a fun theme.

So:

1.) Low cap (60M-70M) where you ban (a) switch hitters (b) base stealers (c) deadball pitchers
2.) Mid cap (80M-100M) where you make people use players from eras that aren't normally used (say 1880s, 1930s, 1950s)
3.) 100M-120M Teammate chain leagues are always fun and either a pleasure or a pain to research, depending on how much you like spending hours on baseball-reference.com.
4.) A good-bad-ugly theme where owners have to pick an historically great team (say 100 wins or more), an average team (.500 record or +/- 1 game like 81-80), and a really bad team (say .350 winning percentage or below). And require a certain minimum number of players (or minimum PA/IP) from each team. This probably works best at 80M.
5.) Does WIS still allow you to see how many times a player has been used? If so, then how about an 80M or 90M theme where you can only use players who have been used fewer than X times. Where X is a low enough number to make the theme difficult, but not so low that everyone is going to end up with the same roster. I have no idea what that number would be, but it shouldn't be that hard to determine.
6.) All Star Twist. Pick an All Star game from any year in history, and create a twist team using only players who actually appeared in the game (i.e. are listed in the box score) from that year. Probably 100M or 110M.

Looking forward to seeing what others suggest.

Pitching and Defense ($100M)

All Position Players must have offensive stats equal to or below the following thresholds:
0.300 AVG
0.350 OBP
20 HR
30 SB

All Starters Must be Lefties ($110M)

Any Position Player with over 300 PA must be a Left Handed Hitter
Any Pitcher with over 125 IP must be a Left Handed Pitcher

Maybe I'll think of more but this is what I've got for now.

These are not well thought as of yet and I'm open to suggestions, constructive criticism, and insults, so please feel free to offer up whatever to flush them out better if folks think they're workable.

1.) EFF Advanced Stats League $90 million

Low OBP and bad base stealing for players, and high walk and hit rates for pitchers.

-No player with an OBP+ greater than 100, and/or no OBP over .300 or .320
-No player with a base stealing percentage greater than .600
-No Pitcher with a walk rate lower than 3.6 per 9 innings
-No Pitcher with an .OBA lower than .225 (maybe .250)

2.) Hamstring your payroll $80 million

-Must select 1 position player with over a $12 million salary
-Must select 1 pitcher with a salary over $12 million salary
-All players must be 1960 or later

3.) One Season 5 Man Rotation League $100 million

-Must draft 5 starters from the same season, and each must get at least 32 starts and no spot starts allowed
-1920 or later
-Each position player must be from a different and unique season

4.) Deadball showdown $255 million

- All players must be from the deadball era
- Best of the best from the sim's favorite era. Bring it!

5. Astrological Signs League $110 million

-Pick a sign and draft all players born during one astrological period that you choose
-Which signs have produced the best pool of players? Guess we'll find out what the sim thinks.
-Any season is allowed

6). The George Herman "Babe" Ruth and Hank Aaron League $120 million

-All players must have 2 first names (middle names do not count)
-no clones

7.) Only 4 players on your team $130 million

- Only 2 position players
- Only 2 pitchers

8.) 1950's league $100 million

Since nobody likes the '50's in the sim lets go all-in for a league!

-All players from the 1950's


I've got other ideas too. I'll add more as I have time.

I do like something along these lines, very intriguing. . . .

2.) Hamstring your payroll $80 million

-Must select 1 position player with over a $12 million salary
-Must select 1 pitcher with a salary over $12 million salary
-All players must be 1960 or later

I’d like to see a 60mil twist league. I think it would be wacky and involve a lot of research.

Fewer leagues that involve tedious research or fitting puzzle pieces together, where the puzzle doesn't have much to do with draft strategy. Push us to think up new strategies for sure, but more themes that resemble the types of leagues that frequently show up in Theme League play. I've always thought the tournament deviates quite a bit from what most people play.

Some ideas.
HR in the Astrodome. High HR pitchers in parks rated -4 for HR. I ran that league once and it wasn't popular but there was quite a variety of power in the teams entered. Maybe find more opposing ideas where the strategy isn't obvious. D arms and hitters with high CS%. High walk pitchers and relatively low walk hitters.

$50-70M with below average AAA. I've never seen a aaa lg in this tournament, probably because some people think it's all luck, but there is more drafting strategy than most people realize when the parameters make sense.

Everybody has a mid-range stats in several categories, HR, BB, HR/9. etc. or no mid-range salaries, based on $/pa and $/ip. All studs and duds. Might have to experiment to figure out the best set of rules.

Blacklist low HR/ pitchers, blacklist A+ defense, blacklist high SB% runners, push people out of their cookie comfort zone

Variable cap leagues used to be in style. The lower your team salary the more free wins you get.

and is it possible to make restrictions across all 6 teams? Like no more than one Ed Walsh.

Some great ideas so far, keep them coming!

That variable cap idea from rbow is very similar to any idea I've been playing around with. One way is to give bonus points // free wins, but another way is to change the multiplier you get per win. So, using 100M, you would get 1.00 points per win, while using 101M would give you 0.99 points per win, 90M would give you 1.10 points per win and using 110M would give you 0.90 points per win, etc.

Haven't played around with it enough to know what the right increases or decreases per million used would be

How about a league with a max on PA and IP? I'm thinking no more than 400 PA for any player you draft, and no more than 175-180 IP.

Something simple that forces people away from cookies and deadballer staffs, while still manageable for the commissioners...

• All the pitchers must be exactly 10 years apart (1908, 1918, 1928, etc.) and so must the hitters, but not the same last number (1905, 1915, 1925 etc.)
• The database runs from 1885-2017 - Halfway between those years is 1951. The years used by the pitching staff AND the hitters both must average out to 1951 (if you want to make it more difficult, make it a weighted average based on IP or PA)
• At the end of 2018, find the average number of PA and IP for all teams (use AL if DH-league). Everyone has to match those PA/IP numbers EXACTLY but for a different year of their choosing

@toddcommish -- I liked that second one so much that I replaced one of the themes for Round 2 this year with it.

A HOFers league.

• $90M or $100M Cap
• Only players who were elected to the HOF (as players) are eligible
• Create your roster using only these HOF players

Everyone works from the same pool of players, but we should see a lot of variance and different strategies given the lower cap. It'd be interesting to see how rosters are constructed.

A few ideas (some of which are similar to things ones above, and somewhat agreeing with Contrarian's principles).

Modern Baseball
$70M Cap
All players 1947 or later
All pitchers with K/9 of 9.0 or above.

Alternatives, $90M cap, and add a rule that at most one pitcher has > 200 IP/162.

Stars and Scrubs
$80M Cap
At least $50M spent on stars - where a star has either $/PA > $10000, or $/IP > $40000.
At least one full-time player (>200 IP or >600 PA) is a superstar, either $/PA > $14000 or $/IP > $50000; play in park of superstar

Middle of the Century
$90M Cap
All players from the middle third of the 20th Century: 1934-1967

TV Stats Sequence
$100M Cap (though this is really variable)
No two players from the same year.
Every hitter must match the hitter chronologically before them in one of these three categories: Same AVG (to 3 decimal places), Same HR or Same RBI.
Every pitcher must match the pitcher chronologically before them in one of these three categories: Same Wins, Same Losses or Same ERA (to 2 decimal places)

Bad Pitchers
$110M Cap
Pitching staff must have given up at least 200HR and 600BB between them.
Every hitter must be a real-life teammate of a pitcher (same franchise and year)

OR

$80M Cap
Every pitcher must have a losing record
Every hitter must be a real-life teammate of a pitcher (same franchise and year)

New and Old
$120M Cap
No 20th Century players (i.e., 1900-1999)
At least $25M spent in each of these four categories

• 19th century hitting
• 19th century pitching
• 21st century hitting
• 21st century pitching

Hospital - $255M
1200IP max
5000PA max
Coors
Injuries on

Posted by dippedncrack on 9/21/2018 10:03:00 AM (view original):
Hospital - $255M
1200IP max
5000PA max
Coors
Injuries on

LOL