In previous WISC, I've struggled with trying to experiment and push boundaries too much and often have one team that tanks my chances of advancing to round two. I tried really hard to not do that here again, but as I write these recaps, I realize I definitely didn't succeed. I took big chances in strategy in the $80m
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$80M: I Drafted for My Ballpark
Stadium: South Side Grounds
I know many here consider this a low cap, this cap is already pushing the heights of comfort for me. $90m is about as high as I ever really play. Anything above that just feels like a random generator of luck with everyone having access to the greatest seasons. I'm still blown away by what kind of teams can be put together at $120m. But I digress...
I basically started by checking common OL guys and keeping who worked and finding similar players for the ones who didn't. My offense is similar, though with slightly less pop than a default OL lineup for me. My pitching, however, is nothing like I'd ever voluntarily run on a competitive team. Maybe on an experimental one, but not if I was trying to win. That said, the pitching selections I liked would've all put me in ballparks I would've been wholly uncomfortable with. So, I started looking for players from specific franchises and years to get a ballpark I would be comfortable in. That left me with only
1909 Frank Smith as an option. Then I had to build a complementary rotation without spending more $ on anyone else.So I paired him with
1902 Jack Taylor. Though I have decided on a 2-man, 3-man with a tandem in the 3rd slot, or 3-man with a A/B in the 3rd slot, yet... Guess I'm running out of time to make that call... The most interesting thing I did here was at 1B, where I've tanked the position and am running a 9 man platoon of sub $300k guys. The 9 combine for 592 PA at .274/.371/.353 and cost $2.39m, which was way better than I could find in a single player (closest comps I found were near $3.5m), let alone having to spend cash for all those bench spots. The 1B mess will take some hands-on management as Sparky seems limited to being able to manage a 5-man platoon on his own.
Hitting: 5,001 PA, .282 / .348 / .371, $38.8M
Pitching: 1,254 IP, 0.99 WHIP, 0.22 HR/9, $41.2M
Prediction: . 88 wins +/- 6
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$90M: 2000 Pitchers for the Gloves
Stadium: Safeco Field
I spent more time here than anywhere else. I knew right away I'd be avoiding the deadball pitchers. The error rate effect of that alone would be too costly. I assumed there would be little to no deadball pitching staffs here and came very, very, very, close to submitting this lineup:
Pos |
Player |
B |
PA/162 |
AB/162 |
HR |
RBI |
SB-CS |
SO-BB |
AB/HR |
AVG |
OBP |
SLG |
F/R |
Salary |
|
|
C |
1885 John Kerins |
R |
695 |
660 |
3 |
51 |
31-18 |
40-20 |
152.0 |
.243 |
.281 |
.353 |
D-/B |
$4,060,338 |
|
|
1B |
1900 Mike Donlin |
L |
344 |
320 |
10 |
48 |
14-13 |
26-14 |
27.6 |
.326 |
.361 |
.507 |
D/B |
$2,587,509 |
|
|
2B |
1973 Davey Johnson |
R |
656 |
563 |
43 |
99 |
5-3 |
93-81 |
13.0 |
.270 |
.370 |
.546 |
D+/A- |
$5,714,324 |
|
|
3B |
1931 Jimmie Foxx |
R |
633 |
549 |
30 |
120 |
4-3 |
84-73 |
17.2 |
.291 |
.380 |
.567 |
D/C- |
$5,232,257 |
|
|
SS |
1991 Howard Johnson |
S |
663 |
568 |
38 |
117 |
30-16 |
120-78 |
14.8 |
.259 |
.342 |
.535 |
D/D- |
$5,119,036 |
|
|
OF |
1979 Dave Kingman |
R |
589 |
532 |
48 |
115 |
4-2 |
131-45 |
11.1 |
.288 |
.343 |
.613 |
D/D- |
$4,953,097 |
|
|
OF |
1915 Gavvy Cravath |
R |
662 |
557 |
24 |
115 |
11-9 |
77-86 |
21.8 |
.285 |
.393 |
.510 |
D/C |
$5,616,204 |
|
|
OF |
1922 Tilly Walker |
R |
679 |
595 |
37 |
99 |
4-3 |
67-61 |
15.3 |
.283 |
.357 |
.549 |
D+/C+ |
$5,049,840 |
With the thought that with all modern pitchers HRs could play very well. Ultimately though, I went a very different route. On the off-chance that there were still teams with deadball pitchers, I worried this team would be DOA against them, and that I'd be banking on alignment luck. So, I decided to try to capitalize on the one thing I know about every team; they're going to make lots of errors. I wanted my lineupo to put as many balls in play as possible, so I drafted based on contact rates with all of my hitters being deadballers with 94% rate or better. I chose deadball hitters to exacerbate the error rates of my opponents defense, and figured if they also ran deadball pitchers, I'd get an even bigger bump due to both the era normalization and the lack of Ks. My pitchers all have decent to great K rates and low OAV & HR/9 just in case anyone else thought like I initially did.
Hitting: 5,292 PA, .304 / .364 / .427, $39.3M
Pitching: 1,314 IP, 0.97 WHIP, 0.45 HR/9, $50.7M
Prediction: Feel confident about the pitching, decent about the fielding, and the bats are more dependent on y'alls gloves so: 90 wins +/- 5
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$110M: 1
Stadium: Petco Park
I didn't think about this one too much. Took some favorites, looked for similar seasons from them in a year before or after, and moved on... filled in a couple slots with guys who go from stud to dud and vice versa, but ultimately, I didn't really put much into this one. Both of my teams are nearly identical in terms of quality of IP/PA, though the distribution in terms of quantity and salary into hitting/pitching changes slightly from one team to the next... so similar overall, though, that it was really a coin toss as to which team I put in for round one vs round 2. Only real choice I made was to find me a player I could use for Petco, even if that meant a scrub. Kirby Yates did the trick there. The crazy thing is how far your money goes at this cap... I mean Lajoie, Baker, Hornsby, Wagner, Speaker, Maddux, Alexander... who can you not afford when you get this high!? Basically I just plugged in a bunch of SIM MVPS and CYA...
Round 1 Hitting: 5,059 PA, .343 / .423 / .502, $63.5M
Round 1 Pitching: 1,271 IP, 0.98 WHIP, 0.50 HR/9, $46.5M
Round 2 Hitting: 5,708 PA, .328 / .422 / .481, $57.2M
Round 2 Pitching: 1,336 IP, 0.97 WHIP, 0.47 HR/9, $52.6M
Prediction: We're getting more into crapshoot territory... 85 wins +/- 5
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$120M: Koji Berries
Stadium: Bennet Park
My choices:
- SP — Joss, because the aggregate salary to the others is comparable but the $/IP is not
- RP — Uehara, and even then, that was a tough pill to swallow for an RP.
- LRP — Kershaw, duh
- Hitter — Cobb, because Ruth was too expensive and A+ range
- Defender — Piersall, as it allowed me to draft better 3B/SS options than Furcal or Robinson would've at a substantial discount.
After plugging in my sunk costs, the remaining looked to be roughly equivalent to a $70m league. I feel good about this one overall. I drafted a bunch of favorites to supplement my albatrosses on offense, whereas, on pitching, I already had 40% of a staff built, so I looked to find pieces that would complement the existing overpriced core and ended up with
1902 Cy Young and small cadre of relievers in the pen. This one should be fun and I expect Cobb to slay. Slightly nervous about my defense in front of two deadball pitchers, as I normally shy away from that due to the huge increase in errors.
Hitting: 5,572 PA, .299 / .364 / .447, $58.4M
Pitching: 1,358 IP, 0.91 WHIP, 0.21 HR/9, $61.6M
Prediction: Defense could bite me, but confident in pitching/hitting... maybe 89 wins +/- 3
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$140M: Brave Indian Cubs
Stadium: Jacobs Field
I started by looking through players and logging teams to try to find 5-6 teams I felt I could work with before narrowing down. I ended up with 6 teams after my first pass, and then checked to see what boxes they fit in so I could start putting an actual team together. Whoops, 4 from box 2 (Cubs, A's, White Sox, Pirates), 2 from box 1 (Indians & Dodgers), and none from the third. So, I figured it would be easiest to figure out what team I liked from box 1 and start seeing what team from box 2 I liked complemented them best, and then I'd fill in with whatever was left form box 3 and make adjustments to fit rules from there.
I had to only make one adjustment after the first pass, as the Cubs were over $60m and the Braves below $40m, both by roughly $4m, so I swapped a Cubs pitcher for a Braves pitcher, had a few $ left over and created a roster error by upgrading Speaker to a better season without even looking at his team and added a Red Sox in the process.
It's hard not to like this team, but at this cap, every team is filled with studs across the board since there isn't really a limit to the player pool. Hopefully the defense plays up my pitching in conjunction with my ballpark, and my offense gets more errors from everyone else's...
Hitting: 5,667 PA, .318 / .400 / .533, $68.8M
Pitching: 1,561 IP, 0.86 WHIP, 0.20 HR/9, $70.4M
Prediction: Too many similar rosters will likely make this play tighter, but I really like this team, so... Let's say 93 wins +/- 4
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Variable Cap: 182 Million Regrets
Stadium: Target Field
I've played enough low caps to know salary in and of itself isn't important, especially with some of the prices dynamic pricing stuck some of the best players with (shoot, I still have a boxscore saved from when my $25m team beat a $255m team!). That said, players who weren't quite full time seem to have gotten some beneficial pricing, or at least not been as negatively affected, by the dynamic pricing, so there are already bargains to be had in the sub 500 PA hitters. I already build many lineups around platoons and maximizing that value, so this theme fit that well. Salary was no concern, I already knew I could afford the best across the board, So I never even really paid attention to it, and I'm pretty sure I left some money on the table because I don't know how I could even use it improve my team.
On the hitting side I am only running one full time player in the
1935 Arky Vaughan . SS, is a tough position to fill with a quality bat, especially with platoon players. These guys all hit and they all take their base. My goal here was to not make outs. They'll be going against some fo the toughest pitchers in history, so I wanted to try to make sure we didn't concede any ground. All favorable matchups and a ballpark that should complement.
Pitching-wise, I went with two full time arms in
1913 Walter Johnson and
1910 Ed Walsh and the polar philosophy. I've got 1500+ innings of "we don't allow baserunners, and if we do, it's not a HR or an XBH." It's funny though, the guys that two leagues ago were "over-priced" were the bargains here and Ive got both Kershaw and Uehara again, as well as Eckersley, and Kimbral.... funny what a difference $60m makes. And I still couldn't use all my $$$!!!
Hitting: 5,914 PA, .371 / .466 / .571, $81.7M
Pitching: 1,513 IP, 0.76 WHIP, 0.22 HR/9, $99.3M
Prediction: All these teams should be roughly the same given the limited pool of quality, so definitely feels like more of a crapshoot... 81 wins +/- 15
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My predictions put me at 526 wins with a full range of 488 to 564. So, everything goes right, round two is on the table... things don't quite go right, sitting on the outside looking in around the mid-40s, which seems about right. I didn't do anything too crazy like I have most years, that should keep me from having those 90-100 loss seasons that tank my ranking this time around. Good luck everyone.
***Edited to add: I read through my write-up, and it sounds kind of like I'm complaining about the higher caps. I'm not. I enjoy them still, but they're just not something I play frequently as I feel there is so much more variability and strategy in the low-mid caps ($25-70m and $80-120m, respectively). And historically I tend to do well in the $60-90m caps in the WISC and am all over the place in the $100m+... Thought the themes were fun and I enjoyed putting my teams together, especially the $90m and $180m.