Posted by ronthegenius on 9/10/2024 2:45:00 PM (view original):
Speaking of the Providence Grays and commemorating baseball history, there is a nice plaque at Hanlan’s Point on Toronto Island of Babe Ruth’s first ever professional home run. In early 1914, before he was called up the Red Sox as a teenager, Ruth was on the Providence Grays and hit one out against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

See what a historical marker can do? I never knew that Ruth played for the Grays, obviously later when they were a minor league team, but still. Great stuff. Thanks.

$60M The Moon Rises Again

I performed very poorly in last season’s $60M Rd2 tournament. I was analyzing my old team to see what went wrong. Also, when I went to look at last season’s tournament standings, I noticed mjkrunner had a dominant $60M team. He did a writeup, so I used his writeup as a guide for this team (and with some players, straight up copied it). Yes, I’m a poseur, unoriginal and deserve all the shame associated with such low-brow tactics. Mjkrunner, I’m sorry to copy your team, but imitation is the highest form of flattery.

In trying to re-create mjkrunner’s team, the first issue is that I have to re-do the pitching staff as I couldn’t take any pitcher over $6M. He used “three and a half” starters of which the top 3 were over $6M. I sorted by similar OAV#, WHIP# and ERC# and spread it out from three and a half, to four starters. I came up with:

1913 Hub Perdue 2.81 ERC# to replace 1976 Gaylord Perry 2.85 ERC#
1973 Tommy John 3.02 ERC# to replace 1985 Mike Moore 3.08 ERC#
1976 Bert Blyleven 2.92 ERC# to replace 1945 Preacher Roe 2.91 ERC#
1911 Hooks Wiltse 2.90 ERC# to replace 1944 Thornton Lee 2.72 ERC#

Four of the relievers are copied (in bold). He didn’t list his other four so I found similar pitchers. They are: 08 Jake Thielman, 62 Toth, 07 Henley, 66 Short, 20 Gerber, 89 Combs, 14 Oldham and 98 Heredia. I don’t really know the rationale of why he chose these guys but who am I to second guess? I have the same restrictions when it came to the lineup as mjkrunner had a bunch of sub $600k hitters, so I had to make some changes. With the $600k minimum, this was going to be a “all hands on deck” where I made use of platoons. Mjkrunner had specifically said that 56 Moon and 21 Merrifield were going to be the cornerstones of his offense so I made sure they were on the team. He also wanted strong-armed catchers so I used copied Pena and added Howard. Players in bold are the same as mjkrunner’s team.

C 14 Brayan Pena / 56 Elston Howard (will also play some OF)
1B 56 Wally Moon
2B 21 Whit Merrifield
SS 22 Wander Franco / 17 Johan Camargo
3B 99 Tommy Leach / 98 Todd Zeile
LF 21 Tony Kemp / 42 Roy Cullenbine
CF 88 Bob Carruthers / 96 Harry Davis
RF 19 David Fletcher

Salary ratio between hitters and pitchers are almost the same as his. This team feels foreign to me because it’s not like one I would normally make. Funny enough this may be my best team and I have no idea why.

Mjkrunner’s hitters: 5299 PA, .276/.340/.415
My hitters: 5303 PA, .274/.344/.399
Mjkrunner’s pitchers: 1236 IP, 0.254 OAV, 1.19 WHIP, 0.55 HR/9
My pitchers: 1248 IP, 0.250 OAV, 1.15 WHIP, 0.45 HR/9
Astrodome

$90M The Schlieffen Plan 14-18

I knew I was going to use 1914-1918 from the get-go and never tried any other combination. I like that era due to access to the Federal League, deadball pitchers and better glovemen compared to 19^th century players. 1915 Dave Davenport is key to this team as I think he offers good value compared to other pitchers of his caliber. Other key players are 1918 Babe Ruth for being a pure hitter with power, 1917 Buck Weaver for his A+/A rating at SS, and 1916 Wally Schang for getting an A+ arm on the cheap. I have four lefty/righty platoons to make use of a deep bench.

C – 1916 Wally Schang / 1916 Rip Williams – both underpriced catcher arms
1B – 1917 George Sisler
2B – 1914 Eddie Collins - .452 obp
3B – 1916 Frank Baker / 1914 Red Smith – A+ range both
SS – 1917 Buck Weaver – A+/A fielding
LF – 1914 Ty Cobb / 1914 Danny Murphy
CF – 1918 Babe Ruth / 1917 Sherry Magee
RF – 1916 Bill Hinchman – 16 triples
SP1 – 1915 Dave Davenport
SP2 – 1918 Allen Sothoron
SP3 – 1917 Rube Marquard
SP4 – 1917 Marv Goodwin
RPs – 18 Harry Weaver, 17 Joe Benz, 14 Al Mamaux, 18 George Smith, 15 Hooks Wiltse, 15 Tom Seaton

Hitters: 5394 PA, .308/.384/.431
Pitchers: 1417 IP, .216 OAV, 1.02 WHIP, 2.06 ERA, 0.11 HR/9
Braves Field

$100M Big Game Hunters

I created this team last since I knew it would be a beast to put together. And it certainly was. First, I didn’t want to use expansion teams since it would limit my choices. I did try some Astros teams but couldn’t get it to my liking. Giants/Cardinals was a combo I kept coming back to for Frankie Frisch. Dominic Leone was a happy find so that I could use 2020 Shane Bieber. I kept on trying to use the White Sox for a Carlos Rodon, Joe Jackson, Liam Hendriks or Chris Sale combo, but ultimately, they were all scrapped.

	Red Sox	Athletics	Giants
Cardinals	Reggie Smith	Jason Isringhausen	Frankie Frisch
Yankees	Wally Schang	Catfish Hunter	Goose Gossage
Indians	Corey Kluber	Jason Giambi	Dominic Leone

C – 21 Wally Schang / 20 Wally Schang (will also play LF)
1B – 01 Jason Giambi
2B – 30 Frankie Frisch
SS – 30 Charlie Gelbert
3B – 22 Frankie Frisch
LF – 20 Wally Schang (also C), 21 Braggo Roth (teammate of Wally Schang)
CF – 70 Reggie Smith
RF – 74 Reggie Smith
SP – 75 Catfish Hunter
SP – 72 Catfish Hunter
SP – 20 Shane Bieber (teammate of Dominic Leone)
SP – 17 Corey Kluber
Notable bullpen – 89 Gossage, 79 Gossage, 21 Dominic Leone, 07 Isringhausen, 01 Isringhausen

In the end, I have a lineup schwarze would be proud of as six of my starters are switch-hitters. But I also have almost $1m in wastage between 2014 Giambi, 2023 Kluber and 2020 Leone. I’ve never really used Catfish Hunter before, so I don’t know how he’ll perform at this cap. My HR/9 is 0.81 (not normalized) but still too high. I don’t love that my best hitter is a guy from 2001 where he’ll face a lot of deadballers. Gossage was a poor choice with his 2.60 and 3.26 ERC#. It’s hard to be efficient with this theme as it’s more important to find players who fit within the grid. I should have spent more time trying out different combos. But there comes a point where you just want to be done with it. This team could very well lose 95 games.

Hitters: 5413 PA, .310/.394/.482
Pitchers: 1444 IP (including 81 mop-up IP), .202 OAV, 1.02 WHIP, 2.52 ERA, 0.81 HR/9
Oakland Coliseum

$120M What’s in the Box?
I feel that one of the keys to upgrading from a $100M to a $120M league was to find pitchers who are cap appropriate and start there.

Box 1 – 21 2B Rogers Hornsby + Specs Toporocer
Originally had Koufax but ended up with Hornsby for my Box 1 big splurge player.
Box 2 – LHP2 78 Ron Guidry + Brian Doyle
One of the few big SP with a cap appropriate 1.73 ERC#
Box 3 – LHP1 43 Harry Brecheen + Howie Pollet
2.10 ERC# is good and teammate Pollet is even better with 1.84 ERC#
Box 4 – OF2 23 Harry Heilman + Ole Olsen
Originally had Tiant in here, but pivoted to Heilman and his best season
Box 5 – RHP2 64 Joe Horlen + Hoyt Wilhelm
Another good combo of 1.78 ERC# and 1.87 ERC#
Box 6 – C 30 Gabby Hartnett + Cliff Heathcote
Not worried about opponent’s SB, so went for best hitting catcher
Box 7 – RHP1 20 Babe Adams + Johnny Meador
Adams is a little underpowered at $120M (2.16 ERC#) but still a “good deal”
Box 8 – OF1 27 Paul Waner + Johnny Miljus
Kept coming back to Waner to leadoff and Miljus is a solid reliever 1.93 ERC#
Box 9 – 3B 65 Brooks Robinson + Stu Miller
He’s fine as my 7^th spot hitter. Miller is a good RP 1.97 ERC#
Box 10 – SS 26 Dave Bancroft + Oscar Siemer
Perfect for this cap, decent bat/good glove and bat 8th
Box 11 – OF3 79 Ken Henderson + Bruce Sutter
Took a $405k Henderson so that I could grab Sutter 1.63 ERC#
Box 12 – 1B 70 Orlando Cepeda + Rico Carty
I don’t love Cepeda, but he comes with my starting RF

Hitters: 5682 PA, .337/.406/.529
Pitchers: 1545 IP (incl 83 IP mop ups), .213 OAV, 0.99 WHIP, 2.14 ERA, 0.31 HR/9
Memorial Stadium

$160M Band of Brouthers

The first question is who’s going to be my $12M+ man? I wanted to go Astrodome, but wouldn’t you know that 94 Jeff Bagwell is just under $12M and 86 Mike Scott is not a viable choice as you can’t get the team salary high enough? I’m sure I’m not the only person who noticed that. I wanted to go with an all-star deadball team since I’ll see a lot of deadball pitchers and a minimally-dynamically priced modern pitching staff but I had to throw a 27 Babe Ruth out there to make it work and to get the still pitching friendly Yankee Stadium I.

$15M – 27 Babe Ruth
$11M – 11 Joe Jackson / 15 Zack Greinke
$10M – 99 Ed Delahanty / 08 Honus Wagner
$9M – 18 Jacob deGrom / 20 Shane Bieber
$8M – 20 Dinelson Lamet / 09 Joe Mauer
$7M – 85 Dan Brouthers / 03 Nap Lajoie
$6M – 94 Bill Joyce / 18 Chris Sale
$5M – 50 Jim Hearn / 20 Tony Gonsolin
$4M - 20 Liam Hendriks / 94 Tuck Turner
$3M - 19 Gavvy Cravath / 17 Chad Green
$2M - 86 Rob Murphy / 20 Victor Gonzalez
$1M - 42 Roy Cullenbine / 20 Sam Huff
<$1M - 02 Wilton Guerrero / 87 Tommy McCarthy

Some notables include Joe Mauer as my only starting hitter from the modern era. I am not concerned about stolen bases so his D+ arm will be fine. Tuck Turner and Gavvy Cravath will platoon at DH. I’m hoping the relatively bad fielding will normalize with modern pitching. My pitching staff is super-modern but homer-prone. All relief pitchers have an IP/G north of 1. Looking forward to seeing how this team will perform!

Hitting: 6295 PA, .366/.439/.583
Pitching: 1493 IP, 0.176 OAV, 0.85 WHIP, 1.81 ERA, 0.53 HR/9
Yankee Stadium I

Thx for the 60M shout out toysboys!

Posted by toysboys on 9/10/2024 3:42:00 PM (view original):
$90M The Schlieffen Plan 14-18

I knew I was going to use 1914-1918 from the get-go and never tried any other combination. I like that era due to access to the Federal League, deadball pitchers and better glovemen compared to 19^th century players. 1915 Dave Davenport is key to this team as I think he offers good value compared to other pitchers of his caliber. Other key players are 1918 Babe Ruth for being a pure hitter with power, 1917 Buck Weaver for his A+/A rating at SS, and 1916 Wally Schang for getting an A+ arm on the cheap. I have four lefty/righty platoons to make use of a deep bench.

C – 1916 Wally Schang / 1916 Rip Williams – both underpriced catcher arms
1B – 1917 George Sisler
2B – 1914 Eddie Collins - .452 obp
3B – 1916 Frank Baker / 1914 Red Smith – A+ range both
SS – 1917 Buck Weaver – A+/A fielding
LF – 1914 Ty Cobb / 1914 Danny Murphy
CF – 1918 Babe Ruth / 1917 Sherry Magee
RF – 1916 Bill Hinchman – 16 triples
SP1 – 1915 Dave Davenport
SP2 – 1918 Allen Sothoron
SP3 – 1917 Rube Marquard
SP4 – 1917 Marv Goodwin
RPs – 18 Harry Weaver, 17 Joe Benz, 14 Al Mamaux, 18 George Smith, 15 Hooks Wiltse, 15 Tom Seaton

Hitters: 5394 PA, .308/.384/.431
Pitchers: 1417 IP, .216 OAV, 1.02 WHIP, 2.06 ERA, 0.11 HR/9
Braves Field

I built a 1914-18 team, but the difference is I apparently built a much worse one. Only had 3 players in common. No doubt you'll fare better than I will with the team I thought was better.

I know the feeling. I went with 1917-21.

Four other people (discodemo, mjkrunner, doctorcc, dvor80) picked the same years and my team doesn't look anything like the other four teams. My two expensive starting pitchers ('17 Ruth, '18 Mays) were not selected even once by the others. Not sure why I didn't think to roster '21 Ken Williams.

justinlee_24 went with 1918-22, which I never even considered. Both justinlee_24 and dvorr80 are in my division, along with buddhagamer (1915-19). That's a lot of the same years. In fact, there are only four modern teams are in the entire A.L. (Six modern teams in the NL)

Posted by schwarze on 9/10/2024 6:09:00 PM (view original):
I know the feeling. I went with 1917-21.

Four other people (discodemo, mjkrunner, doctorcc, dvor80) picked the same years and my team doesn't look anything like the other four teams. My two expensive starting pitchers ('17 Ruth, '18 Mays) were not selected even once by the others. Not sure why I didn't think to roster '21 Ken Williams.

justinlee_24 went with 1918-22, which I never even considered. Both justinlee_24 and dvorr80 are in my division, along with buddhagamer (1915-19). That's a lot of the same years. In fact, there are only four modern teams are in the entire A.L. (Six modern teams in the NL)

Well my experience when I was simming modern day vs. a century ago for this theme was the old timers beat the brakes off the modern day teams. We'll see if that bears out in the WISC, but my guess is that modern teams will not do well when pitted against all the teams centered on 1918.

Before I post my strategy writeup, I just wanted to say thank you to schwarze for starting this whole WISC thing, to ozomatli for taking it over, and to redcped for running it now. And schwarze again for maintaining standings. I know it’s a ton of work, more than I’d be willing to put in.

I’m retiring from WIS after this tournament, so these are my final 6 teams. These themes were fun, even the difficult ones. The WISC was always my favorite part of this site, and finishing in the top 3 three different times (2nd place twice, tied for 3rd once) is my proudest accomplishment in this game. I’m waaay too far back to hit the top 3 this year, but I’m glad I got to participate in R2 and learn from all y’all.

And if you see me around in the near future, don’t be afraid to yell at me to go away. This game is addictive, but I need time for other things for a while.

Posted by doctorcc on 9/10/2024 7:35:00 PM (view original):
Before I post my strategy writeup, I just wanted to say thank you to schwarze for starting this whole WISC thing, to ozomatli for taking it over, and to redcped for running it now. And schwarze again for maintaining standings. I know it’s a ton of work, more than I’d be willing to put in.

I’m retiring from WIS after this tournament, so these are my final 6 teams. These themes were fun, even the difficult ones. The WISC was always my favorite part of this site, and finishing in the top 3 three different times (2nd place twice, tied for 3rd once) is my proudest accomplishment in this game. I’m waaay too far back to hit the top 3 this year, but I’m glad I got to participate in R2 and learn from all y’all.

And if you see me around in the near future, don’t be afraid to yell at me to go away. This game is addictive, but I need time for other things for a while.

I'll be rooting for you to go out strong. You've earned your place among the best owners here, and I wish you luck in all you do going forward (unless we meet in a playoff series, in which case ...)

Just happy to be here, y’all. I finished 25th in round 1, one point (!) out of the cage, but luckily we had some dropouts.


$60m The Number Of The Beast
County Stadium
.290 AVG / .372 OBP / .358 SLG / 24 HR
1288 IP / .237 OAV / 1.07 WHIP / .29 HR/9

Seriously? I thought for sure the 6-6-6 theme parameters would inspire more references to Satan. Maybe I’m the only one who grew up listening to Maiden, Dio, Mötley Crüe etc.

I rebuilt my lineup a bunch, trying to find the best value hitters and experimenting with different platoons. I ended up with

C Wally Schang / Ted Simmons
1B Bill Everitt
2B Cupid Childs
3B Sammy Strang
SS Larry Kopf / Joe Koppe
LF Johnny Hopp / Germany Shaefer
CF Johnny Watwood / Bug Holliday
RF George Anderson / Armando Marsans

Plus 2022 Danny Mendick as a multi-position sub.

I feel pretty good about the hitting, and I went with less of a pitcher’s park than some. I‘m trying to avoid a repeat of round 1, where I somehow managed to combine league-best pitching with league-worst hitting multiple times.

Defensive range is decent, but lots of error-prone fielders, especially Strang. Hope that isn’t my downfall.

I hoped to compensate for the bad fielding by drafting modern pitchers, but struggled to make it work at this cap. Except for 2 modern lefty relievers, my pitchers all come from 1907-1918. I’m starting Rankin Johnson, Jack Warhop, Jake Weimer, and Charlie Smith, who should be…fine? Like others have said, it’s hard to know what to expect from a low cap team.

I’m hoping 1288 IP is enough. My $70m round 1 team had 1307 IP and never got fatigued, so I used that as a guideline.


$90m Five Years (That’s All We’ve Got)
Shibe Park
.328 AVG / .397 OBP / .440 SLG / 54 HR
1364 IP / .227 OAV / 1.01 WHIP / .16 HR/9

Huh. Just realizing I could have extended the Bowie reference to call the Immaculate Grid team “My Brain Hurts A Lot”. Would’ve been appropriate.

I settled on using 1917-1921 early. The 1910’s provide effective and affordable pitching, while the 1920’s offer great hitting, so the goal was to find the ideal overlap. Same thinking as quite a few other owners, it turns out.

Yet after glancing at the other rosters, I may very well lead the league in hitting. A bold statement, but it seems I drafted the highest team batting average, in some cases by a pretty considerable margin. And while yeah, those are raw numbers, some of my starters actually normalize upwards (1917 Rogers Hornsby, 1918 George Burns, 1918 Heinie Groh). And 1921 Ken Williams can clear the fences.

Defense is solid enough. I’ve never used this particular Hornsby before, with a C/A rating at shortstop, and now I’m wondering why not. Pitching resembles a lot of other old school squads. My starters have reassuringly familiar names compared to my $60m staff: Eddie Cicotte, Ferdie Schupp, Babe Adams.

But man, that hitting. I’m excited about this team, which is often a bad sign. I was most excited about my $100m grid team in round 1, who won just 84 games…but that was enough to win the division, and they went on to lose the WS and win the TOC. Not sure what I learned from that.


$100m The Immaculate Collection
AT&T Park
.334 AVG / .421 OBP / .442 SLG / 40 HR
1391 IP / .218 OAV / 1.00 WHIP / .46 HR/9

The Immaculate Collection is, of course, Madonna’s brilliantly-named and near-perfect greatest hits album from 1990. (I would’ve substituted the forgettable new song “Rescue Me” with “True Blue”, but close enough.)

I don’t know that my collection is immaculate, but it feels pretty okay. This was a tough theme for sure, but after a few false starts building around players that were way too expensive I found my rhythm.

I didn’t want to spend a ton of time on Baseball Reference searching for ideal pairings, so I started with players I already knew had usable seasons for multiple teams. The Braves provided a great start with 5 starting lineup spots, 3 key pitchers, and the RH half of a catching platoon:

• Braves/Cubs: Greg Maddux (SP), Greg Maddux (SP), Dennis Rassmussen (RP)
• Braves/Giants: Dave Bancroft (SS), Dave Bancroft (2B), Hank Gowdy (C)
• Braves/Phillies: Billy Hamilton (LF), Billy Hamilton (CF), Jimmy Collins (3B)

The White Sox/Giants gave me Carlos Rodon, but I got stuck on pairing the White Sox with the Cubs and Phillies. In that case I did use the Multifranchise tool on Baseball Reference, and sorted by WAR to see whether anyone useful played for both teams.

• White Sox/Cubs: Phil Cavaretta (1B), Phil Cavaretta (1B)
• White Sox/Giants: Carlos Rodon (LR), Carlos Rodon (SP), Ryan Tepera (RP)
• White Sox/Phillies: Smoky Burgess (C), Smoky Burgess (C), Gary Peters (SP)

Gary Peters was a nice bonus, solidifying my starting rotation.

Rounding things out, the Cardinals gave me Harry Walker in right, and Tom Herr providing 2 cheap switch-hit seasons off the bench. 1926 Pete Alexander wasn’t my dream long reliever, but a Baseball Reference search didn’t yield any better options.

• Cardinals/Cubs: Pete Alexander (LR), Pete Alexander (RP), Harry Weaver (RP)
• Cardinals/Giants: Tom Herr (2B/SS), Tom Herr (2B/3B/OF), Dan Quisenberry (Mop)
• Cardinals/Phillies: Harry Walker (OF), Harry Walker (OF)

This wasn’t as straightforward as I’m making it sound, but neither was it as difficult as I feared. Spending $1.2m on a backup 1B in 1954 Cavarretta stings, and the 1950 Walker brings 178 PAs of zero value. And this team has comically little pop: 1945 Cavaretta is second on the team with six total home runs. But not too shabby overall, given the level of difficulty.

(to be continued)

$255M

In Round 12 when I saw modern era teams casually drafting $87K/IP P (Hong-Chih Kuo) while I was scrambling to figure out who the best $32K/IP P I could possibly get (apparently, Moe Drabowsky) was, I realized that I probably should have taken Bonds over Mantle in round 1.

$160M

I figured a lot of people would use a big IP deadball SP for their 25th player, so I thought relying on HR for offence wasn't a great idea. Since deadball SPs biggest weakness is OAV and extra induced errors from deadball hitters, I went with a high AVG, 95% deadball offence.

Pitchers are all modern so I don't increase the errors the fielders will inevitably make and we're playing the Astrodome to help mitigate the high HR9. Probably a little light on PA.

Hitting: 6117 PA .376/.440/.537 $87.5M
Pitching: 1514 IP .187 OAV/0.86 WHIP/1.71 BB9/0.45 HR9 $72.5M

$120M

Not much strategy here. Just took the best options of what was left to take. Really nice range, but that's about it. Too many PA and not enough quality IP but there wasn't much I could do with this. I took Crosley Field, but I can't remember why. Knowing the sim, this will probably be my best team.

Hitting: 5825 PA .322/.405/.472 $61.6M
Pitching: 1546 IP .202 OAV/1.01 WHIP/2.62 BB9/0.42 HR9 $58.2M

$100M

Like many, as soon as I found a team that finally fit the cap, I was done with it. Of course, as I found out, it wasn't actually within the rules, but I managed to fix that without dismantling the team too much. Also, like many I'm sure, I picked older teams (Phillies/Pirates/Dodgers across and Phillies/Cubs/Red Sox down) for the grid to have a bigger player pool to work with. I like Dave Bancroft and Billy Herman in MI at this cap. Herman has a nice 3B season too, so that took care of a couple of clones. Kiki Cuyler and Lefty O'Doul have great OF hitting seasons so they were an easy choice for 2 more. Smokey Burgess with a great 468 PA season and an OK 253 PA season takes care of the catching. Great Pedro and Jason Schmidt seasons for my rotation and their lesser seasons for Long A/B. Derek Lowe with one good and one passable season for the rest of the rotation. One great Mark Melancon as a closer and one OK one for long B.

I really like the lineup with with four .350+ hitters, two .330 hitters and two .300 hitters. My pitching staff doesn't walk too many batters but the OAV is a little higher than I like. I have a few good doubles hitters, so I went with Polo Grounds (V) which will also help out a bit with the OAV.

Hitting: 5606 PA .334/.398/.472 $51.3M
Pitching: 1,363 IP .217 OAV/1.03 WHIP/2.06 BB9/0.65 HR9 $48.6M

$90M

Looks like a bunch of people made a modern team and a deadball team and then picked one. So did I. Went with deadball so I could use Bill Bernhard who I really like at this cap. I'm in a division where everyone else went modern. This is either very good or very bad for me.

Hitting: 5321 PA .319/.381/.430 $44.5M
Pitching: 1,370 IP .215 OAV/1.01 WHIP/2.00 BB9/0.07 HR9 $45.5M

$60M

I really like low cap leagues. With these rules, I figured there would be some platoon teams, so I went with a couple of L/R tandems and two SP with good value for money, Rankin Johnson and Jack Warhop. Offence leans on SB in the hope that people didn't spring for an A+ arm, but shouldn't get completely shut down if we can't run wild. Petco to help with fatigue.

Hitting: 5133 PA .274/.335/.375 $30.5M
Pitching: 1,215 IP .238 OAV/1.06 WHIP/2.66 BB9/0.30 HR9 $29.5M

$120m Wheel Of Fish
Shibe Park
.351 AVG / .409 OBP / .524 SLG / 137 HR
1392 IP / .202 OAV / 0.98 WHIP / .34HR/9

“You can hold onto your red snapper, or you can go for what’s in the box…”

The years 1920-1980 don’t offer a lot of great relievers, so my first task was finding an ace starter who could bring along some bullpen help. I thought about Joe Horlen plus Cisco Carlos, but Don Sutton is better than Horlen and comes with both Jim Brewer and Doug Rau, providing 117 innings of sub-1.5 ERC# relief.

My starters are Ron Guidry, Mort Cooper, and Sutton. I used the LHP1 slot on Whitey Ford since his 1967 season costs < $1 million.

Just like in round 1, I found two offensive starters from one pairing, this time from 1920 Eddie Collins and Shoeless Joe. Unfortunately, this sparked a Box 3/Box 8 OF dilemma:

• A) 1943 Stan Musial pairs with sparkling long relief from Howie Pollet, but that meant wasting a bunch of salary on lousy performances from 1953 Ralph Kiner/Toby Atwell.
• B) 1930 Al Simmons is a beast and brings a .380 pinch hitter in Jimmy Moore. 1944 Paul Waner is cheaper and more useful than Kiner, but he pairs with Ed Head, who is not exactly Pollet-quality.

I couldn’t figure a way past this dilemma, which is the joy of the box theme, I guess. I ended up with option B, since it wasted less salary, provided a huge hitting boost, and gave me an extra RH bullpen arm, where option A left me with only 2 righty relievers. Oh, and Simmons allowed me to play in Shibe.

We’ll see if I did the right thing. This team has great hitting, infield defense, and starting pitching, but less long relief innings than I’d like (my $100m box team had tons) and a steep dropoff in bullpen quality after Brewer and Rau.


$160m Elephants and Kangaroosies
Hilltop Park
.370 AVG / .444 OBP / .508 SLG / 61 HR
1606 IP / .177 OAV / 0.83 WHIP / .41HR/9

Eh, I don’t know. This team looks competitive enough, but the theme was so unrestrictive that it practically amounted to a $160m no clones open league, meaning I’ll be facing 23 strong owners bringing their best. I could be wrong, but I’d guess this particular league will be determined more by luck than strategy.

Obviously the big question was where to spend my > $12 million. I wanted to play in League Park, but the options were underwhelming, so I ended up with 1910 Russ Ford in Hilltop. There were better stars available, I’m sure, but I wanted to save money for the rest of my roster (Ford costs $13.7m) and avoid the wrong park.

The breakdown:

$12m+: Russ Ford
$11m: Ty Cobb, Pedro Martinez
$10m: Nap Lajoie, Tris Speaker
$9m: Roger Connor, Honus Wagner
$8m: Joe Mauer, Dinelson Lamet
$7m: Wade Boggs, Clayton Kershaw
$6m: Harry Walker, Chris Sale
$5m: Billy Hamilton, Jim Hearn
$4m: Joe Berry, Liam Hendricks
$3m: Chad Green, Zach Britton
$2m: Chris Martin, Sean Doolittle
$1m: Roy Cullenbine, Rich Hill
<$1m: Neifi Perez, Pinky Hargrave

Good range everywhere except 2B, where Lajoie’s .396 #AVG, C range 1910 season won out over his 1906 season with A++ range but inferior hitting. Otherwise, my only pick that was really affected by Hilltop was Joe Berry. There are better pitchers available in the $4m range, but I wanted the extra innings.

The team name, if you’re wondering, is from an extremely silly Sunday school song about Noah’s ark featured in the classic Simpsons episode “Homer the Heretic”.


$255m I Taught My Dog To Say I Love You
Wrigley Field
.319 AVG / .395 OBP / .544 SLG / 292 HR
1607 IP / .194 OAV / 0.97 WHIP / .37HR/9

Two salient facts:

• The number of draft leagues I’ve played is the number of WISC R2s I’ve qualified for.
• I’m no good at them.

My most recent draft team lost something like 97 games. Hopefully I’ll do better here, but I’m not feeling confident.

Old school vs. modern for my first pick was a key question. Modern provided a superior reliever pool, but I figured most owners would go that way. And when 11 out of the first 16 owners chose modern players, mostly SPs, I figured drafting the best old school hitter I could find in Rod Carew would lead to greener pastures.

Then the next 5 owners all went old school, probably thinking the same thing as me. Dang. Ah well, Carew was still available, and since I don’t know what I’m doing I picked him anyway.

Based on the hitters I drafted over the next few rounds–Yastrzemski, Pedro Guerrero, Billy Williams–I gradually realized I was building a HR-heavy team, meaning Carew probably made little sense as a first pick. As a leadoff hitter, my hope is he’ll get on base ahead of my sluggers.

I only have one ace starter in my #2 pick, Luis Tiant, but I believe I have a better bullpen than most old school owners (JR Richard, Eckersley, Milacki, Rob Murphy, Ray Searage, Dave Righetti) and my pitchers surrender very few HRs in general. If we can consistently outhomer the opposition there’s a chance, but I don’t feel great about this roster.

Oh, and the team name? I referenced the Beastie Boys when I drafted Carew, and I thought about calling my team Sure Shot, but then I discovered the Little Caesar’s commercial providing the barking dog sample that opens the song.