Inquiring minds want to know. Post when ready.

Alright, I'll get us started. I'm going to pontificate a bit before getting to the team breakdowns though, because I believe something worth noting has happened in the sim.

What I've come to believe after being back for a few months now is that the dominant strategy in the game seems to have legitimately changed, and I'm not sure people are playing like it has yet. That's an opportunity I've been able to capitalize on well with my non-WISC teams and, while not all of the themes enabled me to put it to use in Round 2, I used it wherever I could.

These shifts in the game are not frequent. There have probably be 5-ish in the 20-ish years I've been on the site.

A quick and familiar example: a very old dominant strategy was to draft SB machines. This was The Tim Raines Era. But then some owners started exclusively using A+ arm catchers to counter it. Suddenly, the SB teams would beat everyone else, but lose when it mattered. These days everyone knows that, and so no one drafts SB teams. Yet we still typically draft A+ arm catchers (or at least A-), mostly out of habit. And there are enough affordable A+ arm catchers so still doing so doesn't really hurt you too much. Better safe than sorry, right?

The shift we are currently undergoing is about pitchers. Suppressing HRs via deadball pitching in a park that further suppresses them has long been the dominant strategy. Much like with SBs, no one who wants to win drafts HR hitters anymore. And much like A+ catcher's arms, suppressing them is not too expensive since lower HR/9 tends to go hand-in-hand with lower K/9. When you compare ERC# to $/IP, these types are the best value on the site. So even though no one really drafts HR hitters anymore, better safe than sorry again, right?

This has been The Bill Bernhard Era.

But over the last few years of real-life baseball, enough modern pitchers have delivered seasons with very low WHIP#, high K/9#, and high HR/9# to provide an alternative that I believe is currently superior. Specifically because no one drafts HR hitters anymore, you can do a better job suppressing runs by focusing on hit suppression (via WHIP# and K/9#) rather than HR suppression, if you sacrifice HR suppression entirely. And these pitchers benefit from not having their salaries inflated by the dynamic pricing updates years ago.

The deadball era was a pitcher's era, so the WHIP of pitchers from these years normalize more poorly than I'd realized. Their ERC# tends to still be lower than modern pitchers because of their low HR/9, but I've come to believe this is a misleading number in the sim now and that the WHIP# delta matters more than the ERC# delta.

We have left The Bill Bernhard Era and moved into The Kenta Maeda Era.

You can say that this strategy is easy to counter (just draft HR hitters) but, since very few owners are using it yet a HR-centric team will still lose the majority of their games even if they consistently beat a Maeda team, ironically crowning the Maeda team as the new dominant strategy overall.

I was not able to use this strategy for the 100M, 120M, or 140M leagues (all the more reason to be jealous of disco's incredible Shane Bieber team, which ironically has both Bernhard and Maeda) but it was my inspiration for the other three. The 80M league is the first time I will have tested it below 120M, which feels risky but fun. Hopefully this isn't just a high-cap phenomenon.

Anyway, good luck to everyone and may the best teams win!


$80M: MH Non-Back-To-Back Clones
Stadium: The Astrodome

I run a league called Back To Back Clones where every player must be a clone of another player on your roster, but from a consecutive season. It plays at various caps but never lower than 100M.

I viewed this league as similar — harder since I got 8 players instead of a max of 12 and with a lower cap, but easier because I didn't have to use consecutive seasons. The 100M version of B2BC tends to play like a lower cap league since you're typically making sacrifices on offense, and I figured this one would be no different.

This is actually pretty freeing since it lets you focus on pitching and defense.

My first goal was to find out how many slots I would get for my position players, so I looked at which pitchers could take up 1,400 IP on their own for under $30,000/IP and what the maximum number of roster slots I could use a scrub pitcher and scrub hitter for.

Turns out there are not many hitters with 4+ < $300k seasons, and the max is 5. And turns out there are more pitchers than I expected who could at least take up the majority of the 1,400 IP. My pitcher list was:

• Babe Adams
• Pete Alexander
• Bert Blyleven
• Robin Roberts
• Jim Bunning
• Roy Halladay
• Burt Wooten
• Fergie Jenkins
• Clayton Kershaw
• Sam Leever
• Juan Marichal
• Christy Mathewson
• Mike Mussina
• Jim Palmer
• Gaylord Perry
• Deacon Phillippe
• Eddie Plank
• Dick Rudolph
• Bret Saberhagen
• Slim Sallee
• Tully Sparks
• Don Sutton
• Fred Toney

Since there were a lot of options, I thought a good idea would be to start by drafting an unoptimized team with the smallest number of players possible, and then improving it by adding others to replace weak points. That team was:

• Babe Adams
• Roy Cullenbine
• Wally Schang
• Dave Bancroft
• Tommy Milone
• Jim Leyritz

...but only Schang and Milone ended up making my roster, so I don't think that strategy was too successful.

This is when I started seriously committing to my overall strategy of prioritizing WHIP# and almost completely ignoring HR/9.

Once I did that, Halladay stood out, and Philippe did as well (he or Babe Adams may be the most underpriced pitcher in the sim).

In the Astrodome you can get away with bad range, which let me feel comfortable using Zobrist (good fielding and OBP) and Crawford (good XBH). Carey gives us enough range in CF.

I feel like this team is similarly well balanced to my B2BC team. Our final crew is:

• Max Carey (2x)
• Sam Crawford (2x)
• Ben Zobrist (4x)
• Wally Schang (2x)
• Harry Spilman (5x)
• Roy Halladay (5x)
• Deacon Philippe (2x)
• Tommy Milone (3x)

Hitting: 4,937 PA, .291 / .378 / .443, $37.4M
Pitching: 1,395 IP, 1.04 WHIP, 0.68 HR/9, $39.6M


$90M: MH 1913201620221993
Stadium: The Astrodome

It seemed like everyone was very eager to get their hands on deadball pitching and then planned to plug-and-play the rest of their roster with whatever the best years available were for offense/defense + remaining IP needed.

But I wanted deadball hitting and modern (2015+) pitching. Again, my assumption is that most people will avoid drafting HR hitters even from modern years since they assume everyone else will optimize their pitching to suppress HRs.

The 1913 Joe Jackson is underrated (he generates more runs than the better fielding 1920 version that's $1M more expensive), and pairing him with Speaker and either the low-PA Cobb or Cravath is a killer outfield. The year comes with some actually good value arms too, so I was surprised it didn't go higher.

With that established, I knew I wanted 2016. There are a lot of good, cheap hitters from that year (I'm using Zobrist again, Jose Ramirez, and Evan Gattis — yes, 499 PA Evan Gattis for $3M), plus you get the good-value Kershaw, Hill, Melancon, and Asher. It's a Round 1 year that I got in Round 2.

With that, my lineup only had 2 spots left so I knew I needed to focus on pitching with pick #3. And when 2022 was available it was a no brainer. Another stud with Verlander, plus an often overlooked deGrom year (he lets up HRs, who cares) and some other value arms make this a winner.

For the last round I knew I needed a good fielding SS who was cheap. Not a lot of them, but 1993 had Walt Weiss and came with a .401 OBP Tim Raines year for only $3.9M and one last cheap bullpen arm.

It was weird. None of the years I was targeting ever got taken except the obvious ones in the first round. My team is a bit "top heavy" both with hitting and pitching but I think I just did a good job of finding years with cookies.

Hitting: 4,849 PA, .312 / .394 / .483, $42M
Pitching: 1,407 IP, 0.95 WHIP, 0.63 HR/9, $47.2M


$100M: MH Roger Bresnahan's 1906 Ohio Giants
Stadium: Polo Grounds (IV)

I realized that I could mostly fill up one category with $200K guys, so really the restrictions required one fewer category to be selected than stated.

The three that seemed the most likely to yield a variety of quality players were same franchise, same season (or birth year — I viewed these interchangeably), and the state they were born in. I considered anything more than that a bonus (why over-complicate it?).

First I looked for comparable theme leagues to see how I could narrow down my search.

• The Ultimate Baseball Season league blacklisted 1885, 1888, 1906, 1910, 1914, 1915, 1918, 1954, 1985, 1999, 2011, 2020 because they won the league.
• The Random Captain league's best teams came from Larry Walker, Ruben Sierra, George Davis, and a few others.
• The Uniform Number League didn't have public results but highly-regarded owners took 34, 24, 16, 29, 21, and 30.

There's also a best birth year league, and a few other relevant ones. I explored these but knew none were perfect comps (for example, The Ultimate Baseball Season league requires 25 players from a season while I only need a few).

So I decided to plant a flag and say that the best way to get the modern pitching I wanted was likely to pick a modern season like 2020, or a franchise with a lot of good modern SPs (false), or a state (false).

Then I discovered that deGrom and Kershaw were both born in 1988. So I started looking for players who were born in 1988 and played for a good deadball franchise (I preferred the Giants for their killer infield of Connor, Frisch, Joyce, and Davis — or potentially the Indians) while also having a usable season from a good year.

This gave me a short list of:

• Brandon Belt
• Alex Colome
• Trevor Cahill
• Jose Martinez
• Jose Ramirez
• Ben Zobrist

Household names, all.

Belt was the best but would've required me to forgo Connor, so it was back to the drawing board. I also considered Drew Smyly (2020 Giants), but he wasn't born in '88 so I just kept him in my back pocket.

I decided to commit to the Giants and start exploring deadball years again, which is when I found Bresnahan. 1906 is a great value season of his, and it comes with some great value pitching too (Tully Sparks, Roy Patterson, Barney Pelty, some others). Enough to the point where I had options.

What really made me decide to go deadball was that the deadball players were born in states that had a lot of other deadball players. Bresnahan's Ohio got me Cy Young, Ed Delahanty, Benny Kauff, Burt Shotton, and some good RPs. I figured if anyone else found the perfect modern player, I'd at least have a strong lineup of deadballer XBH guys who could also field.

I continued looking into other options for a while but liked this team the best. I managed to avoid the overpriced Mathewson seasons and, just to show some adherence to my strategy, I intentionally took the higher HR/9 1934 Hubbell over the more common 1936 version due to a better WHIP#.

Hitting: 5,182 PA, .328 / .418 / .478, $51M
Pitching: 1,414 IP, 0.95 WHIP, 0.23 HR/9, $47.5M


$110M: MH How The Grich Stole Christmas
Stadium: Target Field

I spent significantly more time on the scrubs for this team than my actual lineup or pitching staff. That's not to say I neglected either of those two, it's just that the scrubs took for-fking-ever since very few of the low-value boxes had any seasons that were $200K.

At one point I ended up with a team that was $110,001,000 but had no way to get cheaper without a major sacrifice or trying something different. It was annoying and I had to backtrack a bit. I blame Bobby Grich (the Angels' cheapest hitter at $356k).

The tough part about this theme though is that, in some of the boxes, some choices just likely would never be picked by a Round 2 caliber player (or were missing some players that would have created harder choices — Bill Joyce, Max Carey, Kenta Maeda, where art thou?).

Outside of that I just ran my strategy — XBH-friendly deadball hitters with a good fielding SS and a rotation of Verlander, deGrom, Kluber, and Santana. Go ahead, hit HRs off us, see if we care.

Took about 20 minutes before I got to the scrubs. Then it took 3-4 hours.

Hitting: 5,092 PA, .332 / .391 / .488, $52.5M
Pitching: 1,407 IP, 0.89 WHIP, 0.63 HR/9, $55.7M


$120M: MH 1909 A's Sr.
Stadium: Shibe Park

My Round 1 team underperformed hebdomad's considerably, despite picking the same squad. I attribute that mostly to luck, but I need it to not continue.

I'll say what I said in Round 1: it's hard to find a deadball era team with three top tier hitters that also has top tier pitching. You can argue the A's are borderline top tier pitching instead of true top tier relative to, say, those pesky modern Dodgers... but I like the balance of the team overall.

Not much else to say here. My one concern is that our OF defense is not great (though our INF defense is quite good). We've been planning for this moment and likely sacrificed some wins in Round 1 to get here. Time to deliver.

Hitting: 5,912 PA, .334 / .402 / .460, $61.2M
Pitching: 1,461 IP, 0.98 WHIP, 0.05 HR/9, $54.6M


$140M: MH Akron Astros
Stadium: Colt Stadium

If I lose the tournament and it's close, this team will be why.

Since emanes10 and I had back to back picks, we discussed the best combo available and went with Indians-Reds. This was the only good part about picking 6th. Thankfully, we got the Astros too. Without them, this would not have been super pretty.

Then jbohrman joined and we ended up in the worst possible divisional alignment, against the top two divisions.

Our own division doesn't have a ton of pitching and the other two we're up against have great hitting, so I prioritized pitching heavily. Unfortunately, I think I prioritized it too much once we got to RPs. I left some INF positions until very late in the draft, not realizing that some of them also had usable low-PA seasons. So in places where there was one great option and then three roughly equal options and then a dropoff, I got the 5th best in two or three spots.

Since we're in Colt Stadium (a panic selection after someone else took The Astrodome earlier than I expected) with the best pitching in the division, I have to hope that we'll be better equipped for low scoring games.

But, as a team that did not come close to the $140M cap, I'm very worried we don't have enough SLG to compete.

Hitting: 6,769 PA, .335 / .416 / .528, $70.8M
Pitching: 1,468 IP, 0.95 WHIP, 0.49 HR/9, $54.9M

Good luck everyone!

So Round 1 was an extremely pleasant surprise for me. I’m usually happy just to get into Round 2 and maybe catch a whiff of the top 10. As the round wore on, I started to think maybe I really could finish in the top 10 of the round. And then I found myself lingering in the top 5 late into the season… and started to feel some real pressure coming. Not only do I have to get Round 2 up and running, I have to build some really good teams before everyone else to boot.

That got me started early, and I had versions of 3 teams done and a fourth close before we finished the division series. In some ways the two drafts removed some pressure, because I only had to think about building 4 teams at that point. I decided to start writing them up early, because often I find the holes in a team when I try to describe my strategy.

80m: Here Today, Zaun Tomorrow

I have played a few clone leagues but usually at higher caps, which is why we felt this would be challenging to run it at $80m and get some different players than you usually see in these. I played around with a lot of combinations and built four rosters with similar strategy but a range of players. I hope I settled on the right one.

My offense is built around switch-hitting and speed with some solid defense. It’s kind of an Astrodome team, though I didn’t manage to roster anyone who played there on my final choice. I had Jerry Mumphrey in the outfield on one iteration but ultimately didn’t use him. So I’m in Pro Player instead.

One guy I had on all versions is Roger Connor, whose 1894 combined season produces an .899 OPS# plus A- range at 1b for $4.7m. He normalizes badly from a .952 actual OPS, but .297/.374/.525 is still pretty good. And he’s not HR dependent at all. His 465k 1897 season serves to meet his clone requirement. He’s not fast but he’s a switch hitter so that’s good enough.

I also pretty early decided I would use Willie McGee to cover at least two-thirds of the outfield. His 1990 combined plays CF with a .328/.377/.418 slash and 90 speed. His 1991 season with a .318/.363/.413 and 84 speed works really nicely too. Just $9.2m combined for them, too.

Though he’s not a switch hitter, Whit Merrifield fit very nicely into the plan. His $3.9m 2021 season slots in at 2B with a .286/.323/.379, 86 speed, A/A- speed and 40/44 SB. His 2018 season fills out the outfield with a .311/.373/.421 slash, A- range, 86 speed and 45/55 SB. His 2022 fills a bench spot to back up one of the McGees, too. In checking rosters later, it sure seemed like he was one of the most popular picks.

For a long time I had Tony Fernandez playing SS and 3b in part because I always liked him during his Jays days. But then I was building a roster for a 1966 Dodgers twist team and started noticing Maury Wills. I wasn’t sure if I would be happy enough with his glove, but I came around to thinking he will get a lot of singles and steal second and third that more than makes up for it. I’ll use 1962 at SS with a .300/.348/.367, 104/117 SB, 92 speed and C/B- defense. Then I’ll slot 1967 at 3b with a .309/.344/.375 slash, 90 speed and C/B defense.

My first choice at catcher was Ted Simmons, but he was hard to fit into the budget. I think I looked at every SH catcher out there. And then I remembered that I played another clone theme with a 5-4-3-2-1 structure and needed to cobble a catcher out of four clones and landed on career backup Gregg Zaun. This solved my problem of having extra roster spots to fill, too. So I’ll have 2001, 2006, 1997 and 1996 versions rotating through the lineup. I can use the seasons with more power when we play in favorable parks. His arm isn’t great, so other teams like mine will molest him badly, but it works otherwise. If he gives up 300 steals, I’ll regret it, though.

In raw stats I’ve got a .295/.351/.414 with 292 SB vs 92 CS and just 73 HR. Six starters have 84 speed or better, so that’s going to help cash in the singles my guys mostly hit.

I played around with a lot of pitching combos as well. I had a pretty good Jim Palmer-Sid Fernandez-Alex Wilson trio that was a bit homer-vulnerable particularly if I wasn’t in the Astrodome. I had one with Catfish Hunter and Max Lanier and some reliever I forgot. I can’t even remember how I wound up with the group I did, but I think it works.

I wanted to use a couple pitchers who had seasons as starters and relievers for flexibility and relied on my Dodger fan history to pluck Alejandro Pena and Rick Honeycutt out of the pile and pair them with the two good Randy Jones seasons. Between 1975 and 1976, Jones gets you 600 innings of ERC# of 2.33 and 2.34 and a WHIP a hair over 1. 1981 Honeycutt (2.81, 1.09) and 1983 Pena (2.55, 1.16) fill out the rotation. None of them walk guys much.

My pen has a pair each of Pena and Honeycutt for the late innings and a hodge podge of weaker seasons to throw long relief and mop up. Team has a raw WHIP of 1.08 in 1397 IP. Probably a few more innings than I had to draft, but clones are hard to work with in hitting those targets accurately. At least I should avoid fatigue, which I really battled in the 70m league.

By taking 97 Zaun, I can use Pro Player Stadium (-2 for HR and +2 for 3B). It would be better to be in the Astrodome, but I couldn’t find an Astro who worked as well anywhere.

90m: Couldn’t Afford Frisch or Bancroft

I did not come into this draft with much research done or a real plan. When I saw I would be drafting early in the first round, I decided to scout which years offered the best potential pitching in the sweet salary range. I came up with about 8-10 target years.

Picking 4th, I saw my division mates all go with deadball seasons between 1902 and 1909. So I knew I’d be seeing lots of pitchers who don’t give up homers. Best to grab a deadball staff myself. It came down to 1888 and 1915. I went with the latter, getting the great value 414 IP from Dave Davenport, plus another good SP in Guy Morton. I could have filled the whole rotation if need be. But I also took a couple high IP/G relievers in George Dumont and Cy Falkenberg, plus long man Hooks Wiltse. I only took one bench hitter from 1915.

During this draft, I was also building Connections rosters and had a chat going with ronthegenius about the need to redo the 140m draft. I made a joke to him about Wally Schang, one of my favorite catchers in the sim. I had tried to find a way to clone him in the 80m unsuccessfully. And after seeing that he had some strong connections possibilities I started building a roster around 1921 Schang. … With that backdrop when I saw 1921 still available as Round 2 was ending, I decided to take it and see what I could make work.

I did start out trying to use the middle infield of Frisch and Bancroft, but neither ultimately fit the cap well. But I do have 4 starting hitters from 1921: Schang of course, 1b Jack Fournier and OF Irish Meusel and Max Carey. Aside from Schang they bring good speed and averages. The rest from this season are scrubs.

I figured I should use a modern team for lots of bullpen options, and 2011 was one of the few left by the time we got late in Round 3. I thought I might pluck some infield starters from the group too. I wound up using SS Jimmy Rollins as the only key bat. But I’m taking my 3rd SP in Kershaw, spot SP Josh Johnson, plus bullpen pieces in Mariano Rivera and Scott Downs.

I really didn’t have a great plan for the last season, so I dipped into my past. Having replayed the 1982 season on Statis-Pro Baseball during middle and high school, I had a lot of favorite players from that year. So why not? I’ve got 3 lineup pieces in 2B Joe Morgan, 3b Bill Madlock, and my Statis-Pro MVP Leon Durham. Heck $5m is a bargain for an MVP, right? They’re all also guys with good speed, which this team has a lot of. And they’re not too homer reliant for their production even if they can hit a few when the situation allows. Bob Stoddard is the only pitcher I wound up using, a long man and spot starter (his PB was 2-9, and IYKYK).

I hope it’s a competitive roster. I expect this league to have a lot of parity and just hope it can get me 88 wins and a playoff spot. I’ll play in Dodger Stadium, because we are mostly reliant on singles, walks and speed.

100m: Stan’s the Man and the Captain

With a lot more time, I might have built several rosters for this league. I tried out a few captain possibilities to see if they had birthdates or years or places that offered a lot of talent, and I wound up doing three pretty different rosters. My first one started with 2011 Clayton Kershaw, getting plenty of options from Texas, the Dodgers and his birth year. That roster spent a bit too much on pitching and also didn’t really fit Dodger Stadium well enough.

I also built one with, as telegraphed above, 1921 Wally Schang. His birth year (1889) had a lot of good players, as did his home state of NY and the Yankees of course. I liked the core, but then I found I couldn’t afford Frankie Frisch and Dave Bancroft at this cap either. Who designed these themes anyway? I kept trying to shave salary to fit the last couple guys and I liked the team less and less as I did.

So I returned to a 1953 Stan Musial roster I’d built earlier and tweaked it a bit until I felt I couldn’t do much more. I used six teammates each who played in 1953, for the Cardinals, hailed from Pennsylvania and wore #6 at some point. I wanted to build a strong doubles team for Sportsman’s Park, and that came together well. My offense is capable of hitting homers and also scoring off guys who don’t give them up. My starting lineup has 344 doubles, an average of 43 apiece. There’s some good speed and defense, too.

Musial (56 doubles) will be joined in the OF by 1936 Ben Chapman (53) and a platoon of 2005 Kenny Lofton and 1981 Lonnie Smith, who will alternate leading off too. 1978 Ted Simmons (40) handles the catching. I’ve got 1937 Johnny Mize (42), 1930 Frisch (48), 2008 Scott Rolen (48) and 2008 Jimmy Rollins (38) in the infield. Rollins somehow wound up on three rosters for me, and I’m just realizing this as I’m typing up the final notes. Also, hooray for fitting one Frisch in.

I’ll use a 3-man rotation of 53 Warren Spahn, 1908 Frank Smith and 1920 Stan Coveleski. Most of my bullpen is starting pitchers, which hopefully helps on the fatigue front.

110m: The Left Fielder with Five Heads

I only built two versions of this team, and they have a lot of overlap. I decided to try for a doubles offense with good defense and decent speed, which usually can work against any pitching era. I couldn’t really guess how many deadball or modern or mixed staffs we’d see. Mine is a combo and I suspect the general lean towards modern players in the boxes (especially Schwarze’s favorite relievers) pushes things that way. So HR might play in this league, but I wasn’t going to rely on them.

I’ll break down my team by franchise for analysis.

As - Al Simmons, 1940

My favorite thing about this team is my 5-headed left field platoon. Simmons was a late addition, replacing ‘84 Rose. It’s a lousy way to use Al Simmons, but I didn’t make the rules. No wait, I did make the rules. Never mind.

Braves - Greg Maddux, 1997

The #2 starter. Like almost all my picks, stingy with walks

Orioles - Ken Williams, 1929

Williams’ 170 PA head the LF platoon list. My first version of this team had Williams sharing with two other guys, but I didn’t love it. This group adds up to $5.9m with no wasted salary.

Red Sox - Tris Speaker, 1913

I knew I’d have him in CF. The tough part was picking a season and fitting his salary.

Cubs - Gabby Hartnett, 1941

175 PA as a backup and pinch hitter.

White Sox - Ed Walsh, 1908

He’s hard to pass up at this cap. Half my starts are set now.

Reds - Eppa Rixey, 1932

I was flirting with about 1400 IP on this team and started to worry that wouldn’t cut it. So I moved a few pieces around and landed on these 118 innings to spot start and pitch long relief. I needed some insurance.

Indians - Joe Sewell, 1920

Backup SS with 88 PA

Tigers - Hank Greenberg, 1934

63 doubles? Sold!

Astros - Billy Wagner, 2010

Was going to be the only lefty in the pen, but I kept moving pieces around. I’d like to think he will be very good, but he’s a reliever so … yeah.

Royals - George Brett, 1979

I tried virtually everyone here the first time. But Brett is really the only Royal I like at this cap so I pivoted to him.

Angels - Mike Trout, 2021

The righty in the big platoon and the best bat of the bunch. Works well for a hard franchise to use. V1 had a low inning Frank Tanana for long relief. A lot of you used him or this Trout.

Dodgers - Clayton Kershaw, 2022

I intended to use one of his really good years if I could swing it. Reality bit. He’s going to be in a tandem, I think.

Brewers - Josh Hader, 2021

This is his best season and he’s very hard to hit. Walks can be an issue, though. Combined he and Wagner have 206 Ks in 128 IP. I’m one of just a handful who didn’t nab the cheap Prince Fielder here, I think.

Twins - Joe Nathan, 2008

Another really good RP for whom I have no expectations.

Mets - Jacob DeGrom, 2023

I think I’ll try to use this 30 IP version to close.

Yankees - Mariano Rivera, 2010

I knew I’d use him. Lots of good seasons. He was the easiest to plug in last in the pen because of the options he provided, and at various points I think I had four versions plugged in.

Phillies - Jimmy Rollins, 2008

I had Furcal here in V1. Still gets me a speedy switch bat and strong glove but about 700k cheaper. This makes 3 Jimmies now, I think, but who’s counting?

Pirates - Paul Waner, 1932

I had to downgrade him a bit to make my pitching salary work, but 62 doubles! Hello! Plus B+ range. I had Musial in RF in V1, and I do love me some Musial.

Padres - Brian Giles. 1996

Another big bat in the LF platoon. Lots of doubles!

Giants - Frankie Frisch, 1928

I didn’t have Frisch here at first, in part because I couldn’t afford his best seasons. But I went with a very strong glove, and of course he’s a speedy switch bat too. Frisch count rises to 2 (spoiler alert: schwarze nabbed him in the 140m draft).

Cardinals - Ted Simmons, 1980

I had Cochrane in the platoon with Gabby in V1. Decided Simmons worked well once I discarded Musial from the OF.

Rangers - Neftali Feliz, 2015

Had a cheap Palmeiro season rostered at one point. Also had a good Feliz season and a good Kirby Yates. Wound up using a 300k version as a mop up.

Expos - Daniel Murphy, 2008

I wasn’t expecting to find this 151 PA season where he played outfield. The fifth head.

Jays - Roy Halladay, 2005

His 142 IP would pair well in a tandem with Kershaw, but I can’t run a Starter 2A/B with a tandem so they’ll probably have to be rotated in laboriously.

What does this add up to? A high-average, doubles-heavy offense with decent speed and solid defense. We don’t strike out much or walk a ton, but I think 359 doubles will help (and that’s not using a great Speaker or Frisch season for them). I think it’s an offense that can put up runs against any era of pitching, which is certainly necessary here. I have 3 switch hitters, one righty, 4 lefties and a platoon, which feels right based on the pitching options.

I think I’m finally happy with the pitching staff. I figured out how to get a second lefty in the back end of the pen. I think I have enough innings. The rotation will require constant rearranging, but that’s ok. Now I just have to wait a month for everyone to get done lol.

I’ll play in National League Park with +3 doubles and -1 homers and a slight edge to pitching.

120m: Aaron Small’s 2005 Yankees

I actually built this team before R1 to make sure it worked, and I was sure I pasted the roster into a sheet somewhere. I couldn’t find it, though, but it wasn’t too hard to recreate. There are only a few tricky decisions to this build.

The rotation starts with Randy Johnson and Kevin Brown, with the $12m 2004 Unit heading the bill (246 IP, 1.70, 0.89) and the 96 Brown (233, 1.93, 0.94) behind him. 1995 Mike Mussina (250, 2.33, 1.07) and 1998 Al Leiter (193, 2.53, 1.15) fill out the rotation. Hopefully they’re good enough at this cap.

I have a deep and talented bullpen, including 05 Rivera (1.40, 0.87), 01 Steve Karsay (1.22, 0.84), 04 Tom Gordon (1.36, 0.86), 02 Buddy Groom (1.61, 0.90), 02 Alan Embree (2.39, 1.08) and 03 Paul Quantrill (1.92, 0.87). So of course my expectations are they’ll all wind up with ERAs around 5.

I made a late decision to dump team namesake Tanyon Sturtze in order to secure more innings. My first roster had 1412, which felt light for 120m. I got it up to 1476 by using the miraculous Aaron Small, who went 10-0 in 15 appearances for the 05 Yankees and became the namesake. I don’t remember him at all, but he’s got to be good luck.

Offensively, the biggest decision involved where to use Gary Sheffield. If I use him as an OF or DH, then A Rod plays 3b and Jeter plays SS. Or I can use his 1992 season at 3b, play A Rod at short and take my pick at DH. Where I ended up rather surprised me though. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

2007 Posada (.944) was an obvious pick to catch, 2002 Jason Giambi (1.011) plays 1b and 2012 Robinson Cano (.919) plays 2B. I couldn’t really make one of Giambi’s $9m seasons work. In the outfield, we’ve got 1999 Bernie Williams (.931), 1989 Ruben Sierra (.890) and 2012 artificially enhanced Melky Cabrera (.903).

I went with 1992 Sheffield (.980) at 3b ultimately because it generates the best defensive alignment with his B/B there. That put 2000 A Rod (.985) with his A/B glove at short. As I looked for the best hitting season available to me to DH, though, I found a rather surprising option … the Captain himself. For $5.5M I can use the 2000 Jeets (.845) with his .331 AVG# there and not sweat his C/D glove. Makes a good #9 hitter maybe, since he’s actually the weakest bat. That leaves available a 200 PA Hideki Matsui to fill in what Cabrera can’t quite do.

All told I’ve got 6264 PA with a .325/.402/.544 raw slash with 259 HR. No easy outs and a pretty solid defense, too.

$140m: Meet Me in St. Louis

I picked 3rd in the first round of franchises and would definitely have taken Yankees or Dodgers if they’d lasted. But no complaints with the Cardinals. The Orioles/Browns and Royals complemented the Cards pretty well. For the most part there’s enough talent at each spot, though like most groups SP thins out relatively quickly.

This was a great draft experience, too, as we cranked out 75% of it the first day and easily polished it off the next day. Much gratitude to my division mates for that, and now we find out who handled it the best.

Here’s how the rounds went picking twice each time.

R1-2: George Brett and John Tudor

I can’t argue with any of the picks ahead of me. I love Musial and might have taken two hitters if Tudor had gone.

R3-4: Mike Cuellar and George Sisler

I wasn’t expecting schwarze to double up at 2B with Frisch, but it was a smart move. I would have taken Mort Cooper with one of these picks, too, if cubbies hadn’t nabbed him. Sisler is a nice consolation prize, even if 1b is pretty deep. But with a DH I don’t mind taking two of them.

R5-6: Frank Robinson and Willie McGee

Outfield isn’t as deep among these teams as I might have thought, especially for players with 500+ PA. Building a platoon or two is still possible, but I’m happy to lock down two studs. McGee will play CF and probably hit between Sisler and Brett.

R7-8: Howie Pollet and Dan Quisenberry

Schwarze surprised me (and possibly himself) by taking Jim Hearn. I was happy at least to get Pollet because pitching depth won’t be easy to achieve here. And on that note, I grabbed 139 innings of Quiz, with low HR and BB rates.

R9-10: Al Grabowski and Willard Schmidt

Continuing with the theme, Grabowski has 54 lefty innings with SP endurance and 0.00 HR/9. Schmidt is comparable to a couple other pitchers,

R11-12: Jose DeLeon and Jeff Montgomery

Gonna need more SP innings so I’ll settle for DeLeon, who is probably going to get roped with these offenses but someone has to pitch. Montgomery gives me another high inning reliever, pushing me to 1357 innings with 8 slots used. I’ll be able to add a couple low inning guys later, but I’ll definitely want to push up close to 1600 innings here.

R13-14: Don Padgett and Wally Schang

Time to return to the offense a bit. With schwarze taking Simmons and Torre early and Porter going a few rounds ago, I was going to have to go with a couple half-season guys. Padgett is a beast, basically a .400 hitter, but with only 273 PA. I grabbed my good pal Wally with his 350 PA and A arm to cover the other half. I’ll likely need a third C just to minimize fatigue though.

R15-16: Goose Goslin and Chick Hafey

Two awfully good hitters lying around at this stage. They’ll possibly platoon or form a three-headed LF/DH crew. I’m not even worried about weaker bats at 2B and SS. This offense will do damage against these less-than-amazing pitching staffs.

R17: Garry Templeton, Lou Brock

Cubbies84 surprised me by taking Jose Oquendo ahead of me, but otherwise I was able to map out the final picks pretty well. Templeton isn’t anyone’s top choice, but he’s a switch hitter with speed and A+ range. He makes too many errors and never walks, though. The worst thing about Brock is his glove, but 464 PA from the left side makes a nice half of a DH.

R18: Vern Stephens, Fred Holdsworth

I needed someone good to spell Brett, and if I hadn’t been approaching the cap yet, maybe I could have ignored PA and taken Brooks Robinson or Whitey Kurowski. I had tried to map out my salary needs for the remaining picks, and a $5-7m player wasn’t going to fit.

Stephens, however, had a solid enough partial with 196 PA from the right side at .826 OPS# and A-/D+ fielding. It isn’t great, but it will have to do. And because he had good SS seasons, I didn’t want to leave him on the board as I was low on good fits.

Holdsworth was the best RP on the board with 40 IP, 1.50 ERC# and no HR allowed.

R19: Bobby Grich, Larry Jaster, Jim Hardin

The rules say you need a 2b, and I knew I’d have my choices still. I’ll use the 76 Grich with B/A glove and a little lower PA total to avoid wasting salary.

I needed a couple more pitchers and wanted at least 1500 IP if not closer to 1600 ideally. Hardin has 112 with SP endurance and low WHIP. Jaster has just 29 but he’s the best arm on the board. That gets me to 1538 innings, all as good as I could manage. Lots of flexibility on roles and not much risk of getting hosed by in-game fatigue. The team WHIP is 1.00 with just 72 HR allowed.

R20: Les Moss, Bob Johnson, Busch Stadium

Moss gives me a few extra PA at C and he can hit, so I think that’s a useful 911k. Johnson backs up Grich and can DH some too against lefties. So I wind up with 6588 PA and a raw slash of .342/.399/.553. I spent all but 30k of the salary, and really nothing is wasted as far as I can tell. I’ll be using everyone.

Prologue:
At the end of my round 1 writeup, I wrote “Before writing this, I figured I’d likely finish in the neighborhood 21st – 28th place, on the cusp of qualification for round two. That still might happen, but I’m now more pessimistic, and would not at all be surprised if I ended up around 40th – 45th.” It turns out that my later pessimism was unwarranted; I finished the regular season in 18^th place, but dropped to 24^th due to an abysmal showing in the playoffs. In other words, dead center of my initial prediction. So how do I feel about this round? My initial feeling is positive, but we’ll see if it mirrors round 1 and gets more negative the more I write…

80M: Eight and Switch
Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds

As my team name might suggest, my offensive players are all switch-hitters. That was pretty much my strategy in a nutshell: switch-hitters who tend to provide value. Cullenbine in the OF, Bancroft at 2B and SS, Bill Mueller at 3B and backup 2B, and Victor Martinez at C and 1B. Other than Bancroft’s range my defense is customarily weak, but they should hit. If they don’t then I’m in trouble.

I don’t have a strong recollection of why I chose Cy Young as my starting rotation. I don’t use him a lot. Maybe part of it was that he can hit a little, and I like the concept of turning over the lineup in non-DH leagues. Maybe it’s so I can use Huntington Avenue Grounds, which is more or less neutral but I pass by the site every day going to and from work so I like to pretend. I dunno. For relievers I searched for guys with multiple seasons with $/IP levels and abilities appropriate for this cap, and landed on Dave Smith and Jesse Crain. To round out the roster I chose Jon Rauch, who has a couple of cheap seasons with relatively high IP/G that can be used as solid Long A.

I like the way this team feels, for no reason in particular. I think it will be a bellwether: if this team does well, I think I’ll have a solid round 2. If not, I’m screwed. Also, I always thought it was spelled bellweather, which turns out to be a bellwether of whether I can spell, which I clearly can’t. But it has inspired me to invent a new word: spellwether, which would be a commonly misspelled word that indicates whether the user is good at spelling. I think this might become a thing.

Offense: 5448 PA, .301/.390/.445, 103 HRs
Pitching: 1341 IP, 2.54 ERC#, 1.11 WHIP#, 0.35 HR/9+ (plus 2 mop-ups)


90M: Season Draft 1904 2009 1977 2013
Baltimore Memorial Stadium

Luck of the draw left me with the third pick in this draft. Of course, my luck is such that when I finally luck into a good pick it’s in a draft where I don’t think draft order mattered much, if at all. I honestly believe that if I had the last pick in every round I could’ve come up with a team of similar quality. At $90M, every season has usable players. It comes down to personal preference more than anything, and my preferences tend toward the idiosyncratic.

That having been said, with my first pick I continued the established trend of deadball seasons with 1904, which I chose because it had 3 pitchers with $/IP levels and abilities appropriate for this cap: Joe McGinnity, Kid Nichols and Noodles Hahn. I also liked Honus Wagner (except for his defense), but other than that I really didn’t consider offensive players with this pick, but ended up starting two others anyway: high-OBP / decent defenders 2B Miller Huggins and CF Roy Thomas.

My second pick in this draft reveals my philosophy about this draft not really mattering. I chose 2009, and from what I can remember this was solely on the basis of one player: Pablo Sandoval. For some reason I decided that I wanted him as my starting third baseman. This is a bit strange because at this cap I’d usually prefer Bill Mueller, who produces similarly for almost $1M less. Maybe I went with 2009 because I thought that Joey Votto was a better 1B candidate than anyone in 2003, although Votto ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS underachieves for me, including his ostensibly amazing 475 PA 2012 season. And because, you know, it’s not like I’d be able to get a starting 1B with either of my other two picks. 2009 also has a cheap, productive Victor Martinez, although the way the rest of the draft unfolded for me I ended up using his partial season so he will have less impact. And Claudio Vargas, Scott Kazmir and Blake Hawksworth are solid, well-valued relievers. But really, this pick was all about Kung Fu Panda. Or maybe subconsciously it was about it being the last season in which the Yankees won the World Series. That would make the same amount of sense.

I only just thought of that when I realized that my round 3 pick was the first season that I ever saw the Yankees with the World Series: 1977. However, for that year I had a somewhat better rationale: Reggie Smith and Ken Singleton are two of my favorite outfielders at this cap. Unfortunately, when all was said and done and I assembled my roster, I couldn’t afford both. I went with Singleton because his value is a bit less home run dependent. In place of Smith I chose Mitchell Page, who I haven’t used in forever and a day but I seem to recall doing well for me. Joining those two starting flycatchers are two world champions from that season: Yankees George Zeber and Cliff Johnson. The former is my second-favorite utility player in the sim (trailing only the immortal Terry Shumpert), and the latter was a childhood favorite who I always used to call “Clifford, the Big Red Johnson”, blissfully unaware of any potentially suggestive double entendre.

Last but not least was 2013, from which I needed a few more bullpen arms and cheap backups. Mission accomplished with closer Louis Coleman, Setup B Brandon Cumpton, Long A Freddy Garcia, and decent, cheap backup IFs Chris Owings and Doug Bernier. 2009 also ended up yielding a decent offensive catcher in Dioner Navarro, who joins Victor and Clifford to complete the good-hit/no-field backstop triumvirate.

While I believe that my $80M team will be a bellwether, this one is a moratorium on whether this draft mattered in the first place. Or, perhaps, a team doomed because I drafted too few innings. I chose Baltimore Memorial to try to mitigate that, but I may have sliced this one a little thin.

Offense: 5425 PA, .313/.408/.483, 152 HRs
Pitching: 1368 IP, 2.20 ERC#, 1.05 WHIP#, 0.24 HR/9+


100M: Clements & the Pennsylvania PhilleJacks
Philadelphia Base Ball Grounds

This was definitely the most fun team to create. I built 6 teams, all of which were similar. I decided early on that I would use 3 categories, and that those would be birth state, team and first name. I’m guessing that a lot of people chose a single season, but I didn’t think that I’d be able to find a large number of players from a single season that I’d consider ideal for this (or any other) cap.

My overriding philosophy for this team was to build a starting pitching staff that could hit. I used Pete Conway in this manner to great effect in Round 1; he hit very well and pitched surprisingly decently. I decided that I wanted to pair him with Jack Chesbro, who isn’t quite the hitter but should be a better pitcher than Conway, and therefore give me the basis of a solid staff that would turn the lineup over reasonably well. I didn’t love the selection of Petes throughout history, but there are a surprising number of useful Jacks. Most of these are from 100+ years ago for whatever that’s worth. My first build was a Jack Chesbro team, but I couldn’t pair him with Conway because they were born in different states and played for different franchises. I settled on Jack Clements from Conway’s great state of Pennsylvania. The other Jacks include most of my bullpen (Quinn, Hallett, Taylor, Powell and Ferry, none of whom allowed a home run in their chosen season) along with starting 1B Fournier and backup catcher Lapp.

I used Pennsylvanians for the majority of my lineup: 2B Herr, SS Magee (yes, my keystone combo is from the Keystone State because that’s how I roll), 3B *****, OFs McCosky and Roy Thomas. In addition to the aforementioned Conway my pitching staff is bolstered by Pennsylvanians Bobby Shantz and Joe Beggs. Phillies provide some power: well-valued 2021 Bryce Harper, plus 1919 Gavvy Cravath and his .662 SLG# and 1.111 OPS# in 302 PA. Other Phillies fill out (Phil out?) the bench and remainder of the bullpen. My biggest regret in building this team was feeling the need to use the inferior 242 PA 1894 Clements to the far superior 265 PA 1896 version (the super-stud 1895 was not even considered with this cap), but in 1896 the Phillies were playing in the Baker Bowl, and I just didn’t think I could draft enough innings and plate appearances to be comfortable there while still liking my team, so the normalized-down-to-next-to-nothingness 1894 Clements it was, along with his completely neutral Philadelphia Base Ball Grounds. Love the splitting of baseball into two words there.

I think all of my teams are decent, and will be competitive, this round. But this is by far my favorite. If any of my other teams play poorly I’ll be disappointed, but if this one does I’ll be downright sad.

Hitting: 5453 PA, .322/.420/.500, 125 HRs
Pitching: 1398 IP, 2.08 ERC#, 1.04 WHIP#, 0.21 HR/9+


110M: Where the Ragged People Go
Baltimore Memorial Stadium

For as long as there are box themes, I’ll name my teams in those leagues with lines from The Boxer by Simon & Garfunkel.

As with the $100M theme, I drafted 6 teams of this league, and they were all very similar. The one must here was the 1908 Walsh. I teamed him with a tandem of 1984 Guillermo “Willie” Hernandez and Christy Mathewson, the latter of which I cannot ever recall having used. I mean, I’m sure I have, but it’s not ringing any bells. The rest of the team is typical $110M fare. The outfield is a four-headed monster of ’18 Ruth, ’25 Speaker, ’89 Henderson and ’28 Goslin. ’87 Molitor will lend his utter inability to catch the ball to second and third bases, with ’05 Chipper sometimes chipping in (see what I did there?) at 3B. ’16 Daniel Murphy, with whom I have an increasingly sadomasochistic relationship (he hurts me, but for some reason I like it), plays 2B until Molitor bumps him to 1B, which in turn bumps ’90 George Brett to OF to yield a truly terrible defense. Only ’98 Barry Larkin and ’75 Ted Simmons are full-time regulars. I’m again using Baltimore Memorial because again I’m a little concerned about PAs and IPs.

I feel like I loved this team a lot more when I originally created it. Now I'm not so sure. On paper it looks fine, but something seems off. Probably the fielding.

Hitting: 5450 PA, .332/.413/.535, 165 HRs (includes 50 PAs of scrub Banks but 0 from scrubs Manny and A-Rod)
Pitching: 1395 IP, 1.83 ERC#, 0.97 WHIP#, 0.23 HR/9+ (plus 27 IP Long B/Mop-up Dierker)


120M: Los Angeles Dodgers 2021
Dodger Stadium

This isn’t rocket science. The modern Dodgers teams such as this one have phenomenal pitching. However, their offense is extremely dependent on home runs, which does not bode well for their ability to consistently defeat early 20^th century teams. Irresistible force meets immovable object? Maybe. But in my experience on this site, such battles are usually won by the deadballers. We shall see.

Hitting: 5953 PA, .316/.399/.553, 302 HRs
Pitching: 1450 IP, 1.80 ERC#, 0.92 WHIP#, 0.48 HR/9+


140M draft commentary and epilog (deliberate misspelling based on The Streets of San Francisco) forthcoming.

Spellwether has officially entered my vocabulary. Thank you for that, and for an entertaining write up.

Love your explanation of each selection in the 110M and 140M, red.

Also regretting that I sort of defaulted to Philippe as my reliever rather than exploring some modern relievers who more closely fit my strategy and can fill more than 2 roster slots. Philippe is honestly priced insanely well, so it's hard to not pick him, but I probably could have wasted 400-600k less salary on Harry Spilman's benchwarming clones and put that towards bullpen arms who give up HRs (since no one was drafting HRs at this cap). But, honestly, Philippe is so cheap for what you get that it may not matter too much.

<<continued>>

140M: Yankees and Cubs playing in San Diego
Jack Murphy Stadium (ugh)
(Spoiler alert: the stadium I wanted went off the board faster than I anticipated…)

Picking near the end of the initial round of this draft I was also eligible to have the first pick in whatever division I ended up in. To me, Babe Ruth is such an advantageous player that it was a pretty easy choice for me to go with my beloved Yankees (as difficult as that love has been recently, not that I’m bitter).

Round 1 – Babe Ruth
Duh. The only question was going to be what season I’d end up using. I originally penciled in 1920, but ended up being able to afford 1923 and its superior defense. In hindsight I wish I’d tried to fit in the 1921, but I ended up right at the cap with very little waste using the 1923 so I didn’t feel like shaving the additional $1.2M in salary from other players that I drafted.

Round 2-3 – Spud Chandler, Ernie Banks
I was really, really hoping that somehow Rogers Hornsby would drop to me here. Instead I got the best available offensive shortstop (who can also field), and also IMO the 2^nd best SP in the league.

Round 4-5 – Ron Santo, Dick Ellsworth
I like Santo better than any other available 3B in this league, so for me he was a no-brainer here. I think I considered Rickey Henderson with my other pick, but instead went with 291 IP worth of another solid SP in a relatively scarce market.

Round 6-7 – Dave Righetti, Red Ruffing
Relievers (and stadiums) tend to go more quickly than I expect in most drafts. This one was no exception. With five RPs off the board, I figured I should snag a reliable closer (in a remarkably shallow pool) in Ruffing. Righetti’s ability to suppress home runs should be useful in this league, and he’s eminently usable in either two tandems or three. I generally find value in drafts in these IP “tweeners” that aren’t seen as SPs. I considered a catcher here, since to me there was a massive drop-off between Dickey and Hartnett and the others and I didn’t want to end up on the wrong end of a two player run, but I gambled that at least one of them would be around after 6 more picks.

Round 8-9 – Bill Dickey, Wilcy Moore
It turns out that they both were. I didn’t want to risk it any further, so I chose Dickey because his 640 PA season is enough that you don’t have to waste a roster spot on a backup catcher. Moore is kind of a tweener because of his low IP/G, but it’s just high enough that he can be used in a three tandem rotation, so he works for me. I now have 1,008 IP with a collective ERC# of 2.11, which I am extremely happy about given the relative dearth of pitching in this draft. I also considered taking Billy Williams or Bobby Murcer, who are personal favorites, but I thought there were enough OFs left that there was a chance that at least one would drop. I mean, clearly one of the six picks would be Hartnett…

Round 10-11 – Bobby Murcer, Al Downing
Nope. Somehow Hartnett stayed on the board. But while Billy Williams was taken, Murcer was not, which gave me a good hitting OF who plays enough defense that he could be used in CF if I ended up rostering 1920 Ruth instead of 1923 (or if I used ’23 Ruth at 1B, which was a real possibility since there was a surprising shortage at that spot). With my other pick, I was really hoping that Wrigley Field would drop to me, as it was the only hitters ballpark available in the draft. I wasn’t stunned that the only positive home run park was taken early, but I was surprised that it was chosen by the person who also had drafted the two most home run vulnerable starting pitchers in the draft to that point, and who among his four hitters had a grand total of one with more than five real life home runs. Anyway, with Wrigley off the board I didn’t see a huge difference between any of the available stadiums, and I didn’t see much value in the offensive positions that I still needed. There also weren’t a ton of great relievers available, so I decided definitively to use a three tandem rotation and chose another tweener in Al Downing, who has done well for me in the past. He’s high in walks but very low in OAV and HR/9, and slots perfectly with my tandem rotation.

Round 12-13 – Ray Grimes, Steve Hamilton
Hartnett finally went off the board, which did not affect me, but the selection of Phil Cavarretta did, as I still needed a first baseman. I’ve never used Ray Grimes, but he looks pretty good so what the heck. I also considered Don Mattingly, one of my all time favorite players, but I was starting to worry about hitting the salary cap so I went a little cheaper. At this point I had five of my six tandem spots filled, but only one reliever, so I chose the best available RP in Steve Hamilton, who also gives me a lefty in the pen. Solid, albeit with only 51 IP.

Round 14-15 – Oscar Gamble, Fred Beene
Still needing an outfielder and a DH, there were a lot of similar full-time OFs available, but Gamble was much better than any of them. Obviously he was still available because he only provides 327 PAs, but there were enough part-time OF/DHs left that it would be possible to assemble Frankenstein’s monsters that would out-produce the remaining full-timers in those spots. Can’t argue with .353/.453/.596 in the 14^th round. Fred Beene filled my last tandem spot, with only 91 IP but a high IP/G. My tandems combine for 1211 IP and a 2.14 ERC#. Considering that there were only three pitchers available in this entire draft with 175+ IP and ERC# less than 2.14, I’m happy with my rotation.

Round 16-18 – Tony Lazzeri, George Selkirk, Johnny Murphy
Three second basemen went relatively early in the draft, so I knew I could wait on mine. Lazzeri probably would’ve been my second choice, so I am very happy to get him here. Selkirk is another Frankenstein piece (309 PA, 1.010 OPS#). Johnny Murphy gives me another solid 72 IP in the pen.

Round 19-23 – Jerry Mumphrey, Ben Paschal, George Zeber, Bill Stafford, Jack Murphy Stadium
Now we’re in the end game. Mumphrey (349 PA, .923 OPS#) and Paschal (290 PA, .999 OPS#) provide more Frankenstein parts, George Zeber makes another appearance on one of my rosters as a utility guy extraordinaire, and Bill Stafford is a useful long reliever who fits under the cap. Jack Murphy Stadium is less than ideal, but it suppresses home runs less than the other remaining ballparks so at least there’s that.

Round 24-26 – Cliff Johnson, Ken Johnson, Dale Long
Clifford the Big Red Johnson joins the team! He enables me to have a platoon at catcher and roster the superior 500 PA 1936 Bill Dickey. Ken Johnson gives me one more arm in the pen, albeit one with only 27 IP, but that’s all I could afford. Dale Long will sub in occasionally for Grimes at 1B, and as a defensive replacement.

I’m extremely pleased with the way this draft turned out, but Babe Ruth will do that for you. I’ll be very disappointed if this team does not win its division. Obviously, my team name derives from not having drafted any San Diego Padres. They were on my lists, but I didn't end up with any of them.

Hitting: 6057 PA, .336/.428/.589, 276 HRs (limiting Banks and Long PAs based on expected usage)
Pitching: 1450 IP, 2.12 ERC#, 1.08 WHIP#, 0.26 HR/9+ (limiting Stafford to 24 IP)



I like my teams. I’m happier with them than I was with my first round teams. Of course, that means almost nothing. Since I begin round 2 near the bottom of the standings, a top ten finish seems out of the question. However, in the previous three WISCs I finished in 13^th, 13^th and 12^th places, so I think shooting for a middle-of-the-table finish is a reasonable, if ambitious, goal.

Thanks especially to redcped, and to everyone else involved in running this great tournament.

Posted by redcped on 10/20/2025 2:22:00 PM (view original):
Spellwether has officially entered my vocabulary. Thank you for that, and for an entertaining write up.

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

$80 Million - I Think I'm a Clone Now

I knew I wanted only 2 pitchers because that would give me some flexibility with position players. Ed Walsh has a ton of good innings for this cap and Mark Melancon has a bunch of RP years that fit the cap nicely too. I knew I wanted Dave Bancroft to cover MIF, so those spots were filled easily. My Tony! Toni! Toné! Tonie! outfield of Gwynns will make a bunch of errors and minus plays but they should hit well. Butch Wynegar has a good season for this cap behind the plate along with a cheap bench year for backup. Next, I needed platoons to cover 3B and 1B and to fill up roster spots. David Freese has 2 nice half years at 3B and Nap Lajoie has a couple at 1B, but their defence leaves a bit to be desired. That left uber utilityman Daniel Robertson to fill out the bench with 4 sub-$360K years. AT&T Park.

Hitting: 5444 PA/.312/.376/.423/$39.9M
Pitching: 1,308 IP/2.12 ERA/.227 OAV/1.05 WHIP/5.74 K9/1.96 BB9/0.21 HR9/$40.1M

Prediction: Low IP with poor fielding is a never a good idea, but here we are. Hoping to hit our way out of some jams.


$90 million - Four Seasons in the Abyss

Late pick in this, #21. Saw a lot of deadball years go off the board early, so I wanted to make sure I got at least one. For this cap, 1905 with Christy Mathewson, Cy Young and 3 Finger Brown seemed like a good rotation, not to mention Mike Donlin in the OF and an Ed McFarland half season behind the plate. Luckily enough, it made it to me, so I took it. Next pick was to get some offence. 1925 with switch-hitting MIF of Frisch and Bancroft, Jimmy ***** at 3B and Zack Wheat and Al Wingo in the OF looked good to me and 1925 made it back to my next pick, so I took them. Next, I knew I wanted a year from the last 10 years to fill the bullpen with a bunch of good, low IP arms and 2024 was the last one left by the time I picked, so I was also lucky to get that. All that was really left to fill was 1B and it had to be cheap considering what I spent on the other hitters. Wally Moon and his 11.42 RRF at 1B seemed to be the best fit and luckily 1956 was still available, but it was a long time before I picked again. And just to make it interesting, ozomatli thought it prudent to remind everyone in the draft that all the 1950s years were still available. Luckily, that didn’t seem to influence any picks, 1956 made it to me and my team was done. Lots of luck in getting these years. Hope they’re just as lucky on the field. Target Field.

Hitting: 5400 PA/.325/.389/.462/$44.4M
Pitching: 1,327 IP/2.01 ERA/.215 OAV/0.96 WHIP/5.89 K9/1.59 BB9/0.28 HR9/$45.6M

Prediction: Hoping Branch Rickey was right when he said luck was the residue of design.


$100 Million - L.A. Connection

On a long enough timeline, you can put together a million different teams with this theme, all with their own strengths and weaknesses, and never be truly happy with any of them. So, I aimed low: I really like 18 Degrom at this cap, and I wanted to fit him in somehow. That was my goal. But Degrom played for the Mets, has pretty uncommon names and was born in Florida. Not very deep player pools there. Degrom did go to the same college as Corey Kluber and Logan Gilbert, but the talent falls off a cliff after that. Had to find a better link. Degrom was born in 1988. So was Clayton Kershaw, who played for the Dodgers and was born in Texas. Now we're getting somewhere. Those player pools were deep enough for me. I tried various teams with Ed Delahanty, Dode Paskert, Ed Walsh and even Jim Corsi as my captain before I settled on 2011 Kershaw, with players born in 1988, players born in Texas and Dodgers as my connections. Dodger Stadium.

Hitting: 5459 PA/.319/.395/.454/$50.2M
Pitching: 1,340 IP/2.43 ERA/.208 OAV/0.99 WHIP/8.41 K9/2.05 BB9/0.61 HR9/$49.8M

Prediction: I really like my 1-4 hitters who all hit over .345 and the rotation of Kershaw/Degrom/Horlen/Reuss. Because of that, this is sure to be my worst team.


$110 million - Men in the Box

I had a team I was pretty happy with until I was told that $200K super scrub 1960 Joe Morgan wasn't the Joe Morgan, which honestly I should have known in the first place. Back to the drawing board and ended up with a team I liked a bit better. For these Box themes, I like to pick the MIF and SP first, as there's usually not a lot of depth there. Eddie Collins and Barry Larkin seemed like good choices and rotation of Pete Alexander, Clayton Kershaw, Joe Horlen and Jacob Degrom looked like a good start. From there, it was just a matter of deciding if the remaining boxes had someone I wanted in the everyday lineup or not. If not, then I used that box for a bench player or RP. Municipal Stadium.

Hitting: 5667 PA/.336/.404/.472/$55M
Pitching: 1,360 IP/2.10 ERA/.200 OAV/0.93 WHIP/8.23 K9/1.84 BB9/HR9 0.47/$55M

Prediction: Will lose an inordinate number of games to walk-off home runs.


$120 Million – 2008 Los Angeles Dodgers

Here's what I wrote about the Round 1 team:

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.

So, I'm just happy I get to use them. Hope they work out. Dodger Stadium.

Hitting: 6161 PA/.319/.391/.523/$61.5M
Pitching: 1,426 IP/2.39 ERA/.210 OAV/0.98 WHIP/8.20 K9/2.00 BB9/0.57 HR9/$58.5M

Prediction: Offence isn’t up to par for this cap. Will lose a lot of 2-1 games.


$140 Million - Misdemeanor's Row

I liked the original theme and was excited to pick an 1985-1986 team but the theme we ended up with was really fun. Not much of a strategy here, mostly just went for the best players available. Because of the era, I focused a bit on high average hitters because I assumed most others would focus on low HR9 (and higher OAV) pitchers. I wasn't planning on drafting Don Mattingly and Elston Howard as I already had full time 1B and C, but they stuck around longer than they should have and I couldn't leave .350+ hitters out there for my division mates. Polo Grounds.

Hitting: 6868 PA/.341/.410/.528/$80.8M
Pitching: 1,620 IP/2.21 ERA/.214 OAV/1.06 WHIP/6.08 K9/2.46 BB9/0.41 HR9/$58.2M

Prediction: I’ve never done well in draft leagues, and I don’t expect that tradition to end.

It's been a while since I've made it to Round 2. Definitely a different beast and it's fun to see how the minds of the geniuses on this site work. I do not have the mind for data that some others do, so I do not expect to top the gurus, but hopefully I can make them earn their wins.

A few underlying principles I wanted to focus on throughout my builds to hopefully gain a bit of an edge: switch hitters, high% steals, and good-hitting pitchers. I think I adhered well to all three.

$80M: Clone Wars
Turner Field

I immediately had my three aforementioned principles on my mind. I first searched for competent pitchers with a serviceable RL batting average and came away with a few solid options for this cap: Jack Quinn, Red Lucas and Sam Leever, each of which brought some short-inning options for the pen. Done. All of these are RHs, so Rich Hill fills the last 3 spots. They’re not the sexiest bunch, but the bullpen is good and hopefully their bats help counteract any pitching deficiencies.

On the hitter side, I settled on Asdrubal Cabrera almost immediately. A cheap SH with usable options across the IF. I tried various configurations of players with him but could never quite get the balance I wanted in terms of optimizing salary, and slugging – most affordable lineups I put together couldn’t really do much but single.

I decided on Yasmani Grandal at C due to his switch-hitting and OBP – he brings quite a few walks that will hopefully help in pitchers parks. After much tinkering, I landed on Stan Javier. Lots of partial-PA seasons that can add up to a cost-efficient lineup, and high-% steals. He’ll be manning the OF spots and 1B.

That left me with $13M and two slots left, so I looked for an affordable option with great slugging to be my run producer. I considered Rafael Palmeiro, Jim Thome and Bobby Abreu before finally landing on Chipper Jones. His defense isn’t great, but it should be passable at 3B and SS.

Overall, I think I put together a quality team, but given the depth of expertise in my opponents, I don’t anticipate stellar results. Prediction: 76-86

Offense: .287/.374/.453, 232 2B, 152 HR, 125/152 SBs
Pitching: 1439.1 IP, 1.13 WHIP

$90M: Smallballers (No Roids Required!)
Astrodome

I didn’t have a great plan for this one. I know the other owners have a much better feel for individual seasons than I do, so I selected a couple I felt comfortable with and tried to fill holes as best I could.

Seasons: 1926-1989-1987-1995

I initially had my eye on 1998, but wanted some pitching options with more innings and, like the $80M league, find pitchers that could hit. With a .311 BA and .744 OPS, Pete Donohue was the selling point of this season, He’s joined by Tris Speaker, Paul Waner, Lu Blue, Red Shannon and Pete Alexander.

I looked at 1989 next, mostly because I know there was an affordable Tim Raines who does well for me at these caps. Brian Harper and Mike Lavalliere bring a nice L/R platoon catching tandem, and Wade Boggs comes aboard as the leadoff man. Bert Blyleven and Jeff Russell join the pitching staff.

1987 helped fill some gaps in the pitching staff, with Rick Reuschel, Jack McDowell, Pascual Perez and Dave Smith. We also added Willie Randolph and Johnny Ray to platoon at 2B.

Lastly, 1995. This was a solid final piece to the puzzle, with a SH Walt Weiss and his 110 walks and 17/20 SB to play SS. Dwayne Hosey and David Segui come along as good bench options, and Kevin Brown and Kirk Reuter join the staff. Norm Charlton will anchor the back end of the bullpen.

The one positive is that this team is built for the Astrodome and think we will hold our own at home. On the road, I have no doubt this team will get squashed, as I know the other owners had a much better grasp of things than I did as far as seasons go. I think I assembled a good, complementary roster, though I doubt that will matter much against this competition. PREDICTION: 74-88

Offense: .308/.405/.436, 302 2Bs, 730 BB, 113/161 in SB.
Pitching: 1,393 IP, 1.10 WHIP


$100M: Oh Captain, My Captain! (1953 Andy Carey)
Yankee Stadium II

I tried to link a lot of stud high-walk guys for an Astrodome team, but forgot that I needed the ballpark of my captain – oops. Ended up with a strong pitchers park in Yankee Stadium though, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

I wanted to see if I could link the likes of Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Mickey Mantle, Rickey Henderson, etc. It was a fun challenge, and I was able to roster most.

I wanted a California player due to the wealth of options there, as well as a player from a storied franchise with many options as well. Uniform # would be the third.

I tried a few different options in David Wells, Ted Lilly and Raul Mondesi, but eventually found Andy Carey, who offers a usable scrub season and plenty of good options.

Categories:
Team (Yankees) – Ron Guidry, Whitey Ford, Spud Chandler, Tiny Bonham, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Lefty Gomez

Uniform # (6) – Jim Thome, Rogers Hornsby, Mickey Mantle, Scott Rolen, Chick Hafey, Billy Rogell, Gregg Zaun, Joe Medwick

State (CA) – Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Tarik Skubal, Doug Fister, Tommy Milone, Andy Rincon, Trevor Hoffman, Randy Winn

The Yankees supply my rotation, with Chandler, Bonham, Ford and Guidry, with the bullpen featuring high-IP/G pitchers in Skubal, Fister and Rincon, and strong typical RP in Rivera, Hoffman and Eckersley.

On offense, walks are the name of the game, with Williams, Bonds, Mantle well over 100 and 4 more players at 80+. The lineup also has a strong balance of L, R and SH options.

Overall, I think it’s a well-constructed squad and has the potential to be one of my better teams this round. PREDICTION: 84-78

Offense: .304/.418/.517, 289 2Bs, 841 BB
Pitching: 1,399.1 IP, 1.00 WHIP

$110: Box Me In
Citi Field
My strategy for this one was to go through each box and identify players with useable cheap, low-PA seasons that I could plug in to minimize wasted salary, then work around that. Pete Rose, Corey Seager, Joe Jackson, Mike Trout and Rogers Hornsby fit the bill, and a scrub Prince Fielder. This allowed me to shortchange myself on PAs a bit for hitters like Barry Bonds, Mickey Mantle, Lance Berkman and Carlos Beltran.

The lineup is completed by Edgar Martinez, Joe Mauer, Chase Utley and Arky Vaughan.

On the pitching side, Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez felt like must haves. I wanted Shane Bieber badly, but in the end, I had to drop down to Corey Kluber (not a bad consolation) to get under the cap. Don Sutton and Jake Arrieta round out the staff.

This bullpen should do quite well, with high-IP/G options in Jacob Degrom, Tarik Skubal and Max Scherzer, joined by Zack Britton, Trevor Hoffman and Dennis Eckersley.

Overall, I feel pretty good about this team, but once again, my competition gives me pause. Based on the roster, I think this team is capable of 90+ ones. But being as this is Round 2 of the WISC…PREDICTION: 85-77

Offense: .312/.413/.513, 272 2Bs, 756 BBs, 110/140 SBs
Pitching: 1,418 IP, 0.93 WHIP

$120M: 2007 Fawlty Fathers
Petco Park

I had a Round 2 roster built that I was very pleased with and didn’t check it again until just prior to submitting. Then realized it only had 1320 IP. Not gonna cut it. I dropped down from ’95 Greg Maddux to ’94, which helped with the missing innings and gave me $3M back, but this roster is shockingly lacking in variety. I’d already used the max version of every player, so ultimately, I’m probably leaving some value on the table. Regardless, I’ve been looking forward to using this team and think it’s built for Petco. We shall see.

The rotation consists of Maddux, Jake Peavy, Chris Young, David Wells and Brett Tomko (the lone blemish, after my innings mishap). The back end of the bullpen should be lights out with Cla Meredith, Trevor Hoffman and Heath Bell.

The lineup is well balanced, with a ton of doubles, lots of HRs, walks, and steals. Adrian Gonzalez and Brian Giles are my anchors, with strong defenders in Mike Cameron, Milton Bradley, Brady Clark and Khalil Greene.

I’m excited to see how this team does and will predict it’s my best of the round. PREDICTION: 88-74.

Offense: .299/.382/.518, 380 2Bs, 250 HRs, 685 BB
Pitching: 1,524.1 IP, 1.04 WHIP

$140M: The Fabulous Camilli Brothers
County Stadium

There were 3 options left for me when my turn came up. I wanted no part of JJP’s division, and did not feel comfortable drafting from the Red Sox and A’s for some reason, so Dodgers and Tigers it was. I had the Brewers ranked as my 3^rd choice for expansion teams, so I was pleased when schwarze took the Royals ahead of me. The Brewers also complemented the Dodgers and Tigers well, so it worked out.

MJD snagged Koufax first overall, to no one’s surprise, so I grabbed Don Sutton with the second pick. I wanted to make sure I had a strong ace. Dazzy Vance, Don Drysdale and Hal Newhouser went with the next three picks, so I opted for a stud hitter in Ty Cobb with my second choice. My following picks in order were:

Babe Herman, Roy Campanella, Willie Hernandez, Alan Trammell, Jim Brewer, Tom Niedenfuer, Jay Howell, Zack Wheat, Don Newcombe, Gates Brown, Champ Summers, Paul Molitor, Dolph Camilli, Burleigh Grimes, Moose Haas, Steve Sax, Elias Sosa, County Stadium, Marty McManus, Jim Bunning, Dan Plesac, Billy Rogell, Gee Walker and Doug Camilli.

I don’t feel great about the depth of my SP, but Sutton is a reliable ace and my bullpen should be strong. I have a pretty diverse lineup with tons of doubles, plenty of HR and walks, and some steals.

Overall, this team should be fun to watch, but I don’t expect great things. PREDICTION: 81-81

Offense: .344/.414/.553, 450 2Bs, 239 HR, 721 BB
Pitching: 1,685 IP, 1.00

@JJP: Ha, I was just trying to direct people away from the rapidly diminishing amount of 80's and 90's seasons that had a usable, cheap SS like my eventual '93 Weiss :)

Quote post by Jtpsops on 10/21/2025 11:27:00 AM:
$100M: Oh Captain, My Captain! (1953 Andy Carey)

Andy Carey is my father's all-time favorite baseball player. I'm sorry that I never even considered an Andy Carey team.

80m - Houck Stovey Season

I would have liked more time to play around with this one. Since it was all seasons, I figured most everyone would have deadball pitching. I took my list of A+ fielding/base stealing hitters from the round 1 70m league and looked at which players had other usable seasons, either as bench guys or platoons or at other positions. I added in some deadball hitters just to make sure I had enough to pick from. Then I looked at the pitchers I already knew would be a good fit for this league and did some quick searches to find guys who made good SP/RP combos or had multiple good SP seasons. After that I had a list of about 60 or so guys to build from and started building a team. I figured I would either end up with 4 or 5 hitters. 8 players is plenty to build a team without having to do too many gymnastics.

Jose Valentin could give me A+ range at 2B/SS and JT Realmuto has a sneaky great 1B season and a solid catcher season. I added in Harry Stovey to play all 3 outfield positions - I'm intrigued by his deadball hitter power and of course he has great wheels. Bobby Bonilla has a couple cheap bench seasons and an A+ season at 3B, so he gets the final hitter spot.

I wanted to build my pitching staff with low walks and not too many HRs, and worry less about OAV given my team's range. The staff starts with Roy Patterson - 2 good SP seasons (153 and 174 innings) and a very good 95ip setup season. I added Slim Sallee to partner up with him in a couple of tandems. I also added John Tudor (who's probably a better fit) but forgot to write him down, so I had to axe him to get back to 8 players. Then I finished the staff with Mike Morgan (good tandem season, some good RP years) and Tanner Houck, who's a great fit for this league with basically all of his seasons being useful. He's closing, he's starting and he's setting up. Is this team any good? I don't know. Is it weird? Yes. I put them in Riverfront to further suppress hits and maybe help my hitters who do have some power. The pitching is going to take a lot of juggling.

90m - Old Friends and New Cookies 1891-2023

I ended up with the 8th pick overall in this draft. There were a bunch of seasons I really liked but I decided to go with 1920 since they had 3 pitchers I liked right in the $/IP wheelhouse (Babe Adams, Coveleski, Wilbur Cooper) plus Edd Roush and his magic glove at 1B and a good Dave Bancroft season at SS. I thought a lot about 2016 or 2021 or maybe 1924 but liked the balance for 1920. In round 2 I was very surprised that 2016 made it back, and so did 2023. I really like 2016 (Gattis, J-Ram) but decided to roll the dice on 2023 to get Andres Gimenez and his range at 2B, plus finding a way to shove Ronald Acuna under the cap somehow. I didn't really look at the relievers but just assumed I'd find some.

For rounds 3/4 I just needed a 3B and some outfield and bench help, plus a couple more RPs. I grabbed 1891 to get a rangey 3B with speed (Latham) and surprisingly good reliever in Ted Breitenstein, plus Duke Farrell as a nice switch hitting catcher. In the last round I just needed a backup catcher and some bench players and I was happy to take 2010. My daughter was born that year, after all. Plus Wilson Ramos is a fun backup C and Alexi Casilla covers me a little bit at all the infield positions. I'm a little worried about how many of my innings are 1920/1893 given my shaky fielding ratings in the infield, but if Acuna hits and we rack up the + plays, I think we can be OK. Playing in AT&T Park.

100m - Drew Smyly's Giant Pandemic Swifties

You mean I can get Connor, Frisch, Bancroft, and George Davis playing in AT&T Park, with a bunch of 2020 pitchers, and I don't even have to do any crazy machinations to get there? Sign me up! Drew Smyly is my captain, so he gives me the Giants infield and a rotation of Plesac, deGrom, Kershaw, Keller, Darvish and Stripling (all in some kind of mashup). Smyly was also born in 1989 (like Taylor Swift, of course) so that was an easy choice as my 3rd pick. There's lots of useful players that share Taylor's birth year, including Cookie Merrifield and RP seasons of Sonny Gray and Jose Quintana. Love getting the higher IP/G guys to use as relievers.

The outfield is Mike Donlin in CF (where his glove might be a liability), plus Merrifield and Ross Youngs in the corners. Playing in AT&T, we're going to give up a lot of triples. Buck Ewing and Hank Gowdy platoon at C (thanks again, Giants!) and a bunch of 1989 guys round out the bench. Kwang Hyung Kim and Dakota Hudson each have >100 IP in the bullpen and will help make up for my starters failing to go deep. At least I hope they will. The bullpen might be this team's weakness. Hopefully we can Shake it Off.

110m - Man in the Box

This league feels like the boxes were constructed for a higher cap league. Which made for a fun challenge, at least for me. I started by looking at the hitters and figuring out who had usable cheap seasons, since I knew I'd need some bench/platoon bats. That gave me an idea of which boxes I'd have to take a "real" player from - but since most teams had at least one, it wasn't too restrictive. So I started with my usual spots - starting rotation and infield - to see which boxes had multiple players where I'd have to choose between 2 things I wanted (A's, Tigers, Pirates).

This is where I probably would have played things more differently if I'd had more time to think about all my teams together. I went with a modern rotation (Bieber, Lamet, deGrom, Verlander, Arrieta) and a high-range infield (Roush, Eddie Collins, Yount, Brett) just like most of my teams. Yount is underpowered for this cap (and low on PAs to boot) but it allows me to have Ruth and Goslin as 2/3 of my outfield, with Ken Williams/Honus platooning in the other spot. You know, Honus Wagner, the famous outfielder. Posey and Fisk platoon behind the plate and the cheap guys are A-Rod, Duke Snider and Jimmy Rollins. Similarly famous and out of position guys include Setup B guys named Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux and Shohei Ohtani.

Diversity might have been a good idea! But I do like this team. They also play in AT&T. And there's also a team in my division called "Men in the Box" ... so, you know, very creative!

120m - 2021 Dodgers Got Their Raise!

Even though these Dodgers have a ton of talent, figuring out how to put it all together is the challenge. Pujols at 3B? Which Mookie? Who plays the outfield? Which amazing relievers make the cut? How do you figure out the back of the rotation?

Given the dearth of outfielders, I let Pujols stay at 1B, used Belli's Cubs season in the outfield (since his Dodgers MVP gets normalized to death), and went with the Justin Turner/Edwin Rios duo at 3B. AJ Pollock gets 7.1 mil to play CF. Mookie '19 is the one who fits under the cap, in LF with Trea Turner and Corey Seager manning the middle infield. Max Muncy is at DH and Chris Taylor is playing several positions where we're a little short on PAs. Not a great looking offense for 120m, but hopefully not too HR dependent so they can survive the deadball teams. (Of which there's only one in my division. Of course.)

The rotation starts Kershaw/Bauer/Scherzer and I'm going to try a tandem of Gonsolin and Buehler in the 4 spot, with Urias in long relief. I've got Victor Gonzalez, Trienen, Kenley and Evan Phillips all around 1.20 ERC# and then lower leverage guys in Price and Nate Jones. Far too many low IP/G for my liking but hopefully they can make it work. Urias will likely get some spot starts because we're going to need him to throw close to his 149 IP total. I hope this team will be solid. I don't think they'll be amazing but I'm cautiously optimistic they won't be horrendous.

140m - The Teammates Minus Ted

The Teammates is of course David Halberstam's book about the friendship between Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky and Dom Dimaggio. Well, 3 out of 4 isn't bad, I guess.

I really liked the first iteration of this league and I was sad to see it go. But we persevere. I had the 5th pick and thought the top 4 would be NYY, LAD, STL and BOS, but the Giants got picked 4th so I took the Sox. Justinlee helpfully added the A's for some pitching and duhbigcat added the Expos.

Having the 4th/5th picks in the draft, I went bold and took Clemens and Grove since there wasn't a ton of elite pitching. Boggs or Simmons or Yaz might have been a better start. In the next round I went with another pitcher (Tex Hughson) and finally got a bat in Tim Raines. Eck went before I could pick him but I grabbed Joe Berry and his 118 hopefully excellent relief innings (1.65erc#), and Mickey Cochrane in hopes that the 3rd and 4th catchers picked would be worse enough for it to matter.

There were three 2Bs, and I didn't want to get shut out, so my next 2 picks were Doerr and Jim Rice. I like Rice's corner bat and hope he's not a one-dimensional guy (15 triples!). I continued to load up on the best pitching I could find with 115 IP of Jack Aker (2.03erc#) and grabbed my 3B in Billy Werber, who I love for his speed and range but is really not a 140m cap guy. In the next round I grabbed Reggie Smith and then Tiant to complete my rotation. Elmer Valo and Hubie Brooks platoon at DH. I waited on shortstop since there were at least 4 good ones and ended up with Eddie Joost - hope he at least gets on base. Dom Dimaggio plays CF and Pesky fills in everywhere. I grabbed my park in round 18 since I knew what I wanted - Municipal Stadium, where home runs go to die. I am not sure if this team can hit OR pitch but hopefully they're balanced enough to be competitive. Not even getting close to the cap is worrisome. Maybe our division just isn't as good as the others but I can win it with 85.

LF Raines 627pa B+/B 331/429/515
DH Valo 356pa B+/C 366/456/485 and Brooks 341pa C/C+ 345/392/570
RF Rice 742pa B+/C 315/372/599
C Cochrane 582pa B/D+/B- 316/452/511 and Tenace 128pa B/A/A+ 312/433/564
1B R Smith 495pa B-/A+ 304/398/516 (B/A+ OF) and Goodman 511pa A-/B 349/412/445 (also D/B at 3B, A/C+ OF)
2B Doerr 656pa B/A+ 308/380/499
CF Dimaggio 717pa B/A 324/399/442
3B Werber 764pa C/A+ 312/385/463
SS Joost 702pa A-/A 289/402/462

T1a Clemens 256ip 0.97whip 0.74/137hr .196oav# 2.31bb# 7.70ip/g 1.93erc#
T1b Hughson 214ip 1.05whip 0.18/209hr .226oav# 1.83bb# 7.26ip/g 2.20erc#
T2a Grove 308ip 1.08whip 0.31/151hr .221oav# 1.88bb# 7.04ip/g 2.15erc#
T2b Tiant 188ip 1.08whip 0.35/180hr .214oav# 3.34bb# 4.16ip/g 2.34erc#

LRA Nels Potter 120ip 1.08whip 0.48/122hr .246oav# 1.13bb# 4.05ipg 2.36erc#
CLA Jim Corsi 39ip 0.94whip 0.47/163hr .195oav# 2.35bb# 1.74ip/g 1.78erc#
SUA Joe Berry 118ip 0.91whip 0.32/114hr .193oav# 1.88bb# 2.10ip/g 1.65erc#
SUA Jack Aker 115ip 0.96whip 0.56/152hr .212oav# 2.30bb# 1.71ip/g 2.03erc#
SUA Honeycutt 64ip 1.07whip 0.28/282hr .206oav# 3.05bb# 1.01ip/g 2.03erc#
SUB Diego Segui 83ip 1.00whip 0.76/90hr .190oav# 3.59bb# 1.60ip/g 2.12erc#
SUB Nabholz 70ip 1.07whip 0.77/102hr .179oav# 4.13bb# 6.36ip/g 2.35erc#

Ok I just realized it’s been so long since the 90M draft that I legitimately thought I took two of my years in a different order. Wow I can’t believe I got 2016 in the third round

$80M: Orphan Black Sox
Stadium: Pro Player

First of all, did anyone else watch the show Orphan Black? The thing I am most excited about for this team is how good that name is! Orphan Black was a show about clones and then Black Sox fits perfectly with the Eight Men Out theme. Anyway, I'm super pumped about this. We will see if the actual team lives up to the name.

My clones:
Max Carey x4
Paul Molitor x3
Frank Chance x2
Mike Redmond x2
Eric Young x3

Addie Joss x4
Max Lanier x4
Charlie Smith x3

First of all, this has probably gone unnoticed, but Max Carey has been on almost every WISC team I have entered in the last 2 years where he has been allowed. So look for him as you read on. He is my favourite sim player because he is the prototypical player for how I build my teams. Switch hitter, lots of speed, lots of range, poor fielding to keep the price down, and not a lot of power. I thought Molitor would be used by more teams in this because of his infield versatility, but I didn't see him at all when I browsed the teams. I have him playing 2B,3B, and SS and like Carey he satisfies all the attributes I look for. I normally use him at lower caps, so I hope he can play at 80 mil. Frank Chance worked in that way as well and he can play the 2 infield positions that Molitor doesn't. Redmond (who I used in last year's clone theme) has some nice low PA seasons at different price points, which makes him easy to play around with for cap purposes. 97 EY was a nice find for speed and extreme range as well as the perfect number of PA (175) to fill in for 2B Molitor (512).

None of my successful teams have ever been power teams so I have just given up on trying to build them. Stick with what works for me. Addie Joss has 4 seasons with 250+ IP that I feel great about at this cap. All sub 1.00 whip and doesn't give up homers. He has a really solid 115 IP season as well, so in the end I went with 3 starters and the long relief option. Max Lanier had a bunch of 30-50 IP seasons and that are just OK and well priced for this cap. I liked that he is lefty, and I wanted to spend most of my pitcher money on Joss. Charlie Smith is one of my favourite low cap pitchers. Again, I hope he plays at 80 mil, but price was right.

80 mil is usually a good cap for me. I made in one of the 80 mil leagues in round 1, and I have high hopes for this team. Off to a 2-0 start with 2 shutouts, so maybe I'm blinded by that as I'm writing this.

PA - 5,362
IP - 1,313

$90M: Peter & The Wolff
Stadium: Griffith

9th Pick in the Draft

Round 1 - 1919
I was between 1920 and 1919 for my pick and 1920 went right before. I liked 1919 maybe more because of the options for SP. I like having lots of options in these types of drafts, because you have no idea what you are going to get later. I rarely end up with the guys I originally plan for. That comes from experience in the Juice drafts.
Pete Alexander, Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Tyler, Ray Caldwell, Max Carey (obviously), Rogers Hornsby, Babydoll Jacobson

Round 2 - 1887
I have a lot of pitching options from 1919 and only got Hornsby for an infield spot. My goal with round 2 was to complete my entire infield. outfield is usually the easiest thing to find later, as well as relievers. So I ended up with 1887, which filled my starting C,1B,SS,3B,OF
Cap Anson, Jack Glasscock, Jerry Denny, Fred Carroll, John Kerins, Bill Bishop (mopup)

Round 3 - 1912
I really wanted 1912 for some reason when it got close, and I think it was the only year from 1900-1925 or so that was still out there. After round 1, I have become a big fan of Hank Robinson as a long reliever, spot starter, and lefty with what I feel is a great price. He was amazing for my 1913 Pirates as a tandem starter in 80 mil, so I'm hoping he is still good at 90. 1912 also had a bunch of really useful low PA guys to plug some holes and make up almost my entire bench, and Carl Weilman might be my best reliever.
Hank Robinson, Bobby Veach, Johnny Bates, Olaf Henrikson, Pete Knisely, Carl Weilman

Round 4 - 1945
My team was pretty much done except I needed a starting pitcher. Every season with any pitching depth was gone, but that's fine because I just needed a one off. 1945 works to get Roger Wolff. I think 90 mil is the ideal cap for him. 1945 also had some useful relievers and the right amount of sub 300k players that I needed.
Roger Wolff, Ox Miller, Max Lanier, Ray Harrell, Cecil Travis, Clyde Sukeforth

PA - 5,557
IP - 1,348

I don't have a read on this team as I lost a lot of creative control after round 1.

$100M: Max Carey's 1890 Indiana Pirates
Stadium: Forbes

Captain - 1919 Max Carey (Shocker!)
I didn't even try to build with another guys after I saw my options in his birth year (1890) and state (Indiana). The only question was how many connections I do and which Carey I pick. I actually ended up with his partial PA season of 1919 as that's just how things played out. Here were the main draws in each connection:

Born in 1890
Babydoll Jacobson
Red Smith
Benny Kauff
Mellie Wolfgang
Phil Douglas

Born in Indiana - This was a jackpot for me and players I like to use
Edd Roush
Billy Herman
Bubble Hargrave
Scott Rolen
Mordecai Brown
Babe Adams

Played for the Pirates
Honus Wagner
Ginger Beaumont
Solly Hofman
Howie Camnitz
Hank Robinson
Sam Leever
Mike Gonzalez

PA - 5,474
IP - 1,360

$110M: Goose Box Hero
Stadium: Astrodome

I originally started this by looking for all the possible 200K players so I knew which teams I was only going to use for that. But after I started building, I realized there were some cheap guys I liked, that were actually useful. So, in the interest of being efficient with my dollars, I penciled them in. Those guys are 1918 Joe Jackson (102 PA), 1920 Joe Sewell (88 PA), 1926 Mel Ott (66 PA), 1998 Carlos Beltran (63 PA). These guys were very helpful as subs, pinch hitters, and D replacements and allowed me to be as efficient as possible with my spending. I also did waste some on Eddie Matthews and Roberto Alomar. Then I moved on to rotation and ended up with 2 of my 3 players from the captain team - Mordecai Brown and Babe Adams (different years I think...I hope), and added Sandy Koufax as I wanted a lefty. Relievers was just never-ending plugging then replacing once I settled on my hitters. I had a number of innings I was trying to get to and I kept mixing and matching until I got there.

PA - 5,595
IP - 1,362

$120M: 1913 Pittsburgh Pirates
Stadium: Forbes

I have low hopes for this team. I built it with 80 mil in mind, and that worked because I made the world series. I was able to piece together a 120 mil roster, but I just used the best version of every player and didn't have a ton of options to make this team how I would want. The pitching should play with the best versions of Babe Adams, Claude Hendrix, and Howie Camnitz as well as the elite relief season for George McQuillan, however I rostered over 100 more IP than I would have liked, and there was no way around it. In the most recent Juice tournament, I took the 1913 Pirates to the World Series at 120 mil, however that team was allowed clones which made a huge difference. I don't think that result will mean something good for this team.

PA - 6,624 (DH)
IP - 1,612 (yuck)

$140M: Dulf Vada's Empire
Stadium: Astrodome

Another team where I am quite happy about how the team name came together. I was also ecstatic with the teams we got in this league at 6/7 picks (Reds/Indians) and then adding the Astros was probably best case scenario for pitching help, as well as the fact that I love the Astrodome and was 100% planning on reaching to get it.

3rd pick in the draft

1 - Joe Morgan - I almost always go hitter in drafts, but I would have taken Mike Scott. Speaker was tough to pass on but I wanted to fill in an infield spot
2 - Al Rosen - I'm not a fan at all to be honest. Again, I wanted the position and I'm off to a good start with guys that can hit and play A/A ish defense
3 - Tom Seaver - I'm OK with this, but there were unexpected pitchers available at the end. If I had known, I would have kept building my offense here
4 - Lew Fonseca - Contunuing with guys that can hit .(369) and play defense (A-/A-). I am accepting a poor pitching team, so I want to keep helping them with defense as long as the best hitters available can also field. Felt like a drop-off at 1B after this, and it felt too early to take Edd Roush who was one of my top targets
5 - Eric Davis - Of course Roush was taken. Devastating. My favourite player to use after Carey. I debated Davis because I knew his power would likely not play in whichever park I took, but Rosen has some power too and there aren't many pitchers in this division or any really that can prevent homers. 95 speed and A+ range? Not passing it up. Nice SB efficiency as well to go along with Morgan. Maybe we will take advantage of some weak catchers.
6 - Vada Pinson - Same story. hits for average, is fast, great range. Good fit
7 - Dolf Luque - In the years allowed (1920-1990), there are only 5 pitchers across ALL leagues with 200 innings, a sub 1.15 whip# and sub 0.15 HR9#. 3 of those 5 guys were Reds. I really like to keep the ball in the park when I build a team with great defense.
8 - Eppa Rixey - The second Red of the guys I filtered above. Pretty pleased about the roation given my focus on hitting early
9 - Kal Daniels - Arguable the best hitter on the board and happens to have 85 speed too. It's possible to play him in the OF, but more likely he is destined for DH
10-12 - Doug Jones, Ted Abernathy, Rob Dibble, - Jones and Abernathy keep the ball in the park and have high IP for relievers. I am hoping to finish my staff using as few pitchers as possible so I can add some low PA studs to my hitting bench
13 - Astrodome - First stadium taken and probably early, but I needed and wanted it. It was the only thing I could add to my team that would for sure make an impact in the way I wanted. I said at the time, "I am taking the best pitcher available"
15 - Dickie Thon - Still needed a SS and could have taken Sewell a round earlier who was shockingly still out there, but I didn't want to come this far preaching defense and then punt it at short stop of all places. I like Thon for my normal reasons.
16-17 - Bo Diaz, Ray Fosse - Nice catcher tandem and Fosse has a crazy arm. My team is going to be pretty tough to score against. Need to earn it.
18-19 - Bill Doran, Joe Wood - Big bats. Doran needed because Morgan is low PA, Wood to platoon with Daniels at DH
20 - Brett Butler - My last OF. Speed, great D. Ensures Daniels stays at DH
21 - Pete Donahue - The 3rd Reds pitcher from the group above. Love how this played out
22-25 - All bench bats with great hitting as planned - special shout out to Pid Purdy and his 5 3B#. 3B is about the only positive hitting thing that can happen in the Astrodome, so hopefully I can deploy Purdy strategically.

I am a big fan of how this team turned out, mostly because everything went according to plan (other than the Roush snipe). However, this division has 3 other great owners who all know what they are doing, and probably executed their plans as well.

6,676 PA (DH)
1,549 IP
I did manage to get within 150K of the cap and get the innings and PA I wanted, so I 'should' have a good team.

Good luck everyone!