One of my favorite parts of this tournament is reading about others' thought process when building their teams. Go ahead and start posting....

$80 Million --- Seasons: 1944-2023 at
Ballpark: AT&T Park (HR LF/RF:-3/-3 1B:1 2B:0 3B:2)

Pitcher Salaries: $42,310,472 : First must mention Pitching ---- challenge to find I thought with 1944-2023 .... With Staff HR/9 0.41 highest and AVG 0.34 Went to $/IP less than $30,000 and actually Median low $29K ... Unorthodox 5 SPers and 1945 Boom-Boom Beck with 117 IP/162 as Long A ...
If you wonder how I "Manage" all the Pitchers Relief Boxes are Checked and all are Pull "4" to begin with ... 1443 IP per 162 Games Total

For Running Forrest I searched in the Draft Center for Speed 80 Plus to Set BaseRunning at Very Aggressive ... Whereas Stolen Bases were foremost in choosing Starting LineUp I tried for the highest OBP and Have a "B" Fielding Range MIF by Setting Range to Min 7 ..

With Bench included which will not be used much considering PA of Starters ... Hitter Totals

.292

.361

.401

.762

Normally, I like to start with the lower salary caps first, since those are usually the hardest teams (for me) to build. But this 70M theme looked like a lot of work so I left that for last. Somebody mentioned that the 100M would be time consuming so I started with that one. I will post these in the order I built them.

100M Theme
Team Name: The Boxer
Ballpark: Shea Stadium

My first thought was I needed to find players on teams with good bullpens since there are no pure RPs listed in the boxes. I started with Joe Horlen and those 1960's White Sox teams, but I quickly abandoned that option b/c I wanted to use Horlen in round 2. I actually built my round 2 team first. Anyway, my next step for my round 1 roster was to search on SPs with 100-200 IPs (not listed in the boxes) that I could use as long-relievers and/or part of a tandem. There were 2 players that popped up in my search... Howie Pollet (1.84 erc#) and Monty Stratton (2.13 erc#) So, I started there and grabbed '43 Harry Brecheen (Box 3, LHP1) and '37 Luke Appling (Box 4, SS). I then focused on which two RHPs I wanted. I just finished playing in a league where '28 Dazzy Vance (Box 1, RHP1) crushed it for me. His teammate is a backup catcher w/.316 average, Johnny Gooch. At this salary cap, many of the top RHP2 candidates had salaries a bit too high for this cap level. I finally settled on '64 Don Drysdale (Box 9, RHP2). I used a scrub teammate. So far, that's 5 pitchers and 1061 innings. I still need a LHP2 and a few more RPs.

At this point, I started on my offense. I really focused on getting players that had reasonably priced seasons that had good performance histories. I started with one of my favorite catchers, '80 Ted Simmons (Box 7, C) - he's only got 562 PA, so he fits well with Gooch. He brings along a useful teammate, in Andy Rincon (1.90 erc#). I strongly considered Frankie Frisch at 2B, but he's a bit too expensive for this cap, so I went with '74 Joe Morgan along with a scrub teammate. Two of my favorite players at this cap level are '36 Dolph Camilli (Box 8, 1B) and '41 Roy Cullenbine (Box 5, OF3). Camilli (and Morgan) are my most expensive hitters at $6.6M. Camilli gets me a decent pinch hitter, Mickey Haslin (.344 avg). Cullenbine's teammate is a scrub. My second OF is '64 Roberto Clemente (Box 12, OF2) who brings a much needed RP, Al McBean (2.39 erc#).

At this point, I have used boxes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12. I have three boxes left (6 10, 11) and need 3B, OF1, LHP2. So my choices left are Santo, Hack, Boyer at 3B, Yastrzemski, Averill, Cobb at OF1 and McNally, R.Jones, Matlack at LHP2. And I have about $20M left to spend on these 3 players (plus teammates). I decided to try something different. I really like '73 Carl Yastrzemski (Box6, OF1) to play 3B with his A+ range (and sub $5M salary). That then leads me to take a $743K '33 Stan Hack (Box 10, 3B) who should be my best pinch hitter (.350/.451/.483). My last SP is then defaulted to '74 Jon Matlack (Box 11, LHP2). The teammates for these three players are all scrubs. But wait, I still need a third starting OF. Since I haven't used a second teammate from any of my box-players yet, I start looking through each player to see if I can find a starting OF. I have about $5.9 million to spend. I decided on a guy I've never used before. Since Clemente and Cullenbine aren't great on defense, I add '41 Wally Judnich (.284, .377, .456, B/A).

Outlook: Not super confident. I only drafted eight usable pitchers (1448 ips), so I will have to keep a close watch on usage. I do think my offense will be ranked near the top My defense isn't great but isn't terrible either. I picked Shea stadium to help the pitching staff. Feels like an 85-win team.

Stats (excluding scrubs, but including pinch hitters)
Hitting: 5538 PA, .309, .408, .480, $48.6 million
Pitching: 1448 IP, .218 oav, 1.04 whip, 0.33 hr/9, $49.5 million

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110M Theme
Team Name: 1908 Ed Walsh & Friends
Ballpark: South Side Park

I spent very little time trying other digits. I knew I was using "8" in order to get the best valued big-inning deadball pitcher in the game. Besides 1908 Ed Walsh, I tried squeezing in '18 Hippo Vaughn, but I didn't like how that looked, so I went more traditional with 2018 Jacob deGrom and 1948 Harry Brecheen as Starter 2A and 2B. By taking a pitcher as my Warrior, that meant 13 pitchers. So I went with mostly cheap sub-$2M relievers, many who have better than 2 IP/G. I'm sure many others who went with "8" have a lot of the same guys... 1898 Sam Leever, 1918 Roy Mitchell, 1928 Hal Haid, 1938 Dizzy Dean, 1958 Barry Latman, 1968 Steve Hamilton, 1978 Gene Garber, 1988 Dave Leiper and 1998 Jeff Shaw, That's 9 pitchers and 459 relief innings. I have a 2008 scrub for mop-up duty.

I knew that most people would be drafting deadball pitchers so I wasn't going to spend a lot on HRs, although I do have guys with low double-digits HRs. I started with 1928 Frankie Frisch. He's not as good as the '21, '24 or '27 versions, but he's still a .300 hitter with A+++ range and only costs $6.1 million. For my other middle infielder, I went with another switch hitter, 2008 Jose Reyes. It's his 2nd best season. You got to love his 37-19-16 extra base hit totals. He's not an A+ range guy but his B fielding will help with errors when Walsh pitchers. Next up is another switch hitter, 1978 Ted Simmons. This is his 3rd most expensive season. 1968 Roberto Clemente is only $5.2M and should normalize well. Since Clemente only has 557 PA, 2018 Tommy Pham (.343 avg) will sub in for him and any other OFs who need a rest. 1948 Enos Slaughter has done well for me in the past and has a reasonable salary ($5.4M). I know 1938 Earl Averill won't normalize well, but a .330/.429/.535, C/A- season is too hard to pass up for only $6.0M. I wanted to get some more A+ range guys in the infield, so I sacrificed a little offense by selecting Bobby Bonilla to play 3B. Since I can't really afford a deep bench, I am happy to have his 690 PAs and this makes 4 switch hitters in my starting lineup. My most expensive hitter is 1918 George Sisler ($6.8M). He's not the best offensive player (relative to cost), but he's another A+ range guy. A DH in a salary-capped league is always fun to draft. Here's where I actively look for D- fielding guys for the value. 1898 Elmer Flick seems like a bargain. For only $4.5M, I get a .302/.430/.448 hitter.

Outlook: After looking at this team now, I probably should have tried more combinations. I'm fairly certain I could have done better offensively, but I guess that's the price one pays for A+++ range. I built some better offensive teams using the digits 4 and 7, but I just can't pass up Walsh and deGrom for their insane value. I should be ranked near the top in pitching (assuming my RPs don't f*ck me). I'm hoping my offense can at least be league average. The upper ceiling for this team is 90 wins, but after seeing the random alignment, I'm stuck in a league with two other 1908 Ed Walsh teams, so maybe 80-85 wins is more likely. I guess we'll see who picked a better "8" team. "8" was by far the most commonly selected digit.

Stats (excluding scrubs, but including pinch hitters)
Hitting: 6015 PA, .305, .389, .480, $54.5 million (oh no... this is worse than my 100M team)
Pitching: 1417 IP, .208 oav, 0.94 whip, 0.17 hr/9, $54.8 million (yikes, did I draft enough innings?)

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80M Theme
Team Name: Last in SB, First in AVG
Ballpark: Astrodome

This type of theme requires very little research and so I figured I'd knock this one pretty quickly. Spent less than an hour on it, and never went back to tinker. My initial roster-building thoughts were (1) don't worry about pitchers who allow HRs as very few people will spend on power (2) draft the fewest allowable SBs since most of the SB-guys aren't the greatest hitters (3) get hitters with good batting averages. High on-base guys who walk will end up resulting in too many guys left on base.

I almost always try to balance my salary 50% offense, 50% pitching. I started the roster build with the pitching staff. I took 13 pitchers (1360 innings) with no scrubs. I honestly don't recall why I took these specific SPs, but my rotation is '75 Randy Jones, '78 Craig Swan, '83 LaMarr Hoyt & '44 Ed Heusser. That's 957 innings. My nine RPs total 403 innings with guys mostly in the 0.95 to 1.05 whip range. The aggregate HR/9 for my pitching staff is 0.59, but seriously, how many HRs is LaMarr Hoyt giving up to Vince Coleman, Maury Wills, Lou Brock, etc? In retrospect, I should have gone even more extreme on the HR pitchers, to get better value.

For my offense, I basically got to 300 SBs with just five players, '74 Brock (.306 avg, 118 SB), '90 McGee (.324, 31), '89 Alomar (.295, 42), '12 Reyes (.287, 40) and '80 Mumphrey (.298, 52). Nobody else on the team has more than 9 SBs. '65 Donn Clendenon (.301) can hit a little but is on the team mostly for his insane A+++ range. 3B Bill Mueller (.326) and C Victor Martinez (.330) are there to drive in the speedsters. I also added three .300+ pinch hitters since I expect to go through a lot of pitchers in most games.

Outlook: I don't know if going with the minimum SBs was the right strategy or not, but I've always felt SBs is vastly overrated, which is why in normal leagues, I generally set all my players' steal settings to zero. A caught stealing is way more harmful than a stolen base is helpful. 1360 innings seems a bit light for an 80M theme, but I always tend to draft more innings than I should, so maybe 1360 is ok. I'm playing in the Astrodome, but maybe I should have picked an even-more extreme pitcher's park. I don't think this is a 90-win team, but I don't think it's a 90-loss team either. Just like my other two teams, feels like a slightly above-average team. Are all my teams going to go 85-77?

Stats (excluding scrubs, but including pinch hitters)
Hitting: 5464 PA, .308, .364, .431, 306 SBs, $40.1 million
Pitching: 1360 IP, .227 oav, 1.04 whip, 0.59 hr/9, $39.6 million

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120M Theme
Team Name: 94Phi, 21NYG, 41Brk, 81Hou, 21Mil
Ballpark: Astrodome

I started the roster build with the 1921 Giants because I really wanted Frankie Frisch and Dave Bancroft, two switch hitting middle infielders with A+++ range. I also considered George Kelly at 1B, but needed Earl Smith (.336) as part of my catching platoon. Of course, this eliminated the 1906 Cubs and other deadball teams from consideration. There isn't much pitching, but Red Shea has 34 useful innings, while Rube Benton is a $1.6M mop-up guy. Yep, wasting salary just to get those middle infielders.

My next choice was between 1941 Dodgers and 1943 Cardinals. The Cardinals offered a solid Stan Musial season, a decent Walker Cooper at catcher, plus pitchers Harry Brecheen and Howie Pollet can start or relieve. But I really wanted the two A+ range guys the 41 Dodgers had to offer, Dolph Camilli and Pete Reiser. SP Whit Wyatt is good, but might be in a bit over his head at this cap level. RP Johnny Allen has a 0.87 whip is HR prone, which is why we are playing in the Astrodome. The fifth player is a 200K scrub.

Since I knew I would be playing in a low-HR park, I wanted some high-average low-HR guys. Where else to look than the 1894-96 seasons. The 1894 Phillies was the absolute perfect fit. Lave Cross gives me another A+++ range to complete the infield. Oh, and he hit .386. Ed Delahanty hit .407 and is my most expensive hitter at $9.5M. Despite his poor range, I just couldn't pass up Sam Thompson and his 1.144 OPS. Holy crap, I love this team's offense. The other key to this pick was that the 94 Phillies had two cheap scrub pitchers.

Well, that covers 7.25 of my 8 batters. I guess I need some pitching and still have two teams to select. I considered the 2002 Red Sox (for Pedro & Lowe) but I didn't like their bullpen options. I looked at those 2020's Dodgers teams, but then remember that I already have the
'41 Dodgers. That made me rethink the 41 Dodgers vs 43 Cardinals debate. Had I taken the '43 Cardinals, '43 Musial replaces '41 Reiser, '41 Cooper replaces '21 Earl Smith, '21 George Kelly replaces '41 Camilli. Plus, I get Brecheen and Pollet. Hmmm... maybe I should have gone that direction. But wait, if I take 2002 Red Sox, I can't take a 2020 team. Never mind.

Since I also need a catcher with 400+ PA, I finally settled on the '81 Astros. We all know about their great pitching but Andy Ashby was the perfect fit. He's not a great hitter (.356 obp), but he's a switch hitter and his A+ arm will keep everybody at 1B so my infielders can turn lots of DPs. I wish I could take more than 3 pitchers, but settled on Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton & Bob Knepper. I didn't have enough salary left to add Jeff Leonard, so the fifth player was a scrub.

At this point, I don't need any more hitters. The 2021 Brewers have some great pitching options. The three guys I settled on include Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta and Josh Hader. Both hitters selected are scrubs.

Outlook: I sort of like this team even though the pitching doesn't look very strong for a 120M roster. Well, that's because I only spent $53.6M on the usable pitchers. But the offense looks awesome and the defense can only help the pitching. The one downside on the offense is that I have no bench. My only pinch hitter worth anything is whichever catcher isn't starting. The rest of my bench hitters are scrubs. Since I only have one batter with more than 14 HRs (Camilli), I am playing my home games in the Astrodome. I would be disappointed if this team can't get to 90 wins.

Stats (excluding scrubs, but including pinch hitters)
Hitting: 5510 PA, .347, .414, .530, $63.0 million
Pitching: 1454 IP, .202 oav, 1.01 whip, 0.41 hr/9, $53.6 million

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140M Theme
Team Name: Babe Ruth x 5
Ballpark: Target Field

From the very start, I planned on drafting very few HRs and putting my team in a negative HR park. I started with Maddux & Rivera as two of my bigger clones to go with just 2 Ruth clones (including his 1935 cheap season), but then decided to pivot off that since I felt most would want to use many of the good hitting Ruth seasons. I started thinking about which LH SP to take. I figured Kershaw would be a popular choice, but he does allow HR. Even though I am playing in Target Field, I still wanted SPs that didn't allow HRs since I do have to play 81 road games. That's when I decided to use Ruth as a SP. I went with both 1916 and 1917 Ruth (but not 1915). He's not a prototypical 140M pitcher, but he's going to face a bunch of HR-hitting Ruths, so maybe he won't be terrible. That covers nearly 700 IPs.

My third SP is 2018 Jacob deGrom. He's got enough good seasons where I also rostered his 2020, 2021 & 2023 seasons. His 2020 season (the worst of the four) will get some spot starts and pitch in long relief. I like having enough SP innings where I have the option of using LH or RH to start against certain teams and Ruth/deGrom gives me that flexibility. That's over 1200 innings between the two Ruths and four deGroms. I needed two more RPs to finish the pitching staff (one LH, one RH). I chose Zach (Zack?) Britton (x3) over Billy Wagner due to lower HRs while Mike Adams (x2) provides me with a Closer A / Closer B combo (both have under 50 IPs. I hope 1492 innings is enough.

My team name is Babe Ruth x 5, so you probably have already figured out that I have three hitting versions of Babe Ruth. But why would I load up on two more HR hitters if I'm playing my home games in Target Field? Well, one Ruth is the cheap 1935 version. The other two are both pre-1920 versions. 1919 Ruth *only* has 29 HRs but he normalizes very well. 1918 Ruth only has 11 HRs and will platoon at DH, so I didn't really waste a ton of salary on HRs. The next hitter I locked in on was Stan Musial. Don't worry, I am using his three seasons ('43, '44, '46) where he has lots of doubles & triples but not many HRs. He will play 1B, CF, LF. So I have 1B, OF, DH covered. I still need C, 2B, 3B, SS and have a 4-clone, 2-clone and two 1-clones left. The obvious choice for my 4-clone is Rogers Hornsby. No, I am not taking his mid-20's power hitting seasons... I grabbed his 1920 season (.370/.431/.559, 9 HRs), plus three cheap seasons. His 1933 season (.926 ops) can be used as part time DH. Now, it's easy to fill in the last three positions. My catcher is '75 Ted Simmons (his best hitting season, who cares about D+ arm). My shortstop is '20 Dave Bancroft (.299 avg w/A+++ range). I still needed a 3B and some extra PAs in the OF/DH since '19 Ruth only has 641 PA. When you think of guys who played 3B and OF, who comes to mind? My 2-clone and final player in this puzzle is Bobby Bonilla. Using his '89 season (A+ range) for 3B. His '95 season (296 pa, .333/.394/.544) fits my needs perfectly.

Outlook: My defense isn't as strong as some of my other teams, so I'm not sure if my two Ruth pitchers will be ok in this theme. My ballpark will help me out when I face teams with lots of Ruth hitters. In fact, I should lead the league in fewest HRs allowed, but that doesn't guarantee success. My offense should ill be good, but not great. Feels like another 85-win team. Can somebody with six 85-win teams advance? Probably not, if these teams don't make the playoffs.

Stats (excluding scrubs, but including pinch hitters)
Hitting: 6447 PA, .332, .409, .532, $73.0 million
Pitching: 1492 IP, .189 oav, 0.95 whip, 0.24 hr/9, $65.8 million

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70M Theme
Team Name: 1914 Chicago Whales
Ballpark: WhatifSports Park

First of all, I will preface this by saying that I hate low cap leagues. The most important thing about drafting at low caps (<80M) is getting the right number of innings to draft. If you draft too few or too many innings, it really doesn't matter what the roster looks like - you will fail. You can almost guarantee some people will not draft enough innings, and their team will go into fatigue hell and they will lose 110+ games and give other teams in that same league inflated win totals.

I did some initial prep work using the salaries spread sheet. I calculated every single-season's team's weighted OPS#, ERC#, a numerical score for defense, the number of switch hitters on the team, the number of eligible players (full/partial only), the number of hitters with at least 500 PA, the team's total salary and the actual winning% of the team. I also calculated the number of <300K players for each season as this helped me eliminate many of the early seasons due to lack of scrubs available.

I then started sorting the teams by different categories to see what popped up. I looked at the best defensive teams, the teams with a lot of switch hitters, teams with great hitting, or great pitching, teams with very strong W-L percentages. After each sort, I would look at the teams with salaries $75 or less to see if I could strip out the deadweight and make a decent roster. Way too often, I would get a team I really liked, but the salary would be $71-72 million and I couldn't strip it down anymore (I should have made this theme's salary cap $75 million).

If I listed every team I tried building, this thread would be way too long. I can tell you that I did try building some of those 1980's Cardinals teams with all those switch hitters. Apparently, a number of folks managed to make those Cardinals teams work - making me second guess my decision. The 1989 Cardinals actually made it among my final 4 teams. I determined that there would be very few deadball teams selected so others wouldn't be afraid to draft HRs - so I decided to find a deadball team that would work. So besides the 89 Cardinals, the other three finalists were the 1899 Beaneaters, the 1919 White Sox and the team I settled on, the 1914 Chicago Wales.

The Beaneaters and White Sox were very similar teams. Both had good offenses, and a couple of big-inning solid SPs. The problem with both teams is that they each had only 5 usable pitchers and the other pitchers were all scrubs. I was able to get 1150-1180 really good innings from those 5 pitchers, and could fill in the last 100 innings with crap. If my team could squeak into the playoffs, they could go far with a couple of stud SPs pitching every other game. But my biggest concern is whether or not 1250 innings is enough at this cap level (especially considering 100 of those innings were going to get smashed pretty quickly upon using them). Is it worth risking fatigue hell? I had entered 1919 White Sox on Monday night, then at the last minute, changed my mind and went with a safer selection, the 1914 Whales.

This team isn't nearly as good offensively as the Beaneaters and White Sox, but the defense is very solid and I have 4 lefties and one switch hitter (I refuse to take a team with a bunch of righty hitters). The Wales offense had 7 hitters with 545+ PA) so Buck Herzog (.281, .348, .347, A+ range) filled the shortstop gap. Every bench player is a sub 300K guy. My original build kept the stud Claude Hendrix on the roster, but I still had the innings problem, only about 1150 good innings and 100 of mopup. I realized that I had cut Erv Lange (200 ip, 2.48 erc#). If I added him back to the roster and cut Hendrix, I could afford a $9M pitcher, so I added Carl Weilman (2.90 erc#). So now, I have 1269 good innings plus 100 innings of mopup and feel much more comfortable. Also, instead of having 5 usable pitchers, I have 7 usable, including a guy I can use as my main setup/closer in Rankin Johnson (127 ip, 2.10 erc#).

Outlook: If I was wrong on my innings guestimate, and 1150 good innings (+100 mop-up) is sufficient, then I made a mistake by abandoning the 1919 White Sox b/c that offense (+ Ed Cicotte Lefty Williams) would have been awesome. But I determined that I'd rather have this Whales team safely go 82-80 then worry about losing 110 games due to fatigue hell. Did I mention that I hate low cap leagues?

Stats (excluding scrubs, but including pinch hitters)
Hitting: 4941 PA, .275, .350, .378, $33.4 million
Pitching: 1269 IP, .235 oav, 1.14 whip, 0.22 hr/9, $34.1 million

For the warrior league, I went with #5 just because of the players I already knew had good seasons ending with 5. I haven't been playing long enough so I went with what i know. Then I made some interesting discoveries while drafting. Wanted 95 Maddux as my warrior but the IP and cap hit didn't work so I went with 05 Mathewson as my warrior.

The 140m league was the coolest draft for me. I love using clones and trying different combinations. I ended up with a decent team and players I like.

The 80m league wasn't hard to find enough SB but I had trouble finding a good pitching staff because of the years included so I'm pretty sure my pitching is gonna be tired with about 1280 IP. Best I could muster.

Same thing with the 70m league rregarding going with what I know, I took the 1907 Phillies because Sparks and Mcquillan never let me down so far. The rest of the team was decent as well so went with that. I looked at other 90s team because that's the era I follow most but couldn't make the cap work.

For the 120m league, I started with 95 braves for Maddux, Lopez and Grissom. Then I took 1907 Phillies again. 20s Yankees for obvious reasons.

Box league was a real headache. Ttook some guys I known but it was tough to make the cap work. I started over so many times before finding the right combination.

First things first: I’m retiring from WIS after this tournament.

I enjoy the WISC and am thankful as ever for the hard work by those who run it. I’ve just been playing far too long.

I’m sure this announcement won't trouble anyone, but I’m stating this publicly to remind myself to stop playing.

I actually intended to skip last year, but I had major knee surgery in March 2023 and had little else to occupy my time. I’d like to blame the pain meds for my miserable performance (losing record, 56th place.)

But instead I spent some time after the tournament studying some successful teams and reevaluating my team building strategy. I realized I made 3 mistakes:

1) OBP is nice, but I overemphasized it. Hitters generally don’t draw a ton of walks against the low BB/9 pitchers seen in the WISC.

2) If a player met my offensive goals, I settled for high fielding percentage rather than high range. (Think A+/C fielding vs. C/A+). It didn’t work.

3) Too many modern low WHIP / high HR/9 pitchers.

I’ve only played 2 teams since last year's tournament, but both made the WS, and one won 118 games, the WS, and the TOC.

So hopefully I’ve learned enough to bounce back from last year. But either way, this is it.

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As for my round 1 teams, I’m starting 1921 Frankie Frisch at 2B 4 times. Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop” was the best Frankie reference I could come up with, so I named all 6 teams after Suicide songs.

$70m ghost rider
Busch Stadium
.250 AVG / .326 OBP / .347 SLG / 55 HR / 247 SB
1315 IP / .245 OAV / 1.20 WHIP / .73 HR/9

I built 3 teams for this theme–1906 Pirates, 1918 Giants, 1986 Cardinals–and ran SIM matchups a bunch of times. The Cardinals obliterated the other 2 squads.

These Cards can’t hit, but they run fast and field well, and 5 starters are switch-hitters. And once I replaced the staff dregs with Neil Allen (who?), their pitching ain’t bad. The team lacked 1B PAs, so I added Will Clark to form an A+ range platoon with Jack Clark.

Fun fact: I accidentally entered a version of this team in an Open League. Whoops. They're currently 18-20, and despite a few waiver wire improvements I don't expect them to do much.

$80m rocket usa
Pacific Bell Park
.283 AVG / .354 OBP / .370 SLG / 47 HR / 324 SB
1331 IP / .229 OAV / 1.00 WHIP / .54 HR/9

I guess if there’s a strategy here, it was starting ‘75 Billy North in CF and ‘87 Terry Pendleton at 3B. Both get caught stealing too frequently to turn loose, but I’m hoping the fielding range will compensate.

I drafted 11 switch-hitters, including one of my favorite low-cap cookies in 1990 Willie McGee. The lone RHB is Craig Biggio, who runs fast for a catcher and has a 26% CS rate, the highest allowed by this theme. My pitchers are cheap multi-inning guys with low K/9 and low BB/9.

All well and good, but there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for differentiation in this theme, and I suspect my roster will look similar to many others.

$100m dream baby dream
Busch Stadium
.323 AVG / .382 OBP / .482 SLG / 110 HR / 232 SB
1363 IP / .212 OAV / 1.02 WHIP / .50 HR/9

Box 1: 3B 1979 George Brett / Willie Wilson
Box 2: RHP2 1966 Bob Gibson / Joe Hoerner
Box 3: LHP1 1943 Harry Brecheen / Howie Pollet / Harry Gumbert
Box 4: RHP1 1947 Spud Chandler / Bobby Brown
Box 5: C 1930 Mickey Cochrane / Jimmy Moore
Box 6: LHP2 1968 Dave McNally / Wally Bunker
Box 7: OF3 1925 Max Carey / Al Neihaus
Box 8: 2B 1921 Frankie Frisch / Red Shea
Box 9: OF2 1946 Joe Medwick / Don Padgett
Box 10: OF1 1930 Earl Averill / Ken Holloway
Box 11: 1B 1927 Jim Bottomley / Fred Frankhouse
Box 12: SS 1936 Dick Bartell / Mark Koenig

The hardest build, for sure, but I really enjoyed it and I'm excited to see what this team can do. I took a $500k Joe Medwick season so I could start 2 players from the 1979 Royals, George Brett and Willie Wilson. 1943 Harry Brecheen was the other key pick–I’m starting him in a tandem with Spud Chandler, but I also was able to draft Howie Pollet and Harry Gumbert to provide lefty and righty long relief.

Speaking of Spud Chandler, he came with a backup 3B/SS/OF named Bobby Brown. Never heard of him, but I guess he played 8 seasons for the Yankees. Will he be too hot to handle? Or too cold to hold?

$110m frankie teardrop
Shea Stadium
.333 AVG / .384 OBP / .499 SLG / 133 HR / 213 SB
1392 IP / .216 OAV / 1.00 WHIP / .30 HR/9

Similar to the $70m theme, I built 3 squads and tested them by running a ton of SIM matchups

– A Fours team with great pitching, competent hitting
– A Ones team with competent pitching, great hitting
– A Zeros team that was more balanced

The Fours team got destroyed head-to-head, but the Ones and Zeros were pretty equal. I went with the Ones since I liked the players better. We'll see if that was the right call.

This team has absurd fielding range

1B 1931 Terry (A)
2B 1921 Frisch (A+)
3B 1991 Pendleton (A+)
SS 1901 Wagner (A+)
RF 1981 Mumphrey (A+)
CF 1941 Chapman (A+)
LF 1961 Pinson (A+)

...plus 2 switch-hitters rounding out the lineup (2011 Victor Martinez at C, 2001 Roberto Alomar at DH)

I'm hoping the excess range helps the pitching, since 1901 Al Orth, 1911 Vean Gregg, and 1971 Tom "My Warrior" Seaver ain't exactly the most fearsome rotation I've ever assembled. This team should at least keep the ball in the park, with a sparkling .30 HR/9.

$120m surrender
Exposition Park
.327 AVG / .387 OBP / .504 SLG / 139 HR / 194 SB
1632 IP / .226 OAV / 1.03 WHIP / .22 HR/9

I decided early I wanted to work with the 1921 Giants and 1943 Cardinals who feature on some of my other builds. By adding the 1901 Pirates, I had the foundation of my team.

C 1943 Walker Cooper / 1901 Jiggs Donahue
1B 1921 High Pockets Kelly
2B 1921 Frankie Frisch
3B 1901 Honus Wagner
SS 1921 Dave Bancroft
LF 1943 Stan Musial
CF ???
RF 1901 Fred Clarke

SP 1901 Deacon Philippe
SP 1901 Jesse Tannehill
SP 1943 Mort Cooper
RP 1943 Howie Pollet
RP 1943 Harry Brecheen
RP 1921 Red Shea
Mop 1921 Red Causey

At $1.1 million, Red Causey is way too expensive for a mopup, but I couldn't get through this build without wasting a little salary. I'll probably never use him since I ended up with > 1600 IP.

From there I only really needed to fill bullpen and bench slots, plus find a center fielder. I chose the 2020 Dodgers for their relief pitching (Gonsolin, Kolarek, Victor Gonzalez), while the 1998 Yankees offered Bernie Williams in center and Shane Spencer’s absurd .910 slugging off the bench.

$140m diamonds, fur coat, champagne
Robison Field
.329 AVG / .409 OBP / .541 SLG / 239 HR / 154 SB
1427 IP / .189 OAV / 0.88 WHIP / .54 HR/9

5: Pedro Martinez
4: Jacob DeGrom, Reggie Smith
3: Frankie Frisch, Babe Ruth
2: Rich Hill, Joe Mauer
1: Chris Sale, Bud Harrelson

I didn't fixate on trying to get Babe Ruth out, just took the best pitchers I could find. Pedro provides 3 seasons as a starter, 1 in long relief, and 1 as a mopup. Kershaw or Koufax might have been nice but I couldn't manage to get the same quality I got out of Pedro + DeGrom.

I took 3 Babe Ruths: ‘30 in LF, ‘31 at DH, ‘35 as a cheap, useless benchwarmer. Otherwise my lineup is mostly switch-hitters: Reggie Smith at 1B, CF, and RF, and Frankie Frisch at 2B, 3B, SS, plus lefty Joe Mauer at C.

$70M – Tide! Whitening Sox since 2005
US Cellular Field
This team jumped to my mind right away. I wanted a team with four 200+ IP starters, so I didn’t have to use FA money on a lot of innings and could save more for offense. Some teams I considered included the 1980 Dodgers, 1985 Padres, and even the 2013 Nationals, due to the balance they had across the roster.

I wanted the 2005 White Sox all along but could not get them under the cap the way I wanted to. After not being 100% sold on my other options, I came back to them and decided to strip the bench bare and make it work.

I don’t have a great feel for what is successful at $70M, but I have to think this team will be competitive. Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia and Jose Contreras provide a solid rotation at a reasonable cost. I added ’05 Trevor Hoffman as my pitching FA to deepen the bullpen. Cliff Politte brings a strong closing option.

Initially, I added Michael Young to play SS, but I couldn’t get him under the cap. Ultimately I went with ’05 Jose Reyes. Switch hitter, lots of speed and PA, he’ll hit leadoff and take some of the burden off the order. What I loved most about this lineup is the HRs. I don’t think we’ll be seeing many deadball teams, so 150+ HRs should bring results in this league, lead by Paul Konerko with 40 and Jermaine Dye with 31. This team brings solid defense as well.

Evaluation:
Again, I have no idea how to predict this team’s success, but I think they’ll be in contention for a WC. Prediction: 84-78.

Offense:
C – AJ Pierzynski (A+/A/D) - .257/.308/.420
1B – Paul Konerko (A/A) - .283/.375/.534
2B – Tad Iguchi (C+/B) - .278/.342/.438
3B – Joe Crede (A/B-) - .252/.303/.454
SS – Jose Reyes (B/C) - .273/.300/.386
LF – Scott Podsednik (B/B) - .290/.351/.349
CF – Aaron Rowand (A/A) - .270/.329/.407
RF – Jermaine Dye (C-/C+) - .274/.333/.512

Total: .271/.329/.428, 154 HR, 222 2B, 355 BB

Pitching:
Mark Buehrle – 237 IP, 1.18 WHIP
Jon Garland – 221 IP, 1.17 WHIP
Freddy Garcia – 228 IP, 1.25 WHIP
Jose Contreras – 205 IP, 1.23 WHIP
Trevor Hoffman – 58 IP, 1.11 WHIP
Dustin Hermanson – 58 IP, 1.10 WHIP
Neal Cotts – 61 IP, 1.11 WHIP
Cliff Politte – 68 IP, 0.94 WHIP

Total: 1,335 IP (90 mopup IP), 1.21 WHIP, 907 Ks

$80M – My Prediction: Pain
Petco Park
I didn’t spend a lot of time on this one and am not overly optimistic. I decided on Petco immediately, to stretch my innings further. I put an emphasis on high % stolen bases (80+), 80+ speed, walks and good gloves.

This team features 7 starters with 80+ speed and most have a success rate of over 80%, highlighted by Eric Davis, Joe Morgan, Kenny Lofton and Paul Molitor. 750+ walks should help us take advantage of Petco’s brutality on hitters. If this team wins, it’ll be with walks and wheels.

Naturally with pitching, I focused on low-walk pitchers to minimize baserunners. Any runner reaching in this league could be lethal. Kluber, Price, Moyer and Hughes provide 900 innings at a decent price, leaving a bit to splurge on the pen. ’98 Timlin is a staple for me in these leagues, providing 80 decent IP for $2M. Doolittle, Eckersley, Rincon and Rich Hill make for a pretty formidable bullpen.

Evaluation:
I really don’t have a good feel for this. Feels like strategies could be across the board in this theme, but I do feel I’ve set myself up well to limit free baserunners and damage. I’ll predict a .500 finish for this team, but I could see anywhere from 60-90 wins. Prediction: 81-81.

Offense:
C – Mickey Tettleton (B/C/D-) - .248/.419/.463, 17 HR
1B – Jose Offerman (B+/C) - .303/.384/.417, 24/34 SB
2B – Joe Morgan (B-/C-) - .275/.378/.411, 29/34 SB
3B – Paul Molitor (C/B) - .312/.384/.452, 13 HR, 41/51 SB
SS – Barry Larkin (A-/C-) - .293/.390/.420, 12 HR, 30/38 SB
LF – Eric Davis (C/B-) - .277/.378/.523, 27 HR, 80/91 SB
CF – Rickey Henderson (B+/B-) - .236/.376/.347, 14 HR, 66/79 SB
RF – Kenny Lofton (C/B) - .282/.371/.413, 12 HR, 54/64 SB

Total: .283/.387/.435, 235 2B, 126 HR, 331/399 SB

Pitching:
Corey Kluber – 215 IP, 0.99 WHIP
David Price – 220 IP, 1.08 WHIP
Jamie Moyer – 236 IP, 1.118 WHIP
Phil Hughes – 209.2 IP, 1.13 WHIP
Mike Timlin – 80 IP, 1.18 WHIP
Sean Doolittle – 51 IP, 0.86 WHIP
Andy Rincon – 57 IP, 0.91 WHIP
Dennis Eckersley – 76 IP, 0.91 WHIP
Rich Hill – 34 IP, 0.79 WHIP

Total: 1,340 IP, 1.08 WHIP, 1103 Ks, 213 BB

$100M – What’s in the box???
Astrodome
After tinkering a bit, I made the decision to go through and find players in each box who had cheap usable seasons or ~$200K scrub seasons that wouldn’t waste much cap space. After that, I could use the remaining boxes and teammates to fill my roster out relatively easily. I had a couple early errors (two players from the same position, rostering a player from 1986, etc.) but eventually found a good team.

Box 1: 1927 Rogers Hornsby. I like him at this cap. He can do a lot of things well and can set the pace at the top of the order. He brings along teammate Les Mann as a stud bench/PH option.
Box 2: 1927 Jimmie Foxx. One of my first round of selections for his cheap, yet productive low-PA season. He brings along Zack Wheat as a platoon OF option.
Box 3: 1970 Vida Blue. A cost-effective closer option who can serve as a stud spot-starter if needed. He is accompanied by Gene Tenace. Tenace has a higher price tag than I would like, but he’s a stud and I really wanted him as a compliment to whichever catcher I ended up going with.
Box 4: 1930 Bill Dickey. His 417 PA fit well with Tenace. Dickey is joined by teammate Earle Combs and his .947 OPS in the OF.
Box 5: 1942 Roy Cullenbine. I was not targeting him at all but omitted an OF3 from my roster. Rather than retool everything, I worked him in. Thankfully he comes with a very good Tiny Bonham season.
Box 6: 1972 Ron Santo. Initially I went with Santo to get Fergie Jenkins, but after my roster adjustment brought in Bonham, I pivoted to Rick Reuschel as a long reliever/spot starter.
Box 7: 1966 Gary Peters. I’ve had modest success with Peters, and he brings Hoyt Wilhelm as a strong relief option for the pen.
Box 8: I opted for 1920 Joe Sewell early due to his good, cheap bench/PH season. He also brings Ray Chapman at SS. Chapman doesn’t have the defense I hoped for at SS, but he’s not horrible, and can hit well enough. Stan Coveleski provides a big innings boost to my staff as Sewell’s second teammate.
Box 9: 1965 Robin Roberts. I use Roberts a lot in lower cap leagues and love him. Good reliever and spot starting option. Claude Raymond adds some decent Setup B innings to the pen.
Box 10: 1979 George Foster. Initially I had his 1986 scrub season to save money but had to pivot. I decided to keep him. His 509 PA season is a decent fit with Cullenbine. I added $200K scrub Harry Spilman as his teammate.
Box 11: I needed a good starter with some innings, so along comes 1968 Gaylord Perry. A solid addition who allows me to also roster $200K Nate Oliver to save some cash.
Box 12: 1954 Richie Ashburn rounds things out. He’ll hit leadoff and provide a nice one-two punch with Hornsby. Stan Lopata is a versatile super sub option who will supplement the OF, and play some 1B and C as needed.

All in all, I came away with about $400K in wasted salary, so no complaints here.

Evaluation:
I’m really not sure. There are so many options for this theme, I think it will largely depend on which league/division I’m in, but I think I’ve constructed a solid team. I put them in Astrodome due to a shortage of homers, and a lot of low-walk pitchers. Prediction: 90-72.

Offense:
C – Bill Dickey (C/C/C-) - .339/.375/.486
1B – Stan Lopata (D-/D-) – 290/.369/.544 (This is going to be a 3-4 way platoon)
2B – Rogers Hornsby (B-/B-) - .361/.448/.586
3B – Ron Santo (C+/B) - .302/.391/.487
SS – Ray Chapman (B/C+) - .303/.380/.423
LF – George Foster (B/D+) - .302/.386/.561
CF – Richie Ashburn (B/A+) - .313/.441/.376
RF – Earle Combs (C/C-) - .344/.424/.523

Total: .319/.403/.481, 241 2B, 643 walks

Pitching:
Tiny Bonham – 238 IP, 0.99 WHIP
Gary Peters – 205 IP, 0.98 WHIP
Gaylord Perry – 291 IP, 1.03 WHIP
Stan Coveleski – 332 IP, 1.11 WHIP
Rick Reuschel – 135 IP, 1.21 WHIP
Claude Raymond – 97 IP, 1.07 WHIP
Robin Roberts – 76 IP, 0.93 WHIP
Hoyt Wilhelm – 82 IP, 0.83 WHIP
Vida Blue – 39 IP, 0.83 WHIP

Total: 1.495 IP, 1.03 WHIP, 282 BB, 817 K, 55 HR

$110M – A Walsh in the Park
Southside Park
I mulled a couple options, but ultimately decided to go with Ed Walsh as my warrior, to give me more freedom in constructing the rest of my roster (ie: not having to worry about trying to keep all other players’ salaries below my warrior). He brings a pronounced pitchers park, so I needed to focus on walks and HR.

I like the balance in my roster, though I am using a lot of hitters I’ve rarely/never used before, including Mike Greenwell, Joe Cunningham, Brian Roberts and Yaz. I accomplished my goal though, putting together an order with a ton of HRs and walks, and good gloves (even if range is a little lacking, though that shouldn’t be a huge issue in my park).

I brought along Harry Brecheen and Corey Kluber to act as 2A and 2B behind Walsh. My bullpen is stacked with a good mix of stud RPs, and good high IP/G relief options, including Dizzy Dean, Billy Wagner, Hoyt Wilhelm, Dennis Eckersley, Hoyt Wilhelm and Jake Northrop.

Evaluation:
I feel good about this team. I’ve tailored my lineup and pitching staff to compliment each other, and both should play well to my ballpark. I’m cautiously optimistic about this team and predict a playoff berth. Prediction: 86-76.

Offense:
C – Ted Simmons (B/B+/A-) - .287/.377/.512, 22 HR
1B – Jeff Bagwell (B+/B) - .304/.424/.557, 34 HR
2B – Brian Roberts (A-/C+) - .296/.378/.450, 51 2B, 40/50 SB
3B – Jose Ramirez (B/D) - .270/.387/.552, 39 HR, 34/40 SB
SS – Arky Vaughan (B/A) - .322/.433/.444
LF – Mike Greenwell (B-/D+) - .325/.416/.531, 22 HR
CF – Carl Yastrzemski (A/C+) - .301/.426/.495, 23 HR
RF – George Harper (B/C) - .305/.418/.537, 17 HR (this will be a 3 player platoon)

Total: .303/.410/.499, 309 2B, 193 HR, 891 BB

Pitching:
Ed Walsh – 495 IP, 0.86 WHIP
Harry Brecheen – 246 IP, 1.04 WHIP
Corey Kluber – 215 IP, 0.99 WHIP
Dizzy Dean – 80 IP, 0.96 WHIP
Billy Wagner – 47 IP, 0.89 WHIP
Dennis Eckersley – 73 IP, 0.87 WHIP
Hoyt Wilhelm – 44 IP, 0.86 WHIP
Jake Northrop – 53 IP, 0.73 WHIP
Sam Leever – 37 IP, 0.94 WHIP

Total: 1,503 IP, 0.98 WHIP, 964 K, 240 BB

$120M – Number Five is ALIVE!
Three Rivers Stadium
As I’m sure many people did, I immediately gravitated towards the 2015 Dodgers. I moved away from them in a couple iterations, testing out the 2019 Astros to create more options, but nothing worked out. I was also pretty fixated on the 1940 Yankees early on, with Tiny Bonham, Joe Gordon and two strong OF options in Joe Dimaggio and Charlie Keller. Ultimately I moved away from them, but I’m very happy with the result, especially after seeing others talk about their difficulty in using the entire cap.

1902 Indians
Bill Bernhard jumped into my head early, but I felt there weren’t enough usable options on this team. However, once I saw how much cap I was ending up with, I opted to splurge on the 454 PA Nap Lajoie. Bill Bradley will handle 3B and Ossie Schreckengost provides some good bench PAs. Jack Lundbom is a throwaway with 41 mopup innings that will hopefully not be needed.

1930 Yankees
Once I found a team that would bring me both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at an affordable price, I was all in. Bill Dickey comes along for the ride at C, and Ken Holloway and Ownie Carroll bring my mopup innings total to 111. I’m pleased with Ruth and Gehrig as the 1-2 punch at the top of my order, even with the likelihood of facing some deadball pitchers.

1964 White Sox
This team was the final piece in my puzzle. I wasn’t 100% enthused by it, but it fills the gaps I need it to fill. Floyd Robinson is a serviceable bottom of the lineup hitter, and Ron Hansen brings plus defense at SS (though his 665 PA is a bit more than I needed). Joe Horlen is the final piece of my rotation, and Eddie Fisher and Hoyt Wilhelm bring two strong RPs. $4M+ for each of them is a bit steep, but they bring good innings totals and I had the money to spend.

1990 Pirates
I had this team in many iterations as well, due to the gaps it fills. It was a good compliment to a lot of teams. Barry Bonds brings a strong OF season and Don Slaught is a perfect complement to Dickey and his 417 PA. Rafael Belliard is a $200K scrub and my only truly wasted money on the offensive side. On the pitching side, Zane Smith and Randy Tomlin bring strong relief options who can go multiple innings (or start) if needed.

2015 Dodgers
The belle of the ball. Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke top the rotation and Pedro Baez rounds out the pen. I had Kenley Jansen in, but was a bit over the cap. Rather than rework everything, I decided my pen was deep enough and went with Baez instead. **** Hernandez will supplement Lajoie at 2B and Seager provides a strong bench bat and can swap in for Hansen when needed.

Evaluation:
At the risk of jinxing myself, I love this team. I think I found a great balance, with very limited wasted salary. In total, I have $1.15M of wasted salary, which seems to be pretty good based on the comments of others. I predict this will be a playoff team. Prediction: 92-70.

Offense:
C – Bill Dickey (C/C/C-) - .339/.375/.486
1B – Lou Gehrig (C/D+) - .379/.473/.721
2B – Nap Lajoie (B/A+) - .379/.421/.569
3B – Bill Bradley (C/A) - .340/.375/.515
SS – Ron Hansen (B+/A+) - .261/.347/.419
LF – Floyd Robinson (B+/C-) - .301/.388/.408
CF – Barry Bonds (B/B) - .301/.406/.565
RF – Babe Ruth (C/D+) - .359/.493/.732

Total: .327/.405/.539, 200 HR, 302 2B, 619 BB

Pitching:
Clayton Kershaw – 232.2 IP, 0.88 WHIP
Zack Greinke – 222.2 IP, 0.84 WHIP
Joe Horlen – 211 IP, 0.94 WHIP
Bill Bernhard – 259 IP, 0.94 WHIP
Randy Tomlin – 78 IP, 0.96 WHIP
Hoyt Wilhelm – 132 IP, 0.95 WHIP
Eddie Fisher – 125 IP, 0.94 WHIP
Zane Smith – 76 IP, 0.84 WHIP

Total: 1,500 IP (111 mopup innings), 0.99 WHIP, 1,056 Ks, 317 BB, 84 HR

$140M – The Final Countdown (and Up)
Crosley Field
Given the ban on deadballers, it seemed like an absolute no-brainer to use 4-5 Ruth’s. Initially I went with 5 Hornsby’s and 4 Ruth’s, but there were so many ways to go with this one. I had to resist the urge to keep fiddling. I was pleased with my final iteration, and don’t feel like I have much waste. I opted for Crosley Field as I think this team will hit a lot more HRs than it allows.

My biggest concern with this team is the OF defense. I have Ruth’s 1919 A/C- season in CF, but the corners are going to be a bit rough. The offense is going to be sexy though, with Luke Appling and Ed Stanky topping the order with low Ks and a crapload of walks. Jimmie Foxx fills in the gaps. Hornsby likely would’ve been the better choice defensively, but I felt like I was ending up with a lot of wasted PAs.

Foxx, Appling and Ruth provide some low-PA bench/relief options. Tommie Aaron was a nice cheat, allowing me to eliminate a “triple” by wasting only $600K salary, to leave more flexibility elsewhere.

Pitching is interesting. As a commissioner, I see a lot of people loaded up on Pedros and Riveras, but it’s so hard to risk going with too many righties. That said, it’s hard to find some worthy LHP for the bullpen worth cloning 4-5 times. Ultimately, I went with Clayton Kershaw and Pedro Martinez for the rotation, and Eckersleys for the pen, supplemented by Tarik Skubal as a lone lefty. I’m a bit nervous about my lack of lefty relievers, but this pen should limit HRs.

Evaluation:
This theme feels like a crapshoot, but I feel like I’ve assembled a strong team, so it’ll be fun to watch the show, at least. Prediction: 88-74.

Offense:
C – Jimmie Foxx - .297/.412/.581
1B – Jimmie Foxx - .354/.463/.625
2B – Eddie Stanky - .300/.460/.412
3B – Jimmie Foxx - .328/.416/.548
SS – Luke Appling - .307/.437/.389
LF – Babe Ruth - .341/.489/.661
CF – Babe Ruth - .322/.456/.657
RF – Babe Ruth - .323/.461/.709
DH – Babe Ruth - .301/.442/.582

Total: .314/.442/.558, 281 HR, 1144 BB

Pitching:
Clayton Kershaw – 232.2 IP, 0.88 WHIP
Pedro Martinez – 214 IP, 0.92 WHIP
Clayton Kershaw – 236 IP, 0.92 WHIP
Clayton Kershaw – 198 IP, 0.86 WHIP
Pedro Martinez – 200 IP, 0.92 WHIP
Dennis Eckersley – 171 IP, 0.97 WHIP
Dennis Eckersley – 58 IP, 0.61 WHIP
Dennis Eckersley – 73 IP, 0.87 WHIP
Dennis Eckersley – 80 IP, 0.91 WHIP
Tarik Skubal – 80.1 IP, 0.90 WHIP

Total: 1,543 IP, 0.89 WHIP, 1762 Ks, 260 BB, 91 HR

$70m:

My typical strategy for low-cap leagues is, when possible, to stock up on deadball pitchers who allowed more home runs than the league average but still have low HR/9, as such pitchers are always underpriced. My original plan was to find an 1888 team so I could use super-cookie Jerry Denny at SS and whichever underpriced pitcher I could fit as the other free agent. The 1888 Beaneaters fit perfectly, with several cookies on offense, strong pitcher, great range and great team speed. The only thing missing was a first baseman, but I was going to fill that with a gaggle of <$300k guys. This team would have won 110+ games. Unfortunately, I re-read the rules and discovered the $300k exception meant only that season, and not all seasons, so it was no longer possible to even field a legal team with the 1888 Beaneaters. Welp.

After that I considered several options, and eventually settled on the 1919 Giants. The pitching is solid and relatively cheap, with 1345 total innings coming in at a 1.11 WHIP (including two 200k scrubs who won't see much action besides mop-up duty.) Then on offense we were able to replace lead-footed George Burns with a .384 hitting Ty Cobb, and we've got a few good hitters besides him with Ross Youngs, Benny Kauff and Larry Doyle, as well as super range shortstop Art Fletcher to help. We're a bit light on PAs but it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Overall we're at .287 /.336 /.391.

$80m:

The obvious strategy here is to load up on as many stolen bases as possible at every position, but the problem with that is almost all the great base stealers in the sim saw large price increases after the dynamic pricing experiment. So the only two very high stolen base guys I have are 1988 Rickey Henderson and the dirt cheap 2023 Estuary Ruiz, so that I can get to the 300 SB requirement. Besides that it's an embarrassing parade of cookies: 2021 Merrifield, 1956 Wally Moon, 2017 Jose Ramirez, 2017 Marwin Gonzalez at SS, and of course 2019 Marte, on the theory that you can't steal first base, and won't often be able to steal home either. I also made sure to get a D+ catcher (1996 Hundley) as that will make a significant difference with all the stolen base attempts, prayers up to anyone who went with one of those D---- Victor Martinez's or something. We come in at .290/.361/.473 on offense. The pitching is a bunch of 21st century guys who don't walk anyone, we are reasonably high on HR/9 expecting others to draft mostly speedy slap hitters. Overall a 0.97 WHIP on 1327 innings.

$100m:

I loved this theme and am baffled by the whining, but I've learned over the years there are some people who'd complain about fresh air. Such is life.

Anyways, my main strategy here was making sure I had good pitching, as there are plenty of good hitters available but not that many pitchers you'd want to use at this cap. 1920 Babe Adams was a no-brainer, as was 1967 Joe Horlen for his stand-alone value and numerous excellent bullpen mates (I eventually went with Don McMahon). Then I took 1943 Harry Brecheen and his excellent teammate Howie Pollet, and rounded out the pitching row with 1968 Wilbur Wood and his teammate Hoyt Wilhelm. To round out the pitching staff, I used 1928 George Sisler to bring in his teammate Garland Braxton. This gives me a pitching staff with plenty of innings (1411), a 0.98 WHIP, and very low HR/9 for only $46 million. The presence of Wood and his very challenging to use 159 IPs mean I will need to run a two man rotation with tandems and actively manage, but we should have a good staff and have a ton of money for the offense, which comes in at a robust .338/.409/.518.

We've got 1920 Hornsby, the 1925 Tigers duo of Cobb and Wingo, 1936 Bill Dickey, and another Sisler teammate in Goose Goslin to give us five regulars who hit over .360. We've also got 1966 Dick Allen and a shortstop combo of 1920 Joe Sewell and Ray Chapman, plus cheap George Foster and Billy North to round out the boxes. The bench is weak and we're very light on PAs among regulars but we should make up for it with quality.

$110m:

My first thought here was to grab 1908 Ed Walsh as the Warrior and figure the rest out later, given Walsh is dollar for dollar the best pitcher for this cap. I built a team with him, 1918 Walter Johnson, and a bunch of strong relievers, and the pitching was excellent, but I really didn't like the lineup, I had too many slow guys and too many poorly normalizing home run hitters. So instead I decided to build around another deadball monster who could be used in a two man rotation, 1914 Claude Hendrix, and soon discovered I could combine him with 1904 Jack Chesbro to give me Hilltop Park.

And fortunately, I was able to find speedy guys who hits lots of doubles and/or triples. Everyone except the catchers can run, and everyone will pile up the doubles and triples in the spacious confines of Hilltop. The range isn't quite as good as I'd like for Hilltop, but we'll score a lot of runs at least.

Offense: .327/.393/.519, 6193 PAs
Pitching: 1493 IP, 0.28 HR/9, 1.00 WHIP (includes 3 mopups who will hardly play)

$120m:

Similar result as the $110m here, we first went after 1908 Walsh but his hitting teammates were uniformly useless so had to come up with another plan. Again, we looked at 1914 Claude Hendrix, and he had three other decent teammates in OF Dutch Zwilling, C Art Wilson, and P Rankin Johnson. After that we went straight to 1894 and discovered the incredible Philadelphia trifecta of 1B Ed Delahanty, OF Sam Thompson and 3B Lave Cross, who also came with two dirt cheap pitchers. Then we picked up 1963 Koufax and four scrub teammates, 1985 John Tudor, Willie McGee and Ozzie Smith plus two scrub teammates, and then 2017 Corey Kluber, Jose Ramirez and Andrew Miller plus (you guessed it) two more scrub teammates.

This gives us a remarkable roster with 11 out of 25 players just roster filler, but those other 14 are quite good, and I could never improve on this roster. There were a lot of good options in the 1900s but using any of them would have meant getting rid of my 1894 Phillies and I couldn't part with those guys, This one will take a ton of active managing of the pitching staff but should still work.

Offense: .335/.393/.510, 5655 PAs
Pitching: 1350 excellent innings at about 0.90 WHIP, then 215 innings of scrubs

$140M:

I loved this theme too, as it gave me the opportunity to possibly out-smart myself and go against the grain. The rules of the theme are begging you to go all-in on Ruth. There's a DH and you can't use deadball pitchers (except overpriced and not good enough for the cap pitching Ruths.) You've got $140M to play with. The play is to put three Ruths in the outfield, another at DH, and maybe another at first base. Start with that and figure the rest out later.

Except the Ruth's are all really expensive, in particular the monster Ruths who will crush any and all pitching thrown at them. Not only that, most owners will go heavy on left-handed pitching to counter the Ruths. Kershaw is a very obvious pick, and I expect to see lots of Koufax as well. Plus some people will probably be using pitching Ruths. So we decided to go with right handed hitters and put them in the cavernous Municipal Stadium. Take a platoon advantage, and have enough money left over for the pitching to make sure we can stand up to the Ruths. We've got five Kershaws, four de Groms and three Rich Hills (the two low IP very low WHIP ones plus a mop up). We come in at 1548 IP, 0.51 HR/9 (and this will normalize well), and overall 0.89 WHIP. In a high cap DH league, especially one where I'll be facing a ton of Ruths driving up pitch counts, I think its worth the high IP total.

Then on offense, we've got Piazza at catcher (paying for catcher arm is a waste of money) and triples machine 2011 Jose Reyes at shortstop for our two single players. Our two doubles are the mandatory two Ruths (1918 for his doubles and triples and the cheap 1935 one) and Ernie Clement to back up in the IF (2023 version hits .385 and 2021 is cheap and shouldn't play any meaningful innings). Then we've got three Kiki Cuylers providing speed, range and XBHs, and finally four Rogers Hornsbys (1920,1921,1923 and 1931, the ones who mostly hit doubles and triples). Total: .349/.418/.562.

Thanks to redcped, schwarze and everyone else for keeping this going, really looking forward to it!

Collective Strategy:

As mentioned in the past, given what I've seen with HRs allowed vs errors in overall RA/G, and how the HR impact was priced in, such that a pitcher similarly priced as another pitcher will essentially have the same RA/9 without regard to how they get to it. I generally don’t even look at the HR/9 for the pitchers I draft, most of the time, their HR/9 is relatively high.

I've also continued to play around with very heavily offensive oriented teams maximizing every roster spot with typically 2-4 platoons to use every $ productively. I no longer draft $200k scrubs or mop ups.

I have become a huge fan of non-traditional pitching staffs that are built almost entirely of RPs or shorter IP SPs. There's so much value in these pitchers with 80-130 IP, especially with IP/G <2. On most teams these days I run pitching staffs of 11-13 80-130 IP guys at roughly a 20-30% discount to a similar staff built around higher IP/G or traditional roles due to dynamic pricing and most of these guys being generally ignored as it takes a little more careful effort to use them effectively.

I really like to use players I’ve never used before, and I like to maximize value as much as possible. I prefer pitchers post-1960 and hitters pre-1930 (but especially from the 1880s).

So, as you read through each of the team specific thought processes below, remember that all of them start with this basic set of goals.

$70m: 2023 Tampa Bay Rays - Tropicana Field (-1, 0, 1, -1/-1):

No secret that I love the low caps. The lower the better. My favorite is $25-40m and have been delighted to have the old HLCYG theme revived of late. I started with this one. I had an initial idea of trying to find a team that had a bunch of great players, but that was missing 1-2 key pieces. My main thought was:
Try to avoid 1969-70 and pre-WW2 era teams due to dynamic pricing making most of these teams above $70m, which meant I’d mostly be using my FA to downgrade, not upgrade, at least salary-wise.

I started with the 1996 Florida Marlins. This was a team that was right around .500, had legit stars in Sheffield and Brown, and great pieces like Devon White, Charles Johnson, etc… They were solid, but even with the FA, there was too much wasted salary on the bench. They didn’t have enough PA to be useful platoon players, and the starters had enough PA to not need to platoon, so I’d end up either replacing most of the bench with $200k scrubs and still waste $1.2-1.5m, or I needed to look elsewhere and find a team that better utilized it’s pieces. They also had nearly 1500 IP, which is overkill at any cap, except $180m+, so that was also a factor.

I decided I needed to look for a team that emphasized platoons and shuffling pitchers. After seeing some of the salaries for the ‘96 team, I also added a third thought in that I now wanted to focus entirely on 2017-2023 to minimize dynamic pricing impact altogether. Obviously, the Rays are a standout team in playing matchup baseball, so I figured I’d look at their 2017-2023 teams and see what came up.

However, when I did my search, the 2017 starting year didn’t take, so I only searched for 2023. Which may or may not have worked to my advantage. This team was perfect. Only offensive shortcoming was catcher, easily fixed with FA 1, and pitching-wise, they utilized the matchup game so well, they were about 200 innings short of my target IP. FA 2 helped with that, though, I’m still about 45 IP short of where I’d ideally like to be. If I’m going to be short IP in any league, this is the one. Plus, this whole roster has high RL K/9 pitchers, so they should all benefit from throwing less pitches than allocated and not fatigue as much as other pitchers might. Especially, if as I expect, most owners draft teams pre-1980. The negative hit factor of my park –and I also expect, most parks – should also help here. I liked this one so much, despite the short IP, I didn’t even bother to look at the other six seasons I meant to check out. I also had the idea long after I entered this team, that I probably should have looked at the ‘17-20 Cubs knowing they have a bunch of guys who are great at lower caps like Zobrist, Happ, Schwarber, Baez, plus Hendricks to anchor a rotation, but I never even looked at any of them… So, I’ll be curious to see how many other Cubs and Rays teams from these eras show up.

LINEUP (FA Italicized):
C Keibert Ruiz .260/.308/.409
1B Yandy Diaz .330/.410/.522
2B Brandon Lowe .231/.328/.443
3B Isaac Parades .250/.352/.488
SS Wander Franco .281/.344/.475
LF Luke Raley .249/.333/.490
CF Josh Lowe .292/.335/.500
RF Randy Arozarena .254/.364/.425

Platoon Pieces:
OF Michael Brantley .278/.298/.426
2B/3B/SS Taylor Walls .201/.305/.333
1B/OF Harold Ramirez .313/.353/.460
ALL Osleivis Basabe .218/.277/.310

I'm running a 3-man rotation with:
Taj Bradley 105 IP 5.59/.255/1.39
Logan Webb 216 IP 3.25/.248/1.07
Zach Eflin 178 IP 3.50/.235/1.02

Key Bullpen Pieces:
Shane McClanahan 115 IP 3.29/.222/1.18
Tyler Glasnow 120 IP 3.53/.209/1.08

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 5,155 PA, .268 AVG, .344 OBP, .455 SLG w/ 194 HR and 134 SB (80% success rate).
Pitching: 1,208 IP, 3.39 ERA, .226 OAV, 1.11 WHIP, 0.99 HR/9


$80m: Double Teaming Hit Parade - Hilltop Park (+3, +3, +3, 0/-3)

For this theme one of the obvious choices was to lean hard into SB to take advantage of the lack of quality C arms, especially with the requirement of a minimum of 300 SB. A bunch of guys like Raines, Rickey, Coleman, Willis in Dodger Stadium to give them the best shot at just getting on base and then running around. I’ve done that in OL a couple of times and it was fun. Not as fun when at least a good percentage of other teams will be trotting out that same strategy. I thought it would be fun to go for a power/speed team and had a fun roster with Bonds, Marte, Carroll, Bonilla, and I ended up with 313 SB and 306 HR. But I didn’t really like the balance on defense or how HR reliant the team truly was. I figure with the mostly post-WW2 era most owners would be looking to minimize HRs with their ballparks and that we’d see a bunch of Dodger, Target, Petco, etc.

Then, I thought, if there’s a bunch of Dodger Stadiums, I could try to capitalize on the +hit factor and go all in on AVG and then take that to an extreme. My initial thought had me building this team for Coors where their park adjusted AVG# for Coors would be .412. I loaded up on doubles hitters as a secondary factor to try to drive in as many runs as possible. No player has less than 7 2B/100#, with a couple of them reaching 10+ 2B/100#. Factor in Hilltop with the +3 hit factor and the +3 2B factor, their park adjusted AVG# is .404 and they would be expected to hit more than 350 doubles. Now, the other side of this is my opponents ballparks, so if everyone is in Dodger, expect my team to hit close to .385 with around 300 doubles. If mostly Petco, somewhere around .330 with about 265 doubles. In any case, this offense should be on base constantly and hit lots of 2B.

For pitching, I made two assumptions, most everyone is going to lean into SB, others may flirt with the idea of a power/speed team and add some HRs, especially with more modern pitchers, but that overall, I wouldn’t run into too many HRs and there will be more Target fields to combat that strategy than there will be HR oriented teams. Teams leaning into SB are mostly going to be low BB rate singles hitters, so in addition to ignoring HR rate, my pitching staff also ignored BB rate. I focused solely on OAV. I drafted the absolute lowest OAV# I could get. Nothing else mattered.

In the end, I switched off of Coors and settled on Hilltop as I do have a decently high HR/9, also, my entire pitching staff is RH (except for Randy Johnson), so the -3 HR RF will help negate the platoon advantage somewhat when I do run into a HR friendly offense, plus the hit factor and double rate there was only slightly less than Coors, so the overall impact I was going for still holds up.

LINEUP:
RF '01 Ichiro Suzuki .350/.381/.457
CF '71 Ralph Garr .343/.372/.441
LF '89 Tony Gwynn .336/.389/.424
2B '91 Julio Franco .341/.408/.474
SS '21 Trea Turner .328/.375/.536
1B '75 Rod Carew .359/.421/.497
3B '89 Carney Lansford .336/.398/.405
PITCHER
C '12 Jordan Pacheco .270/.363/.351

PH ‘75 Tommy Harper .319/.373/.464
PH ‘90 Joey Cora .270/.311/.300
PH ‘18 Adrian Sanchez .276/.288/.345

Again, I’m running a 3-man rotation:
’20 Justin Dunn 123 IP 4.34/.189/1.36
‘92 Randy Johnson 211 IP 3.77/.206/1.42
‘73 Jim Bibby 197 IP 3.76/.202/1.34

Key Bullpen Pieces:
No RP has more than 96 IP or fewer than 72. OAV ranges between .185-.212, WHIP between 1.28-1.41.

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 5,464 PA, .335 AVG, .383 OBP, .451 SLG 301 SB (77% success rate)
Pitching: 1,348 IP, 3.71 ERA, .200 OAV, 1.35 WHIP, 0.98 HR/9


$100m: Boxed Into Claude Raymond - Baker Bowl (0, +4, +1, +2/+1)

After some initial frustrations trying to figure out the best way to approach this theme and build a team that fit my overall team building strategy, I finally built one I was comfortable with and received a message that my team was illegal as I had players post-1980 (four of them as a result of taking the 1993 Fisk and 1984 Schmidt. Ironically, both hitters were taken because of who I could get from their pitching teammates (Roberto Hernandez and John Denny). I already knew that team was only already an acceptable compromise, and I would now be very unlikely to be able to draft a pitching staff I liked that didn’t have any pitchers with more than 170 IP and that now my only options at catcher were Torre or Hartnett since I already had my catcher platoon from other boxes that were too valuable to my preferred playstyle to disrupt, and that the only teammate of Torre’s that fit my requirements was Seaver, who is another box player, and who I also already had, and Hartnett, whose pitching teammates sucked for what I was trying to build. Which really limited me to either a complete redraft and trying not to draft a team the way I like with all of my pitchers between 70-150 IP and more limited platoons, or I’d have to compromise on quality. Budget wasn’t the issue… Could’ve made this work several ways with the players from the boxes if the years restriction wasn’t there, or their usable teammates weren’t literally all in other boxes, or if they had just as many seasons at positions they weren’t assigned to than the one they were. So, it really came down to, compromise on quality or compromise on how I like to build my teams. I did the quality compromise. I’d rather draft teams that play how I like than to win. So, I sacrificed a bunch of OAV, WHIP, BB/9, and HR/9 to keep my pitchers and rotational setup how I like. I sacrificed AVG, OBP, and defense to keep platoons and minimize wasted PA or salary. I still had some waste with high IP pitchers and $200k Torre. Which really frustrated me. Even more so when I realized in my shuffle of trying to do this, I ended up with two players from Box 6 and none from Box 11. At this point, I never even considered a round 2 team here because the amount of effort and time spent – just to make one team I was barely OK with even as a compromise – was more time of almost pure frustration that I hoped to not have to deal with again. Thinking was: If I do make round 2, I’ll conform and just draft a boring cookie team with the standard 3-man rotations and such so I don’t have to even think about building a fun team. At this point, I knew redraft was necessary, and there was likely no way to draft the team I was trying to. I also posted most of this and my original drafted final thoughts (which I’ve removed from here) in the other thread.

At this point I did two things simultaneously:
1. I modified the WIS salary sheets to only include the 1920-1980 seasons, removed a handful of stats and added a couple of custom normalized stats, and removed all players except the box players and their teammates. I also put together a script to iterate through combinations within specific parameters of PA ranges, IP ranges, hitting and pitching salary ranges, stats to focus on, etc to have the script choose the most optimal team within the constraints I gave by selecting box players and their teammates. It took the script 37 hours to give me the following roster:
1920 Dave Bancroft
1920 Cy Williams
1923 Jim Bottomley
1923 Rogers Hornsby
1924 Babe Adams
1924 Eddie Moore
1925 Tris Speaker
1925 Joe Klugmann
1927 Gabby Hartnett
1927 Fred Haney
1940 Joe Dimaggio
1940 Tiny Bonham
1942 Jimmie Foxx
1942 Bill Butland
1943 Harry Brecheen
1943 Howie Pollet
1954 Al Rosen
1954 Don Mossi
1968 Andy Messersmith
1968 Tom Murphy
1968 Wilbur Wood
1968 Hoyt Wilhelm
1968 Don McMahon
1979 Bruce Sutter
1979 Ken Henderson

This was my favorite offense, however, while I gave it IP constraints for the individual pitchers, I didn’t for the whole team, and it was about 100 IP short from where I felt comfortable at this level (1,251 total IP). I thought about adding in the team-wide IP restraint and re-running it, but I had a short trip over the holiday weekend that ended up leaving me without the time to work on this more, and by the time I was back, I definitely didn’t have even half a day to let the script run, let alone up to 3-days…
2. While the script was doing its thing, I worked on two distinct teams, one that would meet as many of my fun criteria as possible for the pitching staff without concern for the hitting meeting my ideals and ended up with a team that was close to what I’d like to see from a pitching staff (had to make a couple of compromises, but overall I like the pitching). From my hitting, I had to make a large number of compromises and really only like about half the lineup, but I do have a couple of interesting platoons and virtually no wasted salary across 5400 PA and 1380 IP. It’s not a team I would ever intentionally build, and it’s not quite how I like to build my rosters, but it’s close enough that I went ahead and entered it. The other I worked on was one designed to just draft the cheapest pitching staff regardless of how I got the IP as long as it had at least 1,330 and no more than 1,420. It had just 7 pitchers, and a fun offense, but I didn’t like it as much as the one above.

If perchance, I make it to round two, I’ll fine tune the script a little more and give it the restraints to cut out the players I’ve already used and use whatever it gives me just for kicks.

LINEUP (box selections italicized):
SS '20 Dave Bancroft .299/.346/.387
LF ‘25 Ty Cobb .378/.468/.598
CF ‘20 Cy Williams .325/.364/.497
2B ‘24 Frankie Frisch .300/.374/.441
RF ‘40 Joe Dimaggio .352/.425/.626
1B ‘46 Roy Cullenbine .335/.477/.537
3B ‘54 Al Rosen .300/.404/.506
PITCHER
C ‘37 Gabby Hartnett .354/.424/.548

Platooning with the following key players giving PA at LF, 1B, 3B, and C:
‘25 Bob Fothergill .353/.377/.451
‘46 Doc Cramer .294/.342/.368
‘42 Jimmie Foxx .270/.392/.460
‘37 Lonny Frey .278/.381/.369

Still running a 3-man rotation:
'40 Tiny Bonham 105 IP, 1.90/.224/0.97
‘66 Gary Peters 205 IP, 1.98/.212/0.98
‘72 Vida Blue 158 IP, 2.80/.215/1.09

Key Bullpen Pieces:
‘42 Bill Butland 119 IP, 2.51/.206/1.06
‘54 Don Mossi 98 IP, 1.94/.176/1.02
‘65 Robin Roberts 76 IP 1.89/.216/0.93
‘66 Bob Locker 95 IP, 2.46/.206/.1.01
‘66 Hoyt Wilhelm 82 IP, 1.66/.178/0.83
‘68 Andy Messersmith 82 IP, 2.21/.157/0.98
‘68 Tom Murphy 100 IP, 2.17/.191/0.96
‘72 Rollie Fingers 117 IP, 2.51/.212/1.05

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 5,485 PA, .323 AVG, .398 OBP, .492 SLG
Pitching: 1,384 IP, 2.26 ERA, .206 OAV, 1.00 WHIP, 0.47 HR/9

$110m: Fort Huachuca Nine - Fenway Park (+2, +4, 0, +1/0)

I only looked at one season and unlike my normal strategy, I built my offense first. Any chance I can use ‘99 Delahanty, I do. Plus ‘19 Ruth, an opportunity to use Hornsby and Foxx and Ted Williams! Done… I was all in on offense. I had to adjust slightly and drop Foxx as I couldn’t quite afford him and a C and still provide what I felt was a moderately competitive pitching staff. If only the ‘39 Foxx qualified at C. My only real disappointment was having to take ‘99 Brian Anderson for IP purposes. If only Williams salary was a few thousand less and I could’ve made those IP up with Bobby Shantz, whom I liked much better. That said, I have this crazy offense that hits tons of doubles in Fenway. My pitching is a little suspect, but mostly on BB rate, OAV is tenable for the ballpark and cap, but if we aren’t destroying pitching staffs, then we aren’t winning, so we leaned into this fully.

LINEUP (Hero Italicized):
3B ‘89 Wade Boggs .330/.430/.449
2B ‘29 Rogers Hornsby .380/.459/.679
LF ‘49 Ted Williams .343/.490/.650
CF ‘99 Ed Delahanty .410/.464/.582
RF ‘19 Babe Ruth .322/.456/.657
SS ‘09 Honus Wagner .339/.420/.489
DH ‘59 Joe Cunningham .345/.453/.478 & ‘69 Tito Francona .341/.418/.541
1B ‘09 Nick Johnson .291/.426/.405 & ‘19 Asdrubal Cabrera .323/.404/.565
C ‘99 Jason Kendall .332/.428/.511 & ‘39 Don Padgett .399/.444/.554

DH/1B ‘79 Terry Crowley .317/.449/.476

With another 3-man rotation of:
‘69 Jim Nash 116 IP 3.67/.247/.1.23
‘19 Shane Bieber 214 IP 3.28/.230/1.05
‘09 Ted Lilly 178 IP 3.10/.230/1.06

Key Bullpen Pieces:
‘59 Bill Henry 142 IP 2.68/.227/1.02
‘79 John Fulgham 146 IP 2.53/.227/1.02
‘89 Mark Grant 117 IP 3.33/.248/1.18
‘39 Oral Hildebrand 136 IP 3.06/.219/.1.13

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 6,322 PA, .348 AVG, .448 OBP, .551 SLG
Pitching: 1,333 IP, 3.20 ERA, .236 OAV, 1.11 WHIP, 0.98 HR/9

$120M: DOPY Sox - Dodger Stadium (+2, -4, -3 -1/-1)

I really struggled on this team to get a roster together anywhere close to the $120m cap. At one point I even messaged another owner “how does anyone draft for caps this high? Maxing out the salary here is REALLY HARD and I’m drafting guys like ‘27 Ruth who cost $15m!” At that point and iteration of this team I had three $10m+ hitters and my roster came in at $115.7m. Prior tries had me at $110.3m, $110.1m, and the only one I got to even $118m had 800 excess PA and two mopup pitchers. After those messages I managed to get one to $116.4m and wondered if I should just grab $4m in wasted salary to fill the cap on excess PA or IP bench pieces. In the end, I definitely have around 400 excess PA and probably around 50-75 excess IP, but I managed to get to $119.6m. So… For those of you that managed to effectively squeeze out your cap better, kudos.

I started with my pitching and honed in on the 2020 Dodgers, 1990 Pirates, 1994 Expos, 1965 White Sox… I looked at how they pieced together and took the Pirates over the Expos and then went about trying to figure out the offense. I quickly settled on the 1896 Orioles, and after some trial and error the 1927 Yankees. I still have Ruth, as well as the $12m Hughie Jennings.

LINEUP:
LF ‘96 Willie Keeler .386/.432/.496
SS ‘96 Hughie Jennings .401/.472/.488
1B ‘27 Babe Ruth .356/.487/.772
CF ‘27 Earl Combs .356/.414/.511
RF ‘90 Barry Bonds .301/.406/.565
C ‘27 Pat Collins .275/.407/.418 & ‘20 Will Smith .289/.401/.579
3B ‘90 Wally Backman .292/.374/.397 & ‘20 Justin Turner .307/.400/.460
2B ‘65 Don Buford .283/.358/.389

PH ‘96 John McGraw .325/.422/.403

As has probably come to be expected, another 3-man rotation with
‘20 Walker Buehler 99 IP, 3.44/.178/0.95
‘90 Doug Drabek 232 IP, 2.76/.225/1.06
‘27 Wilcy Moore 225 IP, 2.28/.234/1.15

Key Bullpen Pieces:
‘20 Clayton Kershaw 157 IP, 2.16/.194/0.84
‘65 Eddie Fisher 166 IP, 2.40/.205/0.98
‘65 Hoyt Wilhelm 144 IP, 1.81/.177/0.83
‘20 Tony Gonsolin 126 IP, 2.31/.193/0.84

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 6,063 PA, .333 AVG, .419 OBP, .508 SLG
Pitching: 1,465 IP, 2.49 ERA, .213 OAV, 1.00 WHIP, 0.62 HR/9

$140m: UCL Gang with Babe & Jackie - Robison Field (-1,0,0,-1/+2)
For my three main clones on the pyramid I immediately knew it would be some combination of Kershaw, deGrom, and Ruth. As soon as I saw there was a DH, I knew exactly how that trio would be sorted. 5 Ruth, 4 each of the other two. deGrom and Kershaw are solid in their own right, but Kershaw helps combat all the Ruth, deGrom all those who think about all the Kershaws and build RH heavy lineups. Now my offensive and pitching core were both set. I just needed to fill in some pieces around them. I was looking for a pitcher with three seasons of similar nature to deGrom and Kershaw, and a 2nd pitcher with two seasons of that same nature, but in both cases I just needed seasons between 40-60 IP, so it wasn’t too hard to find Josh Hader and Shawn Armstrong. My pitching staff was set and is easily the best staff I’ve used in this year’s tourney, and maybe over the last 3-5 years. On offense, I had 1B, DH, and my OF done, so I was looking for 2B, 3B, SS, C and a couple of bench pieces. I initially thought Foxx or Hornsby would fit well knowing I could grab Foxx at C and 3B, Hornsby at 2B and 3B, but as I looked for 3B, Jackie Robinson stood out and (obviously) also had a stellar 2B option. This meant I filled out the 2,3,4,5,4,2 on my pyramid and just needed the 1’s and a 3 on offense. I figured I’d get my 3 at C with a platoon of some sorts and a backup. Thought someone like Clements, but no, at SS, I saw exactly what I was looking for. Jose Iglesias. His 2020-2021 give 470 PA of elite bat at a premium position for relatively cheap, and his 2013 is roughly average bat over 150 PA to give me a solid full 617 PA of SS for $5.5m while using 3 of the same player. Now I just needed to grab a C platoon with my last two pieces of the pyramid, both my 1’s as luck would have it. I found an inexpensive but solid full time bat in low cap hero, Victor Martinez, which left me just enough to grab some 2B/3B PA just in case Jackie gets fatigued in this stacked lineup with the 67 PA ‘91 Freddie Benavides for $254k. Leaving me with a team I was very happy with on essentially a first pass even though I definitely went different directions than I initially thought on most of my infield choices.

I already don’t remember why I chose the ballpark I chose, but who am I to second guess myself at this point.

LINEUP:
LF ‘24 Babe Ruth .378/.513/.739
RF ‘28 Babe Ruth .323/.461/.709
CF ‘26 Babe Ruth .372/.516/.737
C ‘06 Victor Martinez .316/.391/.465
2B ‘50 Jackie Robinson .328/.423/.500
1B ‘19 Babe Ruth .322/.456/.657
DH ‘32 Babe Ruth .341/.489/.661
3B ‘53 Jackie Robinson .329/.425/.502
SS ‘20,’21,’13 Jose Iglesias (combined stats) .345/.376/.503

Would you believe me if I told you I had a 4-man rotation?
‘21 Jacob deGrom 92 IP, 1.08/.129/0.55
‘18 Jacob deGrom 217 IP, 1.70/.196/0.91
‘14 Clayton Kershaw 198 IP, 1.77/.196/0.86
‘20 Jacob deGrom 184 IP, 2.38/.190/0.96

Bullpen:
‘16 Clayton Kershaw 149 IP, 1.63/.184/0.72
‘20 Clayton kershaw 157 IP, 2.16/.194/0.84
‘22 Clayton Kershaw 126 IP, 2.28/.206/0.94
‘17 Josh Hader 48 IP, 2.08/.156/0.99
‘20 Josh Hader 51 IP, 3.79/.123/0.95
‘23 Josh Hader 56 IP, 1.28/.163/1.10
‘22 Jacob deGrom 64 IP, 3.08/.175/0.75
‘20 Shawn Armstrong 41 IP, 1.80/.170/0.80
‘23 Shawn Armstrong 52 IP, 1.38/.188/0.90

Overall stat lines:
Hitting: 5,976 PA, .338 AVG, .450 OBP, .602 SLG
Pitching: 1,436 IP, 1.98 ERA, .184 OAV, 0.86 WHIP, 0.71 HR/9


Final Thoughts:

This go around I spent the least amount of time I can remember spending in a WISC on 4 of the 6 teams. The $120m was a struggle to even come close to reaching the cap for me, and the $100m I’ve discussed relatively thoroughly elsewhere. I like my teams overall. I expect the $70m team to be fairly competitive, the $140m, also. The $80m, $110m, and $120m, are fun for me and they may or may not do well, mostly depending on how the rest of my league built their teams and distributive luck. The $100m, I’m just happy it’s done and have minimal fondness for my roster and more excitement around if I get lucky and advance to round 2, to see what the script pulls out. Generally speaking, I expect to finish somewhere around 40-48th overall.

First let me thank the league organizers for their work efforts. It’s a lot of work, and it’s impossible to make everyone happy. It’s fun to play in our corner of the internet made possible by dedicated content creators like you.

$70M 1915 Braves Redux
Just from previous experience in these kinds of leagues, I’ve noticed that the deadball teams seem to perform well. 19^th century teams are awful defensively and don’t have enough players to fill a 25 man roster, so I’d actually be adding worthless players to the roster. Modern teams’ homeruns don’t translate well in a league with deadball pitching (like the one I chose) so they’re out also. I looked for teams that were already close to the $70M salary already and work from there. Other preferences were a good fielding SS and on-base percentage. The top contenders were the Phillies, White Sox and A’s. But the ones I kept coming back to were the 1914 and 1915 Braves. I had actually made a 1914 team and was about to hit the “enter team” button, but then realized they played in different stadiums in 1914 and 1915. Braves Field is the most pitcher-friendly stadium of that era, so I switched over to 1915 instead. This way, I can feel more comfortable with drafting less IP.
My free agents are OF Les Mann and P Red Ames. I dropped a lot of the mediocre guys to reduce PA and replaced them with scrubs. But I still have too many PA in my opinion. It’s difficult to min/max in this theme, so I have to do the best I can. One issue that I had is that there isn’t any sub $300k pitchers in 1915, so I ended up rostering Dick Crutcher and his $531k salary who will act as my mop-up man.
In retrospect, I think I chose poorly. I have too many PA and I couldn’t improve it any more in a meaningful way. I should have looked for a higher salaried team and cut salary instead of a lower salaried team and improve it.

Hitting: 5529 PA, .259/.337/.345
Pitching: 1357 IP, 2.49 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, .242 OAV, 0.12 HR/9
Braves Field (0.89)

$80M No Honor Among Thieves
This seemed like the most straightforward theme. I think there are two strategies for this theme. First, is to be a contrarian and draft 300 SB, but also, as many home runs as possible. This is because I think most people like me don’t expect a lot of home run hitters in this league and will draft high HR/9 pitchers to save on $. However, I don’t think it’s all that viable since I and many others will also draft a pitchers ballpark like the Astrodome. The other option is to really lean into the stolen base element. So that’s what I did. I discovered a new offensive category that I never used before, SBA/100SBO. This was the most important statistic that I used to complete my lineup. I’m not particularly worried about caught stealing since there will be all bad arms. It’s more important to attempt to steal. I was able to find a couple of hidden gems in 2020 Adalberto Mondesi and 2023 Dairon Blanco this way. I drafted every position this way except for catcher, of which there really aren’t any high SB catchers. So, I looked for the best hitting/low homerun D+ armed catcher and ended up with 79 Brian Downing. I have a lot of switch-hitters (Coleman, Raines, Cruz, and Mondesi). The pitching staff is constructed by looking for high HR/9 pitchers to save money since I don’t think there will be a lot of homeruns in this league. I’m using 19 Kluber, 67 Ken Johnson, 20 Kershaw, 20 Plesac and 21 Scherzer. HR/9#-wise it’s not as bad as it seems. Also, I’m using the Astrodome which should help with that. I’m noticing more than one team has utilized the home run in their team name, so it seems I may struggle against some of those lineups.
I did something for the first time in almost 20 years on this site. I hit the salary cap exactly with zero dollars left to spare. “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” – Antonie de Saint-Exupery.

Hitting: 5394 PA, .270/.344/.390, 588 SB
Pitching: 1322 IP, 2.71 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, .209 OAV, 1.12 HR/9
Astrodome (0.89)

$100M Dick Bartell in a Box
The first thing that I noticed is that there are no boxes for relief pitchers. Since I typically roster 6-7 of them, I researched the best relief pitchers from 1920-1980 to see if they had a usable teammate that was on the list. I was able to find Pete Rose, Dave McNally, Gary Peters, Frankie Frisch, and Jim Bottomley that way. Robin Roberts was the only non-teammate that was on that list, and he proved to be crucial. That was because he was an Astro, and thus I could use the Astrodome and make my doubles and triples team. That also meant I needed to find another starting pitcher. Dick Bartell was perfect because he was a strong defender, around 600 PA (to bat 8^th) and was teammates with Cliff Melton. I don’t like the idea of having three lefties in the rotation, but I tried some other combinations, but I didn’t find any that I liked. Tris Speaker, Al Simmons, and Frankie Frisch all fit the doubles/triples theme well so they made the roster. The rest was just filling in the rest of the boxes. I wanted to use 1972 Don Sutton, but he was too expensive, so I went with his 2^nd best season in 1973. Lastly, good advice in the forum to use a spreadsheet and highlight your choices. That helped tremendously.

Box 1: RHP2 1973 Don Sutton + 3B Ken McMullen
Box 2: OF3 1967 Pete Rose + RP Ted Abernathy
Box 3: OF2 1927 Al Simmons + 1B Jim Poole
Box 4: C 1934 Bill Dickey + RP Harry Smythe
Box 5: OF1 1921 Tris Speaker + C Les Nunamaker + OF Joe Wood
Box 6: LHP2 1973 Dave McNally + RP Grant Jackson
Box 7: LHP1 1966 Gary Peters + RP Hoyt Wilhelm
Box 8: 2B 1922 Frankie Frisch + RP Virgil Barnes
Box 9: RHP1 1965 Robin Roberts + OF Jim Beauchamp
Box 10: 3B 1943 Stan Hack + SS Bill Schuster
Box 11: 1B 1928 Jim Bottomley + RP Hal Haid
Box 12: SS 1937 Dick Bartell + SP Cliff Melton

Hitting: 5538 PA, .322/.390/.489
Pitching: 1484 IP, 2.49 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, .223 OAV, 0.45 HR/9
Astrodome (0.89)

$110M Eight is Enough

My initial research told me I should take 0 or 8. Much of that is because 2018 Jacob deGrom and 2020 Shane Bieber. I wanted one of the best non-dynamically priced players to anchor my pitching staff. Also, 0 and 8 allowed me to roster Ed Delahanty. However, I did not want 19^th century pitching since they make my defense worse. 1898 had Jack Taylor. 1900 did not have a cheap, usable relief pitcher, so 8 was the winner.

For my lineup, I tried to lean into doubles and triples since home runs will be dampened with all the deadball pitchers in the league. Here is my lineup:

CF 98 Ed Delahanty – stud hitter, good obp
RF 08 Ty Cobb – bad defender, but triples king
DH 98 Edgar Martinez – nice to get a pure DH so I don’t have to pay for defense
2B 28 Rogers Hornsby (Warrior) – he barely edges out Walter Johnson for highest $
1B 38 Johnny Mize – 2B/3B king
LF 18 Babe Ruth / 88 Darnell Coles – lefty/righty platoon
3B 18 Justin Turner / 58 Vic Power – too many PA, but solid hitters/defenders
C 78 Ted Simmons – switch hitter, good arm though I’m not worried about SB
SS 18 Yunel Escobar – great defender, less than 600 PA in the 9^th slot

SP 18 Allen Sothoron
SP 08 Walter Johnson
SP 48 Harry Brecheen
SP 18 Jacob deGrom
The rest are relief pitchers or bench scrubs.

I decided to have my warrior to be a hitter and not a pitcher. This is because I don’t want to carry 13 pitchers as it’s difficult to find high quality / low IP pitchers from each decade without drafting too many innings overall. One of the other benefits of having Hornsby as my warrior is that I get to use Braves Field and I have a penchant for using pitcher friendly stadiums in general.

Hitting: 6049 PA, .316/.401/.511
Pitching: 1463 IP, 2.07 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, .212 OAV, 0.23 HR/9
Braves Field (0.89)


$120M Shoeless to Bieber

Oh god, this one took a long time. Too many choices, I feel like I researched every team in history. I tried hard to make a 19^th century team work since I like their hitters. Finding usable 19^th century pitchers was hard to do unless I wanted to them to pitch a significant amount (I don’t) or roster a scrub. Since I was sorting by those criteria, it really limited the quality of the hitters. I almost used the 1886 or 1887 Wolverines, but then the hitters had too many PAs which caused me to have too many PAs overall. I came to the conclusion that it’s more important to find 5 puzzle pieces that fit instead of trying to theme to a doubles/triples team. I had to abandon the 19^th century teams for that reason.

What I ended up doing was making a spreadsheet marked with each position for every team that was on my list. I had about 150 teams on that sheet. Then I refined that list and removed half of them. Then it was just trying to put together a puzzle. The spreadsheet helped a lot as it gave me visual cues as to how to construct the roster. Here is what I ended up with:

1916 White Sox – Eddie Collins, Joe Jackson, Nemo Leibold, Reb Russell, Joe Benz
1939 Yankees – Joe Dimaggio, George Selkirk, Bill Dickey, Oral Hildebrand, Marius Russo
1961 Tigers – Norm Cash, Dick Gernert, Charlie Maxwell, Ron Kline, Terry Fox
1999 Red Sox – Nomar Garciaparra, Scott Hatteberg, Donnie Sadler, Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe
2020 Indians – Jose Ramirez, Mike Freeman, Shane Bieber, James Karinchak, Brad Hand

The 1916 White Sox and 1939 Yankees were selected because they gave me great players at key positions. The 2020 Indians were like that too. I had intended to use Zach Plesac, but I had too many innings and Karinchak was a good substitute. I didn’t want to use 99 Pedro because of his dynamic pricing, but I kept going back because they had Nomar at a key position and good relief pitching (I ended up not using Garces). The 1961 Tigers were the last team chosen. I was looking for a team between 1959-1979 that had a great 1B and usable relief pitchers. The Giants had some teams here that would have worked, but I settled on the Tigers instead. I think when it came to that point, I was literally tired of looking and my personal fatigue was in the red.

Hitting: 5768 PA, .322/.413/.531
Pitching: 1470 IP, 2.26 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, .203 OAV, 0.40 HR/9
Yankee Stadium (I) (0.90)

$140m One Hot Babe

I feel Babe Ruth is a bogey that the designers added to this league, so I decided to clone him only once. He has one sub $500k season that is usable as a pinch-hitter, so I drafted that one. I thought about using his 1934 season as my other season, but it didn’t really work with the other players that I chose. So, I ended up using a full season of Babe Ruth (One Hot Babe).
5 – It was between Kershaw and deGrom. I never considered anyone else. deGrom is good because of his minimal dynamic pricing. All other pitchers at the $140m level are dynamically priced. However, if I’m about to face off a horde of Babe Ruths, then I’ll take the lefty. Kershaw is also very good HR/9-wise. For those reasons, I took 5 Kershaws (13, 14, 15, 16, 20).
4 – Taking a page from “what would schwarze do?”, I took the switch-hitting, high OBP Mickey Mantle. 1961 will play CF. He has partial seasons in 63 and 62 that pair well together. 67 is weak at this cap at 1B and will bat 8^th. What I also like about him is that he doesn’t have CF range in 62 and 63 so I’m not paying for CF range when he’ll be in RF. I tried using Pete Rose, but he has too many PAs to make him viable and Mickey’s got less PA but higher quality.
4 – Josh Hader – I needed the best RP post dynamic pricing and it’s uncontested. Bonus, he’s left handed for all the Babe Ruths out there. 3 of the 4 seasons he has IP/G > 1.2 which is also important to me. I rostered 17, 18, 19, & 21.
3 – Dave Smith – Not a lot of dynamic pricing, insanely low HR/9 levels and can pitch in long relief. He was an easy choice. I took 81, 84 & 87. This rounds out my pitching staff.
3 – Victor Martinez – I think you always need two catchers, but this one also has a full season at DH. Getting a pure DH allows me to not overpay for the position. I don’t think I’ll need an A+ armed catcher, so the two catcher arms are B- and D-. The catchers will platoon and bat last. Did I mention that he’s a switch hitter? I rostered 03, 09 & 14.
2 – Rogers Hornsby will be playing 2B (20) and 3B (21). I originally had Frankie Frisch here because he’s a switch hitter. However, I had the cap space and Hornsby is just so much better offensively, even if his defense is so-so.
2 – Babe Ruth will be playing LF (30) and off the bench as a pinch hitter/player rest (35). I couldn’t punt two Ruths because two Mantles were playing RF. I played with a lot of Ruth combinations and this one fit the best due to his salary. While all the best Ruths have dynamic pricing, this version has a minimal amount. He’s still my best hitter and will bat 2^nd.
1 – Glenn Wright (30) gets the job because he’s the best SS I could find for about 600 PA and allows me about $200k for my last player. He is also a good defender (B/A), which is especially important in a SS. He’ll bat 7^th.
1 – Fred Stanley (79) because that’s all the money I had left for a super-utility scrub ($286k).
This league was the fastest of all the themes for me to finish and the most fun.

Hitting: 6109 PA, .326/.423/.571
Pitching: 1484 IP, 2.02 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, .186 OAV, 0.63 HR/9
Memorial Stadium (0.92)

General Summary
To start with, I REALLY enjoyed building four of these six teams, specifically the $100M, $110M, $120M and $140M teams. The $70M and $80M teams? Meh, not as much, which will probably be reflected in my write-up.
With that said, with each team, I offer a little insight into my strategy and perceived team strengths and weaknesses.
Birds on the Bat ($70M)
I read a lot on the thread about researching and finding the “right team” to use for this format. I tried to do that, but I have no idea what the “right team” looks like, so I simply went with one of my favorites growing up: The 1985 Cardinals.
The good news is this was a great team in general, winning close to 110 games. Getting it under the salary cap was fairly easy as I traded out an $11M John Tudor for a $6M Jimmy Key and a $9.5M Willie McGee for a $5.5M Dave Winfield.
Unfortunately though, with little to no experience playing in a league with this low of a cap, I have no idea how good, or bad this team may be.
Strengths: Much like the 85 Cardinals, I have a ton of speed (even without McGee) and some pretty good defense.
Weaknesses: My bullpen is hot garbage and I worry about being able to score enough runs. May also run a little short on Pas (5,457 from hitters in real life).
Peas and Carrots ($80M)
Another blah build in which I’m sure everyone is going to have some version of Rickey Henderson and most will have a JT Realmuto as their catcher.
As for a strategy, I took a little power as all my starters have at least 8 homers and seven of them have 12 or more, topped by 32 from Bobby Bonds.
Considering I can’t have a catcher to thwart base stealing, I did my best to prevent base runners by focusing on good defense and drafting pitchers with low walk rates.
Considering my home run totals, I may regret choosing the Astrodome as my home park, but with 1,410 real life innings pitched, I felt I may need the help.
Strengths: More power than most teams. Good defense and starting pitching.
Weaknesses: LOTS of strikeouts (the bad kind), low OBP, average at best bullpen.
Ty Cobb’s $100M Box
It would be a tough call as to which format I built more teams: this one, the $110 or the $120. It may be this one as it was the only one I had a mistake on, using two guys from the same box (Henry Aaron and Joe Horlen).
I ended up keeping Horlen, which cost me a bullpen arm, Bobby Tiefenauer, albeit only a 30IP one. I read a lot of comments on the difficulty of assembling a quality pen in this format, using only players from 1920-1980, when quality bullpen arms were in fewer supply.
As such, I ended up with a bunch of the same ones most teams will have: Hoyt Wilhelm (who came with Horlen), Jim Brewer and the 1924 version of Babe Adams. I feel pretty good with my pen that features those three arms and something called an Arnie Stone.
The lineup won’t require much tinkering as all my starters have at least 600 plate appearances, so it should be a set it and forget it, topped by a couple great ones, including the team’s namesake Ty Cobb and Aaron’s replacement, Harry Heilman.
Strengths: Three great starting pitchers in Koufax, J. Horlen and B. Pierce. Strong top-half of the lineup, including Cobb, Heilmann, E. Matthews and J. Foxx.
Weaknesses: My fourth starter, Rip Collins, is average at best in a $100M league and unfortunately, has the most innings pitched among my starters. Bullpen and defense is average.
What’s In a Navin? ($110M)
This team and the $120M probably required the most thought and attention to strategy.
Obviously, the starting point was choosing a warrior. I made five different teams using five different players, but all of them were hitters as I didn’t want a team with 13 pitchers. Twelve is more than enough.
I basically started by searching regulars with the highest RC27, eliminating anyone with a salary north of $12M. From there, I was leaning towards guys who didn’t field as well, wanting to pay for the offense, especially in a league with a DH. I also wanted to go with an earlier year player, as most of the pitching options in those years weren’t as good as more modern ones … especially cheaper guys.
With all that said, I settled on a 1921 model of Ty Cobb for my warrior. He’s a top hitter with an 11 RC27, an OPS# north of 1,000, and the ability to rack up doubles, triples and even some homers. As an added bonus, his fielding is good enough to land him in right.
With Cobb in the 2-slot, I added Birdie Cree and his .415 OBP to bat leadoff, and then stacked the lineup with some power for homer-friendly Navin stadium. I’ve got six guys with 29-41 homers in a lineup that again, shouldn’t need much in terms of rest (which is good since my bench has a collective 374 plate appearances).
Starting pitching, led by Lefty Gomez is average, but for obvious reasons, doesn’t give up many homers.
Strengths: Power lineup in a hitter friendly park. May hit close to 250 homers this season. Bullpen has some top notch arms as well and defense is above average.
Weaknesses: Starting pitching is average at best.
Stan Musial’s $120M Harmonica ($120M)
Factoring in time invested and strategy used, this team was probably the toughest to build of them all.
I ended up using the 1927 Yankees as my starting point, adding Ruth and Lazzeri to the lineup and Wilcy Moore to the pitching rotation.
From there, I primarily focused on building a pitching staff, and ended up with one that only had two traditional starters: Greg Maddux and Denny Neagle from the 97 Braves. While Moore threw 225 innings for the Yankees, it was mostly in relief as he can only go a little more than 4 innings a game, so he’ll be a tandem arm likely with one of my 1952 Cardinals’ trio of arms, Al Brazle, Stu Miller and Harvey Haddix, all of whom are quality pitchers capable of going multiple innings.
My 4^th rotation spot will be another tandem featuring a 2022 Clayton Kershaw (126IP) and probably one of those Cardinals or possibly 1895 Sadie McMahon (152 ip).
With the exception of 2022 Evan Phillips, I don’t have any other traditional one or even two inning relievers, which will be interesting to manage.
One of the challenges of building this team was using all the $$$. I managed to do that by filling out my lineup with the 1895 Orioles and using a $12M Hughie Jennings and a $5.8M John McGraw for SS and 3b and for the top of my lineup.
With no viable short innings guys on that Orioles team, I did end up with a few more innings than I normally roster (1,511) but I figure in a higher-cap league like this, I may need them.
Strengths: Top of my lineup with McGraw (.459 OBP) and Jennings (.444 OBP) followed by a 60-homer Babe Ruth.
Weakness: Only two full-time traditional starters and one traditional reliever.
Babe Ruth Was a Fat A$$ ($140M)
A fun, if not simple build, I started with my pitching staff and went from there. Recognizing there would be a lot of Babe Ruth’s in the league, I wanted a dominant left-handed arm who could start and pitch in relief. I ended up with four versions of Clayton Kershaw, three of which will start in a 5-man rotation and one out of the pen.
My five-clone player ended up being a pitcher as well who can start and pitch in relief, Jacob DeGrom. With a few shortened seasons due to injuries, he has some great numbers for a reliever who can pitch multiple innings as well as a starter.
My lineup has a couple Ruths, one in the OF and a DH batting third and fifth. My prominent players are Jimmie Foxx, who I have 4 of playing 1b, 3b, and catcher, and one coming off the bench. I also added three Carlos Beltrans to fill out the lineup and guard against someone shutting down my lineup with lefties … or righties for that matter as Beltran is a switch hitter.
Strengths: Great pitching from top to bottom.
Weaknesses: Foxx is an average catcher and the 3b version isn’t much of a hitter.

WISC #1 - Merrifield's 2021 SF Giants ($70M)

This theme requires picking a single season team and adding just one free agent hitter and one free agent pitcher, at a $70M cap. Therefore, the team I needed to pick met the following criteria: (1) They won a lot of games. One free agent hitter and free agent pitcher can only do so much, especially with such a low salary cap. (2) They cost less than $70M. If the team cost more than $70M, I would have to be subtracting, not adding. (3) Since PA and IP were likely to be at a premium, I wanted a team that played in a pitcher's park.

I first considered the 1998 San Diego Padres, but I never was quite happy with the team. Then I found the 2021 SF Giants and I knew I had the right team. The 2021 SF Giants went 107-55 for a 0.660 winning %, cost just $66.5 million initially when I loaded their players into the draft center and played in AT&T park, a pitcher's park. The opportunity to add 2021 Whit Merrifield, a low cap staple at 2B as a free agent was the cherry on top.

Managing fairly low innings and PA could be a slight challenge, but this very well might be the best of my 6 WISC teams this season.

Hitting: 5240PA 202HR 97SB 0.263/0.339/0.459
Pitching: 1241IP 3.13 ERA 1.10WHIP 0.226OAV 325BB 131HR

WISC #2 - Stealing is Legal ($80M)

What do you do when everyone can steal, and no one can throw out the baserunners? I think the only answer can be, don't let anyone get on base. So prioritize pitchers that don't allow baserunners to get on base, either by hit or walk (if they give up a HR who cares), and where possible pick players that can play excellent defense. Hitting wise you probably want to emphasize steals, but make sure some players are capable of hitting HRs as a common strategy in this theme will be to pick pitchers that allow HRs. After all, most basestealers aren't prodigious HR hitters, and the ones that are usually cost a pretty penny.

I like my team, and this one will likely compete with my $70M one for being the best of my 6 WISC teams.

Hitting: 5453PA 113HR 492* SB 0.284/0.353/0.419
Pitching: 1216IP 2.63ERA 0.94WHIP 0.217OAV 163BB 133HR

* - I should note here that all these statistics I give for hitting and pitching are normalized to a 162 game season

WISC #3 - 12 Boxes of Rubbish ($100M)

This was the last team I built of the six by several weeks, even though I had started on this one fairly early. The reason for that is it was really difficult to get a roster with a functioning bench and bullpen together. That's because of a combination of factors, including: (1) The 1920-1980 year restriction removes some of the best player seasons from the players in the boxes, including from the hitters (not just deadball pitchers), (2) In most cases, you will have to start a player from a box at each position as if you start a player's teammate at a position, you must still roster someone from the row that corresponds to that position and (3) No player selected from the boxes can have a teammate that is a player from any of the boxes. That made this entire roster an extremely annoying jigsaw puzzle.

I was so annoyed by this theme that I did not build my R2 Roster - and usually I build the R2 roster at the same time as the R1 roster for any theme with a R2 component. Since I didn't build my R2 Roster, I went with the principle that I wouldn't use in R1 any player I was thinking of using in R2. In addition, I made sure every player I picked from the boxes had a decent bullpen pitcher or bench player, so that I would at least have a functioning roster in R1, even if I didn't like it very much. This will likely be the worst of my six WISC teams.

Hitting: 5664PA 138HR 50SB 0.300/0.371/0.458
Pitching: 1489IP 2.30ERA 1.03WHIP 0.219OAV 340BB 62HR

WISC #4 - Cy Young's Magic 8Ball ($110M)

I fiddled around with other possible numbers like 3, 9 or 2 but in the end being able to roster SP stalwarts like Jacob DeGrom and Harry Brecheen and field players I was happy with at 2B or SS outweighed other considerations. I also like 1918 Babe Ruth. From a WISC perspective, I like themes like this - building a functional roster is not incredibly difficult, but finding the best roster can be quite challenging.

Hitting: 6312PA 188HR 126SB 0.298/0.378/0.492
Pitching: 1410IP 1.74ERA 0.95WHIP 0.208OAV 279BB 35HR

WISC #5 - Murderer's Row ($120M)

This was definitely one of the harder themes - building a roster is tough, and getting up to the salary cap was an even tougher challenge. Luckily the 1927 New York Yankees solved a lot of my problems with the $15M Babe Ruth and the $8M Earle Combs. The rest of the roster is filled out with solid players from the 1888 New York Giants, the 1996 Florida Marlins and the 2017 Cleveland Indians, with the 1973 Baltimore Orioles filling in the holes.

Hitting: 5938PA 226HR 195SB 0.309/0.392/0.532
Pitching: 1490IP 2.05ERA 0.98WHIP 0.205OAV 341BB 53HR

WISC #6 - The Babe Strikes Back ($140M)

The principle difficulty in this league is preserving enough 1 or 2 clone options to comfortably fill out the infield positions, so that someone doesn't wind up playing out of position. This means that the pitching staff is going to be composed of a few high powered options, so the choices had to be made wisely. I went with Clayton Kershaw (x4) and Jacob DeGrom (x4) as the core, and filling out with Sean Doolittle (x3) and Rich Hill (x2). Hitting wise, I knew that a I had to use a x5 clone, that player would have to play OF, and that Babe Ruth had to be on the roster, so I made Babe Ruth my x5 clone, while avoiding becoming overly dependent on HRs or Babe Ruth by largely choosing versions of him that would not break the bank.

Hitting: 6534PA 236HR 163SB 0.320/0.417/0.534
Pitching: 1441IP 1.92ERA 0.82WHIP 0.184OAV 239BB 87HR

140m Attack of the clones. Pete Rose (5) came to mind as a great player with good seasons at multiple positions. So he was my 5 guy. The Ruth (3) rule had to be capitalized on because his big hitting years are too expensive so I used his pitching years and got a DH year from him. I picked Torre (3) because he was an elite C in the 60s, and an inexpensive MVP at 3B in 1971. I have had good success w/ him. Needing pop, Ted Williams (2) was an easy OF choice. Placido Polanco (2) can play many positions defensively well and hits so he was the bench guy. The only hole left in the field was SS so Renteria, who was the best left for the budget. Feller provides 300+ effective innings for the price. He will carry a big load. After Ruth, Feller, I needed a lot of pitchers but not a lot of innings. Wilhelm (4) gives ~400IP and is very good. Chapman (4) is the LH in the pen who is unhittable. This team will score but if we can stay out of a HR park, the pitching may be able to hold up.

120m Take 5 - I don’t know why but 1961 Maris/Mantle came to mind immediately. I have seen those guys wreck in other theme leagues. That was the foundation. 1961. Work outward. Devin Williams 2020 Brewers is unhittable and they had other great/cheap pitchers. 1931 Philly brought in offense (Bishop, Foxx, Simmons) and needed IP Grove. Filled gaps. That left 1906 Giants to provide innings, 3B, C. I like Devlin/Breshnahan. It was up to SS and one more decent pitcher. Nomar 1999 Red Sox and past cookie Derek Lowe helped. The rest are just the best from the 5 teams. Great OBP on this team, the big boys need to mash for this team to Win.

Run Forrest Run - SB team was fun. Even though he never delivered in the past, I remember Eric Davis 1986 and 80 swipes along w/ Power and Defense. Started there. Mitchell Page has always done well good OBP, 42 SB. Have not used 2019 Bellinger but a good year and 15 SB with awesome OBP. You cannot steal 1B. Filling in w/ Carew/Lansford/Doran/Campy was generally easy, no power but good defense and OBP. Because C arms are horrible, I focused on keeping BBs down for my staff. Wood/Langford/Gura/Hoyt, that’s 1150IP of about 1.6 BB/9. Vuckovich will be the innings guy in the pen and Veras is the closer. The weakness of this team will be if BP gets fatigued, and it might.

140m Box team was the hardest mostly because if you don’t pick a good player in the box, you cannot use him if he was a teammate. Took Messersmith because he was affordable and also brought Nolan Ryan in who was NOT in a box. 1B/2B/CF was covered by 1922 White Sox Collins, Jamieson, Sheely. Using Johnny Bench brought in Perez at 3B. That helped. Singleton was an easy choice as I couldn’t use Rose and couldn’t afford Mantle on that row. Using bad years from Mize, Boyer brought in Allie Reynolds and Tommy John. After an initial error it took a lot to move this around. I don’t particularly like Box leagues. No idea how this team will do.

All Fours. I think Walter Johnson was my first pick for 1914. That is just about 30% of your staff. From there Kershaw 2014 is very good and Horlen 64 is also good. Kiko Calero 2004 has historically been good for me..he and Adams 24 will be very good closers. Hitting side John McGraw 1894 is crazy good and <6m. I recently discovered Ross Youngs, with Ashburn, Molitor we will have some crazy OBP. Vmart, Medwick, Bill Dickey all have good seasons to drive in runners. This team could be good.
Team Swap 2. I struggled with this one because I kept trying to think of teams that were 1 player away or were not on everyones radar and within the cap. Settled on the Cubs 1987 because Dawson was MVP, with Moreland, Durham, Sandberg, Mumphrey they are solid offensively. Add in Alan Trammel .343 and 28 HRs at SS and they can be AWESOME. Pitching was weak w/ basically just Sutcliffe and Smith as closer. Add in 300 Roger Clemens innings to MVP and Trammells year….this team could surprise.

Did anyone else completed their SB team with cheap Otis Nixon's?? Hahaha

$70M - 2018 Dodgers
When I read the rules for this theme, the early 90s Braves teams immediately came to mind. Using the player spreadsheets, I did a bunch of sorting and filtering to identify other possible teams. Came up with 20 to 25 possibilities, but narrowed it down pretty quickly to the 1993 Braves, 2018 Dodgers and 1911 NY Giants. Built those 3 teams and spent a good while debating which to use. Ultimately went with the Dodgers because I liked their bats better (3 players with > .500 SLG#). Added Jose Berrios and Adam Eaton to round out the squad. I'm concerned about my arms - both from a quality and quantity perspective. Is 1,335 innings enough in Dodger Stadium? I think it will be but we'll find out. The back end of my rotation and long relievers include Alex Wood, Rich Hill, Kenta Maeda and Ross Stripling. All those guys will have to throw meaningful innings, and I don't have confidence that they'll be good enough. That'll probably be what sinks this team.

Hitting: 5,220 PA, 260 2B, 224 HR, .266/.349/.482 slash line
Pitching: 1,334.7 IP, 3.32 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, .230 OAV.

$80M - The 300 Club

I play mostly open leagues and can usually build a pretty decent $80M squad. In fact, I might be the champ of building teams that lose in the Divisional round of the playoffs (as evidenced by my pitifully low 2 championships in over 70 season but respectable .546 winning percentage).So this was the easiest build for me.

I figured most people would go all-in on SB and I decided to take a different approach. I got the vast majority of SBs from 2 guys - 1974 Brock and 1988 Henderson. Added 2 other favorites of mine in 2018 Ramirez and 2016 Segura for another 67 SB. And what's an $80M team without 2019 Ketel Marte? So he was next. Went with 2011 Martinez at catcher. 2019 Bogaerts and 2017 M. Gonzalez round out the hitters.

For pitching, I usually use deadballers for SP, but they were out. So I went with some players that I occasionally use in 1975 R. Jones and 1974 C. Hunter. The bullpen anchors are some of my typical guys - 2021 Holmes, 2018 Herrera, 2006 League, and 2020 Sherriff. Filled out the rest of the staff with a bunch of guys I haven't used before but had the IP that I needed - 1983 Hoyt, 1966 Burdette, 2020 Urquidy, 1993 Aguilera, 1951 Aloma, and 1992 Haas. I'm not confident that they'll be good enough.

I'll say this is an 87 win team. But I could see it being below .500 too if my pitching implodes.

Hitting: 5,433 PA, 301 2B, 171 HR, .306/.376/.487 slash line
Pitching 1,382 IP, 2.75 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, .233 OAV

...to be continued