My WISC performance history : 5^th, CUT, 11^th , CUT, 2^nd….so you know where this is going.

70m Loose Ends
My goal was a fast team with value at each position. My end result was half a fast team with a handful of value players. The rest of my lineup terrifies me, starting with the rarely used (for good reason) Nori Aoki .288,.355 and the strange Jed Lowrie, Bobby Lowe platoon at SS.
I chose 1905 Irv Young and his 398IP more out of laziness than anything else. Hey, my bullpen should do well with four sub 1.00 guys who will spend their time keeping the score at Opponent 3, Loose Ends 0. I don’t particularly enjoy building low salary teams, this was no different.

90m Connor/deGrom
Roger Connor is also always on my mind, but I’ll spare you the song. deGrom and Hendrix stood out like sore thumbs here from a value perspective. I built a squad for each but the better hitting on the deGrom squad felt better than the better pitching on the Hendrix squad. The rest of the team is your standard $80m fair. I was able to squeeze in 90 split season Willie Mcgee (more on him later). I did splurge for 77 Joe Morgan (I hope he performs better for me than he does in the booth). Finally, I noticed that this bullpen isn’t much better than my $70m bullpen. Hmm. Finally, Finally. ’17 Gift Ngoepe. Only $200m. He should be at least $206..at least! F’n gift he is.

110m Heavy Raines
So…..I had this great Willie McGee team until Brian slapped my wrist, informing me my $90m McGee was the combined season. I couldn’t recover. My second choice was Tim Raines. He has two decent half seasons with the Yankees and Whitesox (Ed Walsh!!…who’s always on my mind…always on my mind…Ed’s always on my mind…I’m so happy that he’s mine, Ed’s always on my mind)..anyway, I originally wanted to use a reliever but couldn’t get Foulke or Eck to work right.
I got squat from Tim’s Expos, HOWEVER, the Nats yielded me not 1, not 2, but 3 solid bullpen additions all of which take advantage of SportsHubs supreme laziness and lack of salary updates in 3 years. Speaker Shmeaker I say!

120m 1-8=5, 9=8
You get one guess at my strategy here. Go ahead and read Contrarians write up at the top for a hint. Always on my mind, they’re always on my mind. Besides that, I was able to roster two of my favorite players that I rarely have a chance to use, Tony Gwynn and Tom Herr. Other guys making second appearances are deGrom (screaming value) and Barry Latman (who says 50’s players suck..well I do..but not Barry)

130m Mild and Sunny
I kind of rushed this one and didn’t look back. I chose 5 home runs and .25 hr/9. I have no idea why. I’m thinking 8 to 9 would have yielded a better team at 130m and still left me plenty of room for a possible round 2. Besides your typical cookies I grabbed 1936 Paul Waner in RF who I think will be great with this theme and ’81 Rod Carew who won’t be so great, but he was cheap and I was out of cash. Why was I out of cash you ask? 1994 Greg Maddux costs $16.32 million! He better make the most of those 288 innings or I’m screwed. Chance, Wyatt and Brecheen round out the rotation. More on Brecheen later. Typical bullpen. You’re wondering if Barry Latman made the team…………………………..he did!

Var 163 Cardinals and 1 King
I’ve never used Silver King. Haven’t had the balls. If ever there was a theme though, this is it. I was also able to use two other players that are seriously overpriced for the expected performance but again, if ever there was a theme allowing for ’04 Scott Rolen (R)and ’08 Albert Pujols (R), this is it (of course they both will still drastically underperform at the plate because they are slow, right-handed home run hitters ) BUT, my infield defense is ridiculous (A-,A+ ; B,A+; A+, B+; A, A+).
Now, back to Harry Brecheen. He is a great value and performs fantastic at $100 - $110m, even possibly $130 see above. But 160 – 180? I will be likely need to wheel him out once every 2 days and sparky will likely be quickly wheeling him back in after your Ruth’s and Speakers and Hornsby’s brutalize him. But my infield fielding is great right?!?! Hopefully, Harry is a ground ball pitcher.
One owner, I forgot who, used 1908 and 1912 only and that team looks great. I think that team would clobber this one.

I wish everyone good luck.

$120M: Lucky Numbers
Team Name: MH 4s & 7s
Stadium: Target Field

I avoid playing DH leagues because teams with a DH have little to no shot to win a TOC, so I am always out of my comfort zone in DH leagues in the WISC. It also throws off my intuition around how much to spend, both per position and the overall balance between hitting and pitching.

For pitching, I built an xxx8 team first. It had better pitching than my xxx4 team does, but at a worse value. I had decided I wanted to spend more on hitting since runs are hard to come by in the WISC, and it's cheaper to differentiate there than it is on pitching. I will have the 198 IP Clayton Kershaw in the pen, which is a higher number than I'm comfortable with.

I started to run into the issue of time here. My teams need to be done before anyone else's, so I basically just picked 7 because I could make the team quickly. Never used the 1997 Gwynn before but he looks pretty good. No real insight to add here.

Hitting: 5,813 PA, .347 / .412 / .495, $63.0M
Pitching: 1,434 IP, 0.94 WHIP, 0.26 HR/9, $55.4M
Outlook: Pitching is probably a little weaker than it should be for this cap, but offense and defense are both really good. Let's say 91 wins +/- 3

$130M: Calm Before the Storm
Team Name: MH Regret Minimization
Stadium: Target Field

Jeff Bezos says he lives his life based on the principle of regret minimization. Basically, he makes decisions based on what will bother him the least later.

To minimize my regret about this team, I went through three iterations:

1. Keep my HRs and HR/9 as low as possible, to allow me the most flexibility in Round 2.
   1. This didn't work because the pitcher quality was really unbalanced between my Round 1 and Round 2 teams.
2. Raise my HRs, or at least my HR/9, as high as possible while still being able to make a comfortable Round 2 team.
   1. This didn't work because it added a lot of risk around not knowing what other people would do. If they went low on HRs, and I was handicapped for Round 2 where points count double, I'd be at a disadvantage.
3. Take a Bayesian approach: make a bet on what other owners would do, and build a team to beat that in both Rounds.
   1. This worked (or at least I hope it will). mainly because it freed me to find a true equilibrium.

My highest pitcher is 0.38 from 1999 Pedro Martinez. There are only a few high value pitchers that I'm now blocking myself from using (1924 Babe Adams) by not including them on this team. This still leaves me with tons of options for Round 2. It also allowed me to snag Milacki, McDowell, etc. for Round 1. My pitching for Round 2 will be better than my pitching in Round 1 though.

I balanced this out by putting together a lineup with a good amount of XBH. My highest HR number belongs to 1920 Rogers Hornsby, with 9. This was mainly to allow me to use a couple players in Round 2 who have 10. I originally built a team with a max of 5 but, again, I'd lose more by not including 6 through 9 in this round than I would gain by keeping them for the next round, since there are useful players above 9.

Hardest choice was actually stadium, since it applies to Round 2 also. I'm probably going to be on the low end of HRs for Round 2, so it'll be a competitive advantage to minimize HRs. Target Field it is!

Hitting: 5,311 PA, .353 / .433 / .484, $64.0M
Pitching: 1,418 IP, 0.93 WHIP, 0.25 HR/9, $65.0M
Outlook: My Round 2 team is better, but I'm only a little worried about this one. 92 wins +/- 4

Variable Cap: Minus XY
Team Name: MH CLVI
Stadium: Exposition Park (III)

We've learned from past leagues that maximizing salary is not the way to win. It's maximizing talent, and the best way to get there is value. This theme was difficult because it was hard to consider the full matrix of possibilities, so I built this to help visualize it. I was better able to understand the tradeoffs I was making, as a result.

I was shocked at how many owners, including top ranked owners, built teams around a single franchise. I never even considered that option because I felt I'd need to make sacrifices. Same thing for a single year. Instead, I originally thought about this theme in terms of teams. Not 1894, but the 1894 Phillies. Not 1927, but the 1927 Yankees. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a team this way that I was totally happy with. There aren't enough teams that have multiple stud SPs for this high of a cap.

So, I started with 1908 and looked at years to pair it with for hitting. 1920, 1927, 1912, 1895, 1948, 1957, etc. Eventually decided on 1912 so that I could avoid wasting salary on HRs. I then added 2016 to get a bullpen -- strikeouts are worth the cost at this cap.

Hitting: 5,414 PA, .371 / .438 / .540, $72.5M
Pitching: 1,629 IP, 0.82 WHIP, 0.17 HR/9, $82.1M
Outlook: I have way too many innings but think my offense is good enough to get by, even if the SLG is a bit low. Pitching is top notch. 94 wins +/ 5

My predictions set me on pace for 550 wins. This would be a bit lower than I ended up with last year (when I led after Round 1), so hopefully I am a bit under estimating or I am able to have strong playoff performances OR, given the strong competition this year, we see more parity and 550 is enough. Either way, it's all about Round 2.

Posted by schwarze on 8/11/2019 11:54:00 AM (view original):
Guys - this little writeup by brianjw is worth the price of entering this contest.

* Batting average matters. This might be obvious, but I was trying to avoid it for as long as possible.
* Pitcher strikeouts matter, especially because they give you more pitches, and that is what matters for fatigue.
* WIS really messed up the dynamic pricing, partially in predictable ways, and partially in ways no one could have predicted.
* Putting all those together, it often turns out that recent pitchers are much better value than deadball pitchers. I am running largely 21st century pitchers in round one, and I think just a single deadballer. (I might regret this.)
* In the past I had always had big splits in how many IP I drafted at low and high caps. And I had always had fatigue problems at low but not high caps. So it was kind of obvious that I should have a much smaller gap in how many IP I drafted between low and high cap. And now I am drafting 1300 IP/162 at the lowest caps, and only 1400 at the high cap. (Though more in the DH league, because DH's do weird things to pitcher fatigue.) This means my rate stats are awesome, but I am taking wild risks.
* Unless they are batting 1 or 2, you just waste PAs by drafting someone with over 700 PA/162. So I have largely stopped doing that, and have way more players who will either get days off once a week or (if we hit well) play for a while at 95%. I can live with that, and I don't even feel it is a risk.
* Starters cost more per IP for the same performance level. So you just have to pay more. In the past I had aimed to pay roughly the same $/IP for every pitcher, and I was having my worst pitchers as starters. This was a mistake.

I haven't done quite as well as brian but I can' t resist a good strategy discussion.

BA has always been one of my top rated stats. Doesn't skew as much as other stats when facing an unfriendly.
K cost money. Since you first made this point before I've been tracking IP and only get a few extra, not convinced it's enough extra to justify the cost. I like K's in a high contact low HR theme or with bad defense.
Dynamic pricing killed some popular players but also promoted some lesser used values. Increased my use of non-fulltimers and pitchers who don't neatly fit a role
Recent P have value because they haven't been dynamic priced. The Kershaw deGrom rule.
Surprised by your low IP in high caps which looks like a disaster to me. Keep us updated.
High PA don't appear to be linear priced, 770pa isn't 10% higher than 700PA. I'll waste a few PA to get the player I want. If several are PA heavy it's a rare opportunity to play a hitters ballpark.
I get more innings out of pitchers in the starting role, easier to meet or exceed RL totals so they're worth a little more $/ip. Some clearly outperform than similar RP.

What's starting to stand out to me are the IP counts. Not sure if some people are excluding mop-up innings, but some of these totals are much lower than I've been comfortable with in the past. Anything under 1400 makes me worry about fatigue spirals, unless the theme or the ballpark give me sufficient comfort. Nothing in this tournament provided that solace, though I'm realizing maybe it should have.

Still, I got more comfortable gotten with reducing my innings once I realized that the gain of fatigue-avoidance wasn't balanced by the loss of quality innings. I was simply leaving talent on the table by taking an extra 50-100 innings to relieve worry that was ultimately unnecessary. I almost chuckle at how I was taking 1600+ innings on these teams my first year here, sacrificing significant amounts of quality.

All that said, I think the people who are comfortable skimping on innings have really mastered pitch settings and bullpen management. I've arrived at a comfort zone with some of that, but I keep thinking I have barely begun to grasp the concepts. If I make it to R2, I will probably take some larger risks in this area.

This is my 3rd time entering the tournament and I don't feel anymore confident this time than the other two.
I know I am over-matched at WIS and reading all of the write-ups so far hasn't changed my mind.
The powerhouse owners here actually have a strategy and take the time to execute it when building a team. Maybe when I retire I will be able to have the time to do the same. Unfortunately with work, a week long vacation, 3 weddings, and 3 progressive drafts, (2 that I am Commish of), I didn't really have time to look at very many scenarios. Not that it would have mattered, but it's good to have as many excuses as possible when your teams end up where they belong.... in the toilet. My biggest fear is I didn't draft enough innings for the lower cap Themes and too many (wasted dollars) on the higher cap Themes.

Good Luck anyway to everyone!

$70M First or Last (Comin' and Goin')
My biggest decision here was taking 1911 Pete Alexander. Joining him in the rotation will be 18 Joe Benz, 08 Billy Campbell and 17 Chief Bender with one floating back and forth to the bull-pen as needed. Benz and Campbell have higher OAV's than I like but I'm hoping my defense will help stymie that enough to where it won't hurt me too much. My relievers are led by 15 Wiltse, 2015 Strickland, and 2016 Derek Law.
My Hitters are a rag-tag bunch of misfits that were thrown together to fit under the cap. This was the first team I built and for the life of me don't remember why I took most of these guys. Mike Lansing, Mitch Meluskey, Matt Lawton, Chico Carrasquel, are you kidding me? I hope I can score 2 runs a game!

$90M Double Eagle (Ed and Stan cost a Fortune)
My view of this team has improved since reading a few write-ups and seeing I wasn't the only one to pick these 2 guys. Ed Walsh and Stan Musial. I felt Ed gives good value without breaking the bank and I added 03 Bernhard, 14 Rube Foster, and 09 Pelty to round out the rotation. My bullpen is made up of a lot of other deadballers with the exception of Mark Melancon. I am not a big deadball theme player so I don't know how well these guys will perform.
I feel pretty good with my offense so with that in mind I'm sure they will suck. Musial seems to always underperform for me so I'm not sure why I chose him other than statistically he was a good choice. I went with cookie 09 Figgins at 3B. Cochrane, Mauer, Castillo and Raines headline the rest of the lineup.

$110M 3 Clones 3 Franchises (Pedro, Pedro, Pedro, Ole!)
This theme I actually started with Tim "Rock" Raines and after re-reading the rules realized I could not use his Marlins version. So, onto another choice and finally settled with Pedro Martinez, giving me the Mets, Red Sox and Expos. Not frightening to say the least but it gave me 2018 deGrom and some pretty good relievers. I hear deGrom's suppose to be pretty good, so for me he'll suck as much as the next guy. Beckett(long relief), Andrew Miller, Tim Burke, and Papelbon highlight the bullpen.
I really like the offense. I'll be playing in Fenway so I went heavy on doubles. Earl Webb hit 71, Beltre at 49, Ted Williams at 47, and a few others for a total of 362 for the team. If I run into a team or two that didn't surpress HR I might get lucky and hit a few of those as well with Albert Belle leading the team with 44 and 214 for the team total.

$120M Lucky Numbers (4 at the Plate, 2 on the Mound)
The easy choice was 8 for pitching and figured that everyone would take them. Since I'm stubborn and foolish I chose to go with anything other that 8. I went with a 3 man rotation for this theme in Mathewson, Sutton and Cooper. Overall I feel the bullpen is suspect but I did get '12 Kimbrel, '82 Gossage and '52 Stu Miller.
As we go up in Salary I also went up in defensive fielding and range. Taking the 4's gave me the ever popular Tris Speaker along with Wade Boggs, Lou Boudreau, Ty Cobb, Earl Averill and Richie Ashburn. Jody Reed will play SS and Jimmy Ryan will be DH. A wiser man than me once told me that good defense will make average pitchers look good. This team will have to prove that.

$130M Calm before the Storm (Red Sky at Night)
With this theme I didn't change much as far as thought and strategy as I did from the $120M Theme. (wait I can't do strategy!)Defense and Batting Average was the idea here. 3 cookies made it into the lineup, 09 Figgins again, 00 Luis Castillo and 87 Ozzie. I added Mr. Speaker, Ashburn and some guy named Waner with a .370 BA along with Cavarreta at 1B and Roseboro behind the plate for those of you who think you're going to steal your way to victory.
94 Maddux will lead the rotation with 33 Hubbell and 23 Luque. My bullpen has Rivera, Burke, Carlos, McGee and a few other quality modern era guys. If by some miracle I make it to round 2, my HR is 6 and HR/9 is .30.

$180M Variable Cap (Is $164M Enough)
This was by far the most fun Theme to build. I honestly spent more time on this one than all the other ones combined. Which means this will be my worst team! I went with 4 Franchises and 4 Seasons. The Yankees(Highlanders), Cubs, Indians(Naps), and the WhiteSox and took 1908, 1910, 1930 and 2005.
I figured I better stay with mostly deadballers in the rotation and 1910 Ed Walsh, 1908 Joss, 1908 Mordecai Brown along with 1910 Russ Ford will more than fill the bill. I added the 2005 season so I could get Rivera, Howry and Rhodes in the pen although they won't need to be relied upon completely since I have plenty of IP's to use with the 4 guys in the rotation. I went way over-board on IP's with 1756 total but thought having a 4th deadball starter to use in the bullpen was better quality than some of the other options I had.
1930 has some good offensive players so I grabbed, Ruth, Gehrig, Hartnett, Cuyler, English, and Hack Wilson. Add, '10 Lajoie and '05 A-Rod and my offense should be fairly potent. If anything my defense will be average at best and if my pitching doesn't keep guys off the bases, my thinking is, I'll have to win a lot of high scoring games.

That's a good point about non-linear pricing on high PA hitters. There are some hitters with 750+ PA who are playable because they are much cheaper per PA than they would be with 700. And especially for a lead off hitter in DH league, or something similar, you might even use those PA. So it's like free offense.

What I meant was that I had too many hitters over 680-ish. There are only three hitters who can bat 1, 2, 3, and I was sometimes drafting as if I needed 5 or 6 top of the order hitters.

Also, the cost of a bit of hitter fatigue isn't that much. If you end up with all the hitters at 95, that's fine. It's not great - I'm pretty sure you optimize at 100. But the cost of buying too many PA is bigger than the cost of buying too few and playing with fatigued players.

It isn't quite the same with pitching. And I am as interested as everyone else to see if I can run a high cap team with 1400 IP.

jmissirlis, I've got the 1908/1912 team. Not sure how they'll do, but I do like how they look on paper.

For the three seasons / three team / one player I truly don’t know what the prevailing wisdom is. I wanted a position player only because a reliever would be confusing to me if pitching the same game three times and blowing a save then getting a win and a save etc.

I wanted a player with one great seasons and two crap seasons just over $1mm. The idea of course is to play the two other versions of the player very sparingly.

This was more more difficult than I thought especially when looking for a player with a dominant year plus two crap years for three long standing powerful franchises.

i went with Willie McGee due to 1985 season plus late stops on LAD and BOS

I'm somewhat shocked that nobody has mentioned 1920 Hornsby for the Double Eagle theme. 44/20/9 doubles/triples/homers, .370/.431/.559 with C/A- defense at 2B and barely over $9 million (9.24M). I know he's right-handed but he normalizes well.

Also, it also seems to be that there are better pitching values than deGrom's 42,506 $/IP. The rule was only 40,000. I looked for pitchers barely over that mark. I didn't mind getting a pitcher well over $9M as long as the $/IP was close to 40,000. I want my best pitcher to also pitch the most innings which is why I went with 1919 Walter Johnson (40,374) and his 336 IPs. I also considered 1909 Ed Walsh (40,202), 1906 Doc White (40,666) and 1998 Greg Maddux (40,274).

The argument for deGrom was pretty easy. For one thing he seems underpriced, once you take into account the Ks and the good fielding normalization.

But the bigger point point is that the $40K minimum wasn't really much of a constraint. Imagine you have the following views (because you are a lunatic, or me, or both)

1. You want to spend equal money on pitching and hitting
2. At this cap, you want about 1350 IP
3. You want your star SP to be about 20% more expensive that the average pitcher, because of SP loading and playoff advantage.

Then you get to a $/IP of, exactly, $40,000. And given how rough and ready that little reasoning was, it's totally fine to go over by 5% or so.

I agree that that if you thought $40K was miles more than you wanted to spend, then every $ more feels like suffering. But if $40K/IP is kind of the starting point for looking for the best available pitcher, $42K seems kind of fine.

Also, I want my best pitcher to be a 45 IP closer Starters turn into long relievers (that is, they pitch the 5th and 6th in blowouts) a bit too often. (I know that undermines point 3 above; I'm really not sure how to best think about starters.)

In my ideal world/theme, starters never reach the 5th or 6th due to in-game fatigue. Ideally, I have a bunch of guys with great IP/G who I have the flexibility to remove after 50-60 pitches. This rarely happens because, as Brian mentioned earlier, RPs are a better value at the same $/IP rate, so it's worth it to capture some of that and not just roster a bunch of 100IP+ guys, but if the goal is to maximize the quality of the pitches thrown, shorter starts are better.

Posted by schwarze on 8/11/2019 10:20:00 PM (view original):
I'm somewhat shocked that nobody has mentioned 1920 Hornsby for the Double Eagle theme. 44/20/9 doubles/triples/homers, .370/.431/.559 with C/A- defense at 2B and barely over $9 million (9.24M). I know he's right-handed but he normalizes well.

Also, it also seems to be that there are better pitching values than deGrom's 42,506 $/IP. The rule was only 40,000. I looked for pitchers barely over that mark. I didn't mind getting a pitcher well over $9M as long as the $/IP was close to 40,000. I want my best pitcher to also pitch the most innings which is why I went with 1919 Walter Johnson (40,374) and his 336 IPs. I also considered 1909 Ed Walsh (40,202), 1906 Doc White (40,666) and 1998 Greg Maddux (40,274).

If you subscribe to my philosophy of minimizing IP for your > 40K pitcher:

1. 2018 deGrom
2. 2014 Kershaw
3. 1964 Koufax
4. 1999 Pedro
5. 2015 Greinke

White is 10th, Walsh is 12th, Maddux is 14th and WJ is 39th

If you only care about Value Index:

1. Silver King
2. Claude Hendrix
3. Jacob deGrom

This is my first time trying this tournament and I'm astounded by how much I've learned about team construction and so many other things since I've signed up,formed my teams and read all these submissions.The first thing I've learned is that I'm going to get my *** kicked four ways to Sunday in most of my leagues.I've never dealt much with a lot of these early deadballers and failed to grasp their importance in these themes.I'm also just beginning to grasp the metrics of analysis the top owners use to form their teams.I totally appreciate the willingness of people to share their opinions and knowledge for the benefit of us newbies.

If I could have a redo,my teams would look so much different now.Wish I had a wayback machine.I'm going to keep reading and soaking up as much as I can to at least game play the seasons as well as possible.Damn,I can hardly wait for next year's tournament.In the mean time,when Round 2 comes up,I'm going to make teams as though I was in it and compare notes with people's Round 2 comments and analyses.Thanks in advance for the continued help and good luck to all.

Posted by big_dowg on 8/11/2019 11:28:00 PM (view original):
This is my first time trying this tournament and I'm astounded by how much I've learned about team construction and so many other things since I've signed up,formed my teams and read all these submissions.The first thing I've learned is that I'm going to get my *** kicked four ways to Sunday in most of my leagues.I've never dealt much with a lot of these early deadballers and failed to grasp their importance in these themes.I'm also just beginning to grasp the metrics of analysis the top owners use to form their teams.I totally appreciate the willingness of people to share their opinions and knowledge for the benefit of us newbies.

If I could have a redo,my teams would look so much different now.Wish I had a wayback machine.I'm going to keep reading and soaking up as much as I can to at least game play the seasons as well as possible.Damn,I can hardly wait for next year's tournament.In the mean time,when Round 2 comes up,I'm going to make teams as though I was in it and compare notes with people's Round 2 comments and analyses.Thanks in advance for the continued help and good luck to all.

On that note, each year I run versions of the Round 2 themes that anyone can enter (i.e. not related to the tournament). I plan to do that again this year.

Ozo, can you perhaps explain what the Value Index measures? Not trying to steal your secret sauce, but I'm curious what factors into it.