I don’t know who you think BigScungil is, but here is who I think you think he is:
In a prior life, I was an accountant for the Atlantic City mob. Long story. Let’s just say I took the fall for the crook in the tower. Now, I am incarcerated in comfortable surroundings somewhere in Central Pennsyltucky. The ‘prison’ ain’t bad. The food is good. We have steak every Saturday and spaghetti with meatballs and red gravy on Sunday. We get Netflix, the library is full and most importantly the internet access is the sh!t. I mean, I get to play WIS all friggin’ day unlike youse poor saps who got day jobs. Trust me, when I say, working with fake baseball numbers is better than laundering money for so an’ so.
$80 M – Stay Classy San Diego (that Will Farrell is a friggin’ genius)
Open leagues are for rooks and punks so I don’t have time for them. Honestly, with the disparity in triple -A players and trades the situation is completely rigged. A few guys at the top know how to run the numbers to pad their owner rating. WTF does an owner rating get you? A high seed in this crap-*** tourney? Whoopty-effin-doo. I got tired of being asked to make a trade by a few annoying numbskulls. So, I quit that lameass sh!t. Now, I only play in the theme leagues with youse savants. Yeah, most of youse guys here are on the spectrum, but whadda ya gonna do? You’re the only friends I got except for the guard that sneaks me in some of mom’s cannoli.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what the f to do at this cap so, I looked at the list of recent 80M open champions and scoured their teams for cookies. Totally, freakin’ boring. I was gonna throw in the towel on this theme and then I found Tommy Glaviano. Listen to me when I tell you that, to this day, Tommy was the greatest third baseman the Phillies ever had. Ever! I built my team around his remarkable obp. I drafted a kid named Tolentino. Lemme tell you - he is a top prospect. Some slobs named Bernhard, Davenport and Jones head up the pitching staff.
This should be a very, very solid team. Unless Sparky F’s the whole t’ing up we’ll be 150-12. Mark my words.
Jack Murphy Stadium
5370 PA .295 / .381 / .431
Only 1290 IP 1.05 WHIP
$90 M – Dead Balls and Bad Leather
We just got a shipment of new ‘Tony Lazzeri Signature Model’ baseball gloves in from Al Capone’s grand-niece. She says it’s a peace offering to make up for some bad transgressions made during the old days. We also got a secret shipment of Vaseline and some very heavy balls to mix in with the juiced-up ones they used last year. Tommy Brady gave us some hints on the balls. Perfectly legal. Everything here is on the up and up.
These glove and ball fixes allowed me to bring in some hot bats who will put a lot, I mean a lot, of balls in play. There’s no one here with names worth mentioning. Oh yeah, we got a pitcher named Caruthers. Sparky insists on playing him in the outfield. But we have an arrangement with the league to let him pitch some too. Trust me. With Caruther’s arm this team will be like Nonna’s Christmas Eve scungilli. Delicioso!
I am hearing rumours that some of these so-called savant GM’s are bringing in strikeout pitchers because it somehow helps team fielding. They’re telling me the numbers ain’t the ‘normal’ numbers. Some BS about modern pitchers and modern fielders normalize better and blah, blah, blah. I say, Rigatoni! Listen, we gotta a guy who knows a guy whose grandfather used to work with the White Sox back in the day, and he says a number is a number is a number. He says everything is gonna be OK, and my team should be fine. They’ll win around 155 games or so.
Polo Grounds (V) –
5515 PA - .327 / .394 / .420
1367 IP – 1.02 WHIP
$110M – The First Wave
I spent a lot of time in the cell building this team and my butt really hurts. I built teams from +/-1 all the way to +/-7. My discovery is this: the more degrees of separation you have the more time you spend making a team less than or equal in quality to a +/- 1 team. I guess most of you geniuses knew that from day one. As uncle Nino would say, “pugnalando il porco nel culo!” – Translation: Like stabbing a pig in the ***. A waste of friggin’ time.
The pitching staff here is a little creative. I eschewed (I’m a white-collar criminal) the Ed Walsh route and went instead, with Lady Baldwin. I couldn’t resist the temptation to be different. Trying something new is what gets me into trouble in these leagues. I know what works, but I got a compulsion to twist things and dat screws me every time. Anyway, I have the 269 IP Baldwin in year one and the 600+ IP Baldwin in year 2. What makes this work is that I am using 39 IP Vida Blue and 33 IP Pete Alexander in year 2 (if we get there). The other starter is Koufax. Koufax and Blue are pitchers I know underperform here, but somehow I still use them. Hope youse guys have a lot of left-handed bats. Due to budgetary constraints and what not we had to cut Johnny Franco. In my humble opinion, Johnny was the second-best reliever ever!
The lineup is a blend of speed and contact and is a veritable who’s who of WIS baseball. I’m so frickin’ proud of myself. The team should play well in Andy Rincon’s Busch.
5572 PA- .324 / .404 / .464
1390 IP; 0.97 WHIP. We’ll give up a few homers
$120M – Little Ty Cobb
Holy freakin’ sh!t! This team is a total train wreck. What a disaster. A total bunch of overpaid clowns! None of the choices makes any sense at all when we consider the greatest baseball players of all time. How are DiMaggio, Lazzeri and Lasorda not on this list? I don’t even want to talk about these so-called stars. Rocky Marciano is punching his coffin door. ‘nough said.
In the end, I went with the cheapest grouping of players that don Ozo forced me to choose. With the exception of some fava fajole named Joss, I went with the cheapest players from the don’s list and then built the team around the superstar, Tomaso Anthony Milone. If there are two things I know about this game one is, you need to get the best performance for your money. The more money you have the more money you have. Know what I’m sayin’? I think Fibonacci, and da Vinci would agree. Two, you can’t win without Tommy ‘Mop-up’ Milone. Why else would 90% of youse choose him? Am I right?
I don’t trust don Ozo. The fix is in. We may win 10 games. I predict Gatorade jugs will suffer and they, in turn, will drop us as a sponsor. The over/under on dugout fights is 15. Any takers?
League Park (I) – should be interesting.
5350 PA, .321 / .388 / .489
1352 IP, 0.90 WHIP, low HR/9
$140M – Puritan City Twin Bridegrooms
For me, everything revolves around pitching. So when I saw the city theme, I did a Scungilli-Index value search of pitching by franchise and discovered the best values were with the Red Sox and Dodger franchises. So those two franchises were automatics. It was here that I finally broke with deadball pitching as well. Pedro, Sale, Greinke and Kershaw are, as has been said a million freakin’ times, great values. It’s like that Netflix movie starring Di Nero, Pacino, Pesci and Romano. Bada bing! Instant Classic! The Twins were my third team and they provided Johan Santana. That’s like adding Marissa Tomei to Spiderman. Its mind-blowing, I know.
I only spent $65M on pitching, but I am going on a hunch that spending $75M on hitting will offset this budgetary choice. Pucket and Ted Williams, who I never use, made the team. Dunno what to expect from them.
This team will win 140 games or so.
5723 PA - .360 / .435 / .534
1411 IP - oav .188, WHIP 0.88
Dodger Stadium – I always pick my stadiums to cut down on IP. Hitting choices are usually based on what I think your ballpark will be. Genius, I know.
$176M – Schuylkill Expressway Car Fire (The Schuylkill Expressway is also known as I-76. It’s a bit of a stretch for a name).
Pretty sure most a youse guys picked Simmons, Lajoie, Howard or Clements, Turner, Kershaw and some guy named Possum. So obvious. What a bunch of brainiacs we have here. A lot a youse picked that underpriced bum, Silver King. And lemme tell you dat was a big mistake. In a platoon sitiation, the guy will get raked because of his relatively high oav. Been there. Trust me. King is a bum. The Scungilli-index has Alexander and Walter Johnson rated way, way, way higher. I know you are wondering who the highest-rated pitcher on the Scungilli-index is. I’ll tell you. It’s Ricky Bottalico. The other details on this are proprietary. So I can’t share them.
Due to the fact that all the numbers were rigged we got nothing special here. My strategy here was to dig deep and get the best management. We fired Sparky and brung in Torre, Francona, Bowa and Berra to manage these gimokes. We also filled the library with Vince Lomabardi books. The Paterno books had to be removed. ‘nough said.
With Wagner at short and Cobb in Center, we should be good. Brilliantly, we drafted no first or third baseman. Sos, Torre has the incredible strategy of starting Harry Heilmann at first and Hornsby at Third. Things are already starting to gel. Easily my best team. Prediction: 162-0.
5943 PA - .379 / .441 / .594
1576 IP - .180 oav - .84 WHIP
We’ll be at the Vet, the best stadium ever. Be ready to fight!
Be well all. Listen to Dr Fauci and wash your hands and cover your face.
-Lou
6/7/2020 10:40 AM (edited)