This thread is for commenting on your 16x16 draft experience, strategies, etc. I will start things off.
Red = Nominated/Drafted Player, Blue = Teammate, Bold = Usable (Non-Bold = scrub / not usable)

Nominated Player - 1984 Mike Torrez (265,527)
When I saw how many crappy pitchers were being selected, I dumped Ryan and started looking at players with 16+ seasons with a cheap season with at least one good teammate. I found Mike Torrez and his 1984 season brings along '84 Dwight Gooden (218 ip, 1.07 whip). I was very close to taking the '71 season so I could lock up a stud 3B (Torre), but figured the SP was more important.

Round 1 - 1992 Mike Flanagan (266,396)
Going into this draft, it was clear that the pitching choices from the nominated players were poor to mediocre and the goal was to spend as little as possible on these guys. Picking #3, I was going to go cheap on either Flanagan or Finley. I decided there was a better chance that '86 Finley would slide to round 2 than '92 Flanagan, so I went with Flanagan. He brings along a nice SP, '92 Mike Mussina (241 ip, 1.08 whip) and bumps me to pick #1 next round.

Round 2 - 1967 Whitey Ford (954,756)
Here's my first mistake. Even though '86 Finley went in round 1, I should have gone with '01 or '87 Finley and saved $3 million in salary. But here was my reasoning at the time... Between rounds 1 and 2, I noticed that 6 of the 9 selected batters are right-handed so I didn't want a bunch of lefty SP's on my team. That's the reason I didn't take Osteen/Koufax and the reason I didn't want to have Whitey Ford as a SP. His 1.11 whip isn't bad in this 44-ip season. And it keeps me at the top of the draft order next round. Of course, I ended up having to decided on Osteen or Finley as my SP#4 (way worse than Whitey Ford). He does bring along a nice teammate, '67 Bill Monbouquette (136 ip, 1.03 whip). I like 100-ip relievers in this theme.

Round 3 - 1959 Harvey Kuenn (6,160,015)
I knew I didn't want to use Kuenn at shortsop plus Blair and Paciorek have enough cheap seasons to allow me to play Kuenn at OF. I love his stats .353, .402, .501. And just as importantly, he gets me a starting third baseman and leadoff hitter, '59 Eddie Yost (.278, .435, .436). This does drop me to #4 in the draft order.

Round 4 - 1979 Paul Blair (460,896)
The last super cheap Blair season. Easy choice here. Not really worried about teammates, but as it turns out, he gives me '79 Oscar Gamble (327 pa, .358, .456, .609) which allows me to grab the 468-pa Aaron season later. Move up to #2 in the draft order.

Round 5 - 1987 Tom Paciorek (297,395)
Through 5 rounds, including my nominated player, I have one starting OF and five players whose combined salary is under $2 million. I probably could have waited since Paciorek has a number of reasonably priced cheap seasons, But I knew I was probably going to get a Dickey partial season and I like '87 Gino Petralli (.302, .388, .480) as a catching partner with Dickey. Also, Paciorek does carry a .283 average and .483 slugging (not bad for < $300K). Back up to #1 pick next round.

Round 6 - 1927 Rogers Hornsby (10,148,698)
Before the draft started, I was targeting this season of Hornsby (.361, .448, 586) as I was also going to roster his teammate Travis Jackson (A+ range at SS). Then mid-draft, I decided to instead go with 1920, which cost $1 million less (plus T.Jackson needs a backup due to <550 PA), but mllama54 grabbed 1920 middle of round 5. I didn't want to be on the wrong end of the Hornsby run, so I jumped back on my original choice. As it turns out, I could have afforded the superior 1921 $12M version. My comments seemed to cause an unprecedented Hornsby run. I was hoping a few other expensive Hornsby's would get taken that round, so I wouldn't drop too far in the order. In no way, did I expect 8 Hornsby's to go after me. I still stand my my statement that this nomination was brilliant by calhoop (on the same level as Earl Whitehill).

Round 7 - 1936 Bill Dickey (6,491,677)
I dropped to pick #5 this round. I've been staring at the Dickeys for a few rounds now . At this point, I knew I was going to have to use a teammate to supplement ABs (Petralli). Once joerat1 took '38 version, I jumped on to Dickey's best season (500 pa, .362, .428, .617). He brings a stud Gehrig to the mix, but I knew I wouldn't be able to roster him. But, he also brings along my starting shortstop, '36 Roger Peckingpaugh (784 pa, .288, .387, .437). We drop to #6.

Round 8 - 1967 Dick Hall (2,064,837)
This is where I kept wavering between 45 Cavarretta and 61 Hall. It was taking NebHusker forever to make his pick and I kept changing my mind. Then boom - he takes 61 Hall. Had he taken anybody else, I would've taken 61 Hall here. So now, do I grab the last decent Hall season or go with Cavarretta. I decide on Hall (86 ip, 1.10 whip). Of course Cavarreta goes at the end of the round. The good news is that I have my #1 SP, '67 Jim Bunning (303 ip, 1.04 whip).

Round 9 - 1944 Phil Cavarretta (6,118,583)
This is where I completely f**cked up. I was all set to take the stud '45 Cavarretta season but njbigwig got him at the end of round 7. I should have just waited and grabbed '46 version late which actually is a decent defensive OF (nice job waiting, redcped). I decided to grab the '44 version because it's still pretty nice offensively (.321, 390, .451), but the last cheap Ortiz season went off the board. Now I get a D-/D- at 1B and D/C- at OF. Didn't even get any good teammates with this pick.

Round 10 - 2013 David Ortiz (4,714,408)
I had 2004 Ortiz pegged from the beginning and had his name all typed in and ready to hit enter, when I changed my mind. I liked 2004 because he was a D range instead of D- plus he had 669 PA, compared to only 600 for this version. His '13 stats are ok (.309, .395, .564). The reason I grabbed this version was to add '13 Clay Buchholz (108 ip, 1.02 whip) and possibly squeeze in Koji Uehara but that didn't pan out (too expensive). So the question is will Buccholz be worth the Ortiz downgrade? There were certainly other 100-ip relievers with similar stats available as teammates.

Round 11 - 1964 Claude Osteen (5,938,287)
Ughh. This is my #4 starting pitcher. For the last 4-5 rounds, I knew I was going to end up with either the best Finley or best Osteen available. I preferred '89 Finley (better quality and cheaper) but he went early in round 10 (a few picks before my Ortiz pick). He's got 257 ip's of 1.25 whip and 0.70 hr/9 which equates to about 18-20 losses and a 5.00+ ERA. No useful teammates to speak of either.

Round 12 - 2010 Jamey Wright (1,187,050)
This is another round where I kind of screwed up. I was trying to decide which Hank Aaron I wanted. I could go full season like '62, or one of the top two non-full-time seasons ('71 or '73). Having '79 Gamble (128-pa partial or 327-pa combined) gives me the flexibility. But I realized if I went with '71, I could possibly be screwed salary-wise if I didn't pick up some savings. I figured if I grabbed the cheapest Wright here, I would be ok plus it would move me ahead in the draft order of at least one person who needed Aaron. Plus nobody will spend that much on a non-full time Aaron. I was wrong. Thanks njbigwig.

Round 13 - 1973 Hank Aaron (5,209,750)
I figured out that I could take '62 and get an extra teammate slot (not needing Gamble). But Landry19 grabbed him right in front of me. So I went back to plan C and grabbed his 468-pa .301, .402, .643 season. Using Gamble's combined season with this Aaron season gives me a really strong OF combo. The extra PA's helps offset Ortiz 600-pa (moving Cavarretta to 1B). Not a terrible plan C.

Round 14 - 1999 Chuck Finley (5,092,641)
I spent all day trying to figure out a way to improve the roster, but it turns out I will end up with about $1.5 million of unused salary. So at this point, I just grabbed the best version of Finley left (214 ip, 1.36 whip). He may end up being better than the Osteen I pegged as SP4 (although unlikely with 0.97 hr/9). At the worst, he can be a mopup long-reliever.

Round 15 - Bob Bailey $3,558,247
702 plate appearances of nothing (.256, .330, .363, C-/D- fielder). Was able to get cheap versions of most everybody I am not using, except these last two picks. About $11 million in waste. I'd be interested to see what everybody's effective salary is.

Final Team Stats (only including useful players)
Hitting: 5720 PA, .322 AVG, .412 OBP, .523 SLG, $56.3 million (but below average defense)
Pitching: 1393 IP, 1.09 WHIP, .231 OAV, 0.50 HR/9, $41.1 million (not incl. the 40 innings Torrez is required to pitch to be playoff eligible)
Effective team salary = $97.4 million

Nominated Player - 1958 Whitey Ford
After I played many renditions of this theme it is very unlikely that there will be enough starting pitchers to fill a staff. So I always try to nominate a usable starting pitcher with at least one teammate I can use. In this case Mantle and Howard came along for the ride. Unfortuantely I had to ditch Howard because I needed the space for another position player.
Round 1 - 1975 Tom Paciorek
Though Tom will probably not play he brought a lot of starting pitching. Messersmith, Hooten, and Sutton round out my starting foursome. These three are right handed and are quality for this league.

Round 2 - Mike Flanagan 1985
Now starts the salary cap protection comes. Nothing useful about this guy and no teammates.

Round 3 - Claude Osteen 1974
Another salary cap pick. Again nothing useful about this guy and no teammates.

Round 4 - Chuck Finley 1988
Another salary cap pick. Again nothing useful but I did pick up Bryan Harvey for my bullpen. After getting my stating staff with my number one pick I had to save cap space by grbbing the cheapest available versions of these guys.

Round 5 - Roger Hornsby 1920
I'd like to think that for the first time in this theme I actually started a run. Knowing I would be taking at least 5 and maybe 6 of my 9 players on pitchers I would need to use some of the nominated position players. Hornsby was the best available but I needed to grab an affordable one. He also has an A- range rating. I just thought a run was coming so now was the time.

Round 6 - 1962 Dick Hall
I probably would only be adding 2 relievers from my nine so this version of Hall was the best and only one still available. He also brought long Hoyt Wilhelm.

Round 7 - 1955 Hank Aaron
This may have been a little early but after the posts by a couple of guys about their bad fielding, I knew my team was going to be based on pitching and defense. I looked at available shortstops and thought the 55 version of Johnny Logan was the best available. He is a .295 hitter with a B-/A- rating. I also was able to get one of Eddie Mathews best season 41 HRs. His fielding is B-/B-. Aaron's bat was also good. .314/27 HRs

Round 8 - David Ortiz 1988
Without a DH in this league why do you need to full time first basemen. Given the values still left I thought I would pull the least expensive Ortiz here. He is still useable with 326 AB and a .276 BA.

Round 9 - Harvey kuenn 1961
I will have to play him in LF. Only a .265 BA. But already committed to pitching and defense I had to conserve salary somewhere.

Round 10 - 1969 Bob Bailey
Same thing with Bailey as with Kuenn. in fact they will platoon in LF. Only a .265 avg here again.

Round 11 - 1968 Paul Blair
Back to salary conservation. Maybe use as a late inning defensive replacement.

Round 12 - 1980 Mike Torrez
Same as Finley, Flanigan, and Osteen. Conserve salary with no teammates.

Round 13 - 1936 Phil Caveretta
The other half of my 1B combo. 512 AB with a .276 avg

Round 14 - 2008 Jamey Wright
Same as Finley, Flanigan, Torrez, and Osteen. Conserve salary with no teammates
.

Round 15 - Bill Dickey 1940
I had been watching Dickey for awhile and decided to let chips fall where they may. I also am taking his cathing partner of Buddy Rosar to make sure I have enough catching innings.

had a plan...

$19.7 M Hornsby..

Pretty much sums up my strategy with the players nominated.

Nominated Player – probably the worst job of nominating a player that I’ve done in these leagues. Basically gave everyone a gift; 21 seasons to choose, worst salary anyone can get stuck with ($2,072,000), plenty of good teammate options. Just didn’t have any time to research. Selected the 2010 season because we need to use our nominated player and Wright’s 37 innings (ERC 2.96) are usable. Also came with a good King Felix (ERC 2.34) and Cliff Lee (either 104 IP w ERC 1.86 or 212 IP w ERC 2.25). Was hoping that his $821K salary would get me to towards the top of the draft but it only netted me the 8^th pick.
Strategy – I don’t remember many versions of this theme with as much teammate talent: Hitters – 15 over $10M, 25 over $9M and 40 over $8M; Pitchers – 75 w ERCs under 2.00 and 220 w ERCs under 2.50. But with a lower cap ($110M as opposed to $120), lack of nominated pitching options (more wasted salary), and my plan to use Hornsby I wasn’t planning to be able to use many of them. Figured I be able to use Dickey, Aaron, Ford, and hopefully Hall but needed to make decisions on which other SP to use, and what to do about 1B (Cavaretta/Ortiz) and whether to use either Blair or Paciorek as a second OFer. Planned to punt on Bailey, Kuenn, 3 of the 4 awful SPs (Finley, Flanagan, Osteen, and Torrez), and either Cavaretta/Ortiz and Blair/Paciorek. Figured I’d use teammate slots on a C, SS, 3B, OF, 2 SPs and 3 RPs. Was also hoping to get usable cheap versions of the punted hitters to use as PHs and in platoons to avoid wasted salary. Overall, it worked out OK.
Round 1: with the 8^th pick, I knew I’d be able to get a cheap version of one of the SPs and the decision came down to the 86 Finley or a cheap Torrez. Selected the Finley because he came with Mike Witt (ERC 2.44) and Candelaria (w 92 IPs and ERC 1.98).
Round 2: sitting w the 6^th pick, I couldn’t believe the last super cheap Torrez ($400K) kept falling through round 1 and the beginning of round 2. Apparently, neither could redcped who happily selected him right before my pick. Now, I had to decide whether to dump another SP or get a usable version of one. Each of them had 1 usable season and I decided on the 65 Osteen as he had the fewest <$4M available to dump. It also gave me a SS option w Maury Wills and a great pitching coach (Koufax).
Round 3: after spending $7.4 on Osteen, I slid back to 10^th and with this pick, slid further where I’d stay for the rest of the rounds. I thought about going as cheap as I could on Torrez or Flanagan but in looking at the hitters, I knew I needed to resolve several of them too and there were some pretty awful seasons of Blair that 4 people would get stuck with. I could still go cheap on him, but in wanting to only use 1 teammate slot on an OF, if I went cheap, then I’d have to get Paciorek’s one good year. I think Blair’s great A+ range swung the decision. Choose 67 over 69 to save $1M and got a little more teammate flexibility with three great RPs as well as Frank Robinson. Ended up using Robinson and Drabowsky (96 IPs w ERC 2.14). Briefly thought about taking the 70 version to use his B/A+ glove at 3B.
Round 4: needed to go cheap somewhere. Decided I liked Big Papi’s numbers better than Cavaretta’s best year and Cavaretta had cheaper dump seasons. Grabbed the cheap ($1.2) and usable (.832 OPS) 45 version of Cavaretta, apparently upsetting barracuda.
Round 5: up through this point, I felt I’d been able to choose my picks but the next 2 were pure reactions. I really wanted to go cheap on Kuenn here; there was still an $820K version left, but after njbigwig took the 61 Ford, I felt I couldn’t risk waiting another round. I needed to use Ford and there only 2 (maybe 3) usable versions left. I grabbed the best one – 1960. Of course, the cheap Kuenn went with the next pick.
Round 6: the Hornsby reaction. The Hornsby nomination was certainly a subtly evil pick. With only 16 seasons; all of which were usable and most with great numbers, everyone would get help here whether they choose to use or punt here. Except for the poor person who gets stuck with the $19M (and maybe the $15M) version. I’m guessing that 3day regrets jumping ahead to take a Kuenn here as schwarze (and his comments) trigger eight Hornsby’s to be selected. Thankfully, with the cheap Cavaretta and a slightly cheaper Ford, I’ve moved up to the 10 pick in this round. I go to bed that night being on deck and knowing that bheid is going to select either the 31 ($4.1M w an awful glove) or the 28 (only other season under $12M). Didn’t sleep well. If bheid took the 28 version, I’m thinking I might have to take a $12M version ss I had planned on using Hornsby and hadn’t considered any 2B teammates. I felt quite fortunate to get the 28 version in the morning.
Round 7: I had really wanted to get one of the two really good Dickey’s (36 or 38) in the previous round round and of course both went in this round prior to my pick. So, after absorbing Hornsby’s $10.2 hit, decided to go cheap on Bailey getting a $1.5M version that was reasonably usable. I gambled here on Dick Hall. I really wanted to use to use Hall as he had multiple seasons with good numbers and a decent number of IPs. Using him would prevent wasted salary and provide greater flexibility w teammates, but waited one round too long. When I choose Bailey here, there were still 3 good versions of Hall left and felt I had a good chance of getting him in the next round.
Round 8: Chisock, NebHusker, and schwarze made sure I didn’t get a Hall. Therefore, I decide to take Big Papi. Somewhat surprisingly, there has been very movement on him and I grab his best year and get my closer (Papelbon; ERC 1.31).
Round 9: decide to grab Dickey’s last season w over an .800 OPS. It was frustrating that the 46 version came with a great Aaron Robinson at C but between Dickey and Robinson not enough PAs to cover the C slot (even though they were the only Cs on the roster).
Rounds 10-12: Harvey Kuenn – always wanted to dump Kuenn but it seemed that in each round there were other choices/reactions that had a better benefit. Now with the 15^th Kuenn being selected in round 9, I was stuck with choosing between two $4M+ not particularly good nor particularly bad seasons. As I didn’t think I could afford to waste that much salary, I needed to choose between using Kuenn at SS or 3B. Although his B+/D glove at SS wasn’t awful, it would have left me w Big Papi (D-/D-), Hornsby (B-/D), and Minnie Minoso (D/C-) rounding out the IF. Decided to use him at 3B (C/C-) and keep Wills (B/A+) at SS.
That left dealing with Hall, Flanagan, and Torrez in addition to selecting Aaron and Paciorek. As much as I wanted to get a good season of Aaron and an affordable/usable season of Paciorek, I couldn’t do that until dealing with salary nightmare of the pitchers. Choose Hall in round 10 (still had $600K seasons available), Flanagan in round 11 (fewer <$4M seasons left), and Torrez in round 12. Overall, not too bad: $7.9M for all three which constitutes almost all of my wasted salary. I’ll need to use 40-50 innings of Torrez in long relief/mop up.
Round 13: I contemplated taking Aaron (either 62 or 67) in round 12 and rolling the dice w Torrez, but felt it was too much of a salary risk. Since my round 12 pick, the 71, 62, and 73 Aarons came off the board and 67 was clearly the best left. I really want to take the 67, but have to figure out the risk based on the fact that I’ll probably only have the 2-3 most expensive versions of Paciorek to choose from and a surprising dilemma: my 2^nd catcher. I didn’t pay attention as to teammates to pair with Dickey, assuming that across 16 teams, there’d be several reasonable options. But as we got to the last 4-5 rounds, I realized that I only had two options with over a .700 OPS and both came with A+ arms and were more expensive than I wanted. In picking the 81 Torrez, I got a third (Gary Allenson) who was much cheaper but with a D arm and .226 BA. I decide I can take the 67 Aaron after coming up 4 scenarios that fit under the cap depending on which Pacioreks are left.
Round 14: Three of the other four owners who need Paciorek take him before my pick, so I have 3 options left: $2.2M (.722 OPS), $3.1M (.800 OPS), $6.1M (.897 OPS). The $2.2 option allows for the second best catching option; the $3.1 option requires Allenson but with a better Paciorek who needs to play a decent amount in the OF; the $6.1M option, which is surprisingly available (I almost took it over Blair in round 3) allows for a slight upgrade in the 2^nd catcher and relief pitching and no wasted hitting salary but at the expense of Frank Robinson. I decide that Robinson and his power against the left handed pitching in the league is too valuable and take the $3.1 Paciorek.

Wasted Salary - $9.5 ($7.5 from Flanagan, Torrez and Hall; $2.0 from Bailey/Paciorek – just can’t use all their PAs)
Hitting: 6000 PAs - .310/.386/.490
Pitching: 1442 IPs – 1.10 WHIP, 2.49 ERC, .223 OAV, .51 HR/9

Thanks schwarze for another well run draft. Good Luck everyone.

Well, I'll take a crack at the rundown.

Nominated Player - Dick Hall '69. Having not played before I thought it was rotten to have people get stuck with his two OF seasons. I now realize that bordered on a gift. Live and learn. Still, my overall strategy was to try to have really good pitching. Hall brought Cuellar with him, plus I thought I could use Frank Robinson (which I am) and maybe Eddie Watt (which I'm not).

Round One - Dickey '43. Good year, a little shy on ABs, but he brought Spud Chandler with him.

Round Two - Hornsby '26. As I said when I picked him, I didn't want to get stuck with an expensive season especially since I knew I wanted three topnotch SPs and an expensive Hornsby would kill that. Plus, while nowhere near one of his best seasons, he does still hit .317 with decent fielding. He also brought along Les Bell to play 3b, though for a long time I toyed with picking a Bailey I could use instead or a Blair that brought along a good Brooks season.

Round Three - Ford '66. My first throwaway pick. He had a lot of mediocre, fairly expensive seasons and I did not want to use him as an SP. Of course, I didn't follow through on that and ended up with a lot of wasted SP money with Finley, Flanagan, and Osteen anyway.

Round Four - Blair '73. Solid if unspectacular, he will be usable and will help the defense. I really picked him, though, because he brought Jim Palmer, Bob Reynolds, and Grant Jackson with him. I now had my three SPs and the guts of my bullpen. Now, I had to figure out how to avoid spending so much that I couldn't keep them.

Round Five - Kuenn '56. With my strategy to use my teammate picks mostly for pitching, I needed Kuenn to play SS for me. I really don't like the bad range, but he mostly catches what he gets to and has a good bat.

Round Six - Torrez '73. This was a mistake, though I didn't know it for a long time. I picked him so I could take Steve Rogers and his 1.54 ERA. Somewhere after Round 10, I realized I wasn't going to be able to fit him under the cap.

Round Seven - Osteen '75. Pure cost avoidance. His inexpensive seasons were either gone or nearly gone and I needed to strike. Plus I thought I might end up using Gossage (I didn't).

Round Eight - Bailey '67. Decided I was going to use Bell as my 3b and looked for a cheap Bailey to pick. Settled on this one thinking I might use Roseboro as my second C. Ultimately decided not to for salary reasons and because he was also left handed so wasn't a natural platoon for Dickey.

Round Nine - Cavaretta '43. Figured with my focus on teammate pitchers that I would need to use him as a 1b so went with a value pick here. Decent bat, good glove, low cost. I'd decided early on I was going to try to avoid having to use Ortiz in the field.

Round Ten - Aaron '65. A ton of good Aarons so waited but didn't want to end up paying more than I could afford so dove in here. Not his best year, but certainly very good especially once WIS accounts for it being a pitchers' year.

Round Eleven - Flanagan '86. I've basically reached the 'get everyone as cheap as I can' stage. That basically explains every pick after this point. The only one at all strategic was Wright as he brought along Gerald Laird to be the RH part of the C platoon.

In the end, I'm hoping my top 3 SPs (Chandler, Cuellar, and Palmer) and top 3 RPs (Hall, Reynolds, and Jackson) are enough to make up for what's going to be a pretty weak lineup.

Love reading these. Thanks for posting. Hope others post.

This is my third 16x16 league. Tirades notwithstanding, I enjoy the research and strategy needed for these drafts, along with the unconventional rosters that result.

There are three general principles that I always keep in mind in these drafts:

1. Everyone will waste around $10M in salary, and the league will play accordingly. A $110M league will play like $100M at best. Your rotation will not consist of vintage Koufax, Clemens and Gooden.
2. It’s not wasted salary if you use it. Obviously there are limits to this (a 5.50 ERC# Wright isn’t going to get anyone out, so trying to use him for anything other than mop-up is futile) but don’t be afraid to push the boundaries of your opinion of acceptable quality, especially if doing so enhances your other strategic options.
3. Teammate slots are like gold. You only get nine of them. Use them wisely. Anything that frees one up is worth considering.

Now on to the draft. Rostered players are bolded.

Nominated Player – 2002 Chuck Finley (2,414,532)
When I signed up for this league I had a specific third baseman in mind to nominate. Rather than doing so immediately I decided to sleep on it, and when I awoke the next morning both a third baseman and an extra offensive player had been nominated, so I decided to look at starting pitchers. I was searching for someone who had many sub-par seasons for this cap level, and who also had a season that would be usable in relief and bring some good teammates. When I found Finley I stopped my search. His 86 IP of high IP/G, 2.65 ERC# would be perfect in long relief with the occasional spot start. My original thought was that 2.65 ERC# would be about league-average; the way things turned out it might be a bit better than that. When you start running out of teammate slots relievers tend to be the first players to go, so locking in a bullpen arm was attractive. And Finley’s teammates such as Edmonds, Pujols, Rolen, Renteria and Isringhausen were all usable at this cap, which gave me the flexibility of knowing that I wouldn’t be scrounging around for a decent teammate late in the draft.

Before I continue with draft strategy, a bit about Chuck Finley and my team name. I was never a big Finley fan; at the time I thought he was good-not-great, and a bit overrated. But modern advanced metrics have been more kind. His career WAR is 57.9, which is excellent. For comparison, Hall of Famers Jack Morris and Catfish Hunter had career WARs of 43.5 and 40.9 respectively. Not a lot of black ink on Finley’s page, but he had a damned good career. As for my team name, I had first heard of Finley Dunne as the name of a bar in Chicago where the Boston College alums used to watch games, and where I watched BC play Virginia Tech in the 2007 ACC football championship game. It turns out that the bar was named after a very interesting Chicago newspaperman, who, among many other things, is credited with coining the term “southpaw” for lefthanded pitchers. For this league especially, this seems highly appropriate. More about Finley Peter Dunne here.

Round 1 – 1976 Mike Torrez (6,557,554)
It took a grand total of one round for my inevitable comment about self-torture to rear its ugly head. Torrez was the worst of the starting pitchers in this theme, and it was clear that if I didn’t take a cheap one here then one wouldn’t get back to me the following round. The question was whether I wanted a cheap one, or if I was OK with using the one usable Torrez, and, if the latter, whether that one would drop to me in round 2 or beyond. I pretty quickly decided that with the specter of using a $10M-$12M Hornsby in what will play like a $100M league, I was going to go offense-first (as if that was ever in question anyway) and that the caliber of starting pitcher that I’d be able to afford wouldn’t be that much better than Torrez (3.06 ERC#) so there was no need to waste a teammate slot there. But would the one good Torrez have dropped? That’s what tortured me. He probably would have; people tend not to want to take expensive players lose draft positions early on. But in previous drafts I’ve felt like I was too focused on maintaining draft position at the expense of picking the best available player so I was OK with dropping.

I decided that I’d use all 4 (other than Finley) nominated SPs in my rotation, along with Aaron, Ortiz and Hornsby as regulars, and aim to use my 9 teammate slots at SS (Renteria, fail), 3B (Pujols, .315/.393/.547), 2 OF, 4 RP (including Isringhausen, 1.55 ERC#, 0 HR/9+), and one utility spot in case I didn’t get one of the 600+ PA Dickeys or in case something else went wrong. Well, as Meatloaf said, two out of three ain’t bad. I’d love to be able to re-do the draft taking the cheap Torrez to see how that would’ve gone, but life doesn’t work that way.

Round 2 – 1966 Claude Osteen (7,055,156)
I hadn’t envisioned having to take an Osteen this early, but 3 good ones had already been taken and this was one of the few palatable ones (3.10 ERC#) remaining. If you call a .264 OAV# “palatable”. At least he limits HRs (0.19 HR/9+), and HRs will play in this league. So I decided to bite the bullet and continue my slide down the draft order and stay true to my initial strategy. Osteen came with what would be a usable Koufax in any other $110M theme but this one, and an excellent Phil Regan (117 IP, 1.75 ERC#) who I did roster. Using solely nominated pitchers in the rotation frees up roster spots for relievers. Using 4 teammates in the bullpen, along with Dick Hall and my nominated Finley, promised to give me a deep quality bullpen, which would hopefully make up for my mediocre rotation. Regan was a great first step toward that goal.

Round 3 – 1977 Paul Blair (874,935)
Salary cap management, with a bonus. There was a Blair that was $400K cheaper (which very surprisingly dropped 6 slots to schwarze in round 4) but I went with this one because he teamed with the powerful and versatile Cliff Johnson (339 PA, .979 OPS#). As I mentioned, teammate slots are like gold. I was planning to try to get one of the two Dickeys that wouldn’t need a backup, so I wouldn’t have to waste a teammate slot on one, but having Cliff in the fold meant that I could take my Dickey much later because now my backup C could also fill in at 1B and OF. I’m looking forward to seeing what Big Cliff can do against all of the homer-prone lefties in this theme.

Round 4 – 1938 Phil Cavarretta (1,213,315)
More salary cap management with a bonus. I had wanted the similarly-priced but more useful ’54 version that went the pick before mine, but I’ll have enough decent pinch-hitters on my bench so I’m not too broken up about it. And in hindsight this worked out better because he came with a very good Dizzy Dean (80 IP, 1.88 ERC#) to add to my bullpen. I’d be really happy with this pick if not for what happened next.

Round 5 – 1955 Harvey Kuenn (4,396,879)
The pick that launched a massive expletive-ridden tirade, and with good reason. However, rather than railing against the fates, I should’ve directed my ire at myself. This was by far my worst pick in the draft, and likely on a short list of my worst picks in any draft in my lifetime.

The two picks following mine in the 4^th round were cheap Kuenns. Uh oh. I was not planning on using Kuenn and was hoping for a cheap one. Now there was only one left. But then I saw something else: the 1956 Kuenn. .333/.380/.464, B/D- at SS (but not a horrible D-). Hey, that’s about the same quality as the .307/.363/.425 B/C- Renteria I’m planning on using at SS, and frees up a teammate spot to boot! So now I have two Kuenn options; I just have to hope one of them drops 14 spots to my next pick. Actually 13 spots, as calhoop who picked directly before me already had his Kuenn. The first 10 picks come without a Kuenn. I breathe a sigh of relief. The next two are the cheap one and the ’56.

The next cheapest available Kuenn was $1.8M. There were 3 starting SS Kuenns left, all $4M - $5M, all horrible defensively and mediocre offensively. The best one to me was the ’55, .309/.343/.423, C/D. Worse than the Renteria I’m planning on using, but not THAT much worse. If I use Renteria I have to take the cheapest available Kuenn, which means adding $1.8M in albatross salary (plus the $200K difference between the two) and use a teammate spot on Renteria. So, yeah, Renteria was better, but not $2M plus a teammate spot better.

Seems logical. So why was this such a bad pick? Because the ’55 Kuenn is not appreciably better than the ’53 or the ’57. The ’57 was taken in the final round of the draft. The ’53 was not drafted at all. I wasted a 5^th round pick on a bad player who I could’ve gotten for free at the end. Dumbass.

Round 6 – 1925 Rogers Hornsby (12,334,057)
Well that escalated quickly. The second consecutive run to start immediately after my pick of someone else, this one came a round or two earlier than I expected. Apparently I was one of the few who had budgeted $12M for a Hornsby. I was a little surprised at how many people preferred cheap ones. I mean, I get it. $10M-$12M is a lot to spend on one offensive player in what will play as a de facto $100M league. But if you’re going to spend that much, it should be on the best right-handed hitter of all time in a league filled with mediocre lefties.

Besides my general predilection toward offense, I really like drafting offensive teams in this theme in particular because most bullpens are so shallow. With only 9 teammate spots, few teams seem to have more than 3 or 4 decent relievers. If I can build an offense that gets into bullpens early I can exploit shallow bullpens the end of the game, which is why I didn’t mind spending so much on Hornsby. I was glad I got a $12M version, but I think I could’ve made the $16M one work. $20M would’ve been a lot, but there was a brief moment of insanity where I considered taking someone else here and seeing what I could do with the $20M one. I’m glad I didn’t though.

Round 7 – 1962 Whitey Ford (6,395,636)
No runs this round! So I pick a pitcher who will give up a lot of them! <<rimshot>> Thank you. I’ll be here all month because of the lockdown. Try the veal.

Not only do I get the best available Ford (otherwise known as “damning with faint praise”, 3.17 ERC#) but I get one of my favorite Mickey Mantles (.325/.488/.599). Sure he only has 502 PAs, but the aforementioned Cliff Johnson can take some extras, and I had a plan for any remainder.

Round 8 – 1933 Bill Dickey (5,409,650)
Under normal circumstances I’d say this was a really nice pick. Best available Dickey (.312/.374/.486), 575 PA so if I didn’t want to draft a backup I could get away with him hitting 7^th or 8^th and playing at around 95%, good defensively. However, at this point I was likely to roster a backup C regardless, and paying for an A arm is probably wasted money because hardly anyone in this league is going to be able to run. The somewhat lesser but acceptable and cheaper 1932 version was still there and came with a really nice, reasonably priced Babe Ruth. There was one other OF that I wanted more than Ruth, but there was always a chance that I wouldn’t get him. I went back and forth on this one quite a bit but in the end decided to bite the bullet and take the better player, and take a chance that I’d be able to get the other guy (and his amazingly versatile and awesome teammate). It worked out for me in the end, and this was probably the right place to take my Dickey because the ’32 version went before my next pick.

Round 9 – 1999 Jamey Wright (1,322,965)
This is where I made my “take who I want rather than who I need” post. Because strategically this was not a great pick. There were a ton of similarly priced useless Wrights still available. But there hadn’t been any runs that affected me in the previous round, so I locked in two teammates that I’d targeted since the beginning of the draft. I love this Larry Walker (.376/.451/.690) even though he only had 513 PAs. But he also comes with one of my favorite players in the sim, Terry Shumpert (.344/.406/.560 in 304 PAs) who plays 2B, 3B, SS and OF. My Hornsby only had 641 PAs ($12M doesn’t go as far as it used to) so I’d need a backup (and defensive replacement) for him. I was considering using a Bailey at 3B if I needed the cap space and Shumpert could’ve taken any leftover PAs there if necessary, and best of all he’s a great RHH platoon partner for Walker. I was also hoping to get the ’71 or ’73 Aaron at this point so I’d need a few backup PAs there as well, which Shumpert would also provide. My only regret is that Shumpert can only play one position at a time, as he is simultaneously my best defensive 2B, 3B and OF. Alas, The Great One can only do so much.

Round 10 – 2010 David Ortiz (3,906,509)
And here’s where I pay for taking what I want instead of what I need…

To be fair I never really considered taking an Ortiz in the 9^th round, as there were a whopping 6 acceptable versions still available at that time. Of course, all 6 were taken before my next pick. I had really wanted the 2012 version with 383 dominant PAs that were just tailor made to platoon with Clifford the Big Red Johnson. I truly thought that he’d still be there with my 10^th pick. Oh well. I ended up with a lesser version of Ortiz who comes with a good Daniel Bard (75 IP, 1.95 ERC#) who rounds out the teammate portion of my bullpen, which looks really good except for the fact that somehow while I wasn’t paying attention all of the good Halls had been taken. Where the heck did they all go?

Round 11 – 1955 Dick Hall (2,224,932)
So when njbigwig took a cheap Hall with the pick directly after mine I decided to check out what Halls were remaining. What I saw was not pretty. There was a bad but cheap pitching version (which was taken before my pick), a completely useless and less cheap OF version, a bad 170 IP version which I had absolutely no use for, and the 100 IP, 3.33 ERC#, 6.29 IP/G version that would function as a perfect long reliever. Thankfully I ended up with that one. Not the Hall I envisioned drafting from the outset, but useful enough to be fine.

Round 12 – 1984 Mike Flanagan (4,864,999)
Time to take my 4^th starter. I was getting a little high on innings, and I didn’t want to jettison any of my planned relievers, so I went with the lowest IP version of Flanagan still available who might possibly get someone out (3.58 ERC#). Possibly. He comes with a phenomenal Ripken who I wouldn’t have been able to fit under the cap regardless but definitely couldn’t with the money spent on Kuenn. I felt good about this pick…

Round 13 – 1976 Tom Paciorek (1,828,028)
…but then the Aaron run began. And once again, I was left on the outside looking in. One of the reasons I went with my “use the nominated starting pitchers” strategy was that in past drafts I felt like I focused too much on draft position, and picking near the end of each round would free me from that temptation. But in being near the end of each round of this draft I missed out on several key runs (Aaron, Ortiz, Kuenn). Now, runs don’t necessarily start at the beginning of a round, and I could’ve just as easily missed out on runs regardless of my draft position, but I do wonder. Anyway, the 5 best available Aarons were selected between my last pick and this one, and of the few decent ones left I didn’t have a strong feeling that any one was preferable, so I took a relatively cheap Paciorek who hits well enough to be a decent third pinch hitter.

As an aside, I am completely flabbergasted that the 1981 Paciorek was Mr. Irrelevant in this draft. I know that there are better outfielders out there, but he will absolutely, positively produce in this league. And, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but teammate slots are like gold. I cannot believe that no one took advantage of the opportunity to use him to free up a teammate slot until the end of the draft. I would’ve predicted he’d be gone by the 6^th or 7^th round; if I had been told he’d be there at 15 I would’ve significantly changed my draft strategy to take advantage of that.

Round 14 – 1964 Bob Bailey (3,650,959)
I have my pick of the remaining Aarons in the final round, and I have some leftover cash, so I take a Bailey who can hit a little, and, sadly, with a C/C at 3B will function as a defensive replacement. You read that right. Oh dear.

Round 15 – 1970 Hank Aaron (5,571,230)
I had planned at the beginning to take Aaron with my last pick. Mid-draft I had hoped I’d be able to pick one a little earlier and get the ’71, but that wasn’t meant to be. This one (.301/.384/.569) is just fine, and whatever PAs his 598 don’t cover will be taken by Shumpert. Oh, and at C+/B- he’s my starting CF. Why do I do this to myself?

Summary
I’d give myself a B at executing my pre-draft strategy. Given that I was using the 4 non-Finley SP nominees in my rotation, I got relatively good ones. My bullpen is deep and strong. My outfield can rake and I got an acceptable Hornsby. I ended up with a worse Aaron and Ortiz than I’d expected, but I’ll chalk that up to bad run-luck rather than bad strategy. Kuenn was the only major blunder.

But how did my team end up? Probably average at best. I knew going in that my starting pitching would be mediocre and my defense would be poor. I was counting on my lineup to make up for that. But I’m not sure it does. A normalized .323/.407/.567 for used players doesn’t strike me as being quite strong enough to compensate for my many other weaknesses (2.87 ERC# and an unrepentant disregard for defense). I’ll be using a strong hitters park to try to get into other people’s bullpens as early as possible and neutralize their advantage there. We’ll see how it goes.

Good luck everyone, and thanks to schwarze for doing his usual phenomenal job of running this.

Nominee: Harvey Kuenn, 1965 Giants
Salary: $251,202

The lessons I have learned from past 16x16 drafts include: it’s better to draft earlier in the first round in particular in case there are extremely limited options on some players; you’ll probably have a lot of wasted salary no matter what you do; and your teammate plans never work out the way you expect them to.

Kuenn landed me the No. 2 draft spot, so even though this draft didn’t have quite the poison pill options of some past ones (I’m looking at you, Gus Weyhing and Earl Whitehill), it gave me less to worry about from the outset. As far as teammates, I have a very good Willie Mays and Juan Marichal if I can afford them by the end, and Willie McCovey is a good value 1B if I’m not already overloaded there. The David Ortiz pick kind of screws everyone as far as that goes, though. Seems like I won’t be able to just waste Ortiz’s salary and will end up having to stick him at first and hope they hit a lot of fly balls. If Mays and Marichal make the final roster, I did something right.

As for Kuenn himself, I only have to get him 73 PA and with a .361 OBP# that won’t kill me. For other owners, he won’t be a great lineup addition and will block them from using salary on a better outfielder or a SS who can field. He hits for a decent average, but draws few walks, has limited power, doesn’t run well, and largely is a stiff defensively. So other owners might use early picks to grab his cheapest seasons, leaving more of the limited pitchers on the table for me. And some of these pitchers are seriously dead weight.

Round 1 (pick 2): Mike Flanagan, 1987 Blue Jays ($1,329,629)

Ideally, I would have taken a sub-400K season here and really thought about it, but there wasn’t one that jumped out as helping me in any other way. A $1.2M Flanagan could push me as far back as 8th pick in R2, but in sacrificing a few draft spots I also get a season of his I can use in relief, along with a desirable SS Tony Fernandez and very usable seasons from Jimmy Key and Tom Henke. Fernandez clinched the deal for me really, because I might not see a better option there.

Round 2 (pick 5): Mike Torrez, 1977 A’s ($414,553)

This pick came straight from Lourdes and the parting of the Red Sea. (Side note: my name redcped is short for Red Sea Pedestrians, in case you didn’t know. See this for inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOxECFyUcLc )

I nearly took this cheap partial in Round 1 and figured there was no chance any cheap Torrez seasons would be left. I was already deciding between the not-so-cheap-but-definitely-useless Torrez, Finley and Osteen seasons and convincing myself I could live with one as a second-round pick.

I probably won’t end up with an outfield spot for Mitchell Page, but he’s tentatively slotted into one corner aside ‘65 Mays. There will almost certainly be an Aaron I use, so it’s too early to know whether Page makes the final cut. But the salary savings here are enough regardless.

Round 3 (pick 2): Chuck Finley, 2002 Indians ($2,107,061)

This is a slightly lesser miracle, but it’s still worthy of note in one of the lesser Prophets or Gospels. This completes a trifecta of cheap seasons from the least useful pitchers on the board. Even their best seasons didn’t feel that worth using to me, so I’m happy to get a ~$2M Finley here and avoid overspending. He likely won’t pitch more than 20-30 innings, but that’s fine. He’s just cheap dead weight instead of costly dead weight.

Alas, I doubt I can use the 52-homer Jim Thome “Can You Hear Me” season this pick gets me, because of the expected 1B logjam. But I’ve now got Chris Berman in my head and he won’t leave. “Back, back, back, back …. gone!”

Round 4 (pick 1): Claude Osteen, 1962 Senators ($3,475,620)

This pick came down to either a still solid Whitey Ford season to be my 3rd or 4th starter or try to salvage something out of Osteen. The ‘62 was one of a few sub-$4M seasons left and the best remaining ERC# (3.25) of the bunch. For a 4th/5th starter/long man in a league like this, that is not terrible. No teammates worth discussing.

Round 5 (pick 1): Whitey Ford, 1956 Yankees ($7,192,211)

The Osteen pick just barely kept me at the top of the draft board, which really is a luxury. I won’t mind dropping later, but early on it’s a huge advantage not to wait another 8-9 picks every round. I needed a Ford who could be useful, and there were only three seasons I felt comfortable using left. It was time to spend some money. I liked the 55 or 56 and nearly went with 55 for a few more innings, but I decided saving 600K might be helpful later on.

Round 6 (pick 4): Rogers Hornsby, 1921 Cardinals ($12,133,727)

I was all set to take ‘73 Paciorek to get the Sutton teammate season as my #2 starter, but it was clear the Hornsby run was on (and boy did it go on!). You either had to go big or low on salary, and I couldn’t afford to go $15M+ either. I did some roster building to see how likely I’d be to have a leftover spot for a teammate 2B. Answer: Not so much. At least my shortstop can field.

Round 7 (pick 10): Dick Hall, 1963 Orioles ($3,183,227)

This pick was about realizing how my roster composition is shaping up. There’s little chance of being able to add more than three teammate RP, and the other pitchers so far are hardly worthy of late innings. So I needed a Hall season where he could shore up the 6th-8th innings. There were three good ones left at this point, and these 112 innings should be very useful. I couldn’t take the chance of them all getting snapped up before my next pick.

Round 8 (pick 10): Paul Blair, 1975 Orioles ($3,271,519)

Blair was going to cost me at least $3M at this point, and there was no version I actually wanted to play regularly. But he did have some great pitching teammate options in ‘68 McNally and ‘75 Palmer still. I was happy to add Palmer’s 330 innings to pair with ‘65 Marichal. Two big righties with 626 IP are just what the doctor ordered here. Blair becomes a very expensive defensive replacement and pinch runner, but I have lots of slow guys and bad defenders so why not?

Round 9 (pick 10): Bob Bailey, 1973 Expos ($4,611,205)

The math doesn’t lie. Affording the teammates I already have along with remaining seasons I have to draft won’t let me waste Bailey’s salary too and bring in a teammate to play 3B or 2B (shifting Hornsby to 3B, which I wouldn’t have minded). So I wanted to make sure I got his best all-around season. This one hits decently enough (.273/.379/.489) and is B/C- at 3B. As a bonus, if I can still afford him at the end, he brings me a very nice 134 innings from Steve Rogers (pre-Captain America).

Round 10 (pick 11): David Ortiz, 2011 Red Sox ($4,620,054)

So I missed the memo that this was going to be the Ortiz round, which was troubling because of how low I drafted here. I nabbed the 6th of 7 Papis who went in this round, and that meant I picked out of desperation to get a remaining tolerable season and scrapped my other plans. I’m sitting at a $91 million payroll without a catcher and two outfield spots filled, plus a lousy Wright to plug in. Not sure this is working out ...

Round 11 (pick 11): Bill Dickey, 1941 Yankees ($3,162,372)

With only 3 Dickey seasons left, I had to grab one I could work with. This is far from his best, but his OBP is solid at least. And he comes with this DiMaggio kid who can hit a little. Wonder if I can squeeze him in somewhere. … So long, Willie Mays. Joe D just stole your spot!

Round 12 (pick 10): Tom Paciorek, 1978 Braves ($1,681,504)


I’m going to have to platoon Paciorek and Cavarretta in LF, so this gets me a .300 hitter with a little pop for the RH side. Lots of bad lefty SP in this league, so he might get a lot of chances to contribute, and in the 6th or 7th spot he’ll be OK.

Round 13 (pick 8): Hank Aaron, 1964 Braves ($6,705,029)

I was hoping to grab my preferred Cavarretta here, but with the available good Aaron seasons dwindling rapidly it was time to pounce. I got a higher average Hank who normalizes well (.328), has some speed, doesn’t strike out a ton and gets walked a good amount. He’s not a homer-cranking Aaron (only 24), but I think he fits in better with a team that will be better at singles and doubles anyway.

Round 14 (pick 12): Jamey Wright, 2002 Cardinals ($2,071,695)

Right around this time, as I’m deciding which Wright and Cavarretta to take, I realized I could have a really good Isringhausen in my pen if I took this slightly costlier Wright. Along with ‘87 Henke and ‘11 Papelbon, that was a very solid back end of the pen. … But then I started thinking, which is definitely when things get dangerous.

I hadn’t planned on 3 RP teammates and I could significantly improve my lineup instead to have greater impact. I’d been wanting to use ‘77 Mitchell Page but had resigned myself to a Cavarretta-Paciorek platoon in LF, figuring I’d have no choice. But I already had dropped ‘73 Steve Rogers as a 4th SP and if I cut Henke too, suddenly the $5M Page worked. Instead of more wasted pitching salary, I’d waste more on hitting, but the lineup looked a lot better with Page in it than the bullpen did with Henke in it.

I wonder what decisions I would have made differently if I’d been planning to do that all along. It’s not a great idea to scrap the strategy you used for several rounds after the fact, and I won’t even try to go back and think about what I should have done differently.

Round 15 (pick 11): Phil Cavarretta, 1948 Cubs ($2,838,090)
Salary total: $59,048,698

Once I knew I was going to start Page instead, I dropped to this Cavarretta instead of the ‘49, which was actually a reasonable hitting season. This guy just becomes my defensive replacement for Ortiz at 1B and a pinch hitter otherwise. Gives me a little more cash for my backup catcher and utility infielder, who fill my last two teammate spots out of necessity. I spent more time finding that catcher and cheap IF than anything else, and I’m questionably low on catcher PA now. You’d think that with 16 seasons to choose from there would be a couple sub-500K guys who can field at all, but you’d be wrong.

Teammates:
SP Juan Marichal, 1965 Giants
SP Jim Palmer, 1975 Orioles
RP Jason Isringhausen, 2002 Cardinals
RP Jonathan Papelbon, 2011 Red Sox
CF Joe DiMaggio, 1941 Yankees
SS Tony Fernandez, 1987 Blue Jays
LF Mitchell Page, 1977 A’s
C Dick Brown, 1963 Orioles
IF Billy Hunter, 1956 Yankees.

6388 PA .309/.382/.488 B/C+ $63,548,544
1,571 IP 2.90 ERA .228 OAV 1.13 WHIP 0.68 HR% $46,407,935

@barracuda3: I'm still laughing at "try the veal" ...

Great writeups. As usual, barracuda's is LOL funny.

Thanks guys.

OK, I will give a go at real post... Original plan was to go big on offense (ortiz, 10-12 hornsby, 73 aaron as platoon plus bring along a few good teammates) and make sure to add at least two good pitchers to bolster the nominated players

Nominated Player - David Ortiz '13 Gave up on D right from the start... but figured others would have to do the same. Fist time doing something like this I liked the teammate flexibility this version gave as a safety net. A bevy of good D catchers at different PA and price points. Betts, Bogaerts, Pedroia were all options if needed. Ended up with Ryan Hannigan as a replacement catcher and no range Bogaerts at SS

Round One - Wright '14. Good Kershaw. Hoped to move up the draft.

Round Two - Dickey '31. A/A-/B+, good bat, had the extra innings at catcher wrapped up because of nominated player. Ruth, Gehrig, Gomez... thought i had my second good pitcher and could have Hornsby and Ruth back to back.

Round Three - Bailey '78. Move up the board bench sitting pick to free up $

Round Four - Hall '52. Did not want the pitching version and wanted to move up the board and fee up more $ (started thinking about Hornsby, decided to grab one of the ones I wanted after one other was picked)

Round Five - Paciorek '85. See last two picks. Up the board and $ savings.

Round Six - Kuenn '62. And my draft blew up. Should have stuck with my original plan and grabbed one of the Hornsby's I wanted. Instead I figured that there would be one available next round and this Kuenn didn't move me back much in the draft order and would be a viable platoon bat at a couple of positions. The worst part was that I jumped ahead. If I had waited the infamous post would have appeared before my pick and a 10-12 Hornsby would have been mine as planed. 20M added to roster. Plan out the door. From this point on it was just trying to figure something out. Ended up with teammate McCovey for a semi-platoon outfielder (only 257 PA, but there are plenty of useless guys to take any extra needed). Everything from here on is not a plan but a reaction...

Round Seven - Blair '76. Lots of useless PA's for short $. Necessary after the miscalculation. Will hit 9th when used because every pitcher hits better than him. I hit better than him. Not sure if he even needs a bat. How bad was the team that he went to the plate that many times? Fred Holdsworth ended up coming along with him. Not sure if that's really a positive.

Round Eight - Caverretta '40. More cheap. Necessary after the Hornsby explosion. Had already decided I would need a ton of Innings from the nominated pitchers but would be mediocre at best anyways so keep going low with choices.

Round Nine - Aaron '69. Original plan for Aaron out the door. Had some very good teammate options for center but now Aaron at center was a better choice so the B/B- option was mine. Ortiz/Hornsby/Ruth/Aaron should score some runs and offers balance L/R. Hoyt Wilhelm came along with him and will try to close out some games.

Round Ten - Torrez '82 Useless and not cheap, but cheaper than some. Completed my 3b platoon with Wade Boggs (381 pa at 3rd, paired with Kueen). Bruce Hurst is in the bullpen ready to blow any leads I can get.

Round Eleven - Finley '92 Oh my god. Am I really starting this guy? He will need double digit run support. Hornsby will need to earn his $.

Round Twelve - Flanigan '77 Another miserable starter. This is ugly. Very ugly. Lesson learned for next time.

Round Thirteen - Osteen '67 Umm... do you see the pattern? Perhaps by the all star break all of you will have tired offense from all the runs my team gives up.

Round Fourteen - Ford '53 Welcome to my ACE. Yup. You read that right. ACE. You're welcome.

Round Fifteen - Hornsby '24 Not sure how I didn't end up with the most expensive draft. Can't even win that contest in this draft...

Here's to football scores!.

" Everything from here on is not a plan but a reaction... "

I am certain everyone here knows what that feels like.

Nominated Player: 1985 Tom Paciorek (Possible Teammates: Dwight Gooden, Gary Carter, Keith Hernandez)
I originally was going to nominate Paul Blair but NebHusker changed his pick to Blair right before I was going to post. Back to the drawing board and went with Paciorek. I realized he was a pretty weak player and weak nomination that wouldn't require too much thought for anyone in the draft but I wanted an Ace teammate pitcher with my nomination, so Gooden is a lock no matter what.

My biggest concern before the draft started was the $110M Cap. Knowing I wanted Gooden to lead my rotation I was thinking, get 2 more good starters. Also, looking at the pitchers that were nominated I was thinking defense would be important. I'm hoping my choices didn't lead to too weak of an offense because I think I put together a pretty good defensive team outside of my Hornsby reaction pick.

Round 1 = 1969 Claude Osteen. I went back and forth on this one and probably spent more time deciding this pick than the rest of them combined. Between 43 Dickey and the 65, 72, and 69 seasons of Osteen, I couldn't decide. All 4 gave me 3 starters I was looking for, even though those 3 options of Osteen aren't that spectacular. 43 Dickey included Spud Chandler, 65 Osteen could have got me Koufax or Drysdale or both. The 72 version would have got Don Sutton and the 69 version gave me Bill Singer. I eventually decided 65 Koufax would be too expensive and probably handcuff me elsewhere. Drysdale would have worked but finally I went with the 69 version. It was a little better than the 72 version. It gave me Singer who should be better than Drysdale for the same amount of money and it saved me almost $3M over Sutton. I'm still 2nd guessing myself that I should have went with 43 Dickey and added Chandler.

Round 2 = 2013 Jamey Wright. This pick was, get the best season of a worthless player that I can. Why I chose Wright over a few of the other worthless players is beyond me. Probably a mistake pick here and when you make a mistake this early it'll cost ya.

Round 3 = 1977 Bob Bailey. Get another cheap version of a worthless player and save $$. I did not want to use him. His teammates gave me some nice options with Fisk, Burleson, and Yaz, but none of them made it.

Round 4 = 1964 Dick Hall. I wanted this version from the start and figured I had waited long enough. Since I punted on the Bailey pick the 64 Hall also gives me Brooks Robinson's best season. I figured a good defender at 3B should be huge. I also thought if I had to, I could add Harvey Haddix to the pen and if the Cap got me into trouble I could opt out of Singer and add Wally Bunker instead.

Round 5 = 1989 Mike Flanagan. Probably another mistake pick here for sure. The next time a Flanagan was picked wasn't until the 10th round. I won't be using him except maybe as Mop-Up. He did give me the option to add Tom Henke but that didn't happen.

Round 6 = 1931 Rogers Hornsby. Was all set to take 1 of the cheap seasons that was left when that went POOF! Needless to say I wasn't a happy camper. Like the dealer in Vegas Vacation says to Clark; "Here's an idea, why don't you give me half the money you were gonna bet, then we'll go out back, I'll kick you in the nuts, and we'll call it a day!”
Anyway, I ended up going with the lowest available salary season left and added teammates Billy Herman and shortstop Woody English. I hope Hornsby's defense doesn't hurt me too much and I'm not short on PA's at 2B or David Ortiz may get some unwanted exercize at 2nd base.

Round 7 = 1991 Chuck Finley. At this point I'm still ****** from the previous pick. If I remember correctly I took him to get my closer, Bryan Harvey.

Round 8 = 1958 Harvey Kuenn. Enough time has passed and I returned to a cooled off version of myself by this round. My strategy has come back into focus with the help of something called alcohol, (and I was always told it would have the opposite effect) and remembered that I had this version of Kuenn in my sights from the beginning. I can't wait any longer. His A range rating in the outfield serves me better than any of his remaining shortstop options and I've got to start getting some servicable hitters before they are all gone.

Round 9 = 2001 David Ortiz. Big Papi presented an interesting dilema. With his poor fielding ratings does one take a chance that his bat makes up for it? Knowing I have a reasonably good hitting, good fielding Keith Hernandez in my back pocket, I decided to save salary here. I figured one of Cavarretta's 1B versions was still an option yet as well and figured Cavarretta would be better defensively.

Round 10 = 1946 Bill Dickey. This was a "I waited too long to make" pick here. His 46 season is good defensively and I brought along his counterpart Aaron Robinson who has pretty good offensive numbers. Hopefully the two will be able to cover all the innings I need at catcher. I really don't want to have Big Papi try to crouch down in front of the ump. In addition I grabbed Red Ruffing for the bullpen.

Round 11 = 1965 Whitey Ford. While his OAV at .258 is frightening, his BB/9 is only 1.84. I will use him sparingly in the rotation or long relief. I did add Steve Hamilton as a teammate for the pen. Not real impressive here either but he fit under the cap.

Round 12 = 1947 Phil Cavarretta. I waited too long to make this pick, (seems like a theme going on here). After deciding against Ortiz at 1B and the number of teammates I already was committed to elsewhere I realized I needed a good Cavarretta for 1B. He does bring a .314-BA and .391-OBP but I hoped to get one of his better defensive versions at 1st. I probably put too much emphasis on defense in this draft.

Round 13 = 1971 Paul Blair. At this point I need him to play. Weak bat, great glove. Paciorek will platoon with him so I've got enough PA's to cover that outfield spot. That's about all that's good here.

Round 14 = 1956 Hank Aaron. I had planned waiting to take Hammerin Hank towards the end. A lot of good seasons available. Kind of just ended up with taking what I thought was the best one left. Again, not real great offensively even tho he's got a 328-BA, with good range in the outfield.

Round 15 = 1970 Mike Torrez. Best available at the end, Hoped to work Joe Torre into the mix but just couldn't make him fit without sacrificing elsewhere.

Good Luck all! I hope to finish around .500. Thanks schwarze! I'm all better now!