Post yours here

$70m: Rollin’ Down Mateo With A Shotgun

I started with the pitching and settled on a collection of low K low BB pitchers, led by noted cookie 2020 Kyle Hendricks who I imagine will be on a lot of rosters. And since we won’t be getting too many strikeouts we went with a very strong fielding infield using the out of position 1.000 fielding percentage hack with Kevin Newman at 2B, Jonathan Villar at SS and Brandon Phillips at 3B. Then we have three true outcomes stud Yasmani Grandal and his unearned A+ range rating at 1B, noodle arm Omar Narvaez at C, and a bunch of speedsters in the outfield and DH. This will require heavy active managing as we are light on PA and will be managing a bunch of tandems on the mound but hopefully we will be pretty good.

Theme Self-Evaluation: My hope here was to allow people to pick their favorite current players while also taking many experienced owners out of their comfort zone by combining a low cap and a DH, in past years people have talked about copying a roster from another league and that definitely won’t be happening here. There was some complaining along these lines in the themes thread so I seem to have accomplished that.

$80m: Kosco $1.50 Hot Dog and Soda Combo

The big question here is how do you account for the need to draft 25 players who will all make significant contributions. I decided to go with a whole bunch of outfielders and first basemen worth just over $1 million, most of them home run and doubles specialists to take advantage of Riverfront and the lack of deadball pitchers. We are a bit light on innings and on bodies on the mound (eight total pitchers), which in hindsight looks like an unnecessary risk, but those eight pitchers are pretty good and most of the league is in pitcher’s parks which will help.

Theme Self-Evaluation: I think the general idea of a high minimum salary is good as it requires a non-cookie cutter strategy, but it would have been better without the franchise soup requirement as that mostly just made busy-work keeping everything straight.

$100m: MH Chaos

I generally think if your roster has to be unbalanced between pitching and hitting, you’re much better off spending on the hitting because when spending heavy on hitting you can also pay for fielding that helps make up for your cheap pitching. So I went with many of the usual suspect A+ range guys, as well as going heavy on triples, as I figure I’m going to see a lot of Petco for the pitching teams (and as it turns out, several hitting teams which I guess makes sense but I didn’t expect. Something like Municipal or Hilltop would have been the obvious choice for stadium to let the A+ range guys do their work, but this team looked great on paper so I decided to follow the sage advice of noted philosopher emeritus Redman: if you gotta be a monkey, be a gorilla. So we’re going to Mile High and trying to push whatever edge we might have to the max.

Theme Self-Evaluation:

Very simple binary choices make for interesting strategic decisions, and I think I did that here especially given the variety of strategies I saw checking rosters. Only issue is many lineups will be very cookie heavy.

$110m: Year of the Smile :)

I thought many of the top owners would save the modern stud pitchers for Round 2, so I decided to use them in Round 1 and go with a typical speedy doubles and triples style to beat deadball pitchers, while saving the deadball cookie pitchers for Round 2 and putting that team in Riverfront in hopes of beating the modern pitchers with some home runs. Nothing too out of the ordinary on the roster.

Theme Self-Evaluation: It’s traditional to have a Round 1 theme that connects to a Round 2 theme, but I couldn’t think of much that didn’t require a ton of homework, so this was all I came up with and in hindsight it’s not very interesting, it’s not far off a no restrictions and those encourage the worst kind of cookie strategies and should not be what the WISC is about. Hopefully many at least thought about how to balance Round 1 and Round 2 like I did.

$120m: Dual Power

I really wanted to draft a home run team, and in fact designed this theme with a home run team in mind, but I drafted a Target Field team and a Yankee III team and much preferred the Target Field team. It appears I wasn’t alone in that as a significant majority of the teams chose Target as well, which is a bit of a tough break for me as I spent more on low HR/9 than I usually would, figuring I’d be playing at least 40-50 games in Yankee III and I didn’t want to get slaughtered there. My lineup isn’t too far off the $100M and $110M, which isn’t encouraging. I think this will be my worst team.

Theme Self-Evaluation: The two per decade rule was designed to prevent total cookie-cutting, but I think I should have made the minimum a bit higher so you actually had to draft useful players from each decade. There were also a bit too many rules which led to the most roster errors of any cap by far. The binary choice on ballparks though I like, simple rule but complex strategically as you need to accurately predict what your opponents will do.

$140m: The Triple Alliance Rides Again

Designed this theme with the plan of running a Ruth clone outfield, but then stupidly didn’t ban all pitchers from being the Joker, so almost everyone went with Walsh, Johnson or Alexander, making a home run strategy much less appealing. So I went with a doubles-heavy strategy with eight of the nine spots in the lineup taken up by Speaker, Wagner and Lajoie, with Earl Smith catching and Bob Aspromonte taking up space. Pitching staff is 1910 Walsh, then 3 Kershaws, 3 Hoyt Wilhelms, and 3 Babe Adams (two useful). I fear I have too many right handed hitters and not enough speed.

Theme Self-Evaluation: Like I said above, I should have just required the Joker be a hitter. I figured if I didn’t ban 19th century pitchers everyone would take Silver King, but I should have gone further. Besides that error, I think it’s a good theme that forces you to put puzzle pieces together. I loved the clones theme in Round 2 last year and NebHusker’s Eight is Enough league so built on those at a higher cap.

Hope everyone has fun, putting this together was a massive process but the hard work is basically done for now so I can enjoy the sim ride. Good luck everyone.

• $70M
  • Elite to Efficiency: 100% Efficiency
  • General Strategies
    • Minimize pitchers’ HR/9 anticipating high proportion of sluggers in L5Y
    • Target Field (-4/-4 HR LF/RF) to further reduce HR against and maximize IP
    • Balanced offense with enough HR to compete on the road, but prioritize 2B for success at home
  • Pitchers

Role	Players	Salary	IP	IP/Player	ERC_Norm	HR_Norm	Runs Saved	RS/$Mil
Starter	3	$17,006,210	602	201	2.71	0.68	11	0.6
Start/Relief	2	$8,682,424	294	147	2.62	0.73	20	2.3
Relief	4	$6,126,441	224	56	2.64	0.76	4	0.8
Non-Mop	9	$31,815,075	1120	124	2.67	0.71	35	1.1
Mopup	3	$1,861,286	138	46	6.30	1.24	-29	-23.9
Total	12	$33,676,361	1258	105	3.07	0.77	6	-1.6

• Hitters

Role	Players	Salary	PA	PA/Player	Runs Created	RC/PA	RC/$Mil	HR/100PA
Starter	9	$31,409,552	5358	595	746	0.139	23.8	1.8
Rotational	4	$4,857,401	771	193	125	0.162	25.7	3.0
Total	13	$36,266,953	6129	681	871	0.142	24.0	1.9

• $80M
  • Elite to Efficiency: 80% Efficiency, 20% Elite
  • General Strategies
    • With $1M minimum salary constraint, went with a platoon offense strategy
    • Used my most consistent approach with this team, which was minimize HR/9 with pitchers, maximize HR/100PA and 2B with hitters, and choose a HR-friendly ballpark that doesn’t skew too far + for hitters (Sick’s Stadium, +2 HR LF/RF)
    • May have left some value on the table navigating the one player per franchise constraint by just starting to build my roster and excluding already used teams from future searches rather than making multiple adjustments along the way.
  • Pitchers

Role	Players	Salary	IP	IP/Player	ERC_Norm	HR_Norm	Runs Saved	RS/$Mil
Starter	4	$29,170,031	930	233	2.37	0.30	60	2.1
Relief	5	$9,641,618	345	69	2.28	0.11	27	2.9
Non-Mop	9	$38,811,649	1275	142	2.35	0.25	88	2.3
Mopup	1	$1,000,502	64	64	4.75	0.66	-26	-26.4
Total	10	$39,812,151	1339	134	2.46	0.27	61	0.9

• Hitters

Role	Players	Salary	PA	PA/Player	Runs Created	RC/PA	RC/$Mil	HR/100PA
Starter	8	$31,336,691	4265	533	713	0.167	22.8	3.5
Rotational	7	$8,818,513	1257	180	207	0.165	23.5	3.6
Total	15	$40,155,204	5522	690	920	0.167	22.9	3.5

• $100M
  • Elite to Efficiency: Hitting 90% Efficiency, Pitching 90% Elite
  • General Strategies
    • Chose to spend $60M on Pitchers, under the assumption I could skew more towards elite by reducing need for IP with elite pitching staff and reducing need for AB with a $40M lineup facing even or disadvantage on nightly basis.
    • 2 Deadball Aces (’08 Ed Walsh and ’12 Walter Johnson) make up about 2/3 of pitcher salary and 2/3 of IP. 1350 Non-Mop IP maybe too much depending on proportion of other teams polarization direction
    • Neutralish field with slight skew towards HRs & Doubles, drafted hitters anticipating heavy usage of deadball pitchers, balanced some HR power with predominantly 2B slugging.
  • Pitchers

Role	Players	Salary	IP	IP/Player	ERC_Norm	HR_Norm	Runs Saved	RS/$Mil
Starter	2	$39,056,676	889	445	1.75	0.08	138	3.5
Start/Relief	1	$9,542,392	270	270	1.84	0.24	35	3.6
Relief	5	$8,747,928	190	38	1.40	0.23	30	3.4
Non-Mop	8	$57,346,996	1349	169	1.72	0.13	202	3.5
Mopup	1	$2,701,713	90	90	2.37	0.34	1	0.5
Total	9	$60,048,709	1439	160	1.76	0.15	204	3.4

• Hitters

Role	Players	Salary	PA	PA/Player	Runs Created	RC/PA	RC/$Mil	HR/100PA
Starter	8	$31,744,121	4082	510	732	0.179	23.1	2.5
Rotational	8	$8,198,557	1210	151	209	0.173	25.5	1.8
Total	16	$39,942,678	5292	662	941	0.178	23.6	2.3

• $110M
  • Elite to Efficiency: 60% Elite, 40% Efficiency
  • General Strategies
    • Similar to the one player per franchise theme, I didn’t take too elegant of an approach to optimizing the 50 different seasons constraint here. Just simply found a player I liked and cut that year from future searches.
    • Built Round 1 and Round 2 teams simultaneously
    • Started with rotations for each roster, prioritizing using the deadball era years for pitchers.
    • With a very rigid deadball pitching staff, I complemented it with a HR-friendly ballpark (Yankee Stadium III) and plenty of power throughout my lineup
  • Pitchers

Role	Players	Salary	IP	IP/Player	ERC_Norm	HR_Norm	Runs Saved	RS/$Mil
Starter	2	$32,342,697	802	401	1.80	0.07	114	3.5
Start/Relief	1	$8,708,490	225	225	1.95	0.07	29	3.4
Relief	4	$9,026,316	312	78	2.33	0.15	28	3.1
Non-Mop	7	$50,077,503	1339	191	1.95	0.09	171	3.4
Mopup	2	$3,233,055	121	61	2.55	0.13	4	1.1
Total	9	$53,310,558	1460	162	2.00	0.09	175	3.2

• Hitters

Role	Players	Salary	PA	PA/Player	Runs Created	RC/PA	RC/$Mil	HR/100PA
Starter	8	$50,522,893	5027	628	1046	0.208	20.7	4.1
Rotational	8	$6,129,472	729	91	150	0.206	24.5	3.8
Total	16	$56,652,365	5756	720	1196	0.208	21.1	4.1

• $120M
  • General Strategies
    • With the $15M limit on deadball pitchers, my strategy was to draft hitters with lots of power and play in Yankee Stadium III. To combat a likely similar strategy from other owners, I used up my $15M on a deadball starter and reliever, then selected only pitchers under 0.2 HR/9, and predominantly under 0.1 HR/9
    • Similar to other year/team restriction themes, I didn’t really plan out how I wanted to use my decades in advance, just found guys I like and removed that decade from my search as soon as I had 2.
  • Pitchers

Role	Players	Salary	IP	IP/Player	ERC_Norm	HR_Norm	Runs Saved	RS/$Mil
Starter	3	$36,351,433	945	315	2.11	0.06	100	2.7
Relief	7	$17,791,185	425	61	1.67	0.07	51	2.9
Non-Mop	10	$54,142,618	1370	137	1.97	0.06	152	2.8
Mopup	1	$2,812,579	96	96	2.61	0.22	7	1.3
Total	11	$56,955,197	1466	133	2.01	0.07	159	2.7

• Hitters

Role	Players	Salary	PA	PA/Player	Runs Created	RC/PA	RC/$Mil	HR/100PA
Starter	8	$53,273,251	4744	593	1012	0.213	19.0	4.6
Rotational	5	$8,984,379	900	180	163	0.181	18.1	3.9
Total	13	$62,257,630	5644	706	1175	0.208	18.9	4.5

• $140M
  • General Strategies
    • Nothing too fancy, started with a few big names that I knew would have multiple good seasons to choose from (Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Cap Anson, Mordecai Brown), grabbed Ed Walsh as the big Joker, and just filled in the last few pieces from there.
    • True to form, I again went with the strategy of deadball pitchers, good power in my hitters, and HR-friendly Yankee Stadium III
  • Pitchers

Role	Players	Salary	IP	IP/Player	ERC_Norm	HR_Norm	Runs Saved	RS/$Mil
Starter	3	$37,758,419	908	303	2.00	0.18	99	2.5
Relief	7	$30,096,336	745	106	1.86	0.22	74	2.5
Total	10	$67,854,755	1653	165	1.93	0.20	173	2.5

• Hitters

Role	Players	Salary	PA	PA/Player	Runs Created	RC/PA	RC/$Mil	HR/100PA
Starter	9	$67,942,855	6001	667	1289	0.215	19.0	3.8
Rotational	6	$4,096,367	692	115	95	0.137	23.2	1.1
Total	15	$72,039,222	6693	744	1384	0.207	19.2	3.5

$70 Million: Bayou Country

Figured we weren't getting away from homers so I leaned into it, focusing on low .OAV pitchers who gave up their share of bombs. Paired it with AT&T park to reduce the homers. Figured many owners would choose low HR parks so on offense I focused on singles hitters with pretty good defense. Only 96 total homers on offense and we'll be lucky to hit 60. Catchers won't be throwing anyone out, but not too worried about that with these years. I'm a bit worried I overdrafted plate appearances.

$80 Million: Green River

For the first time in any league I am using Sicks' Stadium. My strategy is to win with walks and homers. Team OBP of .400 and over 1,000 walks, plus 260 homers to boot. Highest average on the team is 2007 Barry Bonds at .276. Despite no deadball pitchers available, I went as deadball as I could get. My entire staff has allowed 26 total homers. They give up a lot of hits, and I am hoping Sicks' helps with that.

$100 Million: Willie and the Poorboys

Went with pitching and using the very boring Dodger Stadium (because I drafted a low amount of innings) and drafted a bunch of singles hitters with stolen bases. Team average of .308 and 296/74 stolen base ratio. If my league has a bunch of great arm catchers I'm probably screwed. Less confident in this team than any other.

$110 Million: Cosmo's Factory

Predictably went with a deadball team in Yankee Stadium III. 338 team home runs.

$120 Million: Pendulum

Went with Yankee Stadium III and low homer staff. Had a lot of fun building this one. No idea if I have a good team.

$140 Million: Mardi Gras

Joker was Big Train, plus I drafted 3 more Big Trains. Reliever corps is Wade Davis and Sean Doolittle. I decided I wanted four dominant relievers and wanted to get four in the top 75 ERC#. Because I figured everyone else would go deadball, I went with Hilltop and got Honus Wagner, Nap Lajoie, Ty Cobb, and Joe Mauer. Team is silly with singles, doubles, and triples. They'll make errors for sure but got really good range. Going to put 2009 Mauer at first base and hope that goes well. Another reason I went with Hilltop is that I have a ton of plate appearances and innings, and want to use them up as much as I can.

WISC70 DKWID

The acronym stands for “Don’t know what I’m doing” because given that this is the second time that I’ve ever played at this cap (last year’s first round 70 million league was the other time, I went 79-83) I am a little skeptical about this team. DH definitely made this team build a lot harder having to account for 6-700 additional plate appearances. This is the team that I’ve used the fewest guys on so I’m definitely interested in hearing from what some other (better) owners decided here to see if I’m on line or not.

Built my pitching staff here first with a specific budget or so in mind and an innings target. Since the budget was limited I figured on a 5 man rotation and wanted to do my best to minimize walks and at least avoid some of the guys with absolutely crazy HR9. Like having Eovaldi in my bullpen as a potential spot starter to fill in when needed.

Have actually used a few of the hitters that I have and am looking forward to seeing what they can put together here. Hoping that the 21 Brantley, the 20 Cronenworth, and the 18 Jose Martinez can do some things. At this cap I figured versatility was probably key, so I tried to target guys who play multiple positions and landed on 19 Asdrubal Cabrera, 20 Cronenworth, 21 Tony Kemp, and 18 Yadiel Rivera (who has dreadful range, and bats like he’s swinging a pool noodle, but hopefully he won’t make errors. I’ve got the 19 Ryan Braun who is utterly dreadful in the field, but with where I’m at PA wise, I only need him to contributed 50-60 plate appearances in the OF, otherwise he’ll be at DH

Since I didn’t really know what to do with this team, I put them in a neutral park so they’ll be playing in Nats Stadium.

Stats

Hitters: 6120 PA, .280/.351/.434

Pitchers: 1324 IP, .246 OAV, 1.14 WHIP, 1.84 BB/9, .88 HR/9

Goal: 81-81

WISC80 In the Bird’s House Now

Initially fiddled around with something different here, but wasn’t really enthusiastic about it. Sat down one afternoon with the idea of seeing if going in a HR based direction (this is going to become a theme) was feasible and actually landed on something that I was reasonably satisfied with. I figure with this strategy is in place that even if this team is bad (and this is still a distinct possibility) at least it’ll be entertaining to follow them and watch them hopefully hit the ball out of the ballpark

Got three 2020 guys in the line up which with their pro-rated stats hopefully projects well throughout the entirety of the year. Haven’t run many (any) of these guys in these seasons before so it’ll be interesting to see how things shake out with them. None of the guys walk much, but they (2020 guys excluded) don’t really strike out that much either. The one thing I worry about with these guys a little bit is the minimal range that my infielders (especially with Lowe and Bogaerts up the middle have)

Not upset with what I have on the mound. My goal was to minimize walks and minimize HRs and then just try and get as good an OAV as I could. Going to run a 3 man rotation with Barnes, Kremer, and Fidrych on moderate pull settings and then hope that my bullpen guys (who are of higher quality) can do a job. The 92 Doug Jones is the only guy on my staff that I’ve used before.

Based on the build I knew that I wanted to take this team to Tiger Stadium. Hoping that can limit (somewhat) the base hits that I give up while helping the guys in my line up hit the ball out of the ballpark

Stats

Hitters: 5563 PA, .288/.382/.523 B/C

Pitchers: 1373 IP, .245 OAV, 1.11 WHIP, 1.77 BB/9, .40 HR/9

Goal: 85-77

WISC100 Pitching Wins Games

When I saw this theme, my first thought was to go with offense (instinctively) but as I thought on it and played around with rosters I feel like pitching really is the move here. Whether or not I built a good team is obviously TBD but I’d much rather take my chances with bargains in an offensive stadium than taking a bunch of OL level pitchers and watching them get shelled by 120 million dollar offenses

Other than my catcher I wound up with a starting line up comprised entirely of deadball guys. Think I vaguely remember using the 94 Herman Long before (an offensive asset and a major defensive liability) and then I like everyone else has run out various Roger Connor seasons at 1B. I’ve got the 94 version here as well. I’ve come close to using the 87 Fred Carroll on some other teams but have never found a spot for him, he’s in the team here.

Once I knew that I was going with the expensive pitchers, this staff wasn’t that hard to put together. Was primarily going to pay attention to OAV and BB/9 and kind of ignore HR/9. Since the stadiums are completely of choice I figured immediately on a HR limiting stadium. I started with 19 Verlander which quickly brought me to 19 Cole. I’ve used 20 Plesac with some regularity but I know that he kind of needs to be protected so I will use him in a combo of long relief and spot starts with a focus on trying to make sure that any time I start him its in my home ballpark.

I’ve been back playing the game for two years now, and this is the first team that I’ve taken to Municipal Stadium. Given the fact that my starting pitchers are HR prone, and the fact that I’ve got some guys in my line up that are triples demons, it seemed the logical place to put this group

Stats

Hitters: 5623 PA, .314/.389/.466

Pitchers: 1408 IP, .180 OAV, .85 WHIP, 1.90 BB/9, 1.01 HR/9

Goal: 90-72

WISC110 Twenty Five in a Row

I built a team real quick when this theme was initially released, but overall it was kind of aimless and I wasn’t super satisfied with it. I realized eventually that this should have been one of my easiest builds, because one thing that I like to do is to play with building teams with a 25 consecutive years style and I often will do it with a 110 million dollar cap (the only league I ever commissioned was exactly this) so I eventually built three teams and after running some numbers decided to go with this one as the best of the three. This team runs from 1896-1920.

In terms of hitters, I’ve got 02 Charlie Hickman who has been an absolute demon every time I’ve used him, and then I have 00 Honus who sucks in the field but is the most offensively productive version based on what I was looking for. I’ve often looked at the 12 Zimmerman but I don’t know if I’ve ever actually used him, he’s here. Had never heard of Bill Kenworthy, but he worked in terms of salary and in terms of statistics so he is here at the second base spot.

Am a little skeptical about my pitching, but stuck with an approach of low BB/9 and HR/9 and brought OAV as low as I could. Bullpen with Falkenberg, Quinn, and McQuillan are definitely at a little bit of a higher quality level than the starters. I’ve got Fred Anderson who will probably function as a spot start/long relief type guy.

Entered this team, and then pulled and switched my stadium. Going with Old Comiskey since it has a triples boost and I’ve got a lot of guys who hit a lot of triples. Hoping it helps!

Stats

Hitters: 5805 PA, .344/.408/.506

Pitchers: 1400 IP, .209 OAV, .94 WHIP, 1.85 BB/9, .06 HR/9

Goal: 90-72

WISC120 We Hit Home Runs

Like most people, I looked at this and thought that Target had to be the move in terms of creating a team and quickly built one, but like chicks, I also dig the long ball and the pull of Yankee Stadium was too much (I’ve had mixed luck with Yankee Stadium power teams in the past).

I feel good about this offense, because even though I’ve got a bunch of HR guys they are also just hitters. Other than Tony Perez they don’t strike out very much and they can spray the ball a little bit, they aren’t too one dimensional. 48 Joe Gordon is at the bottom end of the line up as a set and forget guy, if he can get me 25 HR and a bunch of plus plays at second base I’ll be happy. Excited to use 39 Foxx (famous last words) and the low AB 62 Mantle. 2020 Seager is my WC and after I figured on this option, I mean…that kind of went without saying in my opinion.

The 2 per decade rule here definitely asked some questions in regards to putting together a pitching staff, but I’m happy with what I landed on here. I’ve got guys who have been good for me (and I’m sure everyone else) in DeGrom, Horlen, Devenski, and Ontiveros, and then some guys who I’ve never used before whose numbers looked good. Wanted to limit walks, and then even though I suspect a lot of 2B 3B hitters in people’s line ups I also didn’t want to completely write off HR/9

As I said, I had a team built for Target (and that is probably going to wind up the better option…) but couldn’t help myself. These guys are in Yankee Stadium.

Stats

Hitters: 5641 PA, .323/.406/.583

Pitchers: 1427 IP, .196 OAV, .92 WHIP, 1.96 BB/9, .35 HR/9

Goal: 85-77

WISC140 Ed Walsh is Funny

This was the team that I probably messed with the most. I went from being completely unsure of what I wanted to do, to having a team built and ready to enter featuring George Brett, Tony Phillips, Honus Wagner, and Ty Cobb as Joker (with a 3 Finger Brown pitching staff) before deciding to sit down and mess with a team with a pitcher as a joker. I put the team together, ran some numbers and found that loe and behold, it was.

Catcher was the position that I struggled with the most here, the first team that I had built had Spud Davis as a catcher and then two low AB seasons from him to fill out the position and meet requirements, but I felt like I was wasting roster spots both with him and with the 82 Tony Phillips season that I had to use. I had to try and make Joe Mauer work and I eventually did, so I have his 08 season behind the plate and his 09 season with the great bat but noodle arm as my primary DH. His 04 season will spell them both. I’ve got Miguel Cabrera at 1B and 3B, his 18 season will spell himself at first. Stayed with Honus Wagner. My one concern is that if the 01 Wagner (who has some extra plate appearances) gets moved around to fill in elsewhere, I don’t have anyone else listed as a 2B. The 03 Wagner (who I have in the outfield) will fill in there if necessary. And then I’ve got Mickey Mantle as my final offensive guy. I’m using the low AB 62 version in another one of the leagues, and I found his 63 version knowing that he would work well as a back up. Then I’ve got the 55 one to bat clean up and anchor the outfield defense in center.

Dabbled a bit between 10 Walsh and 13 Johnson with this team but decided to go with Walsh (who I’ve never used) since he’s a little cheaper and has a few more innings. I’ll run a slightly unbalanced three man rotation with him and a couple Max Scherzer seasons. Going to use the partial 21 season for Scherzer as my first long relief guy. I’ve looked at that season since it was released but hadn’t been able to find a place for it. Stumbled onto Huston Street here as a quality low IP reliever so I’ll have three of his seasons in my bullpen. One full and two partial Andrew Miller seasons joined the team (narrowly over Billy Wagner who I almost went with). Then I’ve got the 65 and 66 Hoyt Wilhelms to use as the biggest inning guys in my pen and the 58 version to meet requirements.

Going to go for it in terms of scoring runs so I put these guys in Globe Life.

Stats

Hitters: 6144 PA, .338/.426/.545

Pitchers: 1424 IP, .179 OAV, .85 WHIP, 1.96 BB/9, .61 HR/9

Goal: 85-77

My strategy was to not have a strategy.

This is my first WISC, but I always liked reading these threads in the past to get a sense of what people were thinking when they built their teams. Thanks to all who take the time to contribute to this thread and to those who put in the hours to make WISC a thing. I have no idea what to expect in this tourney but I enjoyed the challenge of building these teams and that's a huge part of what makes sim fun.

Overall Theme: 'Ed's up!

Ed Delahanty (ED) has gone from a name I had maybe vaguely heard in passing before I started playing sim to one of my favourite all-time players today. I took a chance with him on a Phillies franchise team and he led them to my first TOC. Since then I've tried to include him on all my teams, where possible. I would recommend reading his tragically short SABR bio.

$70M:

2017-2021. I already hate this theme for the non-inclusive EDless restrictions, but I'll make the best of it. I find the areas people tend to skimp on at lower caps are catcher's arm and OAV, so I've loaded the top of the lineup with 2 big SB guys in Merrifield and Hamilton and the rest are the best AVG# at each position I could afford. I'm a big fan of high AVG players and you'll see this theme throughout my teams. Couldn't afford good range but tried not to skimp on fielding % too much. Tried to grab a few switch hitters and ended up with 4. For me, Donovan Solano is the perfect DH, with .336# and D/D- at every position so you're not wasting money on his defensive numbers. I've used a lot of pitchers from this era before but never at cap this low, so the pitching staff is 13 players I've never used before. Seems like 2020 Hendricks is a popular ace pick so I'm relieved with that. 5428PA, 1328 IP. Started in Kauffman but got scared and moved to Busch II.

$80M:

Post 1920. Great. Another league full of EDless horsemen. I usually play caps lower or higher than this and I've never played in an open league before, so I did some scouting and it seemed like every $80M open league team with 90+ wins, without exception, had 2019 Ketel Marte, 2016 Jose Ramirez and 2017 Marwin Gonzalez. How boring. I wouldn't normally draft those guys because of the lowish AVG and lack of range but they must be doing something right. So I figured I'd start there. Rest of the lineup is the best AVG# players I could find that looked like a good value on $/PA. Almost all my regular teams at $120M or less have 1958 Hal Smith/2001 Shawn Wooten combo at catcher, so they make an appearance here. 1981 Larry GURA (always capitalized) is a favourite #2 or #3 SP at $100M, so he's my defacto ace here. 1992 Tewksbury, 1942 Tiny Bonham and 1920 Babe Adams are the rest of the rotation. Bullpen full of low IP arms. No one over $1.76M. 5200 PA, 1,374 IP. Royals Stadium.

$100M:

All seasons available. Now we're talking! For $100M I usually go 55/45 hitting/pitching, so it's wasn't a big stretch to go 60/40, but you definitely feel the difference. At long last, we welcome 1899 ED with his .397# average, 10 2B/100#, 688PA and B/B- in CF. His $10.7M salary will be well earned. As mentioned earlier, GURA is a favourite at $100M, as are his rotation mates 1945 Roger Wolff and 1902 Bill Bernhard, so I started there for the pitching staff. Filled in 1971 Fritz Peterson as #4 SP to eat innings and have a lot of sub-$1M arms in the pen who are all on a 5 hook. Offence outside of ED is average and doubles heavy with lots of range to help out that $40M pitching staff. Big fan of range monsters 1903 Nap Lajoie and 1925 Dave Bancroft up the middle, and they both earned a spot on this squad. Smith/Wooten behind the plate again. Special appearance by my favourite mop up, 2011 Brian Matusz. You can't get 50 IP in 1 pitching slot for less than $300K anywhere else. 5433PA, 1,401 IP. Palace of the Fans, my favourite stadium.

$110M:

Didn't think too much about round 2. I just tried to make the best squad possible and worry about round 2 if I make it there. Mandatory ED is 1902 who joins 4 other players who hit .360-380# to round out the top of the order. Bottom of the order features 1903 Lajoie who gets a promotion from the $100M squad and he's joined up the middle with 1980 Gary Templeton. Reliable Smith/Wooten make a third, and final, appearance behind the plate. Went with one deadballer (1914 Russ Ford) and 3 modern guys (2019 Verlander, 2017 Kluber and 2020 Maeda) in the rotation. Hoping the HR don't hurt too bad and will be offset by the lower OAV. 5363 PA, 1371 IP. Municipal Stadium.

$120M:

I started with a Target team I was quite happy with it only to find out I completely screwed up with the rules so I blew up that squad for a Yankee Stadium team. I've been successful with some high OBP/HR teams in Kingdome and Sick's but Yankee lends itself more to high AVG than high OBP and of course Target really limits HR hitters. So I decided to go with a home/road platoon in the OF and 3B with high AVG/HR guys at home and just high AVG guys at Target road games. 1955 Ted Williams, 1973 Hank Aaron and 1926 Cy Williams will patrol the OF with 1995 Matt Williams at 3B for home games at Yankee. On the road at Target, 1996 Jim Eisenreich, 1955 Elmer Valo and 1919 Possum Whitted will play OF with 1982 Wade Boggs taking over at 3B. 1903 Nap Lajoie and 1925 Bancroft are reunited from their appearance in the $100M squad for solid range up the middle. Obligatory ED is 1894, playing 1B and leading off. Behind the plate Smith/Wooten is a bit of a stretch for this cap, so I went 1902 Peitz to deal with SB heavy teams and paired him with 1934 Danning. Took as much deadball pitching as I could in one shot with 1910 Russ Ford. Him, 1964 Sandy Koufax and 1964 Joe Horlen will pitch at home with 1977 Tom Seaver and 2018 Chris Sale doing most of the Target games. Bullpen was basically just getting the best RP from the remaining decades to fulfill the rules. 5460 PA, 1398 IP.

$140M:

All seasons available and high cap, with clones. Want to guess who my first choice clone was? If you've been scoring at home, you won't be surprised that 1901, 1894 and 1898 ED will be hitting 1-2-3 with Joker 1911 Cobb behind them in the cleanup spot. Looks like a lot of people took a deadball pitcher for their Joker, so I may have gone against the grain here. Dave Bancroft has great 2B range in addition to SS range and has a decent enough 3B season to fill out the IF with ED at 1B. Various Sy Sutcliffe and Babe Phelps seasons will cover C and DH and Sutcliffe can cover a few games at SS and 2B if needed. Pedro and Kershaw at SP with Doolittle and Jansen in the pen. 6151 PA, 1423 IP. Municipal Stadium.

Holiday weekend, and you’ve got some time on your hands, right? Good, because you’ll be here a while. Let’s start with an explainer that may or may not be familiar to some of you. What is this username of mine, redcped, all about? I’ll let Graham Chapman explain:
https://youtu.be/GOxECFyUcLc

OK, if you couldn’t be bothered to watch two minutes of Life of Brian, I’ll fill you in. See, he’s proud to be a Red Sea Pedestrian, you know, like the Jews walking across after Moses parted the waters. So, yeah, that’s who I am, too.

Why does this have anything to do with this tournament? I’m glad you asked. Short answer: nothing important. What happened is I built my 140M team first and noticed as I was writing up that one that I had rostered the two greatest Jewish ballplayers, Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg. It was never part of my plan, but once I realized they both worked … well, I’m just hoping to ride some of that JewJew to the Promised Land - aka Round 2.

And then, because I’m kind of silly sometimes, I made sure to roster at least one Jewish player on every other team just to make sure I spread the JewJew around (this should not be confused with Pedro Cerrano’s Joboo, just to be clear - https://youtu.be/vY0L-bcncXA). I used Baseball Almanac as my arbitrator on membership in my tribe. I once fielded the Star of David squad in the Extreme Themes league, which was a lot of fun but my Judeans got routinely pummeled when Koufax didn’t pitch. I should have found a way to use Max Fried in the 70M and Moe Berg somewhere, I suppose, but this frivolity shouldn’t get in the way of building my best team either.

There’s a sub-theme of entertainment in here, too, with all the team names playing off TV show titles and a few musical interludes to keep you clicking and tapping your feet. Enjoy the show!

70M Pretty Little Bleiers - for RP Richard Bleier
I feel like there’s no avoiding the worst of modern baseball in this theme at this cap, because you’re pretty limited on who you can draft that might be a useful outlier. The 5-per-year limitation was less a challenge than just finding players without huge weaknesses who are affordable. My pitchers are going to give up homers. The only hope is we hit more than we allow. My defense is mediocre, and my catchers couldn’t throw my grandma (z”l) out. But I’m counting on a low number of opponents emphasizing the running game, and also fewer balls are put in play in this era so relatively defense is a bit less valuable.

I’m sure it would have been smart to try a few different builds on this and try to optimize the team, but basically once I’d maneuvered it to fit the requirements I just went with what I have. You have to use a 5-man rotation in this era, I think, and I have guys ranging from 164 to 220 innings. Three of them are decent enough (20 Hendricks, 19 Kershaw, 20 Wainwright), and the others I’ll just hope don’t suck too much. I notice this staff strikes out 7 per 9 innings, which feels low for the era, but I was trying to limit walks too.

The DH really amped up the degree of difficulty because splitting that offense money 9 ways constrained options. I needed 12 pitchers to manage the innings well enough and could have probably gone with 13 even, but that meant very little bench to work with regardless. So I needed to find 600+ PA hitters who didn’t cost much more than $4M to make it all work. Lotta “three true outcomes” guys wound up working. I’ll put them in Great American Ballpark (+2 HR) and just embrace the crazy.

Lineup:
2018 Andrew Benintendi RF .290/.366/.495
2017 Carlos Santana LF .278/.371/.505
2019 Max Muncy 3B .251/.374/.515
2018 Khris Davis DH .247/.326/.549
2021 Joey Gallo CF .199/.351/.508
2018 Edwin Encarnacion 1B .246/.336/.474
2021 Jake Cronenworth 2B .266/.340/.440
2017 Brian McCann C .241/.323/.436
2018 Freddy Galvis SS .248/.299/.380

Rotation:
2020 Kyle Hendricks RH 220 IP, 2.88 ERA, 1.00 WHIP
2019 Clayton Kershaw LH 178, 3.03, 1.04
2020 Adam Wainwright RH 183, 3.15, 1.05
2017 Alex Cobb RH 179, 3.66, 1.22
2019 Ty Blach LH 164, 4.78, 1.36

Raw stats:
5925 PA, .251/.340/.465, 247 2B, 25 3B, 267 HR, 63/18 SB/CS
1336 IP, 3.40 ERA, .239 OAV, 1.11 WHIP

80M Horlen’s Heroes - SP Joe Horlen
If I started this team over again and started from different positions, I’d probably end up with only a couple of the same players. Once I crossed out a franchise, I basically ignored other options from it. In retrospect, this likely means I missed a lot of opportunities to field a better team if I’d just been willing to go back and rethink a roster spot I’d settled on earlier. On the other hand, it’s done, the team is totally unloveable, and yet I really can’t find the enthusiasm to do it twice.

I wound up with a pretty balanced offense that will use a few platoons to make the best use of the salary requirement. A few guys have good speed, we draw walks, a handful can hit homers, there’s some decent range but we’ll make too many errors, and each player fills a role or two with some versatility at my disposal. Only 3 guys have at least 600 PA, so this will require a lot of active managing game by game – but that’s something I like to do anyway.

We’ll stick this lineup in Yankee II for a slight decrease on 2B and 3B that we don’t do particularly well and give the pitchers a little break to stretch out the innings. Maybe a more severe pitchers’ park would have been smarter, but I don’t have much of a read on this offense. I probably should have built for a specific park, but the salary and team constraints seemed hard enough to work through so I just tried to be solid instead of specialized.

Not at all intentional, but 9 of my 11 pitchers are from 1963 to 1980 and no one after 1994 wound up on there. And 10 of my 14 hitters are from 1997 to 2019. I’ll let you know in a couple months if that meant anything good. Also, if anyone can explain how I ended up with Freddy Galvis on both the 70M and 80M teams despite never using him before, kindly call my mother. She’d love to hear from someone, I’m sure.

My rotation starts off with 1975 Randy Jones. I had the ‘76 in there originally, but at the end I got down to 5 spots left and had under $5M left. So I had to save $800K and get 31 fewer IP from him. Joe Horlen and Jerry Reuss, two guys I’ve had success with, and 140 IP from Doyle Alexander complete the rotation. The pen has no one particularly good or interesting, but a few are high IP/G guys to minimize blowups due to in-game fatigue. Instead they’ll just blow up the old-fashioned way – because they suck.

Lineup:
1934 Jo-Jo White RF .313/.419/.385
1933 Bob Johnson LF .290/.387/.505
2019 Josh Bell 1B .277/.367/.569
1948 Larry Doby CF .301/.384/.490
2015 Kris Bryant 3B .275/.369/.488
2000 Mitch Meluskey C .300/.401/.487
1997 Eric Young 2B .282/.363/.408
2019 Freddy Galvis SS .267/.299/.444

Rotation:
1975 Randy Jones LH 285 IP, 2.24 ERA, 1.05 WHIP
1967 Joe Horlen RH 258, 2.06, 0.95
1980 Jerry Reuss LH 228, 2.51, 1.02
1976 Doyle Alexander RH 140, 3.29, 1.12

Raw stats:
5426 PA, .286/.370/.474, 286 2B, 35 3B, 177 HR, 110/41 SB/CS
1423 IP, 2.51 ERA, .228 OAV, 1.06 WHIP

Musical interlude (Hint: It’s about Jews and again features Monty Python, but has nothing to do with baseball)
https://youtu.be/R6VKf6bXCCo

100M Greenberg Acres - OF Hank Greenberg
The first decision is where to spend the $60M, and though I tend to be a pitching-first owner this felt like an easy call. You can build a good enough staff with $40M if you help them out with the park and defense, and the extra money for offense can assure you the gloves. I decided to build for the Astrodome and favor pitchers who are higher on OAV but limit walks, and let the fielders and the park take care of the rest. I suspect a lot of people will go this route, because it just seems pretty intuitive. Then again, I have lousy intuition.

Heading the rotation are 1916 Dick Rudolph and 1920 Babe Adams, followed by 1992 Bob Tewksbury and 1909 Rube Kroh. Most of those guys don’t give up many homers in case we play a lot of road games in HR-friendly parks or face power teams. The bullpen features 1915 Hooks Wiltse, 1910 Deacon Philippe, 1969 Hoyt Wilhelm, and 2017 Pat Neshek. Going low-ish on innings at 1,368 and counting on the park and defense to make that work.

I wanted a lineup with speed and good averages that can benefit from the +1 in triples and didn’t rely on homers. I’ve got 6 guys with at least 80 speed, and all but one hit at least .327. There’s plus range at several spots, too.

Lineup:
1916 Ty Cobb RF .371/.452/.493
1910 Sherry Magee LF .331/.445/.507
1922 Ray Grimes 1B .354/.442/.572
1979 George Brett 3B .329/.376/.563
1910 Tris Speaker CF .340/.404/.468
1927 Frankie Frisch 2B .337/.387/.472
1889 Buck Ewing C .327/.383/.477
2005 Rafael Furcal SS .284/.348/.429

Rotation:
1916 Dick Rudolph RH 333 IP, 2.16 ERA, 0.97 WHIP
1920 Babe Adams RH 277, 2.16, 0.98
1992 Bob Tewksbury RH 233, 2.16, 1.02
1909 Rube Kroh LH 128, 1.65, 1.06

Raw stats:
5730 PA, .328/.400/.492, 295 2B, 119 3B, 96 HR, 327/186 SB/CS
1368 IP, 2.13 ERA, .234 OAV, 0.99 WHIP

110M Better Call Saul Rogovin - RP Saul Rogovin
I built this team last … like way last. Like a few weeks after the others were done. I figured I’d have plenty of time for it and then got busy with many other things, including some drafts, and then as the deadline neared I was building my draft lists for schwarze’s Redistribution league. All this to say that I got it to work and left it alone, and as a result I know it lacks the sort of thought that could really pay off in an essentially open league like this. And no, I didn’t even think to build a R2 team now and then choose which one to enter, because every time I’ve done that I didn’t make it to R2 so forget that cursed behavior.

I have been using a 1-2A-2B setup in the Big Dick Identical Roster league and quite like the neatness of it. The tricky part is nailing the innings, but I gave myself plenty of leeway by drafting basically all SP in the bullpen so anyone can spot start. I think I’d been reading one of schwarze’s bullpen diatribes and decided to see how it might work using all starters there to take in-game fatigue out of the equation. Might be fun. Could be pointless. Like most of the things my brain agonizes over.

The principal SP are 1918 Walter Johnson, 1904 Mordecai Brown, and 2013 Clayton Kershaw, with 874 total IP. The bullpen includes the seasons you’re well familiar with: Red Ruffing, Dizzy Dean, Carl Weilman, Joel Pineiro, Tyler Glasnow, Saul Rogovin. A bit over half the innings are deadballers, so I’ve left myself plenty of good seasons for a R2 team.

I aimed on offense for some speed, good averages, and minimal reliance on homers. I didn’t have the park firmly in mind until I set the starting 8 and Royals Stadium offered the best fit to push the 2B and 3B. The defense is solid, and the bench will barely be needed.

Lineup:
1919 Ty Cobb RF .384/.429/.515
1936 Ben Chapman CF .315/.408/.472
1925 Jim Bottomley 1B .367/.413/.578
1944 Bob. Johnson LF .324/.431/.528
1977 George Brett 3B .312/.373/.532
1931 Mickey Cochrane C .349/.423/.533
1996 Eric Young 2B .324/.393/.421
2005 Rafael Furcal SS .284/.348/.429

Rotation:
1918 Walter Johnson RH 413 IP, 1.27 ERA, 0.95 WHIP
1904 Mordecai Brown RH 225, 1.87, 0.97
2013 Clayton Kershaw LH 236, 1.83, 0.92

Raw stats:
5557 PA, .328/.397/.499, 327 2B, 84 3B, 114 HR, 173/87 SB/CS
1408 IP, 1.89 ERA, .206 OAV, 0.96 WHIP

Musical interlude II (Hint: Contains dancing and Jews, but again no baseball)
https://youtu.be/ZhdlKgAakHw

120M Latman Standing - RP Barry Latman
The first decision certainly has to be the ballpark here. I thought about it more in terms of the negatives. Will a team designed for Yankee III fare poorly on the road at Target, and will teams largely be set up to prevent homers anyway? Or is a team designed for Target more likely to struggle playing at Yankee III?

My conclusion is that a Target team has fewer disadvantages and can be built to perform well enough at Yankee III, too. Yankee is a +1 for 1B and -1 for 2B, so a team designed around those as opposed to 3B and HR should be fine. Target is 0/+1 in those, so overall I can expect a boost in hits generally and at worst a small boost to doubles. The 3B and HR will have more dramatic impacts.

As I usually prefer, I built a pitching staff I liked first and then tweaked it around the edges at the finish as the decade holes needed filling. Going with 1905 Mathewson for the deadball money despite his strongly not-at-all-Jewish vibe, followed in the rotation by 1997 Pedro, 1964 Koufax and 2018 Sale. In case I need a spot starter, I’ve got 4 guys in the pen who can fill in (58 Latman, 43 Niggeling, 55 Rogovin, 16 Hill). The other key arms are 81 Gossage, 20 Kolarek and 09 Bailey. Gets me to 1,430 IP including a mopup so I think I should avoid fatigue woes. I actually swapped out 64 Bill Henry for Rogovin at the end to get another ~20 innings, one more Jew, and also someone to be more of a long man.

The lineup features four guys at the top (Speaker, Delahanty, Williams, Grimes) who are high-average and hit doubles and a few triples when the park favors it, but not depending on HR for their SLG. I slotted doubles machine Billy Herman in at 2B, alongside more A+ range at 3B with Baker and SS with Ozzie. The defense might be a bit error-prone in spots, which I don’t love, but you can’t have everything.

Lineup:
1913 Tris Speaker CF .363/.441/.533
1902 Ed Delahanty RF .376/.453/.590
1940 Ted Williams LF .340/.442/.594
1922 Ray Grimes 1B .354/.442/.572
1913 Frank Baker 3B .337/.413/.493
1936 Billy Herman 2B .334/.392/.470
1937 Babe Phelps C .317/.357/.469
1985 Ozzie Smith SS .276/.355/.361

Rotation:
1905 Christy Mathewson RH 359 IP, 1.28 ERA, 0.93 WHIP
1997 Pedro Martinez RH 242, 1.90, 0.93
1964 Sandy Koufax LH 223, 1.74, 0.93
2018 Chris Sale LH 158, 2.11, 0.86

Raw stats:
5586 PA, .333/.406/.502, 364 2B, 97 3B, 92 HR, 159/124 SB/CS
1430 IP, 1.72 ERA, .191 OAV, 0.93 WHIP

140M Strangers with Sandy - SP Sandy Koufax
I started out thinking I’d use Lajoie at 2B and build around him, but I found it pretty difficult to create a 9-man pitching staff I liked and didn’t think 12 pitchers would leave me enough options to fill my lineup. Using modern relievers to fill 5-6 spots leaves you needing about 1000 more innings, and not many pitchers have 3 seasons that add up well and don’t go way over budget. After trying a few possibilities, I pivoted and dropped 1910 Ed Walsh onto the staff and worked from there. I never tried any other Joker options.

My first version had a bullpen of Mariano Rivera and Arthur Rhodes, and the money/innings worked pretty well with Mordecai Brown. But once I built my hitting and decided to play at Palace of the Fans, I felt Brown’s OAV wasn’t ideal and I was overpaying for his reduced HR rate that the park would help take care of. So I tinkered with everyone from Kershaw to Pedro to Johnson to Clemens, trying to find the right combination of 3 seasons that hit the inning and cost targets. Eventually I decided to spend a tad more on pitching and go with two of the strong Sandy Koufax seasons (1963 and 1966) to lock down a 3-man rotation of 300-inning plus guys who can handle giving up extra hits in Palace. Also, my youngest son’s middle name is Koufax, so yeah, maybe I need help managing expectations.

Eventually I had to shave a little cash and swapped around relievers before settling on two other guys who don’t allow many hits: Joe Nathan (2004, 2006, 2013) and Billy Wagner (2005, 2010, mop). This set me up with 1,452 IP and a team OAV of .189. I’m not sure why I wasn’t comfortable with those innings, but I had a feeling playing in Palace at this cap would tax my pitching more than I might be expecting. So at the last minute I swapped Wagner for Jim Brewer (1971, 1972, 1975 mop) to add another 25 innings to the pen at what should hopefully be similar results.

I started building my lineup around Tris Speaker, knowing I could use him in CF and had an option for a 1B season if it were necessary. I considered Cobb briefly instead, but I’m usually really happy with Speaker. I grabbed Frankie Frisch to cover 2B and 3B, as I’m fond of his great range 1927 season at 2B and his 1924 is good enough at 3B (C/A). He gives me a couple speedy switch-hitters who hit plenty of singles and triples. The downside was having to use a $1.5M scrub season, which I kept thinking would force me to go with another plan but I made it work.

I went through several candidates to fill two of the 1B/DH/3rd OF spots: Pete Browning, Joe Medwick, Lance Berkman, Roger Connor, and Honus Wagner. I wanted a RH or SH to balance with Speaker, plus a lot of XBH. I probably could have been happy with any of them and had a version done with Medwick, but for some reason I started tinkering with Hank Greenberg. I had at first dismissed him because I thought he’d be too HR-dependent. But Hank was a well-rounded hitter, and his 1934 and 1940 seasons feature 63 and 50 doubles, respectively, and fit nicely at 1B and DH. That meant I could go with Speaker across the OF for strong range, with 1914, 1921 and 1923 giving me A+, A, B+ out there. Plus, he’s the original Hebrew Hammer!

Squeezing in a catcher and SS who had cheap seasons available took some digging. I started out trying to platoon a couple Wally Schangs, but I couldn’t make him work. I settled on Walker Cooper, with 442 and 191 PA seasons plus a 325K scrub, but then when I went to enter the team I was double checking everything … and d’oh! I’d taken one of the wrong Nathan seasons! That forced a couple shifts of Speaker seasons but also allowed one of the catchers I’d targeted off the bat: Ted Simmons. I’ll have the 562 PA season from 1980 for most of the time, with a couple scrub seasons to back up and PH.

I wanted a great defensive shortstop regardless of offensive ability, and with about $6M to spend on three versions I wound up with 1960 Ron Hansen (B/A+) along with two sub-500K scrub seasons. All told I’m wasting about $3M on the bench, which isn’t ideal but I can’t really figure out how to avoid a certain amount of it whoever you choose. Unless you only use 12-13 hitters, I suppose, but I wasn’t going to redo everything to try it.

Lineup:
1914 Tris Speaker CF .338/.423/.503
1923 Tris Speaker LF .380/.469/.610
1940 Hank Greenberg DH .340/.433/.670
1934 Hank Greenberg 1B .330/.404/.600
1921 Tris Speaker RF .362/.439/.538
1927 Frankie Frisch 2B .337/.387/.472
1924 Frankie Frisch 3B .328/.387/.468
1980 Ted Simmons C .303/.375/.505
1960 Ron Hansen SS .255/.342/.440

Rotation:
1910 Ed Walsh RH 392 IP, 1.27 ERA, 0.82 WHIP
1963 Sandy Koufax LH 311, 1.88, 0.87
1966 Sandy Koufax LH 323, 1.73, 0.98

Raw stats:
6895 PA, .320/.396/.510, 432 2B, 99 3B, 168 HR, 166/110 SB/CS
1476 IP, 1.64 ERA, .191 OAV, 0.92 WHIP

Closing video (featuring neither Jews nor dancing, sorry to say):
https://youtu.be/QRJ38y4Jn6k

Less time consuming this year. Only the $140m was a puzzle theme. Good themes though 3 soup leagues seems like overkill.

$70m 2017-2021
Players I've never used before and probably will never use again. Balanced spending is my approach at low caps. So I searched in a narrow price range. Nobody is fulltime these days so I'm also somewhat balanced across all roster spots. Some choices were a tossup as there wasn't much difference between those at the top of my searches. So not much trouble to get exactly 5 from each season. The strategy is more important than the players chosen.

Need 6 SP to get enough innings though a couple of them will rotate through the bullpen. Not much power it's unaffordable at this cap. I didn't overdo low hr/9 counting on you guys not to draft power either, tho looking at some rosters I was wrong here. Mediocre glove too, salary formula doesn't discount for the cap size.. Speed is above average but not top priority as some claim, no use for speed if I can't hit.
Some people complained about the DH in this theme but all it means is I need more hitter stamina so it drafts more like a $67m cap.


$80m Decadent team x2
I don't remember drafting half these guys. Must have done this team early and quickly. I like using the entire roster and actively managing my team. $80m with no aaa is semi-lowcap so many players aren't quite good enough.
Pitching led by Bade Adams1920 and Steve McCatty. Then there's Heisser and Niggeling both of whom I'd like to trade back in. Can we do discards like in poker?


$100m pitching
Chose a pitching team mainly because less hitting stamina would be required. It's like having an extra $3M or so to spend. Though it's hard to gauge stamina without knowing what type everyone will select so I have some additional bad innings for protection. Don't need them as most did select pitching.
Ed Walsh and Shane Bieber were automatic selections. First draft had Christy Mathewson, intending to replace him with two 2020 pitchers but higher cost and logistical problems got in the way, So Christy it is .A slew of RP. Niggeling Kolarek Latman R.Hill two Bs and Carter Capps to try out his K numbers.
Drafted speedster King Kelly for C but ended up using him at 2b. My goto affordable C of Peitz with Montgomery backing up.Jack Doyle with speed and + at 1B. Jose Ramirez at 3b. I like McLemore with backup at cheap SS though nobody else seems to. Ketel Marte in the OF with Inciarte who I've never used before, along with Lonnie Smith and Bing Miller. Dode Criss at PH.


$110M
Basically an open league with a few limitations.There's enough years to go around that it's not much of a problem. I did save 1908 and 2020 pitching for the more important round 2. And saved some speedsters since I plan more of a speed team then.With scrubs I tried to avoid the popular years, Beyond that I selected whoever I wanted. Players I've used before.Good pitching high batting average and reasonable defense.


$120m
Target because power doesn't play well. Maxxed deadball innings with Bernhard and McGinnity throwing 442 ip. Wild card a 2020 pitcher I chose Bieber. Other SP DeGrom Hearn Sale. Higher HR pitchers will rest in Yankee stadium. RP from a variety of decades, mostly setup quality.

Frisch and Cobb. That's as far as my speed strategy got. Simmons to save dough, Travis Jackson too and because he's from the 30's. Wade Boggs because I needed 80's. Since it's a low power theme I went with .390+ hitters Heilman and Gwynn. Final position will be played by committee No shortage of good PH.


$140m
Old school puzzle and the most time consuming by far. Albatross had to be a picther and only 3 reasonable choices over $20, I like Ed Walsh. Tried out several trios of expensive pitchers before saving several million with 3 more Ed Walsh. His 495 inning season is a bargain. His 246 ip is adequate and will play Long B/ Spot starter.. And a good 29 ip filler. Looked for 3 good trios of RP and settled on Sean Doolittle, Andrew Miller and Segio Romo. 6 premier seasons, 2 ok low inning versions, and a mop. Considered a 2nd SP and more hitting slots but soon realized that would double my time commitment. Never mind.

SS was the problem spot. Auditioned several trios before going big with Honus Wagner playing SS-2B-3B for $27.5 million.Saved money at Catcher with the moderately priced Deacon Mcguire sporting a decent average in 3 combined years. I don't think power will play well so I went for average with Ty Cobb and Tony Gwynn. Cobb has 2 speedy $8m seasons and a part time 1914 filling in with a couple bench players.I took Gwynn's big .394 year a moderately priced .370 year and a backup year.
Stamina is on the low end so I didn't pick the hitters ballpark I really wanted.

Collective Strategy:

I started playing around with putting together pitching staffs that give up lots of HRs for the HR Bounty I was running and then with the deadball/modern TWISL theme, one of the factors was related to the impact of HRs allowed vs errors in overall RA/G. In the first scenario, it was quite easy to win lots of games with pitching staffs that gave up 300-400 HRs in HR friendly parks, and in the second, it was clear that the HR impact was priced in quite well, such that a pitcher similarly priced as another pitcher will essentially have the same RA/9 without regard to how they get to it. So, despite lots of HR heavy themes, not only did I not even look at the HR/9 for the pitchers I drafted, most of the time, their HR/9 is quite high.

I've also been playing around alot lately with very heavily offensive oriented teams and carried that over here, as well. My pitching staff essentially carries over through the $70-110m leagues with two players making their way on all four of those rosters. None of these pitching staffs look traditional in any sense of the word. In each case below, the guys highlighted are my high-IP pitchers. I’m not hiding starters in relief or big IP guys out of the pen. On most teams these days I run pitching staffs of 11-13 80-130 IP guys.

$70m: Ameriquest Field (+2, +1, +2, +1/+1)

No secret that I love the low caps. The lower the better. My favorite is $40m, though I always loved the old HLCYG leagues that ran as low as $25m (FYI, recently rebooted and recruiting for season 3 at $33m). I started with this one. Loved the restriction as it kept me from just copy and pasting another team in. Started with my pitching staff and drafted who I wanted, then filled in the hitters and made 2-3 adjustments to the pitching staff to fit hitters in a little better. Have a very OL-cookie heavy offense with the following LINEUP:
'20 Jeimer Candelario DH .297/.369/.503
'19 Ketel Marte CF .329/.389/.592
'17 Freddie Freeman 1B .307/.403/.586
'17 Marwin Gonzalez SS .303/.377/.530
'17 Asdrubal Cabrera 2B .280/.351/.434
'18 Eduardo Escobar 3B .272/.334/.489
'20 Jurickson Profar RF .278/.343/.428
'17 Yolmer Sanchez LF .267/.319/.413
'20 Yasmani Grandal C .230/.351/.422

Freddie is the only one that's not a switch hitter, and i have the aforementioned 1.000 FLD% Harrison and a similar 1.000 FLD % Mauricio Dubon on the bench. Also on the bench, three other RH bats with 100-180 PA to serve, as PH, spot starters, and defensive replacements. Speed plays up in low caps as power is usually too costly and easy to stifle, so an A+ arm is must. For this one range wasn't as important to me and I didn't mind paying up for some stud hitters with good FLD.

I'm running a 3-man rotation with:
'18 Mike Minor 157 IP 4.18/.235/1.12
'18 Masahiro Tanaka 156 IP 3.75/.240/1.13
'19 Domingo German 143 IP 4.03/.228/1.15

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 5,145 PA, .279 AVG, .351 OBP, .469 SLG
Pitching: 1,269 IP, 4.13 ERA, .234 OAV, 1.10 WHIP, 1.72 HR/9


$80m: Shibe Park (+2, 0, 0, 0/0)

Went a little more platoon heavy here with the minimum spend requirement. Took a full 13 man pitching staff and had to replace a couple of the cheaper RPs as they were below the floor. That said, I still kept 7 pitchers from the $70m league on this team and the rotation shifted to a 2-man rotation with Minor and Tanaka as German was one of the few that didn't make the cut here.

Offense is still very switch-hitter heavy with six of them in the lineup. Marte is the only hitter to graduate from the $70m team to the $80m team. I wanted a little more range to offset the added offense against my pitchers. Reggie Smith, Bobby Bonilla, Gary Templeton, Frankie Frisch, Myles Straw, and Lance Johnson fill out the core with a strong platoon at each 1B, C, SS, and Straw covering some PA at all both CF and LF.

More balanced overall offense with a mix of power and speed.

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 5,301 PA, .312 AVG, .371 OBP, .465 SLG
Pitching: 1,304 IP, 3.56 ERA, .227 OAV, 1.06 WHIP, 1.42 HR/9


$100m: Hilltop (+3, +3, +3, 0/-3)

No brainer for me to lean heavy into offense and I put them in an offense friendly park. I figured most would lean into pitching and go a pitching park, so I wanted an offense that should succeed there too by capitalizing on the parks benefits myself. This team is all high AVG good FLD and great range. I've got Tris Speaker, King Kelly, Honus Wagner, Billy Hamilton, etc... meanwhile, Tanaka and newcomer '79 John Fulgham round out the rotation. This LINEUP:
'93 Billy Hamilton LF .380/.490/.524
'94 Lave Cross 3B .386/.421/.524
'99 Ed Delahanty RF .410/.464/.582
'03 Roger Bresnahan 1B .350/.443/.493
'13 Tris Speaker CF .363/.441/.533
'03 Honus Wagner SS .355/.414/.518
'87 King Kelly 2B .322/.393/.488
'16 Wally Schang C .266/.358/.420

'19 Gavvy Cravath LF/1B/PH .341/.438/.640

is designed to score lots of runs, and at home, beat opponent pitchers into submission. While four pitchers from the $70m are still here, a number of others from the $80m have now carried themselves forward, as well.

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 5,529 PA, .351 AVG, .423 OBP, .511 SLG
Pitching: 1,337 IP, 3.15 ERA, .220 OAV, 0.98 WHIP, 1.27 HR/9

$110m: Oriole Park (+3, +1, 0, 0/0)

I've got just three pitchers left from the $70m squad, and two more from the $80m. We're back to a 3-man rotation with this one.
'81 Ron Guidry 193 IP 2.76/.214/0.99
'71 Rollie Fingers 131 IP 2.99/.207/0.96
'14 Jeff Samardzija 112 IP 3.14/.224/0.93

I thought long and hard about not using certain years to make sure they were available for a round two team, but did bite the bullet on 2020 to keep John Means. This will have been Means 4th team for me here in this tourney and he's just too valuable to pass up despite his HR rate. Given the stadium option for this one, I figured we'd see a bunch of -HR parks anyhow. My biggest decision here was saving '19 Cravath for round two. This lineup is like a mesh between my $120m and $140m teams:

'86 Dan Brouthers 1B .370/.445/.581
'99 Ed Delahanty RF .410/.464/.582
'12 Joe Jackson LF .395/.458/.579
'22 Ty Cobb CF .401/.462/.565
'13 Frank Baker 3B .337/.413/.493
'05 Honus Wagner SS .363/.427/.505
'87 King Kelly 2B .322/.393/.488
'89 Fred Carroll C .330/.486/.484

And I drafted FOUR stud PH as I plan to PH early and often here with the four combining for a slash of .327/.440/.468 over 448 PA

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 5,770 PA, .364 AVG, .441 OBP, .532 SLG
Pitching: 1,343 IP, 2.76 ERA, .215 OAV, 0.98 WHIP, 1.01 HR/9

$120M: Yankee III (+1, -1, -3, +3/+4)

I've now only got three carryover pitchers left from $80m and none from $70m. I've got another (weird) 3-man rotation of:
'46 Clayton Lambert 56 IP 4.27/.251/1.30
'15 Johnny Cueto 131 IP 2.62/.196/0.93
'08 CC Sabathia 131 IP 1.65/.222/1.00

Despite Yankee, I didn't really draft a HR team, but rather an XBH team with high AVG. '62 Mantle and '24 Ruth are the only two hitters to even hit 30 HRs and Ruth the only one to hit more. I figured most teams would go Target, so I wanted to combat that as best I could with an offensive oriented team. It didn't make sense to still put that team in Target with the amount of runs they'd be generating, so I still put them in Yankee where I hope Ruth, Williams, and Mantle play up and drive in all the high AVG/OBP guys around them. This LINEUP:

'30 Joe Cronin SS .346/.422/.513 13HR
'86 Dan Brouthers 1B .370/.445/.581 11HR
'24 Babe Ruth CF .378/.513/.739 46HR
'55 Ted Williams RF .356/.496/.703 28HR
/'19 Gavvy Cravath RF/LF .341/.438/.640 12HR
'62 Mickey Mantle LF .321/.486/.605 30HR
'20 Rogers Hornsby 2B .370/.431/.559 9HR
'13 Frank Baker 3B .337/.413/.493 12HR
'30 Mickey Cochrane C .357/.424/.526 10HR

should still hit some HRs, but is mostly designed to try to take advantage of those that took Target with their high AVG and OBP, decent FLD/range.

Overal stat lines:
Hitting: 5,612 PA, .352 AVG, .446 OBP, .576 SLG 189HR
Pitching: 1,336 IP, 2.30 ERA, .209 OAV, 0.96 WHIP, 0.61 HR/9

$140m: Baker Bowl (0, +4, +1, +2/+1)

This one took the longest for me to build by far. I immediately knew what I was going to do when I read the theme. I was going to take 2000 Pedro as my Joker and build this strong offense around him. Then when I went to draft him i discovered he was NOT over $20m, but just under it at $19.74... so, no biggie, I'd just take '95 Maddux instead... well, his $19.21m salary told me that would also not be a correct answer. So, then I decided I should actually look who the $20m pitchers are since I clearly have no idea. And that settled it... I was taking a hitter. I wanted as much bang for my buck as possible, so I wanted them to be able to play every game, hit like a crazy stud, and play some defense, since I wouldn't have the benefit of a $20m man in my rotation. That narrowed it to three guys really quickly, but then when I saw the actual price tags, it went to just one even faster. Ain't no way I was spending an extra $2-4m than I already had to. 1911 Cobb it was. So, then I had to get a pitching staff to work. I really tried hard to make one work with Kershaw, deGrom, Sherzer, but couldn't quite get the pieces to fit and kept ending up around $140.1m every time I tried. So, I did the sensible thing knowing that if there was a hitter it was likely a Ruth, Gehrig or Cobb, and there would likely be a bunch of Cobb, Ruth, and Speaker clones by dropping the LHP from my plans. I went with deGrom and Scherzer and then filled out my bullpen with Rick Aquilera and Darren O'Day, who happened to be the only two pitchers who met my criteria that had at least three seasons to choose from. Satisfied with the overall product, I went to work on the hitting.

I figured the vast majority would choose a pitcher for their Joker, which meant y'all were choosing a RH deadballer. Which meant I wanted a team of deadball hitters with high AVG and XBH and preferably, LH. I figured Kershaw and Doolittle would be popular choices for LHP, so I wanted at least one RH bat with some pop. My lineup ended up looking like this:

'97 Jesse Burkett LF .383/.468/.476
'00 Jesse Burkett DH .363/.429/.474
'01 Honus Wagner 2B .353/.416/.494
'11 Ty Cobb CF .420/.467/.621
'99 Jesse Burkett RF .396/.463/.500
'05 Honus Wagner SS .363/.427/.505
'40 Jimmie Foxx C .297/.412/.581
'31 Jimmie Foxx 3B .291/.380/.567
'39 Jimmie Foxx 1B .360/.464/.694

That should score a bunch off the non-Joker pitchers, and should still give the Jokers trouble.

I've got '17 Wagner on the bench as a multi position fatigue replacement, but felt with this lineup I may need a few more PA at 1B/OF, and still wanted a decent LHP, so I grabbed Johnny Cooney who has two great 80-150 PA seasons as a hitter as well as one decent (and just useable at this cap) low IP season on the mound. So, Cooney is my LH Specialist designated to try to minimize the impact of the Ruths, Cobbs, and Gehrigs... as well as the guy who'll spell Foxx and Cobb/Burkett if they get tired from all the runs they put up. We'll see how well he pans out.

I'm running a 5-man rotation here, I've got four deGrom/Scherzer seasons between 180-221 IP, plus the 92 IP '21 deGrom in the rotation, with an additional Scherzer, Cooney, Aguilera, and O'Day all as Specialists. This is the closest thing to a standard rotation I've drafted in probably close to a year.

This is the one I'm most looking forward to and the one that will most likely perform the worst overall.

Overal stat lines:
Hitting: 6,652 PA, .354 AVG, .430 OBP, .525 SLG
Pitching: 1,408 IP, 2.22 ERA, .192 OAV, 0.91 WHIP, 0.80 HR/9


Final Thoughts:

I had a ton of fun with these themes overall. Loved the simplicity while also forcing you to go outside the norms for most caps in terms of player selections and even strategies. The puzzle element of the Joker while realistically only giving a small number of choices (what are there, 9-10 total players over $20m?), but then also forcing you to choose a trade off choice with your clones...

The trade off choices in the years selected for the $110m, and for the $70m were great in their own ways... I got to play most of these in the sphere of strategy that I find enjoyable right now without also feeling like I have no chance (which is usually the case). I may still have no chance, but these teams feel competitive AND fun and normally WISC teams only feel competitive OR fun. So, kudos! Looking forward to getting these rolling and seeing how they actually play. Using a bunch of players I've not used before, or at least not in many years if I have...

Overall thoughts:

Reading through the themes initially, I wasn’t too excited. I understood the reasoning for them, wanting more simplicity in approving rosters, however, I personally loved the themes in previous years that required more research or creativity (last years AVG/OAV theme was one of my favorites on this site). Once I started building these teams, I found they weren’t as cut and dry as I originally thought, however, with the exception of the Joker league, each one was fairly easy for me to build and find a team I liked.

Being one of the commissioners, I needed to have my teams in long before other owners, and so in order to not drive myself crazy, I didn’t look at my teams once I entered them until yesterday. I knew I’d find changes I’d wanna make (like keeping Sean Doolittle over Huston Street in the $140m in order to have a dominant lefty out of the pen). Looking at my teams yesterday, I noticed a couple things that, while not bad, I’m curious to see how it plays:

1. I drafted a lot of HR’s.

2. I drafted a lot of lower cap “cookies” at higher caps

3. I drafted less than 1300 IP in 4 of the 6 leagues. Less than 1400 non-mop up in all 6.

$70M: 25 Ways to Lose

Petco Park (HR LF/RF:-3/-3 1B:-3 2B:-3 3B:2)

I’m fairly comfortable with low caps ($60m-$90m), so this one didn’t scare me. I decided to go heavy offense and average pitching for this theme as I made the assumption most owners don’t like low caps and will either draft poorly, draft too many IP, or too few IP. On paper their stats may not scream offensive powerhouse, but with 2019 Marte, 2018 Escobar, and 2019 McNeil at the core, I expect to score quite a bit. In line with point 1 above, this team has a combined 224HR. Because my pitching wasn’t anything too exciting, I went with Petco with the hopes that my offense will be better than my opponents offense. I don’t expect this team to dominate, but we should win 80-90 if all goes well.

Hitters: PA: 5821 2B: 317 HR: 224 AVG: .280 OBP: .338 SLG: .478 OPS: .816

Pitchers: IP: 1276 BB: 294 SO: 1155 HR/9: 1.1 OAV .227 WHIP: 1.08 ERA: 3.39

$80M: Socialism is the Bestism

Ballpark: Chase Field (HR LF/RF:1/0 1B:1 2B:1 3B:3)

I treated this league like an open league. The $1m minimum changed a little bit, but it really didn’t affect my process at all, the only difficult part was the franchise soup, as I found out a lot of my favorite players are from similar franchises. I didn’t like the 1920+ restriction because I love drafting hitters from that era, and personally don’t consider them any more of an advantage over modern pitchers. I took some OL favorites in this league, 2021 Schoop, 89 Sierra, 2019 Marte, 2017 Marwin, 69 Smith, 2016 Ramirez, 2011 Halladay, 1992 Tewksbury. Looking back, I wish I’d taken a little more range, but I’m hoping the extra firepower on offense with compensate. 5 guys hit 20+ HR, but we also hit a lot of 2B/3B so I put them in Chase. I like my pitching - have a lot of solid bullpen arms, and a couple horses at the top of the rotation. This team should perform well, and I expect them to be one of my better teams. My only concern is I am a little light on PA and if I get off to a hot start offensively, could run into fatigue.

Hitters: PA: 5480 2B: 304 3B: 43 HR: 184 AVG: .305 OBP: .360 SLG: .494 OPS: .854

Pitchers: IP: 1267 BB: 232 SO: 822 HR/9: .60 OAV .225 WHIP: 1.01 ERA: 2,29

$100M: Students of Capitalism

Ballpark: Baker Bowl (HR LF/RF:2/1 1B:0 2B:4 3B:1)

This was probably my favorite team to build - I love themes that give strategic choices, but don’t limit too much of the player pool. I drafted a hitters team and a pitchers team. For the pitchers team, I built my offense first, and like the previous theme, I just treated it like an OL. I had $40m to spend and most of my OL teams fall right around there. Then I drafted the most dominant pitching I could at $60m. It was dirty. I liked it a lot. But in experience in the sim, good hitting typically beats good pitching, and I envisioned the anger of seeing my stud pitchers getting thrashed by all the $60m offenses out there. So I built a hitters team just to see what I thought. I built my pitching staff using the same strategy as above - drafted one of my favorite OL staffs and then drafted a killer offense for $60m. Seeing both teams side by side, I still couldn’t decide so I put them both in SimMatchup and played them against each other. Much to my frustration - after 170 games, they were 85-85 against each other, so I just went with my gut and selected the hitters team. Pitching we’ve got a 3 man rotation of Halladay, Saberhagen, and Tewks - and a bunch of low IP starters in the bullpen for spot starts. Offense is anchored by 1919 Babe Ruth, 1913 Joe Jackson, 1979 George Brett, 1938 Bill Dickey, 2020 Corey Seager, 1960 Ted Williams (platooned with 1919 Gavvy) and 1973 Reggie Smith (platooned with 1963 Mickey). I drafted high range at SS, 3B, CF, and 2B (Schoop) - which should help my pitchers out when going against other offensive teams, and my hitters should rake against any $40m pitching staff. Put them in Baker Bowl to really exploit teams offensive abilities. This is another team I expect to do really well - but could struggle with hitters fatigue if we do too well.

Hitters: PA: 5432 2B: 286 3B: 71 HR: 243 AVG: .316 OBP: .402 SLG: .563 OPS: .965

Pitchers: IP: 1297 BB: 194 SO: 894 HR/9: .50 OAV .234 WHIP: 1.02 ERA: 2.39

$110M: Baseball Almanac

Ballpark: Baker Bowl (HR LF/RF:2/1 1B:0 2B:4 3B:1)

With every team I build where the stadium is required to be a place one of your players played, there is one thing I do first every time. Check the rules to see if I can roster 1919 Gavvy Cravath. Easily my favorite offensive player to use in the sim. In low caps, I pair him with 1900 Donlin or 1926 Ken Williams, in higher caps, I love 1960 Ted Williams. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t give round 2 any thought. I drafted the best team I could in round 1, and if I get to round 2, I’ll figure it out then. Being in Baker Bowl, I knew I wanted an offense that could hit, but also knew there’d probably be a lot of deadballers in this theme so I didn’t go too HR heavy. Joe Jackson and Jesse Burkett finish off the OF, Frank Baker and Willie Stargell at the corners, and Ketel Marte and Sherry Magee up the middle. I drafted nearly .500 OBP Fred Carroll at catcher. I’ve never used Marte at this cap, so I’m curious to see what he’ll do. Not expecting OL numbers but I expect he’ll do well enough. As mentioned before, I don’t really like using deadball pitchers and prefer modern guys. My rotation is Kershaw, Santana, DeGrom, and Pedro - with a bunch of fireballers in the bullpen. 5 guys have a sub .80 whip, 8 are sub .90. We’ll see if this team can hold up over the year. We’re coming in a little low on IP with 1255 - so this will be one I’ll need to actively manage for sure.

Hitters: PA: 5461 2B: 289 3B: 84 HR: 178 AVG: .339 OBP: .422 SLG: .550 OPS: .972

Pitchers: IP: 1255 BB: 266 SO:1410 HR/9: .60 OAV .194 WHIP: .91 ERA: 2.20

$120M: Bombs or Babes

Ballpark: Yankee Stadium (III) (HR LF/RF:3/4 1B:1 2B:-1 3B:-3)

When given the choice between Yankee or Target, it wasn’t even a debate. I knew I was taking Yankee and I was gonna lean into HR as much as possible, while still trying to be competitive. I knew the majority of teams would be going to choose Target Field, but I didn’t care. My base numbers aren’t as high as other teams, but I know all my guys can outperform their RL numbers. Offense is anchored by 1919 Ruth (a personal favorite), 1926 Cy Williams (platooned with 1919 Gavvy Cravath), 1999 Chipper Jones, 1972 Dick Allen, and 1953 Roy Campanella. 1923 Hornsby and 1943 Stephens go up the middle. You’d think that by going Yankee stadium I’d have gone with the deadballers on the pitching side, but no. My staff looks similar to the $110M team, with a rotation of Kershaw, DeGrom, Pedro and Koufax. Bullpen isn’t as deadly, but I sacrificed some firepower for extra innings and grabbed 1904 Robitaille and 1908 Arellanes.

I don’t know how well this team will do - but it will be fun to watch with a team slugging just under .600. My pitching isn’t the most dominant, but their sub .200 OAV and .95 whip should give me a chance to win games.

Hitters: PA: 5385 2B: 301 3B: 55 HR: 271 AVG: .329 OBP: .430 SLG: .599 OPS: 1.029

Pitchers: IP: 1342 BB: 286 SO:1398 HR/9: .50 OAV .199 WHIP: .93 ERA: 2.01

$140M: Joker’s got a Big Train

Ballpark: Fenway Park (HR LF/RF:1/0 1B:2 2B:4 3B:0)

This was the only theme for me that took more than an hour or two to build. I really wanted to use Ruth as the Joker, and follow it up with 3 additional Ruth seasons. My favorite part about this theme is that the cap was only $140M. In years past, I imagine the cap for this would have been $180+, which wouldn’t have made it difficult to just plug and play. The lowerish cap made you make choices and be more creative. Originally, I had Ruth, Hornsby, and Foxx on the offense - but just couldn’t make it work. Then I tried to get LaJoie in there, but still kept falling short. Eventually, I made a very difficult choice and selected Walter Johnson as my Joker. As I’ve mentioned a couple times in this - I’m not a huge fan of deadball pitchers. I tried very hard not to pick Johnson, or any of the other options, but just couldn’t make it work in the time I had. Looking back, I’d probably mirror my brother and take Cobb as the Joker, but too late now. I knew who I wanted at SS. Jose Iglesias has 3 seasons that combine for around 700PA and $7m. I played around with a lot of different combinations on offense, but eventually settled on DJ LeMahieu at 2B/3B, Joe Torre at C and 1B, Joe Jackson in LF/RF and Ruth in CF and DH. On the pitching side - I didn’t have to change too much with the addition of Johnson, I knew Kershaw was a must, and took his 14, 15, and 16 seasons. Then I grabbed Pedro’s 01 and 02, Huston Street’s 07, 12, and 14. On paper, we look solid on both sides of the ball. I don’t love this team though, and if I could pick one team to do over, it’d be this one. I chose Fenway to let the extra base hits fly.

Hitters: PA: 6275 2B: 329 3B: 96 HR: 203 AVG: .340 OBP: .416 SLG: .546 OPS: 962

Pitchers: IP: 1412 BB: 226 SO:1547 HR/9: .40 OAV .192 WHIP: .85 ERA: 1.81

The 1920+ restriction for the $80m wasn't to ban deadballers for strategic reasons, it was to make roster verification easier as I thought I'd have to keep straight all the different franchise names from the early baseball period. This was before I knew there was a Franchise Soup option in the draft center that did the work for me.

Posted by 06gsp on 5/30/2022 2:01:00 PM (view original):
The 1920+ restriction for the $80m wasn't to ban deadballers for strategic reasons, it was to make roster verification easier as I thought I'd have to keep straight all the different franchise names from the early baseball period. This was before I knew there was a Franchise Soup option in the draft center that did the work for me.

That’s good to know. Whenever someone does 1920+ I just assume it’s to ban deadballers lol

Reading other peoples' strategies is giving me imposter syndrome.

Posted by normy17 on 5/30/2022 5:41:00 PM (view original):
Reading other peoples' strategies is giving me imposter syndrome.

Just because I had a lot to say doesn't mean any of it will work!