Drafting 18th, most of the great pitching choices were gone. I had done a clones league a long time ago and used
Lou Boudreau. He was one of the only options that would reasonably allow me to go with two position players as he has Catcher and SS seasons and can play OOP at 2B/3B (actually has a couple years with fielding grades there too). I felt this would allow me to go with a 3-pitcher staff, meaning I could get up to 10 strong reliever seasons and compete with some of the Pedro/Kershaw/Maddux staffs.
At this point, it's a math problem with 13 max pitcher spots. That means my pitchers have to be either 6/4/3 or 5/4/3 and my hitters have to be either 7/5 or 7/6. I planned to use Boudreau as a 5 (C, SS, 3B, 2B, utility) and a lefty- or switch-hitting player at OF/1B/DH/pinch-hitter. For pitching, I wanted a righty-reliever, lefty-reliever, and a 3-clone starter to fill the innings. I wanted Mariano Rivera or Eckersley given their longer innings but both went before it got back to me, as did Billy Wagner, one of my lefty options. I liked Tris Speaker as my other hitter, but he went at the end of the 1st round. There weren't a lot of 6-clone reliever options left so I went with
Joe Nathan over Kimbrel, Jansen, Chapman, etc.
I went to building my team and eventually settled on Andrew Miller as my lefty reliever and Stan Musial as my lefty hitter. Once Miller went with the 4th-to-last pick, I looked at Aroldis Champman and
Sean Doolittle and luckily settled on Doolittle as Chapman was the 2nd-to-last pick. At this point, I went to work finalizing my team and after a few hours got one I liked. I figured there would be a bunch of power-hitting teams and with non-power-hitting Boudreau on board I focused on a HR-suppressing park meaning I could afford a pitcher with high HR totals. I went with
Don Drysdale who gave me just enough innings. Everything fit together nicely after a handful of revisions.
Then freaking Boddicker took Musial with the last freaking pick! I was devastated. I went back to the drawing board. Looked at Mantle but he has too much power as does Ted Williams. Finally looked at
Joe Jackson and while he doesn't have as good fielding as Musial (worse OF fielding and no 1B seasons so have to play out of position there) he actually is a better fit for my team and allows me to go all the way to -4 HR park in
Target Field.
Final choices were just making things fit, but Jackson instead of Musial did allow me to get better Drysdale seasons. Hopefully that helps. With Musial, I had 7 Boudreaus, but Joe Jackson actually has two nice low-salary pinch-hitting seasons for less than $3m combined so that was perfect. He also had one good fielding season in the OF and at a lower salary so he can be my CF and #8 hitter. I was really bummed I couldn't use Boudreau's best season but whatever happened to some players' salaries during my WIS hiatus jacked him up over $12m and I just couldn't justify it. PA will be a little tight, so will have to manage that but I think I'll be ok.
Overall, this was way more fun and interesting than I initially expected. Do another version soon daddyzander!
7.0.3