I don't think I will preview all my teams, as some of the strategies just aren't that interesting.

$140M - Orphan Black Sox

This one I had a clear strategy that would hopefully run counter to what I "thought" most teams might do. Since I knew every team would have multiple Ruth's, I figured there might be some power builds and possibly some pitching staffs containing Ruth pitchers, since he's the only deadballer available to limit other team's power. In addition, lots of Ruth's means some potentially poor fielding outfielders running around. So I decided to build a team with speed and defense with NO power in the Astrodome with modern pitchers who limit homers as best as possible. If other teams have Ruth pitchers and/or Ruth outfielders, then some extreme speed and aggressiveness should cause some errors. Low walk pitchers who kind of limit homers + Astrodome should keep the ball in the park for my high range fielders to go get it. I am probably in trouble when I play on the road, but we will see.

1 - 1920 Edd Roush (1B) and 1936 Luke Appling (SS).
Roush is a range monster at 1B with 94 speed and no power. Perfect fit for what I am going for. Appling is not very fast, but I picked my SS late and was able to afford him and I liked the decent range and great average / no power

2 - 1931,1935 Babe Ruth (DH,Bench) and 1921,1924 Frankie Frisch (2B,3B)
I knew I only wanted one hitting Ruth as I just wanted him at DH and I was on the fence about taking him as a pitcher. In the end, I felt that his BB/9 could do more damage in this league than the homer prevention would help, so I just used the cheapest Ruth as my #2. I really wanted 31 Ruth at DH because of the high average. The power will not play in the Astrodome. Frisch is again a perfect fit for my strategy and he covers my 2 remaining infield spots. A+ range at both and great speed.

3 - Jacob DeGrom (SP/RP) and 21,23,25 Max Carey (LF,CF,RF)
I love Max Carey and my strategy was built for him. DeGrom seems very popular so far and I will be using only 2018 as a starter then the 2 short seasons as relievers

4 - 1994,1997,1998,1986 Greg Maddux and Mariano Rivera
Maddux fits the bill for modern starter with low walks and low homers and he will make up 3/4 of my rotation. 94 gives me an elite SP1 and hopefully 97 and 98 will get some help from my defense and park. 1986 is a 200K mop-uo which was also pretty useful. I figures Rivera would be pretty popular and I found him very useful as I could mix and match his many elite seasons to fit what I needed for salary cap and innings

5 - 98,01,05,06,10 Mike Redmond (C)!
I was downright giddy to be using my 5 on a catcher (What a SIM nerd!). Mostly because of how perfect it worked out and I feel like I'm going to be the only one who uses their 5 clones on catchers. Redmond incredible has 4 amazing sub-200 PA seasons and they add up to about 640 PA which couldn't be more perfect. He also has one season of exactly 200K

YR PA AVG DEFENSE
06 190 .341 A+/A+/B+
05 159 .311 A+/B/A+
01 158 .312 A-/A/A+
98 129 .331 B/A/A+
mop up 68 PA

Thank you for letting me get my excitement out.

6,352 PA .335 / .407 / .484 $71.2M
1,471 IP 1.98 / .206 / 0.92 / 8.82 / 1.58 / 0.37

Team Homerun leaders:
31 Ruth - 46
21 Frisch - 8
Tied (2) - 7

No prediction at all, but I like the team.

My 80m team will be my worst. Of course, I put little time with it. So you get what you put in. I tried for a balance lineup which equated into a team sub 290 BA.
Also, my pitching staff seems just average at best.
If we win 70 games…..

The 140m team is an all switch hitting team made up of an OF of Tim Raines. Frisch is holding up the IF. Pitching in Ruth, Pedro, Kimbrel and Rivera. Petco will try to keep the HRs down.
hoping for 90 wins, mostly at home

more will be added later

My 5 team selection (120m) was 32’A’s (hitting), 53’ Dodgers (hitting mostly), 81 Yanks (relief pitching), 2002 D-Backs (Johnson/Schilling duo, 2022 Astros ( Verlander, Alverez)
I like this team to win 85-90 in a balanced attack. We play at Ebbets.

$70 Million - 1913 New York Giants

I had a tough time choosing between the 1913 New York Giants and the 2019 Los Angeles Dodgers for this one. Both had a good number of IP that was the right price for this cap. It was easier to get the Giants under cap with enough IP and PA, so I went with them. I wasn't a fan of Jeff Tesereau and his 301 IP of 1.25# WHIP, so I replaced him with Hub Perdue who has a 1.17# WHIP over 228 IP. Had a gap at 3B and Mickey Mowery with .260/.344/.331# and B/B was the best I could do with the cap. Had to use 8 sub-$300K hitters to fill up the roster. Polo Grounds.

5433 PA .274/.345/.356 $35M
1,332 IP .248 OAV/1.09 WHIP/1.47 BB9/0.27 HR9 $35M

$80 Million - Run With The Wolff

With this theme, every walk and single will be a triple, so I figured the best strategy is to try to keep everyone off first base. Revolutionary idea, I know. Drafted a $100M cap pitching staff and a $60M cap offence. Everyone steals at a 80% rate or better except 1B and catcher. Because he's the fastest player in baseball, Alejandro Kirk was the obvious choice for my D+ arm. Petco.

5082 PA .279/.359/.385/408 SB $33M
1299 IP .205 OAV/0.93 WHIP/1.69 BB9/0.71 HR9 $47M

$100 Million - Feed My Eyes

Pie Traynor, Billy Herman and Dave Bancroft is just about a perfect $100M infield, so Boxes 10-12 were easy choices. Outside of that, I knew I wanted to squeeze 1950 Jim Hearn in here somehow. The only way to do that (that I could see at least) was to take 1950 Stan Musial as his teammate. Musial's OF fielding that year was bad, but he's an A/B at 1B. So, I took him as OF1/Box 3 but he'll be playing 1B. Then I had to figure out an actual 1B to take from the 1B row.

Mickey Cochrane and Bill Dickey have what I think are perfect catcher seasons for $100M, but I wanted Harry Heilman and Joe Horlen more, so that meant they were off the table and Boxes 3 and 4 were filled. I didn't like any of the other catcher options, but Jimmie Foxx's 1940 season at catcher works great for this cap. So that took care of Box 2/1B row but I still needed to draft from the Catcher row. Joe Torre's 200K 1977 season will do as a bench 1B and Box 1/Catcher row was done.

I really like Babe Adams' 1924 season as a closer and I thought 1968 Dave McNally had the best value out of any of the LHP, so that was Box 6 and 7. Joe Horlen in Box 5 meant I could also take 1964 Eddie Fisher and Hoyt Wilhelm, so that was my 3 teammate pick.

That left Box 8 and 9 with OF3 and LHP1 to fill. I didn't like any of the options left. 1968 Don Buford has 100% fielding and B+ range, so I guess it could be worse for Box 8. With him and Dave McNally, it meant I had to take 2 more 1968 Orioles. Wally Bunker and Moe Drabosky seemed decent enough for the bullpen.

That left me with Sam McDowell for Box 9. Didn't like any of the options, so went with 1966 as an SP #4 innings eater. If approaches .500 on the season I'll be delighted.

The 1925 Tigers have one of the best offensive outfields ever and Al Wingo as Harry Heilman's teammate worked great to fill in the OF gap I created with Musial playing 1B. I needed a couple hundred more OF PA and Les Mann with 211 PA and .326 AVG# as Dave Bancroft's teammate fit nicely. The rest of the teammates fill out out the pen and the bench.

I don't have too many HR hitters and pitching staff doesn't have great HR/9 so I went with Comiskey Park.

5318 PA .332/.409/.499 $51M
1444 IP .202 OAV/1.02 WHIP/2.70 BB9/0.63 HR9 $49M

$110 Million – Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Ways To Win

I like 1997 Pedro Martinez and 2017 Corey Kluber at this cap, and after tinkering around a bit with 0 and 9, I went with 7, with Pedro as my Warrior. The rest was just filling out the roster with the best I could from each year. 1977 Tom Seaver is a good #3 SP and 2007 Erik Bedard shouldn't be too horrible as SP #4. I like 1897 John McGraw as a DH, 1937 Dick Bartell as SS and 1907 Ty Cobb, 1947 Harry Walker and 1967 Roberto Clemente in the OF. The pitching overall wasn't nearly as strong as I'd hoped but I suspect many people had to compromise somewhere on pitching in this theme. Olympic Stadium.

6094 PA .329/.392/.459 $55M
1483 PA .205 OAV/1.01 WHIP/2.40 BB9/0.58 HR9 $55M

$120 Million - Firth of Fifth

This theme took me the longest to get to a place where I liked it. I knew I wanted the 2015 Dodgers (Kershaw, Greinke, Jensen) and 1964 White Sox (Horlen, Fisher, Wilhelm) for 6 pitchers and 974 total IP. I splurged on 1914 Dutch Leonard to round out the rotation. The rest of the staff is Long A/B and mop up. Got lucky that the 1964 White Sox also had a good fielding SS in Ron Hansen and 1914 Red Sox had a great OF Tris Speaker for this cap. Filled in the rest of the offence with 1894 Phillies (1B Ed Delahanty, OF Sam Thompson, 3B Lave Cross) and the 1994 Padres (OF Tony Gwynn, 2B Bip Roberts, C Brad Ausmus). Fenway Park.

5561 PA .336/.404/.492
1,513 PA .209 OAV/1.00 WHIP/2.21 BB9/0.54 HR9

$140 Million - Jacob's Ladder

My first thought was that a mostly LHP staff will help with facing at least one, if not two or more Ruths every game. My second thought was that if I could come up with that brilliant strategy, everyone else could too and would stack their teams with RH hitters as a counter measure. My third thought was that if I came up with that brilliant counter measure, so could everyone else and they would stack their teams with RHP as a counter measure to that. My fourth thought was that I hope people stopped thinking there becuase I didn't want to think anymore there and just went with a mostly, but not exclusively LHP and LH hitter team.

1: Tommy Milone - 2018
2: Gil McDougald - 1955 and 1957
3: Joe Torre - 1965, 1971 and 1977
4: Arthur Rhodes - 1991, 1992, 2001 and 2002
5: Larry Waker - 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2004
4: Clayton Kershaw - 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016
3: Jacob Degrom - 2018, 2021 and 2023
2: Babe Ruth - 1932 and 1934
1: Ryan Sherriff - 2020

Gil McDougald taking care of MIF with 2 years that are great defensively and acceptable offensively was perfect for my 2x clone. Joe Torre having a killer 3B year, a fine catcher year and a 200K bench year is a great 3x clone. Arthur Rhodes with 2 killer LHP bullpen years, one not so bad for long B relief and one horrible for mop up was a nice fit for a 4x clone. On paper, Larry Walker gives me 80% of the offence Ruth does with comparable defence, but with more flexibility for this cap, and made sense for 5x clone. It was a toss up between Pedro Martinez and Clayton Kershaw for 4x clone. But I think LHP will have the advantage, so I went with Kershaw. With Kershaw and Rhodes, I needed at least one RHP, so I went with Degrom's best years for 3x clone. Went with 2 Ruths that had good OBP and will DH and cover the OF at times. Had a little over a million left, so the first single slot was for the best RP I could get under $1M and that was Ryan Sherriff and that left the other single for legendary mop up man Tommy Milone.

Went with Robinson Field and the RF +2 HR to help with Walker and Ruth and hopefully hurt opponent's RH hitters with the -1 HR LF if they even have any. Likely to blow up in my face.

6214 PA .331/.423/.577 $74M
1477 IP .199 OAV/0.91 WHIP/1.76 BB9/0.54 HR9 $66M

$70M - Swap 2

Leaned into SB since I think that they’re less valued than other stats. 1976 A’s stole more bases in the modern era than any other club.

$80M - Run Forrest, Run

Definitely leaned into the theme here. 588 stolen bases on the roster to 151 caught. With all D+ arms, a higher amount of SB seems better than the %. AVG is only .287, but fly ball outs and ground ball outs score runners from third.

$100M - 12 Boxes

Ranked each position 1-12 of the players I wanted. Then tried to get the lowest average score possible. Didn’t worry too much about bullpen since the SP had so many innings.

$110M - 13th Warrior

There’s value in switch hitters so concentrated on hitting. 2 stood out in a big way. 8, I think, had insane pitching, but I couldn’t afford what I really wanted so gave up on it.

$120M - Take Five

’09 Cubs for almost half my innings. ’30 Yanks for affordable Ruth/Gehrig. ’64 Dodgers for Don Drysdale and…Don Drysdale. ’85 Cards for 3 switch hitters and Tudor. ’09 Giants for Pablo Sandoval and…Pablo Sandoval. Prediction: Last Place. By a lot.

$140M - Clones

I’m sure I’m not alone here. Maddux, Rivera, Kershaw. Musial with DJ LeMahieu for the infield. 1 good Ruth, Chipper at short and Wally Schang switch hitting at catcher.

I’ve played in every tournament, and have made the final 24 about a third of the time. I think after this season that % will go down.

Thank you again to those that run this tournament.

Confessions of a WISC nobody - everyone enjoys reading guys like Schwarze's breakdowns, I thought I'd give the breakdown from a guy who spends about 2 days making his teams, first one that works is used and who's had moderate success in previous tourneys, having made The Cage a couple of times.

70 million: 1982 Expos! Why the 1982 Expos? Well, I tried the 85 Cardinals and couldnt come close to making that work with that junky bullpen and then the 81 Astros, but holy crap their offense stunk! The next team I tried was this one, I don't really know why, I figured it would be cool to try and use a Raines, Dawson, Carter, Rogers squad - and it worked....kinda. 3 decent starters and a ragtag bullpen later.

80 million: 80 million reasons not to care I don't play low caps often, but I remember my old timey cookie days and took the usual suspects like Vince Coleman, Luis Castillo, David Segui and Ketel Marte. I decided to try and have fun with the SP and am using a 6 man rotation, perhaps switching it to tandem at some point. Nobody higher than 186 IP and nobody lower than 152. Nolan, Webb, Boddicker, Urias, Bradish, and Alex Wood...We'll see!

100 million: Thank God thats over! For those of us hearty souls who don't have much time to build, a box theme like this is our worst nightmare. I built my team around Ken Singleton, cause he's cool and I remembered that Schwarze used to use that guy alot lol. Every one of my starters is a box name except 21 Red Faber (teammate of Eddie Collins) and 24 Goose Goslin (teammate of Walter Johnson) I basically went box starter and scrub teammate or bullpen help. I ended up with way too many innings, but the whole oh no, its 11:30pm on the last Sunday deadline made sure whatever fit was going in.

110 million: 4 on the floor I figured everyone would use 8 to get Ed Walsh so that seemed boring. I went with 4 cause I immediately thought of 14 Hendrix who i like and 94 Maddux, i added 04 McGinnity and we had our rotation! I definitely didn't think about having to play in Fulton County until it was time to submit my squad so I shed a tear for the impending doom of this team - but rule 1 of the WISC nobodies is if it fits, its in! Hopefully some of my favorites like Heilmann, Cravath, Greenberg and Berkman keep me in it.

120 million: Trashiest Trash I immediately entered the 1894 Phillies trio of Delahanty, Cross, and Thompson...and when I found out I hated the pitching years I'd be leaving I tried to abandon them, but couldn't make myself quit them! The world famous 1915 St Louis Terriers gave me Dave Davenport and Eddie Plank and for the longest time* (*time works differently for us WISC nobodies, so longest time was about 45 minutes) I was going to use 2015 for the Kershaw/Greinke superstars, but then realized I'd have zero good bullpen. So i switched to 2020 to get the super Dodger relievers and went to 98 for the familiar comfort of pretty good Maddux. 42 Tiny Bonham rounds out the pitching mostly because Joe Gordon was pretty much the only decent 2B in the timeframe I had left. My loyalty to the 1894 is gonna cost me!

140 million: Yuck I definitely wanted to use some Ruths, i ended up with 30,31, 32 and 35. Yep, basically the cheapest ones. Mariano is my 5x guy and the SP is made up of some Madduxs, Kershaws and Arrieta. Looks like DeGrom was a no-brainer for most, but WISC nobodies dont leave themselves enough time for that brainy stuff! Joe Torre and Rickey Henderson join the starting lineup, mostly because they had some good scrub seasons. Not sure about this team, didn't pick better Ruths, got lazy with Rivera and no DeGrom, but when you're finishing your 4th team of the night on the last Saturday before the deadline you get what you get. Yuck!

Well, there you have it. Good luck to all my fellow Nobodies! Sending positive vibes to those of us who never met a deadline they couldn't rush to barely meet.

Last year in the WISC first round, I decided to do a Golden Anniversary tribute to the Music of 1973. Do I dare try this again? Let's do a small sample size feasibility study and try out the first option that comes to mind in the 70mm theme.

70mm - Back to Oakland

My trial balloon would be the 1974 World Series Champion Oakland A's as a tribute to this Tower of Power album. There are enough bargain-priced position players to use as a foundation. Catcher Gene Tenace, shortstop Bert Campaneris, 3b Sal Bando and OFs Reggie Jackson, and Joe Rudi all have between 587-639 PA/162 and cost between $3.62mm and $5.20mm. This leaves 3 positions (2b, 1b and OF) to fill with one wildcard hitter and a combination of 1974 A's reserves (OF Claudell Washington, OF Jesus Alou, IF Ted Kubiak, 1b Deron Johnson, SS Dal Maxvill) and a pile of sub 300k guys (of which there are plenty in 1974). Pitching featured 3 starters over 250 IP/162 (Catfish, Vida Blue and Holtzman) as well as 4 other pitchers between 96-1119 IP/162 (Fingers, Lindblad, Abbott and Hamilton). I would get to add 1 wildcard and hopefully not too many sub-300k pitchers.

Let's try 2b Joe Morgan and P Rudy May as my wildcard players. They were both teammates at Castlemont High School in Oakland and therefore would get to come home to Oakland for a reunion.

My list of 6 sub 300k reserves is: Matty Alou, Ollie Brown, Larry Brown, Mike Epstein, Mike Hegan and Chuck Dobson. All 6 of these players are former Athletics and therefore are headed Back to Oakland as well.

One final thought is the album cover. The title Back to Oakland is "photoshopped" (or whatever the equivalent of that was back in the day) onto a green on ramp sign entering the Bay Bridge eastbound. This is the bridge that partially collapsed during the time that game 3 of the 1989 World Series was supposed to be played in SF. The gap between A's WS championships was 1974-1989.

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Feasibility study complete. Moving forward

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80mm - Unbroken Chain

One of the most challenging themes in WIS is "The Chain". Basically, you start out with an anchor player/season. The next player that you roster must be a teammate of that player the following season until you have 25 players. As an example, since the actual name of this theme is "Run Forrest Run", let's start out with Forrest "Smoky" Burgess as the anchor. If we use his 1954 season on the Phillies, complete with his 42 speed rating, he would be a fitting anchor indeed. The next player rostered would have to be a 1955 Phillie, since Smoky was still with them in 1955. How about this complete roster?:

year	player	team	pos	sb
1954	smoky burgess	phillies	c	1
1955	saul rogovin	phillies	p	0
1956	frank baumholtz	phillies	of	0
1957	jack sanford	phillies	p	0
1958	jack meyer	phillies	p	0
1959	chico fernandez	phillies	ss	2
1960	hank aguirre	tigers	p	0
1961	terry fox	tigers	p	0
1962	bubba morton	tigers	of	1
1963	hank aaron	braves	of	31
1964	bobby tiefenauer	braves	p	0
1965	billy o'dell	braves	p	0
1966	rico carty	braves	c/of	4
1967	phil niekro	braves	p	0
1968	pat jarvis	braves	p	0
1969	tito francona	braves	of/1b	0
1970	steve hovley	athletics	of	2
1971	bert campaneris	athletics	ss	34
1972	vida blue	athletics	p	0
1973	rich mckinney	athletics	inf	0
1974	billy north	athletics	of	54
1975	angel mangual	athletics	of	0
1976	phil garner	athletics	2b	35
1977	frank taveras	pirates	ss	70
1978	omar moreno	pirates	of	71
				305

As always, if I am going to do a musical tribute and the Grateful Dead released anything within the criteria there will be a team representing that release. Last year, we honored "Stella Blue" from Wake of the Flood released in 1973 by using clones of Tommy LaStella and Vida Blue (when I could have used any hitter/pitcher combo) in a $110mm cap league. This team finished with a record of 67-94. Furthermore, In the $255mm league last year I tightened the straightjacket and created a team based on "Goats Head Soup" and used a last-name-initial/franchise/season soup structure. This team finished 56-106. Can't get any worse than this, right? Looks like we may find out

In 1974 the Dead released the From the Mars Hotel album which featured some classics like US Blues and Scarlet Begonias as well as a couple of obscure numbers. One of those lesser-known tunes is "Unbroken Chain", which is a Phil Lesh vocal.

Given last year's disaster with both of these elements (Grateful Dead and theme-within-a-theme) am I going to try this again and even combine them? Answer - of course, I am

Some notes about the above roster selections to go with the Forrest Gump theme

Hank Aaron and Hank Aguirre are both on the team giving us multiple Hanks (a hat tip to Tom Hanks)

Bubba Morton and Vida Blue are both here to represent the character Bubba Blue

Phil Garner and Phil Niekro are on the roster to provide a healthy dose of Phil

Some notes about how these players will fit together to create a winning strategy.

Nothing to report

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100mm Dancing Machine

By 1974 the Jackson 5 had not had any real hits for a couple of years but Dancing Machine got them back in the spotlight. All I have to do is find 5 players named Jackson. Since there are zero players named Jackson in any of the boxes, they would all have to be teammates. Solving the puzzle we came up with this:


Row 1 - 1976 Thurman Munson (1976 Grant Jackson) - Yankees
Row 2 - 1931 Bill Terry (1931 Travis Jackson) - NY Giants
Row 3 - 1926 Eddie Collins (1926 Max Bishop) - Philly A's
Row 4 - 1938 Stan Hack (1938 Dizzy Dean) - Cubs
Row 5 - 1971 Ernie Banks (1971 Hector Torres) - Cubs
Row 6 - 1925 Ty Cobb (1925 Johnny Neun) - Tigers
Row 7 - 1963 Mickey Mantle (1963 Al Downing - Yankees
Row 8 - 1973 Hank Aaron (1973 Sonny Jackson) - Braves
Row 9 - 1946 Spud Chandler (1946 Red Ruffing) - Yankees
Row 10 - 1969 Tom Seaver (1969 Al Jackson) - Mets
Row 11 - 1966 Gary Peters (1966 Hoyt Wilhelm and 1966 Smoky Burgess) - White Sox
Row 12 - 1977 Ron Guidry (1977 Reggie Jackson) Yankees

We got our 5 Jackson on the roster. No Mike since his first eligible season in 1987.

We had to use Gary Peters since the Jackson family was from Gary, Indiana

We are using Navin Field in Detroit as our home field thanks to Ty Cobb. Has to be based in Motown

Finally, the week including April 8, 1974 was the week that Dancing Machine broke into the Top 20 for the first time eventually peaking at Number 2. That is also the date that Hank Aaron hit HR number 715 off Al Downing. Both of those players are on this team.

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110mm - Now We are Six


The English folk band Steeleye Span released their sixth album Now We Are Six in 1974. I had heard their name but never listened to them and it turns out that they are still touring in England to this day with at least a couple of original members. Anyway, I used the number 6 and had to squeeze it into the team name so this is all I could come up with. The team:

2016: Clayton Kershaw and Denard "Steeleye" Span
2006 Johan Santana and Barry Bonds
1996 Pedro Borbon, Jr and Mike Piazza
1986 Rob Murphy and Bill Russell
1976 Fred Holdsworth and Bill Madlock
1966 Frank Robinson
1956 Ray Narleski and Ted Williams
1946 Tom Ferrick and Roy Cullenbine
1936 Lefty Grove and Buddy Myer
1926 Fred Heimach and Eddie Collins
1916 Larry "Unbroken" Cheney and Pinch Thomas "the Rhymer"
1906 Ed Reulbach and Houns Wagner
1896 Joe Corbett and Bill Joyce

Footnotes

1) Thomas the Rhymer is the most popular song on this weird album and maybe in the band's entire history. I still haven't been able to listen to the whole track but that may just be me.

2) Who is probably the most iconic Number 6 in sports ever? I am going to go with the Celtics Bill Russell. Celtic music and Steeleye Span may very well have elements in common. 1986 Bill Russell of the Dodgers had to make this team.

3) Which brings us full circle. Celtics Bill Russell's most classic rival was arguably Wilt and the Philly Warriors. However, Bill Russell and my team's Warrior, Frank Robinson, were teammates on the McClymonds High School basketball team. Ironically, the McClymonds mascot is the Warrior.

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120mm Bad Benson


In 1974, I was just starting to listen to a local FM jazz station and I remember them playing the track Take Five which sounded familiar but I couldn't place it. It was not the Desmond/Brubeck sax/piano version but one featuring brilliant guitar work. It happened to be the first track on Side A of the album Bad Benson by George Benson. I started out trying to find the Baddest (ie worst) Benson in the database and $200k 2022 Guardians Will Benson has come through for us. Here is the team

2022 Guardians - Will Benson, Andres Gimenez, Jose Ramirez, Emmanuel Clase, Sam Hentges

1996 Braves - Chipper Jones, David Justice, John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and Pedro Borbon Jr

1943 Cardinals - Stan Musial, Ken O'Dea, Jimmy Brown, Howie Pollet and Harry Brecheen (George Benson was born in 1943)

1909 Pirates - Honus Wagner, Ed Abbaticcio, Ham Hyatt, Howie Camnitz, Babe Adams (George Benson was born in Pittsburgh. Playing at Exposition Park)

1888 Giants - Roger Connor, Buck Ewing, Mike Tiernan, Cannonball Titcomb and Bill George (since we started with Benson we finished with George)

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140mm - Gates of Delirium

I love the Diamond structure but have only done it in draft leagues with no salary cap. Started out looking at Bowie's Diamond Dogs,album and a few players stand out. Micah Bowie, Art Rebel or maybe even Reb Russell (hitting seasons only). Do I really want to waste these roster spots? I wasn't much of a Bowie fan at the time and still don't really know this album much. Let's look elsewhere.


My very favorite musical artist at the time was Yes and they came out with Relayer. The entire first side was an epic track called Gates of Delirium and I love this piece. The whole theme of the song was about war fitting the Attack of the Babes motif. I think we can make this work

5 times - Clayton Kershaw (2011,2013,2014,2015,2016)
4 times - Babe Ruth (1918,1919, 1931,1932)
4 times - Steve Howe (of course) (1982, 1983,1991,1994)
3 times - Luke Appling (1936,1945,1948)
3 times - Gates Brown (of course, again) (1967,1968,1971)
2 times - DJ LeMahieu (2016,2020)
2 times - Mickey Cochrane (1931,1937)
1 time - Dizzy Dean (1938) - We need to acknowledge Roger Dean,the artist that created the iconic Yes logo and did this album cover. Also, Dizzy fits along with Delirium. And speaking of Delirious, let's play our games at Target Field in Minneapolis and wear purple uniforms.
1 time - final roster spot goes to Ian Anderson (2020). This is the closest I could come to an eligible John Anderson so we use the Gaelic form of the first name. Also worth noting, Ian Anderson and his band came out with their own album War Babies which fits the battle theme as well. And did you know (I sure didn't) that Ian Anderson produced the album Now We Are Six that was featured in the 110 theme. And he claims his only contribution as producer was to bring David Bowie into the studio to cameo on saxophone on one of the numbers. So Bowie's influence winds up being represented on this team in a Roundabout sort of way.

Final Thoughts

First of all, sincerest thanks to schwarze, redcped and ronthegenius for creating these great themes. Thanks also to jtpsops for stepping up and being commissioner on some of these leagues.

I consider my tournament a success. I had a great time making up my teams and doing this writeup. I am sure I have peaked already and I am okay with that.

Last year I finished in 72nd place. I think it is entirely possible that I can duplicate that feat this year.

Calhoop is on the very short list to be considered writeup GOAT, as the above post brilliantly demonstrates.

Posted by redcped on 6/2/2024 6:53:00 AM (view original):
Calhoop is on the very short list to be considered writeup GOAT, as the above post brilliantly demonstrates.

Amazing job calhoop.

Yes, very impressive. However, like last year, I find myself simultaneously stunned by the incredible level of thought and complexity calhoop adds onto his team building…..while, at the same time, more than a little worried about his sanity.

Imagine how hard it was for some people to complete a legal roster under the regular theme rules. Now add the complexity of weaving in a Music theme. It's a good thing we don't let calhoop create the themes.

I had a bit of this written up a ways back but got so busy getting the tournament launched. So I had to go back and try to recreate my thought processes, which is less than reliable. All I know is after doing all the roster checking and looking at my own, I’m not feeling tremendously confident. Hopefully I did enough right to get back in The Cage, because it would really suck to be running Round 2 without being in it.

Being late to drop this in the thread means I’ve already read all the previous ones and have even less confidence now. Also, I’m realizing after taking calhoop’s musical journey that I failed to insert a music video into each of my writeups this year, so I apologize that they’re less entertaining in that respect than previously.

70M:
75 A's, But Where's Herb Washington?

I didn’t realize quite how hard this theme would be when we set it up. My sense was that it would be possible to find some rosters that were fairly solid and you’d be able to use the upgrades to clean up a weak spot on each side. I have a lot of experience playing in the Cooperstown Replay league where you use real teams with no changes, and that gave me a comfort zone with weaknesses you wouldn’t ordinarily choose to have. I’ve also played the Bad Neighbor league several times, and that gave me a lot of preliminary research on hand, too. So I thought I’d land on several good options pretty quickly.

Then I started trying teams, one after another after another, and nothing was working at all. I wasn’t happy with the first couple rosters that worked, mostly because I was barely upgrading with my FA. In fact, I was cutting bench guys and replacing them with <300K guys just to be able to afford any upgrades at all.

I figured I just hadn’t dug deep enough and would start finding some rosters that had enough of the necessary pieces and still be able to afford a useful FA. Until I just didn’t, again and again, something not adding up in the PA or IP or just being way over 70M. Then at long last I found a team I liked enough (79 Astros) and decided I was going to stop there. … Until I was reading over the theme rules again one last time and realized I had used a combined season for a key player. I tried to rework it without him, and it wasn’t possible. So I had to chuck that option and go searching some more.

I basically got it down to three teams that worked at all and then picked among them. I went with the 1975 A’s over the 1988 Pirates and 1966 White Sox. The Pirates had the best top hitting combo with Bonds-Van Slyke-Bonilla but a really soft bullpen and not much hitting beyond those three guys. The White Sox had a really impressive pitching staff that scarcely needed an upgrade and likely would be quite dominant at this cap. But boy oh boy the offense was awful, with almost no power or anyone who hit for average either.

So what commends the 75 A’s at the end of the day? They have a few guys with power (Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Gene Tenace) and a few guys with speed (Bill North, Claudell Washington, Bert Campaneris), which makes them marginally more dangerous than the other teams. I had to use four <300K hitters just to get under the cap, and I actually downgraded salary with my hitting FA, subbing speedy 2B Sandy Alomar for all-around mediocrity Phil Garner. I would have certainly rather upgraded somewhere and tinkered with a version where Darrell Evans replaced an off-year Sal Bando at 3B, but I liked what I could do with a stronger pitching FA better.

To that end, I added John Candelaria (122 IP, 2.34 ERC#) to what’s going to be an odd rotation. Vida Blue and Ken Holtzman are full-time starters with 545 IP between them. But beyond them I have three guys with 100-123 IP in Candelaria, Stan Bahnsen and Dick Bosman to fill out the rotation. The bullpen features three workhorse arms in Rollie Fingers, Paul Lindblad, and Jim Todd, each with 122-127 innings, and they’ll all be pitching a lot. The Oakland Coliseum helps the pitchers out a good deal, so 1,352 IP should more than suffice. Hopefully the SP innings work out somehow, with the relievers routinely having to get 12+ outs.

Definitely a shame that Charlie Finley’s love of designated pinch runners can’t translate to this game, because I sure would love a Herb Washington or Don Hopkins or Larry Lintz using one of these otherwise worthless bench spots.

(all raw stats)
5466 PA, .258/.337/.389, 123 HR, 163 SB, $34.4M
1352 PA, 3.09 ERA, .231 OAV, 1.19 WHIP, 0.61 HR/9, $35.5M

80M:
Catch Me If You Can
What do we know for sure about this league? Yes, there will be a lot of stolen bases. And runners will steal at high percentages, too. To my mind, the way to lean into a theme like this is to maximize the benefit you can get from it while hoping not to get hurt even more. So not only did I look for base stealers at every lineup spot, but also players who get on base well and steal efficiently when they do. My roster has 321 SB against 64 CS for an 83.3% rate. This means that with no catchers capable of throwing out runners reliably, I can push my settings for almost everyone to steal at a 5.

My lineup has four switch-hitters: LF 90 Vince Coleman (77/94), SS 88 Ozzie Smith (57/66), 3B 23 Jose Ramirez (28/34), and CF 51 Sam Jethroe (35/40). They’ll be joined by one of my favorite players at this cap, RF 88 Kirk Gibson (31/35), 1B 78 Rod Carew (27/34), C 08 Russell Martin (18/24), and 2B 23 Ha-Seong Kim (38/47). The 2023 players are new to me, but success rates and steals were up a lot last year so it felt like a good well to dip into. Aside from Martin, everyone else has at least 77 speed, so I like our chances of scoring from 2nd on singles a lot.

Now that’s only half the battle. What can I do to slow the other team down? Limiting walks is a good place to start, so I aimed for pitchers who do that with the assumption a lot of rosters would be emphasizing OBP. Ideally, they don’t allow tons of baserunners, period, but the walks are one thing I really hope to minimize with a team rate of 1.37 BB/9. And no one aside from my mopup has a WHIP over 1.10. I worried less about HR than usual, because I don’t think it will be easy for anyone to load up on power in this theme anyway and I’ll be playing in a -4 park besides.

My rotation features 74 Catfish Hunter (0.99 WHIP), 67 Joe Horlen (0.97), 92 Bob Tewksbury (1.02), and 63 Hal Brown (1.03). My bullpen is mostly guys with high IP/G to minimize in-game fatigue and also to have several guys able to make spot starts on hand.

Because this is an 80M cap, I couldn’t quite afford to field A defenders all over the place, so I’m having to concede some there. Coleman is the only one who might commit some minus plays with his C range. Kim and Ozzie should be strong up the middle. Martin should be as effective a catcher as it’s possible to be with his B/A+/D+ ratings.

5569 PA, .286/.366/.423, 118 HR, 321 SB, $41.5M
1357 IP, 2.56 ERA, .233 OAV, 1.01 WHIP, 0.69 HR/9, $38.5M

100M:
No Jacks, Only a Koufax

I built this team last on a tight schedule in order to get the leagues launched, and I have no doubt that additional permutations would have produced a better roster. As it was, I built one and then found a few places I could strengthen that one. And that’s where I stopped. I built around players with strong relief pitcher teammates and mostly just looked to use the box players as the starters at their position unless a much better option emerged.

Joe Horlen (Box 5) was an easy pick because I knew he’d come with at least one great RP from his best seasons, which also happen to fit well at this cap. I went with 1967 and brought Don McMahon along ultimately. I took Harry Brecheen (Box 3) and teammate Howie Pollet from the 1943 Cards. I took 1946 Spud Chandler (Box 4) and Red Ruffing from the Yankees. And I completed my rotation with 1964 Sandy Koufax (Box 1), who offered a few very cheap bench options.

Other bullpen arms come from 1964 Bill Henry, courtesy of Frank Robinson (Box 7), and 1960 Lindy McDaniel, courtesy of Ken Boyer (Box 11). All the relievers are at least able to throw 20-25 pitchers without fatigue, which is one nice advantage of this era.

The only box hitter who won’t be a starter for me is Tom Tresh (Box 9), as I pulled a pair of starting OF from the 1938 Indians in Earl Averill (Box 10) and Jeff Heath. They’ll join F-Rob in the outfield. Along with Boyer, I’ve got 1936 Dolph Camilli (Box 8), 1977 Joe Morgan (Box 2), and 1937 Dick Bartell (Box 12) in the infield. And 1938 Gabby Hartnett (Box 6) catches along with his teammate, a weak spot for two-fifths of my games in Ken O’Dea. It’s a team that gets on base well top to bottom with enough power, decent enough defense, but not too much speed alas as typical of the era. Half the lineup is over 70 speed though, so it’s not awful.

I’m not under any illusions that this is a great team, but I hope it’s good enough to compete. I didn’t even try to build my Round 2 120M team first, something I normally would have done with more time, but hopefully I get a chance to do it by advancing.

We’ll play in Yankee Stadium I because a few guys hit triples well so the +1 helps a bit.

5611 PA, .301/.386/.502, 175 HR, 110 SB, $49.2M
1423 IP, 1.98 ERA, .201 OAV, 0.99 WHIP, 0.39 HR/9, $50.7M


110M:
This Team Is Full of Zeroes

I won’t know for a while if I chose the right strategy for roster building here, but I did test out several different versions of the method I chose. The problem was I had misread one rule: a few of my first tries had a Warrior hitter and also a pitcher from that same season. When I went back to try to fix them, I had to toss two of them out, but I still had 3 workable rosters. All of these were based on using a high-doubles park with a Warrior who played in Fenway or Sportsman’s Park (Williams, Musial, Hornsby basically). I eventually narrowed it down to my 0s team and 6s team.

Then I started rethinking that whole idea and tried to build rosters around Ed Walsh as my Warrior, and I quite liked my 8s roster surrounding him. It was a stronger pitching staff but weaker offensively than my doubles teams. I just didn’t really like the offense enough, and I was using a lot of low-inning pitchers to fill out the staff and worried about how frequently many of them would be too fatigued.

So I stuck with my Sportsman’s Park 0s team with 1920 Rogers Hornsby (46 2B) as Warrior. He’ll be joined in the infield by 1930 Ed Morgan (49), 1980 Robin Yount (49) and 2010 David Wright (36). I waffled between Wright and his better speed and Adrian Beltre’s better doubles ability at that spot. In the outfield, I’ve got 1940 Ted Williams (45) and 1990 Barry Bonds (32) flanking 1970 Reggie Smith (32). 1950 Walker Cooper (23) is the weak doubler in the crowd, but 2020 Dominic Smith (57 pro-rated) at the DH spot makes up for it. 2000 Butch Huskey will DH against some LHP.

Six of these guys run pretty well, and most of them can hit homers when we face pitchers who allow them. All the infielders have at least A- range, and only Williams is a liability in the outfield. It looks strong top to bottom, so I think we will score some runs.

Stopping them, on the other hand, may be a bit harder a task as I did have to sacrifice a couple better arms in order to ensure a decent inning total playing in an offense-first park. The rotation features 2020 Yu Darvish, 2000 Greg Maddux, 1910 Ray Collins, and a tandem of 1980 Rudy May and 1940 Tiny Bonham. They’re a bit prone to allowing hits, but they’re stingy with walks, so hopefully that balances out enough.

Aside from 2010 Mariano Rivera, the rest of the pen won’t require super low pitch counts. He’s joined by 1990 Zane Smith, 1970 Ken Sanders, 1960 Jim Brosnan, and 1950 George Spencer. Because I spent $60M on offense, this pitching staff is basically no better than my $100M team’s. In fact, that one is probably a little better even. So we’d better put up some runs and be atop the doubles leaderboard, or this strategy will be a bust.

6169 PA, .319/.389/.538, 196 HR, 135 SB, $60.5M
1431 IP, 2.24 ERA, .225 OAV, 1.02 WHIP, 0.42 HR/9, $49.5M

120M:
06 Cubs/27 Cards/61 Yanks/01 Ms/21 Nats

I found this theme a fun challenge, because you really had freedom to build around a variety of strategies and yet also had to think about how different eras would fit together. And while there are certainly lots of teams that had awesome pitching or hitting and none of the other, you could still use one or two of them if need be because you can always hide a couple weak players on the bench or as mopup/long men.

Some of the teams I initially gravitated to included the 2015, 2020 and 2023 Dodgers (though not ruling out several other recent ones or even 1972), 1906 Cubs, a few Big Red Machine options, the 1964 and 1966 White Sox, 1985 Cardinals, 1999 Red Sox, and 2001 Mariners. I tried a lot of mixing and matching to find combinations that worked up and down the roster. The first one I decided I liked enough had the 1906 Cubs, 1940 Yankees, 1973 Reds, 1999 Red Sox, and 2020 Dodgers. I also had one with the 1994 Padres (for Gwynn) and the 2023 Dodgers.

But I’ve also had some less than great results out of recent Dodgers hitters and worried that I might not be so happy with what I get out of guys like Seager and Betts. And though I certainly loved the 2015 Greinke-Kershaw combo, the deadball Cubs arms made them less necessary. After a few twists and turns, I wound up with the combo I stuck with: 1906 Cubs-1927 Cardinals-1961 Yankees-2001 Mariners-2021 Nationals. Yeah, the Dodgers got squeezed out, which was the least predictable outcome from my starting point.

The obvious advantage of those Cubs is getting most of your rotation from one team (Mordecai Brown, Jack Pfeister, Ed Reulbach) and being able to minimize homers significantly. The struggle though is how to build an offense that won’t be useless against other staffs like that. I tried to get good AVG hitters with a few capable of hitting homers off the non-deadballers who will be on every staff, too. I don’t know that I quite hit the right balance, because I’ve got a 54-homer Mickey Mantle in center field. I have good team speed, a few very good defenders and a couple clunkers, and high on-base hitters top to bottom. The Ms provided 3 nice RP (and Ichiro), a better fit for me than the Padres I had in there at first.

Now I’m not much of a gambler, but I did take a definite risk in one respect here. I’ve currently got a team in schwarze’s puzzle tournament that includes the 2021 Nationals. And Juan Soto has been just awful, posting the worst SLG in my lineup. So the bet here is that he won’t have two bad seasons for me in a row, and the more I think about it you’d be smart to take that bet against me because he’s very walk-reliant and doesn’t hit many doubles or triples. But I’m sure I had a decent reason when I picked that team, and the fact that the other key guys I’m using (Trea Turner, Max Scherzer, Daniel Hudson) have performed really well in that league certainly doesn’t hurt.

My lineup will have Mantle and the C platoon of Elston Howard and Johnny Blanchard from the Yankees, Soto and Turner (playing SS, but not well) from the Nats, Ichiro from the Ms, Frankie Frisch from the Cards, and Frank Chance and Harry Steinfeldt from the Cubs. I don’t love the defense here overall, and I hope the balance in the lineup makes us competitive against pitchers from all eras.

6092 PA, .321/.397/.497, 179 HR, 253 SB, $65.9M
1473 IP, 1.95 ERA, .195 OAV, 0.99 WHIP, 0.36 HR/9, $54.0M


140M:
Six Babes, Jimmies, A-Rod & a Heathcock

I knew I’d want more flexibility for the hitters to use fewer clones, so I decided to start out trying to use two pitchers for 9 spots. My first iteration was a rotation of Kershaws and a bullpen of Riveras. Then I tested out a rotation of Greg Maddux with a bullpen of Billy Wagner, and it was more cost effective and I think still pretty good. Of course, I don’t have the two top Maddux seasons, so maybe this won’t work out as well as I’d hoped. I was trying to keep the pitching to $60M so I could use a couple pretty good Ruths.

The rotation has 1992, 1996, 1997 and 1998 Maddux, and his 2006 is the long man. The only risk with him is a slightly higher OAV that could spell some trouble. The four Wagners will be joined by a pair of lower-inning RHP in 1924 Babe Adams and 1983 Jeff Heathcock. I’ll try not to be too disappointed when all those relievers get lit up despite ridiculously good OAV and WHIP.

I’ll have Ruth in LF, RF and DH with his 1924, 1931 and 1932 seasons. Since I figure homers will play pretty well in this league, I went for it by grabbing a pair of Jimmie Foxx seasons for C (1940) and 1B (1939) and a pair of A-Rods at SS (1996) and 3B (2005). All three had cheap backup seasons, too. So that left me flexibility for my 1s and 2s.

I’m using my singleton on offense for 1955 Richie Ashburn to lead off and play CF. Someone has to catch the ball out there and get on ahead of Ruth. Filling out the lineup is 1996 Eric Young at 2B, plus his cheap backup. The bench will mostly play in blowouts so I’m not worried that it’s thin.

Aside from Ashburn leading off and Young hitting 9th, the rest of the lineup all has 35+ homers so we’ll play in Great American (+2 HR) and help them all out.

6416 PA, .336/.443/.591, 310 HR, 131 SB, $80.7M
1488 IP, 2.30 ERA, .215 OAV, 0.97 WHIP, 0.47 HR/9, $59.3M

$100m Boxes

So far, my bright idea to go heavy pitching in Round 1 is a total bust (1-6). Team ERA of 5.77 doesn't quite align with talent/expectations.

Could use some serious mean reversion over here!

Well, that worked! 8 1/3 from Horlen (even though McMahon tried to blow a 5-0 lead!) and ‘34 Babe is now batting an even .100 with his first HR.

70m - My 23 Dads
I wish I had more time to build teams for this one. I started with the assumption that a good team wouldn't work here - you'd basically be downgrading just to hit the cap. Since there was no deadball restriction, I thought maybe that would be a way to go (especially with the 300k exception) but I never found an exciting deadball team.

I started by just looking at cheap deadball infielders (with non-terrible gloves) to see if any were on the same team or on interesting teams. Sadly, I looked at the 17 Giants and ruled them out since they must be too expensive. Not finding any good leads there, I looked at more modern speed guys (good SBA/100 and SB%) on interesting teams. The 19 Nats have been a favorite of mine in the past but I ruled them out, or forgot about them or something. The 2023 Padres had a really good infield (Machado, Bogaerts, Kim, Cronenworth) and a lot of speed, they just couldn't throw anyone out - always a concern when most 70m teams are built on speed. Fortunately I could add a catcher (Gabriel Moreno) since they didn't need anything else on offense. They had 4 usable SPs who could make a 5-man rotation with a free agent, so I added Jordan Montgomery, and then they've got 2 big-IP guys in the bullpen too (Nick Martinez and Musgrove).

I also built a 2016 Guardians team and had to basically flip a coin to decide when it was submission time. If I was more convinced that CLE could have survived with 1266 IP I would have entered them - adding Teheran and Evan Gattis - but I didn't want to risk a death spiral in round 1. They looked really good with lots of steals and a little more offense, though.

v4 - 2023 Padres

5412pa 253/337/428 B+/C+ 185hr 139sb/32cs 37.15m

1264ip 1.20whip 0.92hr9 .227oav 9.3k9 3.24bb9 32.84m

v3 - 2016 Indians

5288pa, 274/339/450, B-/C- 168hr, 127sb/28cs 37.01m

1266ip 1.19whip 1.00hr9 .231oav 8.9k9 2.9bb9 32.91m

80m - Run Forrest Run

Didn't bother with a creative team name here. I checked all the catchers with the highest possible CS% (a high D+ is around 26%) and figured I'd use one of those. Beyond that, my biggest plan was to spend a lot on pitching, and then double down with A+ range fielders whenever I could, since the only other way to prevent steals was to keep guys off base. I assumed that all I would have on offense would be steals, and thus would want a team that could run a LOT, even with slightly lower success rates. So my team really can't hit, but hopefully no one can hit us either. With no deadball hitters, I was also a little less concerned about fielding percentage, so a lot of my guys are in the D/A+ or C/A+ range. (Luis Salazar 3B, Molitor SS, Randolph 2B, Erstad 1B, Jose Valentin 467 PAs at 2B/SS/3B since the other 3 are all a bit short.) Erstad was the real internal debate with myself because his OBP is really low and he's A+/A+ and quite pricey, but his RRF is off the charts and I want to see if he'll actually get the + plays that it would project.

So my pitching staff is 3 L/R tandems, all guys between 140-195 innings, and mostly short relievers. (Roger Nelson/Nestor Cortes, Schoolboy Rowe/Ray Prim, and Warren Hacker/Shane McClanahan). Both this and my 70m team actually have a semi-intentional split between Setup A and Setup B, where the A's are clearly a lot better - not always the way I build teams, but hopefully more efficient at lower caps. Oh, and I didn't mind pitchers who were HR-prone since I figured nobody would spend much money on power.

100m - Boxed in by Lesser Seasons

I just started by looking at the positions in my head, and figuring out who made sense for seasons 1 and 2 up front, then building it. Turned out to be a waste of time because when I started making the team in the draft center I ran into issues. Oh, this one was frustrating. I had a great team built, but I had guys on the outside of the 1920-80 range. Who knew that you couldn't just pick the guys in the boxes? So I set it aside and went back to it later.

I didn't exactly build the round 2 team in the draft center, but I wrote down what it would be and made sure that it worked in my mind. Like most owners I've got Frisch and Bancroft up the middle, and then I've got Traynor and Sisler on the corners. I have a nice 5-man rotation filled with lesser seasons of Koufax and Gibby, as well as Wyatt, Peters, and Phil Douglas (who came with Bancroft). I also smuggled in Ken Williams with Sisler, since he's one of my favorite 20s hitters, and Speaker and Reggie Smith fill out the outfield with Medwick as a 4th outfielder off the bench. My bullpen might be a bit shaky but with a 5-man rotation I can move guys back there as needed.

My 2nd round team, should I be lucky enough to make it, will be Brett, Arky (smuggled in with Waner), Morgan, Bottomley, with Clemente, Carey and Waner in the outfield, with Koufax/Adams (as teammates) and Drysdale/Chandler in the rotation. I do like that team in theory. We shall see.

110m - It Takes Two to Bern Hard

This is an interesting team, as my warrior is under 10mil, which might not be the case for most owners. I went through each number 0-9 and looked at good (mostly A+++) infielders, figuring out which number would have the most overlap. The way the league was structured, most seasons would have one non price-adjusted season (2016-23), and if you used a pitcher as your warrior, you'd end up with 13 pitchers, so I wanted to keep both of those in mind when figuring out where to start. Especially since the decades of the 20s-50s are not exactly rife with exciting pitchers. Then I looked at the good 300+ IP pitchers who would work well at this cap, and most numbers had 1 of them, and some had multiple seasons (like 1904 and 1914, 1908 and 1918, etc).

The best years for infielders looked like 4, 5, 2, and maybe 7. Using a 1914 pitcher would block 1914 Speaker though, and similarly using a 1912 pitcher would block 1912 Baker. So the first team I built was the Fives, led by Matty 1905 and Jeff Tesreau 1915 (since Davenport didn't work). I really liked the Fives (Mcgraw, Speaker, Pujols, Yaz, Snuffy, Machado, Ted Simmons, Bancroft, Rickey) but they were a little short on PAs and I just could not figure out how to add them.

So then I built a Twos team, using Bill Bernhard has my Warrior since his price was just over Baker's, but that left me without a good 1912 pitcher that fit under Bernhard. Fortunately there were 2 other SPs I liked a lot in 22 Verlander (a recent cookie I really like) and 62 Koufax, and then I added 2012 Kershaw (love the symmetry of having Kershaw and Sandy together) and Roger Nelson '72 to round out the rotation. The offense is Baker, Bancroft, Andres Gimenez at 2B (another new cookie) and Keith Hernandez '82 - lots of range there - with a cost-saving outfield of 4 guys sharing 3 spots (Melky, George Case, Gee Walker, and Rickey 92) and Pujols at DH. This team is also very short on hitting depth but Pujols can cover 3B/OF as needed so hopefully I can make it work.

I started building a Fours team with 2014 Kershaw priced above Speaker to solve the SP problem, but the team was too expensive and I ran out of time to fit them under the cap. I think this team would have been better (Koufax, Sandy, 3-Finger and Gooden, Pete Ward/Ripken/Frisch/Speaker, Jesse Burkett/Milt Byrnes/Al Smith in the OF and Roger Connor at DH) if I had time to fix them.

120m - 88nyg 09pit 54cle 94nyy 15lad

This was a great theme. I wish I could have had more time to work on it. I basically started by listing the teams I knew off the top of my head would be good (1906/07 Cubs, 2015 Dodgers, 39 Yankees, 09 Yankees, etc) and then did a little bit more of a search for teams I might have missed. This time I started with SPs and not infielders, since the 20-year rule meant I could only have one deadball team, so unless I had 800+ IP from that team, I would need SPs from somewhere else too. Then I looked at which mid-decade teams had some interesting starters, and also looked at which ones had some useful hitters.

The first team I was really fixated on was the 1888 Giants. They were ancient enough to pair with another deadball team post 1908, which I tried to do but could never make it work. But they had a 200+ IP starter in Titcomb, a good RP, and some good hitters in Connor and Ewing, so I liked them a lot. I wanted to use the 1916 White Sox with Reb and Benz and some interesting hitters but somehow I couldn't fit it all together.

My other obsession was the 2015 Dodgers with elite Kershaw and Greinke seasons. I paired them with the 1909 Pirates who had Honus, Fred Clarke, and Babe Adams as a reliever, plus a lot of other useful pieces, and the 88 Giants, and now we were making progress. Needing OF/3B and relievers I added the 94 Yankees for O'Neill and Boggs and Howe, and the hunt was on for a team with a 2B/OF combo, a couple relievers and minimal salary waste, somewhere between 1929-1974. I settled on the 54 Indians with Bobby Avila and Larry Doby to round out the lineup. Somewhere along the line I decided that rather than trying to find a good 4th SP, I would just swap out Titcomb and go with Tim Keefe and Kershaw/Greinke in a tandem. There's really no superstar hitters and I've got to juggle the PAs a little between LH and RH opponents to keep guys from getting tired, but theoretically there's enough there.

140m - Five Babes YOLO Baseball

Generally I didn't find this theme to be all that restrictive. Other than knowing everyone would have at least 2 Ruths, and not having deadball pitchers, I didn't imagine all that much change from a normal team. So the main thing was knowing how to counter the Ruths.

After looking around for 100+ IP pitchers with really low HR/9 ratings, what I mainly noticed was that there weren't that many. of them. The best person to counter the Babe, it turns out, might be himself. So I added both 16 and 17 Ruth for 2/3 of my rotation. Then I added Pedro and Kershaw and Tony Gonsolin and built a quick draft of an offense, and quickly ran out of money. So I had to start over on the pitching staff. I kept Kershaw and Gonsolin, though mostly cheaper Kershaws, and unearthed Wilcy Moore who is a super low HR guy. Moore and Kershaw 2016 will be a tandem in the 3rd spot, Kershaw 22 is the long reliever, Gonsolin 20 and 22 are the setup guys, and then Gonsolin 19 and two cheap Wilcy seasons are there to soak up the very bottom of the leverage totem pole.

Thinking that I might not be alone in drafting a lot of LHPs to counter Ruth, I wanted some RH power that normalized well. I've got Hornsby 21 at 3B and Hornsby 28 at 2B, Rudy York at 1B, Vern Stephens at SS, and a quartet of Walker Coopers playing catcher. I've also got Cy Williams manning CF since he normalizes very well for power and had a cheap bench season. This team is going to be tight on PAs, but they can't field even at 100%, so I'm not going to stress about it.

Then for kicks I put them all in Yankee Stadium III to maximize the HR differential I'm hoping to have. So, punting on defense, swinging for the fences as much as possible, and Babes everywhere? I think this is the kind of YOLO team (You Only Live Once) that Babe would have appreciated. I even read the Robert Creamer biography of Ruth during the weeks I was building these teams.

I may have misunderstood your post about the Boxes theme for R2 above, but I thought we should clarify what this meant from the R1 theme description:

"(In Round 2, you will have to use different players from every box to build a 120M team. This restriction will not apply to teammates.)"

The intent here is that you can use some of the same teammates you selected in R1 if they work as a teammate of one of the box players you choose in R2. It doesn't mean that you'll be able to use box players as teammates in R2. So for instance Koufax can not be used as a teammate regardless of whether you used him as a box player in R1. Box players cannot be teammates.

An example of how you could use this would be say 1958 Joey Jay was a teammate of both Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron. So if you used 58 Aaron in R1 with Jay as teammate, you could use him again as a Mathews teammate in R2. It wouldn't be limited to 1958 either; I just used that because it's his best season. You could use his 1964 as a Rose or F Robinson teammate, too, for instance. Hope that all makes sense.