Use this thread to post your writeups. What was your thought process when buildiong your teams? Which choices did not make the cut for you?

This is my favorite part of round 1....

In past years I've done win/loss predictions for each team but, after 4 years away from the game, I have little idea how I'm going to do. That didn't stop me from planning for Round 2 (see my $80M team strategy), but that's moreso hopeful than expected.

I found the themes to be fun but relatively research-heavy and with a tilt towards lower salary teams (the $100M, $120M, and $140M will all play like lower cap leagues). Wishing good luck to everyone except whomever I'm facing that day.

$70M: MH 1978 Dingers
Stadium: Riverfront Stadium

It's generally a bad idea to bet on HRs in the WISC, against top tier competition, but that's what I'm doing with this team. At this cap minimizing all three of OAV, BB/9, and HR/9 will be difficult. My bet is that folks will sacrifice a bit of HR/9 for the other two, so I drafted a team with just under 200 HRs.

This wasn't my initial plan. I figured a switch-hitting, speed-based team from 1981 or the mid 80's would be best, but when I looked at the data it told a different story. My issue was that none of those years had a combination of strong starting pitching and strong offense with enough defense. It felt like a decision between scoring too few runs and letting up too many. So I broadened my search.

First I looked at pitching. When you rank the seasons by the weighted ERC# (based on IP) of the SPs who don't walk too many people or give up too many HRs, 1984 emerges as the best option.

Year	Weighted ERC#	Pitchers
1984	2.78	13
1999	2.80	2
1987	2.80	6
1985	2.80	10
1992	2.81	7
2005	2.81	2
1981	2.82	9
2010	2.83	6
1993	2.83	5
1980	2.84	9
1982	2.84	10
1979	2.84	11
1997	2.85	1
1994	2.85	4
2001	2.85	4
1990	2.86	11
1996	2.86	2
1989	2.86	13
1977	2.86	8
2014	2.86	13
2008	2.87	3
1986	2.87	5
2013	2.87	4
1978	2.88	13
1995	2.88	5
2009	2.88	4
1991	2.88	6
2002	2.89	4
2015	2.89	6
2017	2.90	1
2000	2.90	2
2011	2.90	8
1983	2.90	5
2012	2.91	4
2006	2.91	4
1988	2.91	12
2003	2.92	3
2007	2.92	3
2016	2.92	1
1998	2.94	4
2004	2.94	1

The difference between top and bottom isn't huge, however, so I started building teams for each of the years with over six options. In particular, 1992 stood out due to having the best available pitcher under $27,500 $/IP (Bob Tewksbury).

Then I moved onto hitting. I wanted HRs, with at least some lefties and switch hitters, and above average defense. 1978 ticked the boxes better than other years.

It was a choice between 1978 (which had better hitting but fewer PAs) and 1992 (which had better pitching but fewer IP). I knew it was going to be a fatigue management game either way, and hitter fatigue is less risky than pitcher fatigue.

I came extremely close to entering the 1992 team — I debated myself on the two, entered both in an Open League and used SimMatchup to run 200 games of them playing against each other, and even asked ChatGPT for its opinion. Ultimately, my gut said the 1978 will do a better job of exploiting the weaknesses of other teams at this cap. If I had been more confident at this cap I might've risked the lower IP with 1992.

Hitting: 4,869 PA, .268 / .369 / .466, $32.5M
Pitching: 1,384 IP, 1.17 WHIP, 0.62 HR/9, $33.3M


$80M: MH 1909 A's Jr.
Stadium: Shibe Park

Wins in Round 2 count for double points (but only if you get there), so I looked for the best Round 2 team and believe that is the 1909 A's. Who knew Joe Jackson briefly played alongside Homerun Baker and Eddie Collins?

It's hard to find a deadball era team with three top tier hitters that also has top tier pitching. And without decent SLG, a Round 2 team would suffer. The modern Dodger teams may be able to compete due to their great pitching, but I typically like betting on deadball pitching's ability to nuke modern hitters over the opposite.

There are probably better Round 1 teams (1916 White Sox, maybe some others) and I'll have to juggle a pitching staff with a limited number of arms, so I expect this to be one one of my lower performing squads, but we'll make up for it down the road.

Round 1 Hitting: 4,741 PA, .312 / .384 / .437, $37.3M
Round 1 Pitching: 1,404 IP, 1.05 WHIP, 0.06 HR/9, $40.7M
Round 2 Hitting: 5,243 PA, .341 / .407 / .497, $58.2M
Round 2 Pitching: 1,484 IP, 0.95 WHIP, 0.05 HR/9, $53.8M


$100M: MH 42-44 Cardinal Rules
Stadium: Sportsman's Park (III)

This theme gave me fits because I misread multiple parts of the rules.

I found 7 teams I liked:

• 1901-1903 Pirates
• 1909-1911 A's
• 1909-1912 Cubs (various)
• 1919-1921 Giants
• 1942-1944 Cardinals
• 1996-1998 Braves
• 2017-2022 Dodgers (various)

I preferred the Giants for the mix of deadball and 20's eras but once I added in the No Combined Seasons restriction it just wouldn't work. The Dodgers were frustrating because of the one-too-many year gap between some of their best hitting seasons. I thought about going back to the well with the A's but couldn't stomach the bad SS defense within the three year period. The Cubs didn't have enough hitting, the Pirates build was wonky, and the Braves gave up too many walks.

I settled on the Cardinals mostly out of exhaustion, but do think they stack up well.

Hitting: 5,445 PA, .304 / .373 / .463, $49.6M
Pitching: 1,456 IP, 1.07 WHIP, 0.29 HR/9, $45.3M


$110M: MH Death By Error
Stadium: South End Grounds (III)

1800's hitter + 1800's pitcher + 1800's fielder = a lot of errors. All three factor into the decision tree and, as a result I'm worried about having enough IP even at 1,459. Would have liked to lean into SLG a bit more myself but overall just tried to find a good balance.

There are a few good gloves from this era but, in most cases, you need to make considerable offensive sacrifices in exchange so I didn't feel it was worth it (though I avoided particularly horrendous fielders and also leaned into folks with good range). Also grabbed an A+ arm catcher in case folks let loose with SB attempts.

Due to high IP of the best SPs of this era, the two-players-per-year restriction was largely inconsequential.

Hitting: 5,268 PA, .341 / .427 / .510, $52.9M
Pitching: 1,459 IP, 0.98 WHIP, 0.12 HR/9, $54.7M


$120M: MH Dummy Hoy Scores
Stadium: Braves Field

By default, this is basically a $100M league where you'll give up more hits and need more IP to compensate.

I'm, again, worried I may be light on IP but really wanted to squeeze one additional good hitter to protect my Big 3, so I sacrificed roughly ~$1M of additional salary to roster 1914 Steve Evans. He'll normalize well and drive in the Big 3 while batting out of the 5 slot.

I went with 1927 Ruth, 2002 Bonds, and 1922 Hornsby. These felt like clear choices to me — I wanted to minimize salary spent on my Big 3 while focusing on run creation from them. Going for higher priced players meant I'd need to downgrade pitching and basically lower the salary cap that my team “plays at,” which likely would not be worth the additional run creation a slightly better Big 3 would generate.

I knew I needed an A+ range outfielder since my other two OFers from the Big 3 are ok on defense at best, and while I generally prefer 1990 Willie McGee, he doesn't have enough PAs to bat leadoff and be a speedster ahead of the Big 3. So, enter 1888 Dummy Hoy. Normalizes incredibly well, fast, walks a lot. He'll score from first on a lot of doubles.

Hitting: 5,149 PA, .334 / .430 / .578, $70.8M
Pitching: 1,409 IP, 0.96 WHIP, 0.37 HR/9, $48.2M


$140M: MH Collins Crew
Stadium: Comiskey Park (I)

I thought a modern pitcher would do best here. I liked my Pedro Martinez team quite a bit (though it was weird to discover there was another pitcher in the early 90's was also named Pedro Martinez, but was a lefty reliever). Liked Kershaw and Maddux too. But ultimately didn't trust the hitting for any of them (do I really want to be relying on Mo Vaughn's terribly normalizing power in the WISC?).

So it came down to Tris Speaker or Eddie Collins and I went with Collins pretty intuitively. It could be the wrong choice, but I liked the mix of White Sox + A's pitching. Probably should have put more thought into it, but wasn't much more to it than that.

Hitting: 6,236 PA, .342 / .412 / .494, $67.8M
Pitching: 1,467 IP, 0.94 WHIP, 0.05 HR/9, $54.1M

I wrote this weeks ago, but I will add my current thoughts under EDIT, after each theme.

70M - Taking it on the Chien-Ming Wang, 2006
I say this every year, with respect to the low cap theme. I hate low caps. Building a roster with a low salary cap is not fun. Trying to get the correct number of innings and plate appearances is not fun, but is the most important aspect of building a roster at this cap. It doesn't matter if you have a great roster of players and the perfect ballpark, if you draft too many innings, you will get crushed by teams with more talent. If you draft too few innings, all it takes is a few extra inning games and your team is screwed.

I built exactly one roster for this theme. Once I was satisfied with the number of innings (1310) and plate appearances (5299), I was done… No tinkering, no multiple builds to compare. I just wanted to be done with this theme and move on. One thing I made sure of was that I was taking a post expansion season to be able to include Col, Ariz, TB & Fla to make the build easier.

I selected 2006. Why? In low cap leagues, I like using 2006 Chien-Ming Wang as a cheap sub-$5M starting pitcher. His 3.32 erc# doesn't seem all that great, but for some reason, he tends to do well for me and he does have 218 IPs. He will be part of a 4-man rotation, which includes 2006 NL Cy Young winner Bradon Webb (235 ip, 2.60 erc#), AL Cy Young 3rd place finisher Roy Halladay (220, 2.62) and NL Cy Young 4th place finisher Roy Oswalt (221, 2.96). I used all 13 pitching slots, including one $200K scrub and one $428K semi-scrub. My seven *good* RPs all have better whips than my worst SP. In aggregate, my 11 good pitchers have the following raw totals: 1254 IP, .250 oav, 1.14 whip, 5.9 k/9, 1.8 bb/9, 0.73 hr/9 and cost $33.4 million.

Offensively, I tried to get guys with good AVG and OBP, sacrificing SLG. Five of my eight batters will be full time players, including C Jason Kendall (626 pa, .295 avg, .367 obp), 1B Kevin Youkalis (680, .279, .381), 2B Luis Castillo (652, .296, .358), SS Omar Vizquel (664, .295, .361) and Magglio Ordonez (646, .298, .350). My part-timers include 3B Chipper Jones (477, .324, .409), OF David DeJesus (552, .296, .364), OF Brad Hawpe (575, .293, .83). The four backup hitters are ok, but not great. 3B Juan Casto (100, .284), OF Delmon Young (131, .317), 3B/OF Jose Hernandez (132, .267) and 3B/OF Fernando Tatis (64, .250). Total raw hitting stats: 5299 PA, .295 AVG, .367 OBP, .438 SLG.

Note that I refuse to draft any D- defenders (range or fielding). Since range is very expensive, most of my fielders have range ratings between C+ and D+. My fielding ratings are much better though as six of my eight regulars are between A+ and B. So, I expect a few minus plays but not many errors. I am playing in Dodger Stadium to keep the scoring down and to protect my low innings pitched total. No idea how this team will perform.

EDIT: I see lots of 1981 teams. In fact, 51 of the 72 teams are between 1977 and 1993. Exactly 4 teams between 1994 and 2009, including mine. Not too optomistic about that. I just hope to stay afloat and finish around .500 so this team doesn't kill my round 2 chances. I will do an innings analysis later, to see if my IP count is too high, too low or about right.
.
80M - 1901 Pittsburgh Pirates
When putting together a roster for this theme, I started by building the corresponding round 2 ($120M) roster first. If I couldn't get close to $120 million, then I didn't even consider building the $80M roster. I came up with a number of decent options for this theme, including the 1901 Pirates, 1904 Giants, 1910 Naps, 1916 Cubs, 1942 Yankees and 2005 Yankees. I really wanted a deadball team to mitigate home runs.

It was often hard to get to $120M with the round 2 build for most rosters without adding some extra IP and/or PA. Ironically, the 2005 Yankees have so much talent that I couldn't draft the best version of some players without going over the $120M cap. On that build, I had to downgrade A-Rod, Posada, B.Williams & Rivera just to get under the cap. The '05 Yankees are a really solid team with a good balance of SP and RP whereas most of the deadball teams I built only have 4-6 pitchers that are usable at a 120M cap. I would expect many people to use the 2005 Yankees as their choice.

The 1942 Yankees have the best mix of SPs of just about any "twisted" Yankees team, including Lefty Gomez, Spud Chandler, Tiny Bonham and Jim Turner. Red Ruffing, Johnny Murphy and Marius Russo represent their three best relievers. Both this Yankees team and the '05 Yankees team are reliant on HRs though, and I feel that there will be many deadball teams so I passed on both Yankees teams.

Among the deadball teams that I looked at, the '04 Giants have a very strong offense with Roger Bresnahan, Dan Brouthers, Bill Dahlen, Mike Donlin and John McGraw plus a nice staff of Christy Mathewson, Joe McGinnity, Jack Taylor, Red Ames and Hooks Wiltse. But that's it for pitching - just five guys. The '10 Indians only have enough innings, but only four usable pitchers (Addie Joss, Cy Young, Willie Mitchell & Cy Falkenberg). Their position players consist of a nice balance of hitting (Nap Lajoie, Joe Jackson, Elmer Flick) and solid defense (lots of A+ range guys). The 1916 Cubs are very tempting, with six usable pitchers (Mordecai Brown, Claude Hendrix, Hippo Vaughn, Tom Seaton, George McConnell & Mike Prendergast) but the offense was the weakest of the deadball teams (not a single hitter over $7.6 million).

I finally settled on the 1901 Pirates. In the $120M build, I was able to spend $118.5 million which provided 1580 usable innings (6 pitchers) with a 0.99 whip and 0.09 hr/9. The $120M offense equates to a slash line of .326/.393/.437 with a very strong defense (range). As far as the $80M build goes, I am at $78.0 million before adding nine $200K players. I only have 1314 innings with my six usable pitchers ('01 Jesse Tannehill, '02 Deacon Phillippe, '04 Rube Waddell, '05 Jack Chesbro, '01 Ed Doheny & '89 Sam Leever) so I may have to throw some scrubs to keep fatigue down, but these six pitchers total 1.09 whip, .241 oav, 0.09 hr/9. My offense is mostly high average guys as my team batting average is .305. '10 Honus Wagner (.320, .390, .432) is my most expensive hitter at $5.8 million. I have 5313 PA before adding scrubs.

This team has a good mix of lefty (4) and righty (4) bats plus one switch hitter. The home park (Exposition) is -2 for HRs, plus my deadball pitchers don't give up any HRs, so we should do well against modern teams like '05 Yankees, but my pitchers do give up hits so we could struggle vs similar type of high-average deadball teams. We should be near the top of the league in defensive "plus" plays.

EDIT: No other 1901 Pirates team? Six people selected 1915 Red Sox. Ruth and Speaker... I get it. I can't remember why I didn't look at this team. 33% of the teams selected are deadball teams, so hopefully my HR suppression will be enough.
.
100M - 1968-69-70 Orioles
This was by far the most enjoyable theme in terms of research and roster-building. I built at least a dozen complete rosters. It could have been more, but some of the roster builds were aborted due to not being able to pass the 8 players / $25M salary per season rule. This includes the 2017-19 Astros, 1927-29 Yankees and 1902-04 Naps. Many of the teams that I completed had a weakness that I couldn't live with. This includes 1980-82 Astros, 1896-98 Orioles, 1923-25 Reds, 1904-06 Giants, 1941-43 Yankees, 1996-98 Braves, 1957-59 Yankees, 1975-77 Reds, 1961-63 Yankees, 1909-11 Athletics, 1951-53 Dodgers and 1909-11 Cubs. In most cases, either the team was too weak offensively or had below-average pitching (and/or a terrible bullpen). But I do think that some of these teams could be competitive and I'm sure I will have regrets when somebody else ends up winning 95+ games with one of these teams that I passed on.

I finally narrowed down my choices to three teams… 1942-44 Cardinals, 1968-70 Orioles and 1901-03 Pirates. Looking at contrarian23's World Series tournament as a proxy to see how good some of these teams are, the 1944 Cardinals and the 1969 Orioles each won 104 games. The 1903 Pirates won 91 games, so I feel pretty good about my three options.

Like most deadball teams, the '01-03 Pirates don't have a lot of pitching depth, but they have four strong SPs combining for 1271 IPs (Tannehill, Phillippe, Leever, Chesbro). The defensive range is strong but the fielding is typically poor so there will certainly be a lot of errors. Seven of the eight position players hit at least .295, led by Honus Wagner (.353), Ginger Beaumont (.357) and Fred Clarke (.351). There is a bit of wasted salary with this team since there aren't many cheap players to fill the back end of the roster, so this team will play more like a $95 million team. I really like this team but am already using 1901 Pirates in the $80M twist theme and if I'm wrong, I don't want it to cost me in two leagues.

I had to sacrifice a bit to make the '42-44 Cardinals legal since 1942 didn't have enough usable and/or cheap players. This forced me to downgrade one of the pitchers and to keep a very good Ray Sanders off the roster. '42 Mort Cooper, '43 Brecheen and '43 Pollet are very good, but the other pitchers are just kind of ok. Since I would be using a low-HR version of Musial, this team should play well against deadball teams. The three lefty batters are the three best hitters on the team (Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter, Johnny Hopp) but the righty bats are all a bit weak. The defense is ok - decent range, but better fielding ratings than the Pirates. I like this team the least of the three teams.

The '68-70 Orioles is the first team I built, and I like this team the best. Based on the raw numbers, this team has the best pitching depth with ten pitchers having whips below 1.10. In fact, the entire team has a whip of 1.03 (including one mop-up guy). '69 Dave McNally, '68 Mike Cuellar, '68 Jim Hardin and '69 Jim Palmer form a solid rotation, plus '69 Eddie Watt, '69 Dick Hall, '70 Pete Richert, '68 Roger Nelson, '68 Wally Bunker and '68 Moe Drabowsky provides more RP depth than most teams. Of course, normalization will not be favorable for this pitching-dominant era. The offense is probably the weakest link with only 2.5 players hitting over .290. The offense looks like this: '70 Ellie Hendricks, '68 Andy Etchebarren and '68 Clay Dalrymple will platoon at catcher. None of them can hit a lick but all three have great arms to limit SBs. '70 Boog Powell (.297, .412, .549) plays 1B and will bat third. '70 Davey Johnson (.281, .360), '70 Brooks Robinson (.276) and '69 Mark Belanger (.287, .351) complete the infield and are all great fielders. The best hitter on the team is '69 Frank Robinson (.308, .415, .540) - he will bat cleanup. '68 Don Buford (.282, .367), '70 Paul Blair (.267, .344) and '70 Merv Rettenmund (.322, .394, .544) will rotate into the other two OFs spots and all are very strong fielders. '69 Curt Motton (.303, .398, 573) and '69 Chico Salmon (.297, .375, .451) provide nice pinch hitters. The overall defense is very strong (both range & fielding). There is very little wasted salary with this team (one 313K mop-up pitcher).

It really comes down to how many deadball teams I think will be in the league. Although I did build a number of deadball teams, I think most will struggle to score runs especially against a good pitching staff with a strong defense. Hopefully, my offense will be able to score enough runs to support my strong pitching staff. My guess is that many folks don't want the headache of playing a deadball team with only 4-6 usable pitchers.

Edit: Well, the 1968-70 Orioles were the 2nd most popular choice (tied with 2019-21 Dodgers) and way behind the 2020-22 Dodgers. I never considered these Dodgers teams b/c I hate having to use these sub-1-inning-per-game RPs. The 1996-98 and 1997-99 Braves were very popular and maybe I should have given those teams more consideration (I just hated their bullpen). Nobody selected the 1901-03 Pirates and very few deadball teams were taken, so I was right about that. I do think my Orioles will be competitive with their great pitching and defense.
.
110M - Statton & Caruthers
When building a team using players from the nineteenth century, I knew there would be few decent relief pitching options, so I started with a two-man rotation who could hit and thus not need a bunch of pinch hitters… I am using '90 Scott Stratton (.323 avg) and '86 Bob Caruthers (.334). I'm sure my bullpen will be similar as most of the other teams, '85 Toad Ramsey, '88 Bill George, '88 Frank Dwyer, '96 Joe Corbett, '98 Sam Leever, '86 John Schaffer and '98 Jack Taylor. That's seven relievers totaling 425 innings with a 0.98 whip and .180 oav. I filled in the remaining staff with four <$300K pitchers (132 IPs). Excluding the four scrubs, my pitching raw totals: 1406 IP, .215 oav, 1.04 whip, $57.8 million.

Offensively, it would seem to be easy to try and build a dynamic offense with guys like King Kelly, Roger Connor, Cupid Childs, Hughie Jennings, Ed Delahanty, Billy Hamilton, etc., but that gets really expensive really fast, so I didn't go that route. In fact, I don't have a single hitter over $8 million on my team. I focused more on defense and on good value. My most expensive hitter is '97 George Davis (.353, .406, .509 at $7.5 million). I also added two guys with strong range factors, '92 Bid McPhee (.373 obp) and '97 Bill Joyce (.441 obp). I really tried to fit '85 or '90 Roger Connor but settled on '89 Connor (.317, .426, .528) who only cost $6.7M. OF '89 Tommy Tucker (.372, .450, .484, $7.38M) is my second most expensive hitter and gives me another switch-hitter. I rounded out the team with C '91 Duke Farrell (.302, .384, .474), OF '99 Chick Stahl (.351, .426, .493) and OF '00 Joe Kelley (.319, .398, .485). Since my two SPs can hit, I only have one bench hitter over $300K, '93 Willie Keeler (.317, .377, .442). Overall, I have four switch-hitters, two lefties and two righties in my starting lineup. My raw offense totals: .325, .412, .471 at $50.7 million.

I am playing in Philadelphia Base Ball Grounds which is neutral (all zeros). I'm sure my pitching will be worse than most teams but I'm hopeful my good defense (2B McPhee C/A+, 3B Joyce D/A+, SS Davis C/A-, CF Kelley C/B+, LF Stahl B/C) will help make it look better. I do expect my offense to be very good thanks to my pitchers' hitting. I am optimistic about this team.

EDIT: As expected, my bullpen consists many of the most commonly selected pitchers. But, my SPs are a different story. The most commonly selected SPs are '85 Lady Baldwin (37 times) and '88 Tim Keefe (17 times). Meanwhile, Caruthers and Stratton were only selected 6 times each. Only two other people had the same thought process as I and rostered both Carutherrs & Stratton (toysboys & d_rock97). That's pretty good company. As far as errors, I will probably be in the middle of the pack as Connor (C-), Joyce (D), G.Davis (C), Tucker (D) aren't great fielders. I am hopeful that I drafted enough innings.
.
120M - Bonds Ruth Hornsby & the Range
This theme is basically a "Stars-and-Scrubs" theme. But instead of three $10M stars and five $3M scrubs in the starting lineup, the cap allows for three $15M stars and five $5M "scrubs". I think the key to success in this theme is selecting the three stud players as close to the $15M as possible. There are five players below $16M to choose from. Since '80 G.Brett ($15.44M) can't play 162 games, the only realistic choices are '22 Hornsby ($15.98M), '02 Bonds ($15.79M), '94 Hamilton ($15.56M) and '27 Ruth ($15.36M). If you select anybody else, you are really hurting the rest of your team. I expect most teams to roster 3 of these 4 players. Since there are no deadball pitchers available in this theme, I think it's perfectly acceptable to use Hornsby, Bonds & Ruth and leave the overpriced Billy Hamilton off the roster. This is the strategy I am using.

So how do I fill in the rest of the offense? My goal coming into this theme was to spend close to $50M on pitching and $70M on offense. After spending $47M on my three studs, that leaves a little less than $5M per position player for the other five lineup spots. I wanted to get players who had a strong defensive range and who also had a decent OBP. I didn't want to waste any salary on $200K scrubs so I have a few platoons. And of course, I want some switch hitters. Here's the rest of the offense… Full-timers: 1B '93 Roger Connor (.305 avg, .413 obp, A+ range), 3B '73 Carl Yastrzemski (.296, .407, A+), SS '85 Tony Fernandez (.289, .340, A+). Part timers: C '07 Josh Bard (.284, .364), '01 Greg Zahn (.320, .377) & '95 George Williams (.291, .383). OF: '19 Max Carey (.307, .376, A+), '05 Ed Hahn (.319, .426) & '14 Ed Mensor (.372 obp, A+). At the last minute, I removed my 13th pitcher and added '18 Bob Bescher (.333, .487) as a pinch hitter and spot starter for Bonds (who only has 616 PA). The offense totals: .325, .433, .542, $71.8 million. No scrubs.

For my starting pitching, I had originally gone with a 3-man all-lefty rotation of '46 Hal Newhouser, '36 Carl Hubbell and '76 Randy Jones, but reconsidered after submitting my original roster. Although everybody will have at least 2 lefty stud hitters, I figured that the stud hitters will be able to hit against all pitchers, so I might as well try to get the best pitchers I can afford, regardless of which hand they throw with. I decided to add SPs that limited home runs and walks. My SP include '20 Babe Adams (0.21 hr/9, 0.62 bb/9), '96 Greg Maddux (0.40 hr/9, 1.03 bb/9) and '69 Fritz Peterson (0.50 hr/9, 1.42 bb/9). These three only have 796 innings, so I added '46 Schoolboy Rowe (0.20 hr/9, 1.39 bb/9) and '40 Tony Bonham (0.36 hr/9, 1.18 bb/9) to spot start as well as pitch in long relief. The bullpen includes no modern RPs b/c you all know how I feel about those guys. I have the usual cast of short-inning SPs and ultra long-RPs: '38 Dizzy Dean, '64 Bobby Shantz, '23 Les Howe, '81 Andy Rincon, '27 Johnny Miljus, '72 Steve Busby and '92 Dennis Rasmussen. I am using 12 pitching slots. Overall, I have 1412 IP, .231 oav, 0.99 whip, 1.2 bb/9, 0.30 hr/9 at a cost of $48.2 million. With few walks and HRs allowed, it will take 3 hits to score against my staff.

I am playing in Riverfront Stadium (0.90 Park Factor) to help my pitching (only 1412 innings). The -2 for singles should help my higher-than-normal SP OAV. I kind of like my team. Bonds and Ruth represent two of my four LH bats. Hornsby is my only RH bat. I have 8 switch hitters. My pitching is decent enough and the defensive range is mostly outstanding. Only Hornsby, Ruth and Bonds are below average defensively. I think lineup construction will be an important consideration. Do you put your three studs back-to-back-to-back to maximize their PAs or do you space them out so you don't have a bunch of 1-2-3 innings? What is the ideal 'intentional walk" setting to use? And how many innings are appropriate to draft? Although most teams will be spending $70M+ on offense, this isn't really a true $140M offense. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

EDIT: I am not surprised that the two most popular combinations have three of '27 Ruth (selected 57 times), '22 Hornsby (42), '94 Hamilton (32) and '02 Bonds (26). I am a little surprised '32 Foxx was selected 16 times and '86 Kelly was selected 15 times. They are both in the $16-17M range. That's a million less that you can spend on pitching. After seeing just4me's offense in this theme, I hope others didn't draft that much offense or else my 1412 innings isn't going to be enough.
.
140M - The Four-Speaker Circuit Smashers
There were three choices that I considered for this team, all from the deadball era. The Nap Lajoie option didn't quite work, because I couldn't afford both '08 Joss and '01 Lajoie. So that left the other two choices to decide between: Cy Young and Tris Speaker.

The Cy Young team I built was very strong and actually have better numbers than the Tris Speaker team. I would have used '01, '05 and '08 Cy Young, to go along with '09 Joss, '08 Steele and '07 Morgan. That's 1607 innings of 0.92 whip, .219 oav, 1.12 bb/9, 0.07 hr/9 for $58.6 million. The Cy Young offense is awesome, with 1B '10 Nap Lajoie, 2B '96 Cupid Childs, 3B '01 Jimmy Collins, SS '99 Bobby Wallace, OF '11 Joe Jackson, OF '95 Jesse Burkett, OF '02 Charlie Hickman, DH '00 John McGraw, DH '90 Jake Virtue and a catching platoon of '92 Jack Doyle, '93 Chief Zimmer and '03 Duke Farrell. '97 Ollie Pickering can fill in the OF as well. Total hitting stats: .352, .422, .485 with a few A+ range guys.

I really wanted to take this team, but I just never seem to have any luck with Cy Young in high cap leagues. Also, the Cy Young team consists of all right-handed pitchers that will likely be facing a bunch of Tris Speaker teams. I'd rather have the Speaker roster.

So, like many others, I am going with the Tris Speaker team. I wonder how many different roster variations there will be. Offensively, let's start with four Tris Speakers, 1912, 1914, 1920 & 1923. All four have over 700 PAs, and of course 1914 will be playing 1B with his A+++ range. The rest of the offense include C '20 Steve O'Neill (.321, .408, .440), 2B '25 Joe Sewell (.336, .402, .424), 3B '28 Jimmie Foxx (.328, .416, .548), 3B '22 Riggs Stephenson (.339, .421, .511), SS Ray Chapman (.302, .370, .409, A+ range), DH Goose Goslin (.334, .392, .516). '18 Bob Bescher will make a nice pinch hitter (.333, .487, .400) and can spot start a few games. Total hitting numbers: .344, .425, .504. Salary $76.2 million

I would imagine that the pitching will be very similar across all the Speaker teams. '12 Joe Wood, '08 Cy Young, '14 Dutch Leonard, '10 Ray Collins, '15 Carl Mays, '21 Guy Morton, '09 Larry Pape, '19 Ray Caldwell, '11 Buck O'Brien and '26 Willis Hudlin. If I remove the two worst pitchers, the numbers are 1498 IP, .213 oav, 0.97 whip, 1,89 bb/9 and 0.05 hr/9 for $58.7 million.

The Tris Speaker team can start 6 lefty bats while the Cy Young team only has 4 lefty bats in the starting lineup. And the Speaker team has 2 lefty pitchers while the Young team has zero. Like I said before, the Young team has the better raw numbers, but I'm going with my gut here due to better balance and the fact that Young always sucks for me. I wonder how many people going with a post-deadball team?

EDIT: Will update after posting league analysis

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 unless the theme requires it or provides an advantage in doing so.

With the way the sim calculates fatigue and pitch counts for pitchers, modern pitchers get a boon due to their higher K/9 (gives them extra pitches on their PC, which is used for fatigue, but they won’t reach those figures due to normalization, even more so if facing deadball hitters), this means you get more IP for your $ all else being equal. Secondarily, I almost always try to draft from 2017+ due to dynamic pricing. There are still some bargains in the dynamically adjusted period, but when I know every player will be a good buy, it’s just easier to not have to account for it.

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 (primarily applies to 1961-2016 pitchers).

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: 2017 - Great American Ball Park (0, 0, -2, 2/2):

No secret that I love the low caps. The lower the better. My favorite is $25-40m. As I’ve mentioned frequently, over the past few years, I prefer modern pitching. Especially in lower caps (though, I don’t really consider $70m a low cap, it’s at the low end of the mid-caps: I’d put low-caps at <$65m, mid-caps $65-120m, and high caps as >$120m). As soon as I saw 2017 was the only year eligible that wasn’t impacted by dynamic pricing I knew what year I was doing. That said, I borrowed the strategy I wanted to use for the $110m league here (more details about it in the $100m write-up below). I don’t know that it makes sense here given the era, but it was easy to do and it was fun. So that said, every player I drafted has a 1.000 FLD % at the position I intend to play them (except C, where I looked at CS% more, but Barnhardt has a .999% FLD along with his 43% CS). It’ll be interesting to see how many errors the team ends up making.

LINEUP:

C Tucker Barnhardt / Miguel Montero .270/.347/.403 & .286/.366/.439

1B Justin Bour / Pat Valaika .289/.366/.536 & .258/.284/.533

2B Jose Reyes .246/.315/.413

3B Brandon Phillips .285/.319/.416

SS Freddy Galvis .255/.309/.382

LF Lonnie Chisenhall / Eduardo Nunez .288/.360/.521 & .313/.341/.460

CF Brett Gardner .264/.350/.428

RF Marwin Gonzalez .303/.377/.530

I'm running a 3-man rotation with tandems:

#1 Erasmo Ramirez 62 IP 3.92/.243/1.16

#2a Gio Gonzalez 201 IP 2.96/.216/1.18

#2b Michael Fulmer 165 IP 3.83/.43/1.15

#3a Alex Wood 152 IP 2.72/.217/1.06

#3b Zack greinke 202 IP 3.20/.230/1.07

Key Bullpen Pieces:

Yu Darvish 137 IP 4.01/.225/1.17

Addison Reed 76 IP 2.84/.226/1.05

Ryan Buchter 65 IP 2.89/.187/1.08

Danny Barnes 66 IP 3.55/.200/1.09

Darren O’Day 60 IP 3.43/.193/1.08

Overall stat lines:

Hitting: 5,074 PA, .276 AVG, .337 OBP, .450 SLG

Pitching: 1,308 IP, 3.31 ERA, .222 OAV, 1.12 WHIP, 1.12 HR/9

$80m : 2021 Dodgers Dodger Stadium (+2, -4, -3, -1/-1)

I love the 1890/91 Boston Reds for twist teams and I immediately went to them to try to make something work… They were fantastic for $80m, a little rough for $120m, so I started looking elsewhere. I stuck with my goal of trying to stay post-2016 for dynamic pricing impacts, but still looked at a few deadball and liveball teams with Speaker, Ruth, Foxx, etc… but in the end, the 2021 Dodgers were still the best in my opinion by far… There were a few others I really liked: 2019 Astros, 1983 Phillies, and the 2017 Indians, but each of them had to make some compromises at either the $80m or the $120m version. The Dodgers really didn’t. In both cases I could basically just take the best players and be right at the cap.

LINEUP:

RF ‘20 Mookie Betts .292/.366/.562

1B '11 Albert Pujols .299/.366/.541

2B ‘21 Trea Turner .328/.375/.536

SS ‘17 Corey Seager .295/.375/.479

3B ‘18 Justin Turner .312/.406/.518

LF ‘23 Cody Bellinger .307/.356/.525

C ‘21 Will Smith .258/.365/.495

CF '17 Chris Taylor .288/.354/.496

‘18 Max Muncy will be providing PA coverage at 3B and OF and boasts a .263/.391/.582 slash

Again, I’m running a 3-man rotation with tandems:

#1a ‘23 Clayton Kershaw 132 IP 2.46/.209/1.06

#1b ‘19 Walker Buehler 182 IP 3.26/.223/.104

#2a ‘14 David Price 171 IP 3.11/.238/.1.05

#2b ‘23 Max Scherzer 153 IP 3.77/.221/1.12

#3a ‘20 Julio Urias 149 IP 3.27/.220/1.15

#3b ‘18 Trevor Bauer 175 IP 2.21/.208/1.09

Key Bullpen Pieces:

‘20 Dustin May 151 IP 2.57/.220/1.09

No other RP as more than 50 IP and only

‘22 Brusdar Graterol 50 IP 3.26/.215/0.99

‘23 Victor Gonzalez 34 IP 4.01/.223/1.10

Are expected to see any significant action.

Overall stat lines:

Hitting: 5,376 PA, .293 AVG, .368 OBP, .515 SLG

Pitching: 1,301 IP, 3.33 ERA, ..223 OAV, 1.11 WHIP, 1.27 HR/9

$100m: 2020-2022 Dodgers Dodger Stadium (+2, -4, -3, -1/-1)

I started here by looking at three year periods that had at least three hitters between 2B, 3B, SS at $5m+, as well as at least one other $5m+ hitter, that gave me a short list of the following teams (some seasons overlapping):

1891-1898 Boston

1892-1899 Phillies

1892-1900 Orioles

1911-1915 A’s

1918-1922 White Sox

1917-1919 Red Sox

1920-1922 Yankees

1923-28 Pirates

1928-1932 Yankees

1938-1942 Red Sox

1951-1958 Dodgers

1963-1966 Braves

1967-1972 Orioles

1970-1976 Reds

1979-1985 Royals

1988-1996 Giants

1990-1994 Pirates

1993-1996 Astros

1993-1999 Indians

1993-2005 Braves

1994-2003 Mariners

1998-2002 Yankees

1999-2004 Giants

1999-2003 AZ

1997-2008 Colorado

2002-2008 Cardinals

2007-2013 Phillies

2008-2013 Mariners

2014-2018 Cubs

2015-2022 AZ

2015-2019 Rockies

2015-2024 Dodgers

2017-2020 Red Sox

2018-2024 Braves

In addition, I also looked early on at the 1887-1889 Cardinals and 1904-1909 Cubs.

I built teams for every single one of these, as well as several others… The 1887-1889 Cardinals team was the first team I tried as I thought this league would benefit greatly from a Silver King team, and they came in right at $99.8m, but had $43m from 1888 (thanks King). Every other team I looked at I couldn’t get higher than $93m. Most of the teams I liked were between $88-93m. Then a comment in the forums made me feel like I was missing something as it seemed like others were getting to $100m easy. I started looking at teams dominated by dynamic pricing and that’s when I looked at the 1904-1909 Cubs team, which was solid, but well over $100m. I also glanced at some of those 1923-1928 Yankees options, but there’s just so much wasted salary there and I never seriously built anything with them. Thankfully, Schwarze posted a short list of rosters he’d considered and their salaries, and it was clear the difference was people were taking a good bit more IP and PA… in Schwarze’s teams he posted he averaged $10m in extra PA/IP (using $8,000/PA and $36,000/IP, and not including the 250 IP of cheap scrubs on the one, which would’ve shifted the average to $11.5m and the high to over $21m) over the ones I was drafting (with one having over $16m in excess PA/IP). For example, one of my favorites was a Braves team from 1996-1998, and by adding a full time Fred McGriff as a platoon mate to go with the full time Andres Galarraga brought me from ~$93m, to ~$99m, and now my team was at 6004 PA, which was similar to what schwarze posted (and still has fewer IP). This made me feel much more confident in the $88-93m teams I had built. If the only difference was that my teams had 5400 PA and 1350 IP instead of 6000 PA and/or 1500 IP, then I’d be just fine…

in the end, I narrowed it down to the 2020-2022 Dodgers, and the 2022-2024 Braves, both around $91-93m. In both cases there were PA I could add (I was drafting 13 pitchers in both cases, so adding IP wasn’t possible) that would bring the team salary to $97-99m, but rather than just adding PA to bump salary, I focused on the quality of the PA and in the end, despite really not wanting to have three teams in this tourney built around essentially the 2021 Dodgers, I have the Dodgers with 5,667 PA and a salary around $94m (and comes out to about $3m in excess PA).

LINEUP:

1B '22 Freddie Freeman .325/.407/.511

2B ‘21 Max Muncy .249/.368/.527

SS ‘20 Corey Seager .307/.358/.585

CF ‘21 AJ Pollock .297/.355/.536

LF ‘21 Mookie Betts .264/.367/.487

C ‘21 Will Smith .258/.365/.495

RF ‘22 Gavin Lux .276/.346/.399

PITCHER

3B ‘20 Justin Turner .307/.400/.460

Platooning with the following key players giving PA at OF, 2B, 3B, and C:

‘20 Austin Barnes .244/.353/.314 (will cover at both C and Will Smith will spend time covering at 3B)

‘20 Chris Taylor .270/.366/.476 (will cover in OF across all three positions)

‘22 Trayce Thompson .268/.364/.537 (will cover in OF across all three positions)

‘21 Trea Turner .338/.385/.565 (will cover at 2B, and maybe occasionally at SS if needed).

Running a 4-man tandem rotation:

#1 ‘22 Tyler Anderson 179 IP, 2.57/.221/1.00

#2 ‘21 Walker Buehler 208 IP, 2.47/.199/0.97

#3a ‘20 Clayton Kershaw 157 IP, 2.16/.194/0.84

#3b ‘20 Tony Gonsolin 126 IP, 2.31/.193/0.84

#4a ‘22 Julio Urias 175 IP, 2.16/.199/0.96

#4b ‘21 Trevor Bauer 108 IP, 2.59/.182/1.00

Key Bullpen Pieces:

‘21 Max Scherzer 119 IP, 2.51/.206/1.06

‘20 Adam Kolarek 98 IP, 1.94/.176/1.02

‘20 Jake McGee 76 IP 1.89/.216/0.93

‘20 Victor Gonzalez 95 IP, 2.46/.206/.1.01

‘22 Brusdar Graterol 82 IP, 1.66/.178/0.83

‘22 Evan Phillips 82 IP, 2.21/.157/0.98

‘22 Yency Almonte 100 IP, 2.17/.191/0.96

Overall stat lines:

Hitting: 5,667 PA, .285 AVG, .371 OBP, .497 SLG

Pitching: 1,329 IP, 2.20 ERA, .194 OAV, 0.90 WHIP, 0.83 HR/9

$110m: Flashing Leather in a Stone World South End Grounds III (+2, 0, 1,-1/1)

Given that all players are going to be deadball players, and all from the 19th century, everyone is going to have the same weakness, errors. My immediate thought was to draft 1.000 FLD% guys at secondary positions (like famous cookies, HoJo or Marwin Gonzalez), except, in this time period there aren’t any. So I did the next best thing. I drafted the highest FLD% at every position possible. In the end I made one small adjustment to that and moved higher FLD% OF, Duke Farrell to C where he also has a great CS%, and drafted the next best FLD% (non-clone, as two other players I already drafted had the next two best FLD%) in super stud hitter ‘99 Delahanty. This is also a theme that will benefit from running King, however, with my approach to offense, I needed to draft more pitchers than work easily for a King team, so I drafted what I felt were the best pitchers available, period, with less than 300 IP, then took the best pitcher I could afford to reach the 1420-50 IP target I was going for for the cap/era, which was Time Keefe and his 538 IP.

The offense isn’t quite as strong as if I’d gone with the types of hitters I’d normally draft, but hopefully we make up for that lost run production with run prevention.

LINEUP:

SS ‘95 Hughie Jennings .386/.444/.512 (.940 FLD%)

1B ‘87 Roger Connor .285/.392/.541 (.993 FLD%)

LF ‘99 Ed Delahanty .410/.464/.582 (.969 FLD%)

2B ‘96 Bid McPhee .305/.391/.386 (.978 FLD%)

C ‘91 Duke Farrell .302/.384/.474 (38% CS)

CF ‘92 Mike Griffin .277/.376/.383 (.986 FLD%)

RF ‘97 Steve Brodie .292/.348/.392 (.983 FLD%)

3B ‘99 Lave Cross .298/.330/.377 (.959 FLD%)

With key OF PA and PH from:

‘97 Harry Blake .256/.331/.325 (.989 FLD%)

‘90 Elmer Foster .248/.325/.467 (.986 FLD%)

‘93 Bob Caruthers .275/.456/.373 (.971 FLD%)

‘00 Topsy Hartsel .328/.403/.484 (.971 FLD%)

Unlisted filler Brown and Kerins also both have .989 FLD% to keep with the theme).

With another 3-man rotation with tandems::

#1 ‘98 Jack Taylor 45 IP 2.20/.213/.1.02

#2 ‘88 Tim Keefe 538 IP 1.74/.196/0.94

#3a ‘85 Lady Baldwin 269 IP 1.86/.203/0.92

#3b ‘86 Jim Handiboe 135 IP 3.32/.193/1.01

Key Bullpen Pieces:

‘86 Frank Gilmore 102 IP 2.52/.202/1.05

‘91 Ted Breitenstein 35 IP 2.20/.150/1.01

‘88 Frank Dwyer 51 IP 1.07/.198/0.98

‘90 Joe Neale 83 IP 3.39/.208/0.99

Overall stat lines:

Hitting: 5,773 PA, .316 AVG, .389 OBP, .451 SLG

Pitching: 1,427 IP, 2.14 ERA, .200 OAV, 0.97 WHIP, 0.15 HR/9

$120M: Heavy Offense, Heartfelt Arms Program County Stadium (+2, 0, 0, -1/-2)

This was the first team I built. This goes perfectly with my standard roster building strategies of deadball hitters, modern pitchers, offense-oriented, team building. I immediately looked at the least expensive hitter that qualified for the $15m+ options and instantly settled on ‘27 Ruth as the cheapest option and one I knew would perform. The next two least expensive choices, Brett and Hamilton each had their own issue (too few PA for Brett, too many for Hamilton… I didn’t want to have to make up PA on a $15m player, or spend $ on PA I wouldn’t use), so I ended up with the next two least expensive options: ‘22 Hornsby and ‘02 Bonds. I then filled in my lineup with as many players as I could that would compliment these three hitters. I looked for A+ range at key positions to capitalize on the deadball hitter/modern pitcher setup, but still wanted the best bats I could get. I then chose a +1B/-HR park despite taking three HR hitters as I wanted to maximize their AVG and OBP with the rest of the lineup… With the weighted + hit factor my hitters will gain roughly 5% on their AVG, and the weighted -HR factor reduces their HR/H by roughly 6.5%, but with the extra hits this would only be a loss of roughly 0-1 HR from their original expected HR in a neutral park (weighted with assumption majority of league is also in -1B and -HR parks, raw factors would see a nearly 10% jump in AVG and only 5% reduction in HR rate: the weighted factor would see a 200 hit/40 HR player end up with 210 hits and 39 HR.)

I expect this team to score a bunch of runs. My pitching is a more extreme staff, I only have one pitcher with 150+ IP, the 154 IP 2015 Tanaka, and my HR/9 is quite high… that said, they don’t allow many hits, so the + hit factor shouldn’t hurt them and the -HR factor only helps, so even with the expectation of a bunch of Ruth, we shouldn’t be hammered too hard with our OAV and + plays, we just need to score more than we allow, and I think this offense can do that.


LINEUP:

2B ‘22 Rogers Hornsby .401/.459/.722

CF ‘27 Babe Ruth .356/.487/.772

LF ‘02 Barry Bonds .370/.582/.799

1B ‘87 Bob Caruthers .357/.463/.547

3B ‘13 Frank Baker .337/.413/.493

RF ‘98 Billy Hamilton .369/.480/.453

C ‘89 Fred Carroll .330/.486/.484 & ‘72 Duke Sims .316/.432/.480

Pitcher

SS ‘25 Dave Bancroft .319/.400/.426

I have the following players covering PA and as my primary PH, which I will be aggressive with (along with Carroll/Sims):

‘19 Gavy Cravath .341/.438/.640 (he will cover PA for Bonds, Caruthers, and Hamilton)

‘45 Luke Appling .368/.478/.526 (he will cover PA for Bancroft)

‘18 Bob Bescher .333/.487/.400 (he will cover PA for Caruthers)

Despite the lack of any big IP pitchers, I didn’t use any tandems or a/b rotations here, just a straight 3-man with

‘20 Merrill Kelly 85 IP, 2.59/.218/0.99

‘15 Masahiro Tanaka 154 IP, 3.51/.220/0.99

‘20 Cristian Javier 147 IP, 3.48/.188/0.99

Key Bullpen Pieces:

‘20 John Means 118 IP, 4.53/.220/0.98

‘24 Bowden Francis 104 IP, 3.30/.196/0.93

‘24 Jack Flaherty 107 IP, 2.95/.211/0.96

‘14 Jeff Samardzija 112 IP, 3.14/.224/0.93

‘21 Jose Urquidy 107 IP 3.62/.218/0.99

‘71 Rollie Fingers 131 IP 2.99/.207/0.96

‘23 Tyler Wells 119 IP 3.64/.193/0.99

Overall stat lines:

Hitting: 5,551 PA, .354 AVG, .468 OBP, .587 SLG

Pitching: 1,363 IP, 3.55 ERA, .212 OAV, 0.99 WHIP, 1.60 HR/9

$140m: Clayton Kershaw Dodger Stadium (+2, -4, -3, -1/-1)

I only looked at one player for this… actually, that’s not true… I did look at a couple of fun utility player options (Lenny Harris – who it looked like you could do some fun things with, at a glance the downside appeared to be that most of the best teammates played in the same season; Edwin Jackson – whose teammates were great, the problem was having to clone him 8 times; Manny Mota – who was fantastic and had great teammates across the Pirates and Dodgers of the 60s-70s, issue was that he missed 15 WIS eligible season by literally 1 AB in 1975 (and by 8-17 AB four other times); Ossie Bluege, who had a great selection of teammates, the issue here was that most of them were hard to work with cap-wise due to dynamic pricing, someone that spent more time solving this puzzle could’ve put something great together; and Mark McLemore – who at a glance didn’t have teammates that could get me to $140m even if he had some fun names and seasons in there) for fun after I built this, but I never truly intended to use any of them. Kershaw gave me every post-dynamic pricing season, great teammates at key positions, and put up a ridiculous number of amazing seasons himself. I had to draft 8 Kershaws, so I drafted the 8 best without regard to IP. Because of this, I have a mostly standard 4-man rotation of Kershaw, Kershaw, Kershaw, and Kershaw, with 4 amazing Kershaw seasons between 126-175 IP serving as the core of my bullpen. I filled out my pitching staff after drafting my offense as I didn’t really need any more IP, so the plan was just to take the best IP left within my budget after drafting the offense.

This team doesn’t hit for quite the AVG you’d expect at this cap, but they play solid defense and they steal lots of bases at a great %. We’re going to be aggressive on the bases as at this cap, SB are generally an afterthought, as are C arms, but with this team and this ballpark, they should play well for us. .

On both pitching and offense I have excess IP and PA. I’ll roll those excesses into aggressive platoons with full time players and aggressive PH.

LINEUP:

1B ‘23 Freddie Freeman .331/.410/.567

DH ‘24 Shohei Ohtani .310/.390/.646

CF ‘11 Matt Kemp .324/.399/.586

LF ‘08 Manny Ramierez .332/.430/.601

2B ‘21 Trea Turner .328/.375/.536

3B ‘18 Manny Machado .297/.367/.538

SS ‘20 Corey Seager .307/.358/.585 & ‘13 Hanley Ramirez .345/.402/.638

RF ‘22 Mookie Betts .269/.340/.533

C ‘12 AJ Ellis .270/.373/.414 & ‘17 Austin Barnes .289/.408/.486

Key PH (in addition to the platoons players listed above):

‘09 Ronnie Belliard .351/.398/.636

‘14 Chone Figgins .217/.373/.267

‘10 Jay Gibbons .280/.313/.507


Rotation:

‘13 Clayton Kershaw 236 IP, 1.83/.195/0.92

‘11 Clayton Kershaw 233 IP, 2.28/.207/0.98

‘15 Clayton Kershaw 232 IP 2.13/.194/0.88

‘14 Clayton Kershaw 198 IP, 1.77/.196/0.86

Bullpen:

‘16 Clayton Kershaw 149 IP, 1.63/.184/0.72

‘22 Clayton Kershaw 126 IP, 2.28/.206/0.94

‘20 Clayton Kershaw 157 IP 2.16/.194/0.84

‘17 Clayton Kershaw 175 IP 2.35/.212/0.95

‘16 Rich Hill 34 IP 1.83/.182/0.79

‘15 Kenley Jansen 52 IP 2.41/.176/0.79

‘19 Yimi Garcia 62 IP 3.61/.178/0.87

Overall stat lines:

Hitting: 6,762 PA, .309 AVG, .384 OBP, .560 SLG

Pitching: 1,655 IP, 2.11 ERA, .197 OAV, 0.89 WHIP, 0.74 HR/9

Final Thoughts:

This go around I spent a crazy amount of time on the $100m, a decent amount of time on the $80m, and basically drafted the other four on the fly with a few check ins on the $110m and $140m. The $100m was a struggle to even come close to reaching the cap for me, and the $100m I’ve discussed relatively thoroughly above. Despite the challenge with it, I like that roster, and I like my teams overall. I expect the $70m team to be fairly competitive, the $100m and $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. Generally speaking, I expect to finish somewhere around 36-44 overall.

[Edit - hopefully this edit fixed the formatting. It was an absolute mess when opening up on here]

Your offense in the $120M theme looks unbelievable. But the pitching? Only 1363 innings? You are way braver than I am when it comes to toeing the line on what a minimum number of innings looks like.

Posted by schwarze on 6/26/2025 3:05:00 PM (view original):
Your offense in the $120M theme looks unbelievable. But the pitching? Only 1363 innings? You are way braver than I am when it comes to toeing the line on what a minimum number of innings looks like.

I’m counting on some of that A+ range helping out there, as well as their K/9 not translating and giving me extra IP based on PC. If using more deadball pitchers, I’d probably have drafted closer to 1420 for a roughly equivalent IP

Posted by just4me on 6/26/2025 3:34:00 PM (view original):

Posted by schwarze on 6/26/2025 3:05:00 PM (view original):
Your offense in the $120M theme looks unbelievable. But the pitching? Only 1363 innings? You are way braver than I am when it comes to toeing the line on what a minimum number of innings looks like.

I’m counting on some of that A+ range helping out there, as well as their K/9 not translating and giving me extra IP based on PC. If using more deadball pitchers, I’d probably have drafted closer to 1420 for a roughly equivalent IP

Me looking at my 1356 IP staff like

J4M lives in a different universe that I wish I could master

70m - Darkness on the Edge of 1978
I started by looking at each position (SS/2B/3B/C/OF/1B) and just identifying players who should be good at this cap, then grouping them by season. Then I added in some starting pitchers and looked at which years had a bunch of players. The standounds were 1978, 1979, 1988, 2007, 2010 and 2016. Going into this league I figured I'd have to build a 2016 team (and maybe a 2017 team too) just to see if their lack of inflated salaries made a difference. Plus 2016 has the great Evan Gattis cookie behind the plate.

Since 1978 had the most players (Mollie/Yount/Templeton SS, Thompson 1B, Wills 2B, Alexander C, Cruz OF, Gura P) I started there. I liked the team a lot. I built a 2016 team too (Gattis C, Odor/Villar 2B, Baez/Semien SS) and figured they were close to a toss-up. I looked at 2010 (Pennington SS, Gardy OF, Buchholz P, Cahill P) and also liked that one but they were really lacking power. The 2007 team (Mauer/Yadi/Kenji C, Kinsler 2B, Crawford/Byrnes OF) may have been the best of them all but I just couldn't quite get them cheap enough.

When it came time to choose I was slightly leaning towards 2016 but I realized that I had written Ian Desmond down as a National (I just always put him there in my mind) but he was on TEX. Re-doing the team proved very difficult so I just threw up my hands and went with the 78 team. Their numbers are slightly better anyway and the only real concern is my backup shortstop having a terrible glove. We'll see how this one plays out.

The numbers for all 3 contenders:

v1 - 1978 ... 5385pa C+/C+ 271/339/410 113hr 208sb/63sb 38.68m ... 1264ip 1.15whip 0.69hr9 .234oav 2.55bb9 4.10k9 31.26m
v2 - 2016 ... 5423pa C+/C+ 267/333/456 198hr 137sb/45cs 36.55m ... 1259ip 1.12whip 0.92hr9 .232oav 2.3bb9 7.6k9 33.41m
v3 - 2010 ... 5180pa B/C+ 266/331/403 115hr 151sb/38cs 37.05m ... 1259ip, 1.16whip, 0.74hr9, .236oav, 2.62bb9 7.2 k9 32.88m

80m - 2021 Dodgers hoping for a raise

The balance for this league is really how much you play for round 1 and how much you focus on having a good team for round 2. Round 2 is worth more, but you've got to get there. I'm more worried about getting there, so I'm looking for a good 80m team that should also be competent at 120m.
The other question is whether the 2 teams will look similar or have completely different lineups. Will the expensive team just be more expensive versions of the same guys? Or totally different players?

I started with the usual suspects - 2021 Dodgers, 95/98/99 Indians, 2010 Mariners, 97/98 Mariners, 1906-09 Cubs, 1914 Boston, 27/28 A's, 30s Yankees with Grove/Ruth/Gehrig, 2000/05/06 Yankees. This is a league where I'd happily build 100 teams if I had time, but sadly I don't. I didn't actually BUILD the 120m team alongside the 80m version but I did write down who I'd use. That may prove to be a mistake.

The 21 Dodgers are always a popular choice since they've got Pujols/Scherzer/Trea Turner plus all of the usual Dodger goodness and a killer bullpen. They can sorta work here because a lot of them also have cheaper seasons, though I did have a bit of a hard time shoehorning them into the lower cap. It's not exactly a murderer's row of names, with prominent roles going to Steven Souza Jr, Luke Raley and Chris Taylor. David Price is the workhorse of a mostly 5-man rotation. They're a little power dependent, and if a lot of owners went for deadball Cubs or A's they might struggle.

I built a 2005 Yankees team but the Dodgers' raw numbers were just way better. The Yankees probably would have been a better 120m team even with Al Leiter as their #4. I built a 1907 Cubs team but I just didn't love the pitching staff with only 7 guys, and would have been even more worried about them at 120m. I couldn't convince myself that the '14 Red Sox could have a usable offense at 120m, ditto the 27 A's and their pitching. I would have built a 1909 Pirates team if I had more time. But I'll roll with the Dodgers and hope for the best.

NYY2005 - 5602pa 282/354/438 B/C+ 157hr 159sb/45cs 42.04m, 1317ip 1.16whip 0.53hr9 .236oav 6.41k9 2.53bb9 37.92m
LAD2021 - 5169pa 270/351/476 B/C+ 203hr 142sb/28cs 38.39m, 1344ip 1.08whip 0.69hr9 .219oav 9.8k9 2.4bb9 41.55m

100m - Hello Earl! 68-70 Orioles

I feel a lot better seeing that schwarze picked the same team as I did. I probably spent too much time on this league. The O's were the 8th or 9th team I built. I had a 2020-22 Dodgers team that I loved, but then I saw the rule against using combined seasons, and after I re-did them, they were still good but not amazing. So I kept looking around. That Dodgers team would have won 110 games though :(

The first 2 teams I built were actually deadball teams, but I couldn't make the 06-08 Cubs or 07-09 Pirates work. The Cubs really only had good players in 07 and 09 and shoving 1908 guys into the lineup made them weaker. The Pirates were lacking in secondary bats and didn't really use all of the cap. Then I built the Dodgers, and had a flirt with the 17-19 Astros. Same problem as the Cubs - 2 great years bookended by one that was lacking good players. I built a 96-98 Braves team that I did like, then tried the 11-13 Tigers, who had a terrible outfield. I wanted the Yankee dynasties to work, but I tried 41-43 and 27-29 and neither had anywhere near enough pitching.

Finally I started a new search by looking at single pitchers who would be good to have, since missing top end pitching seemed to be a common problem. I found '68 Dave McNally and realized I should have considered the Orioles sooner. They also had '69 Cuellar and some good relievers. Their offense was better than expected with F-Robby and Boog. I started building the team and it just came together. No holes, right up to the cap, good mix of seasons. It was really close between them and the remade Dodgers. The bottom half of the O's lineup is not great. The Dodgers' bullpen was better. But the O's have a reallllly good defense and more top-end innings. I may have made the wrong decision since I've got to manage this team instead of having Earl do it.

v3 2020-22 Dodgers
5536pa 282/360/500 B/B- 201hr 71sb/12cs 47.3m
1437ip 0.94whip .195oav 0.79hr9 9k9 2.1k9 57.28m

v4 41-43 Yankees
6094pa 294/377/458 B-/B- 147hr 60sb/37cs 54.6m
1465ip 1.12whip 0.36hr9 .231oav 2.37bb9 3.95k9 43.2m

v5 27-29 Yankees
6168pa 326/402/511 C+/C- 146hr 75sb/56cs 57.01m
1544ip 1.25whip 0.26hr9 .259oav 2.44bb9 2.9k9 42.1m

v8 -68-70 Orioles
5650pa 277/359/441 B+/B- 181hr 100sb/47cs 51.9m
1446ip 1.01whip 0.60hr9 .200oav 2.67bb9 6.4k9 47.56m

110m - 25 Guys who were never on TikTok

This wasn't a team I spent a lot of time on. The 1800s are pretty short on usable relievers, so I kind of started there with John Shaffer and Bill George and Sam Leever and Jack Taylor and Phenomenal Smith as my first 5 guys. Then I added Roger Connor (since he's the GOAT) and went from there.
With all 1800s players there's going to be a lot of errors. Do you embrace them and go for the absolute best rabge guys, or try to get the rare good fielders and keep the errors low? I'm going for range with an infield of Connor, McPhee, Jennings and Cross. Once I had the bullpen sorted I had to see which pitchers fit into the team, and I've got Weyhing '88 as my #1 with Baldwin '85 and Chamberlain '90 sharing the 2nd spot. Caruthers the outfielder, Jimmy Ryan and the ubiquitous George Gore will be the primary outfielders. We're playing in South End Grounds III which is +2 for 1B because we probably have above average D? I hope so anyway.

120m - The Sultan, The Royal and The King

So this is basically a pitching staff from an 80m team and the rest of an offense from an 80m team? A lot of these guys are cross-offs. Bonds? No thanks. Hornsby? If this is a lower cap league I'd rather have infielders who can field. Foxx? Maybe... but I don't know if I trust his RH power either. Hamilton? Paying for an awful lot of PAs. Tip? I do like him a lot and he always performs well - he was probably the last cut.
Brett is exactly who I want - just over the 15m line and A+ range. Of course he's only got 515 PAs. But I'll take him anyway and find a cheap platoon partner.

Since none of these guys can run (except maybe Billy), the most any team can have is 5 basestealers. So I think Kelly is worth the gamble for his A- arm and killer OBP. And of course '27 Ruth, the guy who hardly ever gets completely killed by normalization, is a lock of all locks at 15.4 mil. Either he'll walk and hit singles or he'll hit a few bombs. I'll take him either way.

With Kelly, Brett and Ruth in tow, what does the rest of the team look like? I went with very low HR/9 pitchers (in case others do try Foxx//Bonds, and since everyone will have Babe) and as much infield range as I could manage. Connor '93 is at 1B, Kinsler '07 and Yount '78 up the middle, and Ezra Sutton with his A+ range everywhere fills in the missing ABs at 2B, SS and 3B. Cheap power in the outfield in Santander and Cy Williams (along with Babe). Tex Hughson, Bob Ojeda, Ehmke, Larry French and Wilcy Moore as the starters, though Wilcy will have to do some kind of tandem given his crappy IP/G. I figure I'll rotate them all through the rotation and keep Wilcy every 3rd or 4th day. We're playing in the Kingdome because why not? Hopefully not everyone went so crazy on low HR/9 guys.

140m - The two Ruths, plus two more

Whereas Ruth and his croneys were not a great fit for the 100m league because they were unbalanced, that makes them an equally good fit here. At least I hope so. Who regularly performs in all leagues? Babe. So how do I pass up a chance to get 4 of them? Of course I've got '16 Ruth as the ace of the staff, and managed to fit the '27, '26 and '31 versions in at LF/RF/DH to boot. Plus Gehrig '28... and that's about the extent of the guys who can hit. Wally Berger '35 has raw power, if he can get to it, and '29 Lazzeri might hit some singles. The Dickey/Schang platoon at C isn't terrible but not exactly 140m worthy either. And the less said about Lyn Lary and Aaron Ward the better. In addition to Babe, Carl Mays '18 and Lefty Gomez '34 are the best pitchers, along with Wilcy Moore '27 who I have to figure out how to use. Joe Wood '15 is going to have to be the fireman since the rest of the bullpen is bad. I've got them playing in Yankee I since options were limited.

The alternative to this team was a Kershaw team that I really liked. I was just worried about how Kershaw would fare against a bunch of Babes in Dodger Stadium. I had Kershaws '14, 15, 13 and '20 in a rotation with '15 Grienke. Plus Kershaw '16, Kenley and Kuo as lights out RPs. The offense was only so-so since I couldn't fit Mookie '18 under the cap. I may have chosen poorly, but I already bet on the Dodgers with my dynasty team so hopefully I called it right.

I should point out that I also built a Pedro team here that I honestly liked almost as much as the Kershaw team. I had the big money Pedro '00 under the cap, and an infield of Wright/Utley/Nomar. The lineup was just lacking enough depth to compete with Babe and the bullpen wasn't nearly as good as the Kershaws. But they were all pretty close.

v2 - Kershaw 6363pa 306/381/542, B-/B- , 61.60m 287 HR, 1646ip 0.88whip 0.56hr9 .194oav 1.60bb9 10.1k9 76.28m
v3 - Ruth - 7102pa 326/420/549 C/C- 84.65m 255hr , 1621ip 1.11whip .220oav 55.11m 2.83bb 3.95k9
v5 - Pedro 6555pa 299/380/531 B-/B- 64.4m 280hr, 1570ip 0.98whip 0.51hr9 .200oav 2.19bb9 10.5k9 75.2m

$70 Million – Single Season Franchise Soup

I'm a big fan of 1981 Larry Gura at low caps and the strike year has some good bargains, so I figured it would be a good choice. Didn't do any research beyond that, which was probably a mistake. Team doesn't do anything particularly well, just picked the best overall players I could, given the theme. Astrodome.

Offence: 5362 PA .276/.362/.396 $34.8M
Pitching: 1,319 IP .242 OAV/1.11 WHIP/2.01 BB9/0.55 HR9 $35.1M

Prediction: Larry Gura will finish under .500 and take all our hopes and dreams down with him.

$80 Million – Twist on a Twist (Part 1)

The 2008 Dodgers seemed to have a bunch of pitchers that have serviceable seasons you can use at $80M as well as $120M. That was good enough for me. I like my $120M team more than my $80M team, so I hope I get to use them. Dodger Stadium.

Offence: 5467 PA .284/.358/.451 $40.7M
Pitching: 1,328 IP .229 OAV/1.09 WHIP/2.14 BB9/0.72 HR9 $39.2M

Prediction: The OAV isn't ideal for Dodger Stadium and we will get out-hit a ton.

$100 Million – Three Year Dynasty

The 2020-2022 Dodgers had a bunch of great one-year seasons from 6 different SP that totaled about 850 IP and a bunch of hitting seasons in the $6M range, so that seemed like a good fit. Some great bullpen arms was nice bonus. Defence is a weak point but hopefully there won't be too many balls in play. Pitching will give up a bunch of HR but the bats should hit their fair share too. Dodger Stadium.

Offence: 5544 PA .280/.364/.505 $48.8M
Pitching: 1,349 IP .192 OAV/0.93 WHIP/2.16 BB9/0.85 HR9 $51.1M

Prediction: Will get stuck in a division with some 1930s monster HR hitting teams and get walked off an unreasonable number of times.

$110 Million – The Nineteenth Century

I'm a big fan of deadball teams, so this was a lot of fun to build. I don't think the pitching for this cap can get much better than a 1-2 rotation of Silver King and Lady Baldwin, so I went with that. Took 4 low cost, low IP RPs and a mop up to fill out the pitching staff. So few pitchers means a lot of hitting platoons if you don't want to waste cap just to fill spots with a bunch of scrubs. I figure a good chunk of teams will have Silver King and his only real weakness is OAV, so I took as many high average hitters between 100-600 PA as I could to fill the various positions, giving preference to hitters with good range. I really like this team, which means they'll be my worst. Have a lot of IP, so I figured I should take Jefferson Street Ground to use as many of them as I can.

Offence: 5488 PA .349/.424/.457 $49.1M
Pitching: 1520 IP .201 OAV/0.94 WHIP/1.66 BB9/0.17 HR9 $60.1M

Prediction: The offense isn't quite as strong as I'd like for this theme and will lose a ton of 1-run games where we get shut down by the owners who took Elton Chamberlain as a closer.

$120 Million - Heavy Hitters

Plan was to take the 3 cheapest Heavy Hitters who won't ever need a backup or a rest. George Brett and Barry Bonds will need a backup to cover their shortfall in PAs, so they're more expensive than they look. I figure your Heavy Hitters should hit 1-2-3 all season and to get the most bang out of your picks. With Bonds and Brett off the table, that left Billy Hamilton, 22 Rogers Hornsby and 27 Babe Ruth as the cheapest Heavy Hitters. I hate wasting $ on PA I'll never use, but since I have to, 860 PA Billy Hamilton was an easy choice - great fielder and leadoff hitter who will never need a day or inning off. 1922 Rogers Hornsby doesn't quite have the 2B fielding/range that I like, but he can can hit #2 all season without needing a rest. And 1927 Babe Ruth as my #3 hitter takes care of the heavy hitters. Filled out the rest of the offence with the best hitters with good range I could afford and keep the total hitting under $70M total.

That left just over $50M for a pitching staff, so I took the best low-ish HR/9 1,362 IP I could afford. When deadball pitchers are eliminated, it's tempting to build a HR hitting offence, so I'm trying to counter that strategy that as best as possible. Municipal.

Offence: 5721 PA .330/.407/.509 $69.1M
Pitching: 1,362 IP .213 OAV/0.97 WHIP/1.73 BB9/0.38 HR9 $50.8M

Prediction: Will lose the Wild Card play-in game in the bottom of the 9th to a walk off solo home run by a hitter that has a 0 HR/100 AB# against one of my relievers with a 0.0 HR/9.

$140 Million - I Played With That Guy, Too

I tried about a dozen different builds and I couldn't beat a Tris Speaker team, at least on paper. I could build better hitting squads (Ruth, Lajoie) and I could build better pitching squads (Maddux, Randy, Kershaw), but I couldn't build a better hitting AND pitching squad. I think this would have been the perfect theme at $120M, and I ended up with bunch of extra PA and IP at $140M, as I expect others did. League Park II.

Offence: 6920 PA .348/.423/.483
Pitching: 1,646 IP .209 OAV/0.99 WHIP/2.18 BB9/0.12 HR9

Prediction: No clue what's going to happen with this one.

70M -When This Baby Hits 88mph… Astrodome
When I first read the theme, my mind immediately went to the Astrodome. It would mask some of the pitching issues inherent in a low cap team. After sorting through the available years, I built both a 1981 and 1982 team. 1981 was better, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Then the lightbulb went on, and I realized if I looked 1998+ I could add 4 more teams to the pool. This led me to 2014. I built a team where I was ok with the numbers. But that’s all it was, a collection of numbers. When I build teams I like to have some connection. It’s probably why my overall record is so bad. Back to the 80s I went. I am not sure how I missed 1988 the first time but I put together a team that had everything I wanted. I am going with a 3 man rotation of Browning, Mike Moore, and Dave Lapoint. I was able to fit Pascual Perez, so I will use my version of the Super LRA strategy with Perez . I think Perez has a chance to be a real difference maker in this role at this cap. The rest of the bullpen is anchored by Alejandro Pena, Craig Lefforts, and Mike Henneman. The lineup is solid - Whitt/Trevino, Joyner, Backman/Wilkerson, Oquendo, Seitzer, Gwynn, Evans, and Palmeiro. Low cap leagues can be a bit of a crapshoot sometimes. And there are really good owners in this tournament. But I like this team and I think it has potential.

80M - 95 NYY Yankee Stadium II
Twists are my favorite type of league. I have played 70+ seasons in the 80M OG Twist league. Needless to say, I was very happy to see this theme. The one major difference is the OG league uses AAA, which makes it play more like 90+M. There were a handful of teams I know I’ve been successful with. It became a matter of seeing which ones were better suited to not have AAA. My favorite all-time twist team is the 95 Yankees. I have made the playoffs many times with this team. The rotation of Cone, Key, McDowell, and Bankhead is solid, especially in the regular season. It lacks a real top end stud, which is probably why I’ve never been able to win a title with them. The lineup is solid and does have a number of guys who are upgradable in the unlikely event I advance to round 2 - Mattingly, Boggs, O’Neill, Jeter, Posada. The pitching, not so much. After seeing other teams, I realized a flaw in my selection process. The OG Twist has a blacklist. My list of possible teams for this league doesn’t include the blacklisted teams. So without even realizing it, I removed 100+ good twist teams from my pool. Now, I probably would have ended up in the same place. But in a year where I really put the work into my teams, this could come back to bite me.

Quick sidenote: The <300k exception was way more helpful than I originally thought it would be.

100M - 68-70 O’s Memorial Stadium
This was the last team I started working on. I wanted to find a team that had a run of strong starting pitching. I first tried a number of variations of the early 1900s Cubs, but couldn’t really get anything I was happy with. I then turned to the 90s Braves. I built a 96-98 team and for a while, that was going to be my entry. Sometimes these puzzle leagues drive you nuts, and when I get one to work, my instinct is to settle. But after seeing the discussion in the forum, I decided to try some other options. I built early 70s A’s and mid 80s Cards teams. Both were OK. Dave McNally kept coming up near the top of my pitcher searches, so I gave the O’s a shot. I’m glad I did, as they checked pretty much every box:

• strong rotation with McNally, Cuellar, Palmer, and Hardin
• good bullpen with Hall, Bunker, Drabowsky, Rickett
• solid offense that will normalize well - The Robinsons, Buford, Boog, and Davey Johnson

The O’s come in at just under 100M without a ton of waste.

110M - 19th Century Analog Boys - National League Park II
I don’t play with 19th Century players very often, especially en masse, so this was something different for me. I started, as I did with the other puzzle themes, with what I consider positions of scarcity -SP1, SS, 2B, and C - then built it out from there. I went with Tim Keefe and the combo of Lady Baldwin and Harry Boyle as my starters. I was surprised there were as many short inning reliever types as there were. The lineup features a bunch of the usual names - Roger Conner, Willie Keeler, Billy Hamilton, Hughie Jennings, and Honus Wagner in the OF. The team came together in one shot and I left it alone. No real strategy. I have no sense of how this will go.

120M - Babes, Kings, and Rogers - Riverfront Stadium
While this theme is Heavy Hitters, it will end up being about how you spend the rest of your resources. My Heavy Hitters were King Kelly, 27 Ruth, and 22 Hornsby. Ruth is Ruth. Kelly and Hornsby are both great and play positions with less value options. They came in at about $48M. My original plan was to go for a 70/50 salary split, but pretty quickly shifted to 75/45 and actually ended up 77/43. This is the most open of the themes, beyond the Heavy Hitters. These are the types of leagues that give me fits because it highlights why I’m not good at this game. Too many options. My plan is to spread the heavy hitters throughout the lineup, batting them 1st, 4th, and 7th. Between them are higher OBP guys with at least decent speed - McNeil, Slaughter, Ketel, Carew and Carlos Guillen. The goal is hopefully to put guys on base for the stars to drive them home. It has the added bonus of making sure at least one heavy hitter gets to bat each inning. For the pitching staff it was about building the best 43M staff. I went with Saberhagen, Santana, Bonham, and Yankee Randy Johnson in the rotation. The bullpen will be held down by Pascual Perez, Woody Williams, Rasmussen and Bob Stoddard. Other than the 19th century league, which I have absolutely no feel for at all, this is the team I am least confident in.


140M - Bluetooth Speakers - League Park II
I know from reading the forums that people struggled a bit with the 100M theme. This was the one I struggled with most. I had a hard time finding a team that I was really happy with. My plan was to choose a player with 20+ seasons, preferably a stud starting pitcher. I tried teams for Randy Johnson, Don Sutton, and Greg Maddux. I really tried to make Walter Johnson work, but the team didn’t have enough offense and came in at only $126M. I even tried Jack Quinn and Cy Young. For a little while, Maddux was going to be the guy. I suspect he’ll be pretty popular(note: we all chose Speaker). But I felt there was something better. So, I moved over to the hitters and started building teams. I tried Ruth, but there wasn’t enough pitching. I also tried teams for Hornsby, Musial, and Ty Cobb. Then I found 2 that I finally liked - Tris Speaker and Nap Lajoie. Both were good - above all the other teams I built.They also both had flaws. Lajoie had slightly better hitting. It also had Addie Joss. But the rest of the staff wasn’t as good. And the lineup was mostly right handed. The Speaker offense was not quite as good. But the overall pitching staff was better, led by Cy Young, Coveleski, and Dutch Leonard. The flaw here was that the lineup was almost entirely left handed. I went back and forth for a couple of weeks. I even tried some of the other teams again. I finally settled on the idea that I wanted a more balanced staff. Also, I am betting on the fact that there will be more RHP than LHP. So I entered my Tris Speaker team. One more issue with this team is I probably drafted too many innings (1742). But with the limited options, in a couple of cases if I wanted the quality I needed the quantity. Also, I made an absolute mess of the 140M last year by not drafting enough innings. So this team might be bad, but not throw off the competitive balance of the entire league bad.

$70M: Mama Said Knock You Out (1990)
1985 immediately came to mind when I saw this theme, mostly for Vince Coleman. But I just couldn’t build a team that I liked all that much. I identified 1978, 1990 and 2015 as other options and built teams for each. I ultimately went with 1990 because of their speed. Raines and Coleman will set the table, followed by McGee, Bonilla, and Jeffries. Alomar provides A range at 2B, while the other Alomar provides an A- arm at catcher. Dunston is my weakest link as a light-hitting SS.

The pitching is not great. Finley, R. Martinez, Black, Mulholland, and Tapani will start. Bullpen is anchored by Reardon and DeLucia.
1978 had more power and better pitching. Templeton, Bonds, Rose, Piniella, Singleton led that lineup, with Kingman providing cheap power. But I got enamored with Raines and Coleman running around the bases, so I went with 1990. I hope I don’t regret my choice.

Hitter Totals: 5,423 PA, .282/.334/.415, 226 SB
Pitcher Totals: 1,400 IP, .240 OAV, 1.18 WHIP

$80M: 2022 Dodgers
I identified 10 teams that interest me: 1902 Pirates, 1906 Cubs, 1908 Cubs, 1910 Athletics, 1964 Dodgers, 1969 Orioles, 1998 Yankees, 2005 Yankees, 2019 Astros, and 2022 Dodgers. I started by figuring out which teams could also be a decent $120M team. Then I remembered an important fact – I’m not making the 2^nd round. So I just focused on designing the best $80M team I could.

I really wanted the 1902 Pirates to work, but I just couldn’t get there. The 1908 Cubs were in a similar boat. It ultimately came down to the 2005 Yankees and the 2022 Dodgers. The Dodgers provided more pop and slightly better pitching, so I went with them. Why I picked 2022 instead of 2021 Dodgers is beyond me. In retrospect, 2021 was the better choice.

Hitter Totals: 5,238 PA, .290/.372/.509, 274 2B, 225 HR
Pitcher Totals: 1,421 IP, .226 OAV, 1.11 WHIP

$100M: 2020 – 2022 Dodgers
Continuing my Dodgers theme. This one was a fairly obvious choice for me. Led by ’20 Betts, ’22 Freeman, ’20 Seager, and ’21 T. Turner, these guys should score some runs. Their average is a tad bit lower than I’d like in a $100M league but hopefully they bring some thump. Pitching is led by ’21 Buehler, ’20 Kershaw, and ’22 Gonsolin, along with the Dodgers good bullpen arms like ’21 Treinen and ’22 Phillips.

I did build teams from 1908-10 A’s, 1923-25 Reds and Orioles teams ranging from 1967 to 1971, but none of them were close to the Dodgers team. I do think the Orioles teams are interesting with their strong fielding, so I’ll be interested to see how they perform.

Hitter Totals: 5,729 PA, .283/.365/.508, 297 2B, 261 HR.
Pitcher Totals: 1,395 IP, .194 OAV, .95 WHIP

$110M: O Brouthers, Where Art Thou?
My initial inclination was that a pitching staff would be hard to build, so I focused on that first. One staff was led by ’88 Keefe and ’88 Conway, with ’85 Ramsey, ’86 Shaffer, ’98 Taylor, and ’96 Corbett as key bullpen pieces. The other staff had ’88 Seward as SP1, with ’90 Chamberlain and ’88 Titcomb as starters 2a and 2b. Key bullpen pieces were the same, but I had to drop Ramsey for budget reasons. I ended up going with the 2^nd option, mainly because I like the name Cannonball Titcomb.

The lineup is anchored by ’95 Thompson, ’85 Brouthers, and ’87 Caruthers. ’97 Burkett and ’89 Carroll provide high OBP. ’95 Davis, ’00 Lajoie, and ’91 Shoch round out the lineup.

Hitter Totals: 5,510 PA, .352/.429/.509, 334 2B
Pitcher Totals: 1,487 IP, .198 OAV, 1.02 WHIP

$120M: 3 Big Dogs and the Budget Ballers
My strategy here was similar to others. I wanted to stay as close to $15M as possible to leave more budget money for the rest of the team. Brett didn’t have enough PAs and Hamilton had too may, so there were really only 3 options – Bonds, Ruth, and Hornsby. Next, I knew I needed a CF with good range since I’m stuck with Bonds and Ruth in LF and RF. So ’21 Carey it is.

I needed to be cheap with the rest of my hitters so that I could field a somewhat competent pitching staff. I figured most teams would spend around $45M on pitching, so I thought some of my favorite budget players at $80M would work here too. ’16 Ramirez at 3B, ’17 Correa at SS, and ’02 Peitz at C are my value plays. Lastly, I went with ’71 Killebrew at 1B. I’ve used him a handful of times and have had a couple of big seasons and some really crappy seasons. Hopefully he’ll draw enough walks and hit enough HR to prove useful.

The rotation is ’69 Cuellar, ’45 Wolff, and ’67 Horlen. Key bullpen pieces include ’22 Herget, ’21 Rasmussen, ’69 Wilhelm, ’19 Dyson, and ’16 Melancon.

Hitter Totals: 5,445 PA, .327/.426/.559, 276 2B, 230 HR
Pitcher Totals: 1,409 IP, .207 OAV, .98 WHIP

$140M: The Big Unit
This was the least enjoyable build for me. I spent so much time trying to find a team that worked and never really found one. I settled on the Big Unit out of fatigue more than anything.

My initial idea was to identify a middle reliever that bounced around a lot so that I could have exposure to a lot of players. Andrew Miller and LaTroy Hawkins came to mind, but neither worked at all. I tried Mariano, but he didn't work either. Goose Gossage didn’t have enough SP to make him work. I then pivoted to SP, building teams using T. John, Maddux, Glavine, Pedro and R. Johnson (for some reason, I didn't build a Kershaw team. After my $80M and $100M builds, maybe I was sick of the Dodgers). The Maddux and Glavine teams didn’t have enough pitching depth for my liking. The Johnson pitching staff is ok'ish, but he opened me up to some hitters that piqued my interest. ’94 Griffey, ’96 Rodriguez, ’01 Gonzalez, and ’95 Martinez anchor my lineup. ’98 Biggio sets the table. 1B was problem, so I’m going to play Jeter there out of position. Conor Jackson and Dan Wilson round out the starting 8 and are definite weak links. With almost 7,500 plate appearances, at least fatigue won’t be an issue.

I don’t know that any of my teams will be good, but I’m fairly confident this one won’t be.

Hitter Totals: 7,467 PAs, .321/.397/.537, 452 2B
Pitcher Totals: 1,604 IP, .203 OAV, .99 WHIP

70M 1981 Young Turks

A few things that I knew that I wanted: Relievers who can throw at least 20 pitches per inning, Astrodome or Petco, guys with doubles and triples power and can draw walks. Also, it’d be nice to find a guy with a strong arm who plays catcher as a secondary position. I had it narrowed down to 1978, 1981 and 2004. I built rosters for all three and I liked 1981 the best. I thought I’d like 2004 since there were more teams to choose from, but the IP/Gs were too low and the pitchers had higher HR/9s. I’m not even going to try to hit HR since I’m using the Astrodome.

As I was building my roster it became apparent that some teams only had one or two usable players and that I had to build around those guys and make sacrifices from other players that I wanted to use.

The biggest question is which team name should I use? Angels of the Morning, Slow Hands, Under Pressure, Super Freaks, Who’s Crying Now, Too Much Time on my Hands…so many choices.

Hitting: 5369 PA, .280/.345/.408, B-/C

Pitching: 1292 IP, 2.89 ERA, 1.17 Whip, 0.226 OAV, 0.55 HR/9

Astrodome

80M 1915 Red Sox

My first thought is that I need to create the $120M roster first as that’s the tougher roster to build. There is an ongoing $80M twist league (that I”m not a part of) that lists the previous champions for the past 107 seasons. So I just used that list to see if I could make a $120M team out of those champions. I found my team on the fourth one I built. I knew I wanted a 1910’s era team since I like that era. Cubs? Nope. Giants? Close, but no. Indians? Nope. Red Sox, check!

The biggest problem is 2B and that I’d be using the same crappy Heinie Wagner / Jack Barry platoon at $80M and $120M. Also, Everett Scott can’t hit the side of a barn. But the rest of the team including Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker and an excellent pitching staff overcomes this.

Hitting: 5420PA, .288/.359/.395, C/C

Pitching: 1354 PA, 1.98 ERA, 1.06 Whip, 0.224 OAV, 0.09 HR/9

Fenway Park

100M 1968-1970 Orioles

I spent literal days researching teams for this theme. I created….checking notes…..35 rosters. I looked at probably twice that many teams where I didn’t create a roster because I soon realized that I was coming up short, and I needed much more expensive players. I kept thinking that I just needed to do more research and eventually I’d find the right one. Well, that was true. First I looked for rosters with strong pitching. Then strong hitters. What I forgot about is strong defense, which is what I ended up using. This was the last roster I created and it felt so good when it finally clicked.

Here were some of the other teams that I considered using:

88-90 St. Louis Browns

06-08 Cubs

06-08 Naps

09-11 Cubs

10-12 Cubs

18-20 Indians

25-27 Yankees

27-29 Yankees

37-39 Yankees

39-41 Yankees

42-44 Cardinals

53-55 Indians

97-99 Braves

The issue with most of the older teams is a lack of cheap players and a bullpen. My 2nd choice was the 97-99 Braves, but I really didn’t want to use them since I already have a similar team in the $140M theme.

Hitters: 5596 PA, .280/.355/.446, B+/B

Pitchers: 1449 IP, 2.22 ERA, 1.01 Whip, 0.200 OAV, 0.61 HR/9

Memorial Stadium

110M Garden City Athletic Club

Given the narrow scope of the league with everyone using the same 16 seasons, I figured all of the teams would look very similar. How could I differentiate my team from the others in the league?

My answer is to think like a 19th century baseball team. There is no DH, so I'll get pitchers who can hit. I have a two man starting rotation of Bob Caruthers and Scott Stratton. One of the issues is that Caruthers would be the 2nd best hitter when he pitches and Stratton would be the 9th best hitter when he pitches. I’m not going to micromanage every other game, but so I’m unsure of where to bat them. I am thinking of batting them 3rd, but it could change to 7th because I’m saving the last two spots to keep my low PA/good defenders. I wanted good defenders up the middle so I have SS 99 George Davis (B/A) and CF 94 Mike Griffin (B/A).

I’m going to have either the best or worst pitching staff depending on how you look at it. The thing is that Caruthers (ERC# 2.29) and Stratton (ERC# 2.18) are good pitchers, but may very well have the worst ERA in the league. This seems to be a high risk / high reward strategy. I’m curious how it will work out.

Hitters: 5480 PA, .340/.414/.470, C/B- (not including pitchers)

Caruthers: .334/.448/.527

Stratton: .323/.385/.392

Pitchers: 1438 IP, 2.28 ERA, 1.04 Whip, 0.217 OAV, 0.09 HR/9

West Side Grounds

120M Studs and Schlubs

I found this theme to be surprisingly fun to put together. There’s a lot of “what do I think the other owners will do?”. Here is my thought process when it came to putting it together.

#1 - How much do I want to spend on hitting and pitching? I already know that I have to allocate at least $45M to my hitting. Could I go $70M/$50M? No, I’m a generally a pitching first guy and that’s too much emphasis on hitting. $60M/$60M? That’s too extreme considering I’m already spending $45M on three guys, so I compromised and aimed for $65M/$55M. I want to have one of the best pitching staffs so I think this is the right number.

#2 - I need to get the cheapest $15M+ hitters. I ended up with 1922 Rogers Hornsby ($15.9M), 1927 Babe Ruth ($15.3M) and 2002 Barry Bonds ($15.8M). Normally, I wouldn’t take Bonds because of normalization, but since there are no deadball pitchers, I think it is ok to take him. I passed on George Brett because I’m not willing to pay for his defense. I passed on Billy Hamilton for the same reason plus it’s a waste to have 860 PA. Everyone else is too expensive and I needed that $.

#3 - Ok, I just spent $47M on those three guys. That allows me $18M to spend on the rest of my hitters. That means I’m getting guys in the $5K - $5.5K / PA range which is the equivalent of a $40M ultra low cap league. I’ve been in a few $40M leagues, so I already had an idea of how to put together a lineup at this cap. “The other guys” are not good, but I needed to free up $ for my pitching staff. I ended spending $64M on my offense overall.

#4 - If I’m spending $56M on my pitching staff, how many innings do I really need? Factors include the $120M cap, 3 studs and 5 schlubs in each lineup, dynamic pricing in the 3 studs, the skew towards more offense, and how I think other owners will allocate their hitting/pitching ratio. I ended up with 1460 innings and went with a pitching friendly stadium. Since there are no deadballers, it’s dominated by post-dynamic priced guys like Bieber and Lamet. Also, since most of the $15M+ hitters are left handed, five of my pitchers are lefties.

Hitters: 5427 PA, .289/.406/.494, B-/D+

Pitchers: 1460 IP, 0.203 OAV, 1.00 Whip, 2.07 ERA, 0.37 HR/9

Colt Stadium

140M OMG, I Know Greg Too!

I used the list from BBR that sorted the guys by the number of seasons played. I started from the top, Nolan Ryan at 27 and went down the list to create teams. I took the most expensive players paying no mind if I was using duplicate seasons to see if I could get to 6000 PAs and 1500 IP and get close to $140M. While I didn’t make rosters for every player, I soon realized that it was going to be VERY difficult to get to a cap appropriate $140M. It wasn’t enough to get great players, you had to get the best players. I got down to players with 19 sim-eligible seasons and stopped there. Is it possible there is a player with 15-18 seasons who is a better pick than what I ultimately chose? Yes, but not likely.

After all that research, I only came up with three players: Babe Ruth, Nap Lajoie and Greg Maddux that would work with this theme. Both Ruth and Lajoie were skewed heavily towards offense and were also inefficient in that I’d still be drafting too many PAs, as a lack of cheap players was a problem. Also, the bullpens were non-existent during this time-frame, so I’d be drafting extra players as filler.

I had to take Greg Maddux, because that was the only plausible choice in my opinion. It was the only team that “felt right” after putting all of the pieces together. It’s a $65M/75M hitting/pitching split. The main weakness is that by grabbing a modern team, I’d be susceptible to deadball pitchers if someone uses Lajoie. Secondary weakness is that my bullpen pitchers are all 15 pitch guys. I’d prefer to stretch them out knowing how the sim hates low IP pitchers. I’m using 1994 and 1995 Maddux, which are super-expensive but it's not about being efficient when it comes to this league.

6437 PA, .313/.388/.559, B/C

1531 IP, 2.19 ERA, 0.97 Whip, 0.204 OAV, 0.50 HR/9

Wrigley Field

Campbell's 1978 Soup $70m
I searched Starting Pitchers in the price range for this cap. Several of the top results were from 1978 so that's the year I tried first.Satisfied with the result didn't have the time or interest to draft and compare other years..Start with the best SP and the hitters that stand out at their position. Drop off those teams and select key positions that had several contenders.Ending with the backups and Long B's from the few remaining teams.I have a $500k mopup because I couldn't negotiate a better use for the remaining dollars.
Jim Palmer and Steve Rogers were my top two choices for pitcher. Gaylord Perry beat out several contenders for #3 because there were no other Padres I wanted. 3-man rotation with Dave Frost of the Angels spot starting as needed.Bullpen has a bunch of average arms most of whom I'm not familiar with. Kobel Wirth Proly Bruno Holly, oh hey I've heard of Mingori. Reasonable lineup of Sundberg Cooper Whitaker Bowa Cabell GriffeySr Yaz Piniella. A couple decent backups that can also pinch hit.


$80m 2007 Cubs twist
I went straight to the oldtime Cubs for their solid pitching I've used them in related themes. Some hitters too, good choice for $80m. Hittiing may be a little lite for $120m round 2 but there's no such thing as perfection in these puzzle themes. Compared modern Yankees they sign big names past their prime so may be a good choice for twist leagues. 2000 Yanks had a boatload of hasbeens. Decent $120m team but I couldn't do much with a mere $80m cap.Is it worth it to wait for the more important round 2? I drafted both teams for $120m and compared.. Decided that the Cubs deep pitching makes up for the Yanks better hitting which was only in the power category. My pitchers suppress HR so I may have the advantage in head-to-head matchups.
I'm familiar with the Cubs 5-headed monster of Mordecai Reulbach Overall Pfiester Lundgren. At $80m I used Jack Taylor in place of one and not the best version of others but still good. Enough hitting to make an $80m team I like except the end of the roster. I have 10 under $300k exemptions. Only five real pitchers which makes the manager less nimble and filling in with under 300k pitchers could get ugly. Adequate hitting with Tinkers to Evers to Chance, Kling good name for a Catcher, Steinfeld at 3rd with an OF of Sheckard Schulte and Hofman. Cheap pinchitters but my pitchers hit .200 and I can't be rotating them out too much.

$100M 1968-70 Orioles
The first two teams I drafted went a little over budget. So I was surprised to read others couldn't get near the cap.1968-70 Orioles won a ton of games and had good pitching so that was the first team I tried. Looked at others the only one I seriously considered was the modern Dodgers, killer bullpen and a couple weaknesses elsewhere. Close call. I went with the O's because of my bias for balanced teams, better for the long regular season maybe not so for the short wild playoffs.
Choosing a combo was the hard part then the team practically drafted itself. Others posting this team have almost he exact same roster I do. I guess we fight to outmanage each other. Obvious pitchers McNally Cuellar and Palmer with Jim Hardin thrown in for innings. 6 good quality relievers. Frank Brooks and Boog with Paul Blair patrolling center field, Don Buford, Davey Johnson, Mark Belanger in a rare year he actually hit, and mediocre Catchers Etchebarren and Hendricks.

$110M 1885-1900
The least difficult draft. Bypass a few guys too costly for this cap then there are limited choices. Buffinton's 499 innings otherwise pitching gets too thin and the 600+ inning guys rarely get all of their innings. My Ace is a lady (Lady Baldwin) my closer is phenomenal (Phenomenal Smith) aided by pulling a leever (Sam Leever). SPs '88 Adonis Terry and '90 Elton Chamberlain who will rotate through the bullpen when not starting, different strategy than most who loaded up on low inning putchers. Then Jim Handiboe at Long B and Jack Taylor's 45 innings wherever needed.
Mostly solid hitting. Dan Brouthers at 1B rather than Connor so I can afford Sam Thompson and Joe Kelley because after Bob Caruthers the OF choices tail off. Nap Lajoie at 2B sharing time with the weaker Lou Bierbauer. Denny Lyons at 3B backed up by Jimmy Say. George Davis a rare oldtime SS with good glove but only 500 pa and his backup is putrid.Now I'm broke so Lave Cross at C and a couple affordable bench players.


$120m Foxxy Babe Rogers
Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby were easy choices who I expect will be on almost every team. Need to stay near $15m so there's money leftover to spend elsewhere. Ruled out Brett because of low stamina and underperformance and Hamilton I don't need a thousand PA.. Barry Bonds walks and HR do not hold up very well so I spent more on Jimmie Foxx who ahs full stamina and his HR normalize well. Now to decide how to split $ between renaining hitters and pitching. I may have undercut hitting a little I like having deep pitching. Barely $4000 per position and average $35,000 per inning, then fill out a mostly balanced team with cheap backups and good closers.Hard to predict how many innings I'll need so I drafted a second guy above mopup quality just to be safe..
SS are expensive so I went with Mark McLemore secondary position, filling in with a cheap Aaron Ledesma who will back up other positions too. Garret Atkins at 3b. Deacon Mcguire catching I didn't splurge for A+ arm not expecting a lot of running in this theme. Rarely used Harold Baines and parttime Charlie Hickman in the OF with some cost effective backups. Active management will be required here. Jacob DeGrom and Jim Hearn starting mostly at home because of low HR ballpark. Mid century Mort Cooper and Roger Wolff, ho-hum.. '20 Babe Adams not the best but underpriced. A smattering of RP in the same range, then splurge on Barry Latman and Dale Murray for the finish.

$140m Tris Speaker

I spent a lot of time drafting 5 teams. The first four were all different and I couldnl tell which one was better than the next. Babe Ruth team has the best hitting but pitching isn't very good. Walter Johnson has complete pitching but not much hitting. Greg Maddux has two superb seasons, a good playoff team but may not be deep enough to get there.Stan Musial has solid hitting average pitching, fewer weak spots, surprised only one owner took him..Then I tried Tris Speaker and ballgame over. Four great seasons, mostly good hitting teammates and above average pitching. And good glove. Looked like the best choice so I'm done.
Of course I took the top 4 Speaker years the cap is too high to cause problems. George Burns at 1b sans Gracie Allen.Jimmy Foxx the converted Catcher. Sewell at SS can hit but glove is suspect. Larry Gardner at 3b, a compromise because I also wanted him at 2b. Went with Riggs Stepehnson who is good but only part time, a weak backup is the only real weakness on this team. Bob Bescher pinchitter to the rescue. Rotation of Joe Wood, Cy Young, Dutch Leonard, and Stan Coveleski who will mostly work from the bullpen. Throw in Buck O'Brien and Ray Caldwell. Frank Smith and Larry Pape at long B.