I’m going to sort this by difficulty in building these rosters, not by cap. My daughter left for college about a month ago. Since I miss her and she loves K-POP Demon Hunters, I’m going to name my teams after their songs.

80 Takedown - Because I’m taking down the salary from $140M in the first round

I built this in round 1 and didn’t make any changes when entering the team. A lot of these guys are versions of themselves in their later/off years. Honus Wagner was 41 and Verlander was 40 in the years that I’m using them.

Some notables that I specifically drafted in R1 to use in R2: 1920 Babe Adams is one of the best deals in the sim. Brandon Inge was also intended for R2, especially since it was hard to get an “I” in there. Other notables include Greg Zaun and Ugeth Urbina both using the same seasons from R1. R2 Dinelson Lamet is a $200k mop up, but he was essential for my R1 build. Steve Ontiveros and Joel Pineiro are my #2 and #4 starters, what could go wrong?

			140	80
A	ADAMS	BABE	1924	1920
B	BIEBER	SHANE	2020	2025
C	CONNOR	ROGER	1890	1894
D	DELAHANTY	ED	1902	1903
E	EICHHORN	MARK	1991	1992
F	FOXX	JIMMIE	1928	1942
G	GONSOLIN	TONY	2020	2022
H	HORNSBY	ROGERS	1920	1926
I	INGE	BRANDON	2013	2004
J	JACKSON	JOE	1913	1915
K	KERSHAW	CLAYTON	2016	2021
L	LAMET	DINELSON	2020	2023
M	MARTINEZ	PEDRO	1999	1993
N	NIEDENFUER	TOM	1983	1984
O	ONTIVEROS	STEVE	1985	1994
P	PINEIRO	JOEL	2001	2009
Q	QUINN	JOE	1900	1896
R	RAMIREZ	JOSE	2017	2016
S	SPEAKER	TRIS	1916	1911
T	THOMSON	SAM	1898	1888
U	URBINA	UGETH	2003	2003
V	VERLANDER	JUSTIN	2022	2023
W	WAGNER	HONUS	1909	1915
X
Y	YOUNGS	ROSS	1924	1921
Z	ZAUN	GREG	1997	1997

Hitting: 5306 PA, .307/.379/.465
Pitching: 1371 IP, 2.97 ERA, 1.11 Whip, .237 OAV, 0.55 HR/9
Busch Stadium

120 How It’s Done - Feel good about this team, that’s how it’s done.

This is pretty straightforward, just took a bit of research. I created a spreadsheet for group 1 and group 2. I then looked up every pitcher on that list and created a column for the lowest ERC# for every pitcher in each column. Given that this is a $120M league and if I’m allocating $60M to my pitching and drafting 1400 innings, I should allocate about $42k/IP. After making the lists, it was clear that certain pitchers even in their best seasons were inappropriate for this cap. I highlighted every pitcher that was usable. So I made the pitching staff first, one for Box A and one for Box B. Then I chose the hitters based on what was left. I had my usual preferences for switch hitters, plus range and older players. Here were the normalized totals for each squad:

Box A
Hitting: 6078 PA, .323/.406/.620, C+/B, $64M
Pitching: 1398 IP, 1.93 ERA, .205 OAV, 0.93 Whip, 0.28 HR/9, $56M

Box B
Hitting: 6186 PA, .322/.407/.594, C+/B, $60M
Pitching: 1387 IP, 1.90 ERA, .204 OAV, 0.88 Whip, 0.33 HR/9, $60M

It was closer than I thought. I chose B since I felt it was slightly more balanced. Box A had a 365 inning Eddie Cicotte that would have required more pitching staff management. But I would have been fine using either squad.
AT&T Park

100 Strategy - all about the draft strategy

I picked third in the season draft after dvorr80 and discodemo. Their picks were 1914 and 2015 respectively. Excellent picks. I had two trains of thought for my pick. First, get the best pick to complement the first two picks. Secondly, be a jerk and try to throw in a pick with a players that I hope others would get that I didn’t want. Specifically, I thought of a 2000 or 1995 hoping that someone would grab an overpriced starting pitcher. If this was round 1, I think I might be able to get away with that, but not in R2. But I did find somewhat of a compromise. Outwardly, 1914 and 2015 did not have strong shortstops. But they also didn’t have the kind of relief pitchers that I like. 1914 didn’t have any RPs and most 2015 RP had too low of IP/G for my liking. I chose 1999 because they had great SS (ARod, Jeter, Nomar) that I didn't want, but they also had RPs that fit my ideal type (Lowe, Williamson, Garces). Redcped asked the rest of our group who he should pick for the last season and he was pushing for 1930 and I told him I didn’t think they would normalize well. He chose 1930 anyway. I ended up drafting 4 of my starting lineup hitters are from 1930. I owe this man an apology. Also, no one took any of the 1999 shortstops I put out. These guys are too smart. I ended up with all of the 1999 RPs that I wanted so not a bad choice for me overall.

I’m not gonna do a round-by-round analysis of our ALC draft as no one would be interested in that. I generally try to draft a guy who is “head and shoulders” above whatever else is available at a certain position. The added strategy of whoever has the lowest overall salary drafts first was a cool twist. I was lowest or near lowest for most of the draft until late when I realized it didn’t matter much anymore. At least so I thought, until the player I was about to draft was sniped twice in the last few rounds. I have A+ range at CF, 2B, 3B and A range at 1B and SS. I got some strong deadball hitters in Gavvy Cravvath and Steve Evans. Starting pitchers Russ Ford, Ray Caldwell and Doc Watson should suppress HRs and Jake Arrieta was my one splurge and should be the best SP in the division. I also really like my bullpen as I got the guys I wanted from the season selected. I’m satisfied with my team, but honestly the other three owners also have tough squads as I should expect in a R2 draft. I expect it to be evenly matched.

Hitting: 5574 PA, .327/391/.520
Pitching: 1389 IP, 2.21 ERA, 1.02 Whip, 0.212 OAV
AT&T Park

70 Golden - Coors is brewed in Golden, Colorado

The first question is how many innings do I need? I’ve never been in an all Coors/Mile High league before. Coors is a 1.37 factor. Mile High is a 1.43 factor. I think people will tend towards Coors over Mile High but if I assume a 50/50 split, I’ll use an average factor of 1.4. In a typical 70M cap, I’d draft 1250 innings. Multiply that by 1.4 and you get 1750 innings. Still, this is just theoretical, I need to ask someone who has actual knowledge. I contacted Majocha who is the commissioner of an all-Coors league who advertises in the theme league classifieds. He said 1800-1900 innings. Since low cap league success is highly dependent on the number of innings selected, I’m going to go on the low end of that, maybe just a little bit below that. I could death spiral, but if I’m trying to win this whole thing, I need to take risks. So I’m going back to my original 1750 innings and go with my assumption that more people will take Coors over Mile High.

The second question is do I still allocate half of my budget to pitching or more than half given that I need more innings than usual? I decided to allocate half, but get strong range defenders in my lineup as I’ve heard that is also important in a Coors league. In a way, this is starting to look more like a $60M squad.

My pitchers are mostly deadball guys who seem cheap relative to their ERC# value. They’ll also help to mitigate home runs. There is one exception: Carlos Silva. He kinda sticks out like a sore thumb as he seems like a really bad idea at Coors Field. But I need to defend this. First, Carlos Silva is relatively cheap for his ERC#. He has an HR/9 of 1.19, but that’s HR/9 90+ for 2005. Lastly, having a modern pitcher will help normalize bad fielders like Buck Wever from 1913. 2005 Chien Ming-Wang is also on my staff as a Long A for the same reasons. These two guys comprise 46% of the RL HRs allowed by the entire staff.

The lineup has A+ range at 1B, 3B, SS and CF. Evan Gattis is my catcher as I feel he is always the right answer from 70-110M. Did I forget offense? 78 Reggie Smith in LF, 75 Bernie Carbo in RF. 65 Donn Clendenon did well for my R1 70M so I’m using him again. 26 Taylor Douthit is a good leadoff hitter. I am a bit worried about not drafting enough PAs. Some of these guys may be playing at 90% for a good part of the year.

Hitting: 5319 PA, .281/.349/.436, C-/B
Ptching: 1744 IP, 2.84 ERA, 1.18 Whip, .262 OAV, 0.39 HR/9
Coors Field

110 Your Idol - I am using three Ken Griffey Jrs,, a boyhood idol of mine

Ok, here’s where it got hard. Well not really hard, but time consuming. I keep spreadsheets for each league where I keep my notes and rosters that I’ve made. This one goes down to line 717, the longest of all of them. I built 26 rosters. After building the first few, I realized that I was coming up short in salary and that I needed to keep aiming higher. $10M players didn’t cut it. I need to get $15M players. Think Maddux, Bonds, Mantle and Koufax. It came down to three finalists:

Team A
Hitting: 5697 PA, .339/.418/.684, C-/B-, $71M
Pitching: 1430 IP, 3.28 ERA, 1.32 Whip, 0.250 OAV, 0.53 HR/9, $39M

Team B
Hitting: 5538 PA, .298/.367/.571, B-/C+, $54M
Pithing: 1432 IP, 2.47 ERA, 1.06 Whip, 0.206 OAV, 0.42 HR/9, $56M

Team C
Hitting: 5572 PA, .293/.407/.627, B-/C+, $58M
Pitching: 1427 IP, 2.65 ERA, 1.02 Whip, 0.222 OAV, 0.59 HR/9, $52M

Which one would you have chosen?

Team A: 1937 Yankees, Senators (Case), Browns (Hornsby x2, Caldwell)
This was such an odd team. The Senators were the only “bad” team available in 1937. I was forced to clone George Case, which made my outfield worse. The pitching was so bad, I had to clone Earl Caldwell just to be used as a setup man. It was an extremely unbalanced roster favoring offense. But it was cap appropriate. It had the right number of IP and PA. There was no wastage. Part of me really wanted to use this team just to see how it would do.

Team B: 1992 Brewers, Cubs (Maddux), Mariners (Griffey 2x, Johnson)
My main issue is that I’m forced to use 1992 Randy Johnson who will get absolutely rocked. The rest of the team came together so well. I find it funny that the Brewers were the best “good” choice since I mostly took their relief pitchers.

Team C: 1996 Braves, Marlins (Kevin Brown), Giants (Barry Bonds 2x, Rod Beck)
The main reason why I didn’t take this team is that Barry Bonds never normalizes well. I really didn’t want to go with a more modern team, but there is no denying that that team just fit so well otherwise.

I chose Team B. It was the most balanced. Also, I really didn’t want to use three Barry Bonds. And I was tired of creating rosters. I’m really curious to see what others are doing.
County Stadium

130 Soda Pop - Team has a lot of pop, more than I usually draft

This was hard. Here were my strategies coming into this: Allocate half of my salary towards pitching which would average out to a $46k/IP for 1400 IP. I planned to chain these pitchers together through history. I also wanted to use a “barbell” strategy of using mostly old school and modern players connected by the least amount of middle era players. Think Nolan Ryan, Julio Franco and other players who enjoyed super-long careers during that time frame.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” - Mike Tyson

I soon found out this was not possible. >$40k/IP pitchers are hard to find pre-1950. And the ones that are there are hard to chain. I knew I wanted to some super-modern pitchers so I built a few chains that connected some of the guys I was aiming for. But then i’d get stuck in the early 2000’s. So then I went the other direction and started chaining chronologically forward and get stuck again. I took a week off thinking that I could come back and find a way to link these chains. I was able to make a chain but my salary ended up at $110M. I’m way off. What I really needed to do was to link in some really big hitters.

What finally worked was starting with Babe Ruth and then chaining a scrub named Hank Johnson to Lou Gehrig. I went Yankees all the way from Ruth to Mantle just to get these big salaried hitters. I ended up with a $135M roster. So then I just had to cut down from there by using cheaper versions of Ruth and Mantle.

Year	Team	Player
1929	Yankees	Babe Ruth
1932	Yankees	Hank Johnson
1934	Yankees	Lou Gehrig
1943	Yankees	Johnny Murphy
1945	Yankees	Snuffy Stirnweiss
1946	Yankees	Red Ruffing
1949	Yankees	Yogi Berra
1951	Yankees	Fred Sanford
1960	Yankees	Mickey Mantle
1964	Phillies	Bobby Shantz
1966	Phillies	Dick Allen
1976	Yankees	Grant Jackson
1979	Yankees	Oscar Gamble
1981	Yankees	Dave Righetti
1983	Astros	Jerry Mumphrey
1991	Rangers	Nolan Ryan
1998	Red Sox	Mike Stanley
1999	Red Sox	Pedro Martinez
2000	Red Sox	Nomar Garciaparra
2002	Red Sox	Derek Lowe
2008	Dodgers	Manny Ramirez
2016	Dodgers	Clayton Kershaw
2017	Dodgers	Austin Barnes
2020	Twins	Kenta Maeda
2022	Cubs	Ildemaro Vargas

Certain players such as Hank Johnson, Fred Sanford and Mike Stanley really only exist to chain players. Players such as Mickey Mantle, Grant Jackson, Nolan Ryan and Clayon Kershaw are my time travellers as there are big gaps between when they were teammates and their selected season. Lastly, the hitting/pitching split is $72M/$58M. It’s a lot easier to chain good hitters than to chain good pitchers.

Hitting: 6073 PA, .321/.407/.577
Pitching: 1387 IP, 2.38 ERA, 0.95 Whip, 0.192 OAV
Yankee Stadium (I)

With one exception, being part of the theme committee didn’t mean actually testing out any of the themes. I did have to test the initial version of the Chain theme, because I suspected it might be close to impossible to build. Three attempts proved me basically right. But I didn’t try to build one of the revised theme rosters because we knew we’d removed the significant obstacle (which was that each successive player had to go up in salary from the one before).

Anyway, this is to say I didn’t have strategies in mind for these so much as just tried to work with the group to form challenging themes that were worthy of a Round 2. That can mean taking something to a very different cap or adding a new wrinkle. But what it didn’t do was give me any kind of head start on building workable rosters. Let’s hope these came out well.

70M: Not the Mile High Club I Expected

I’ll confess this one was my idea. I’d played Coors/Mile High themes a couple times but always at high caps. I wanted to see how it would play at a low cap for a change. At 180M, you can draft all the XBH production and great defense and strikeout pitching or whatever you want. At 70M, you have to make a lot of compromises.

I added the maximum salary to restrict anyone from building a rotation with 2-3 deadball workhorses, though I’ll acknowledge in retrospect that didn’t really quash that general strategy. You just have to use more pitchers to do it.

I think the key to this build is probably picking the right amount of IP and PA. There will definitely be some very high-scoring games, and fatigue can hit your hitters and pitchers pretty hard. Take too few IP/PA, and you risk spirals. Take too many, and you waste precious salary.

I decided that I wanted somewhere between 5600-5700 PA, which is about 400-500 more than I’d draft if I played in a pitchers park. With high caps, I’d seen a few lineup spots exceed 800 PA, but I don’t foresee getting quite that high here. I think ~750 might happen, and I have at least 680 PA per position. That should work out with the 10% bonus.

I wound up with just 13 hitters, which might make it harder to keep hitters fresh. But I’m more comfortable with hitters turning a little blue than pitchers, and I think you need enough different arms in a setup like this just to have a few available each game. Especially since there are no workhorses. Only 3 of my pitchers have more than 150 IP, but 9 are over 100.

As for IP, I felt like under 1400 could really flirt with disaster and over 1500 probably would be wasteful. These are critical guesses, of course. But I have a setup that gives me some options, with three pitchers designated for long relief and games that get out of hand. I’ll be OK if any of them drop into the 80s or even 70s in fatigue so long as they can eat those innings.

I tried a few approaches to my pitching staff and then compared what I came up with. One emphasized strikeouts, the theory being that balls in play hurt more in Denver. One minimized homers, combatting the biggest of the dangers. One minimized baserunners with less focus on HR prevention. I then ran a few normalization calculations and basically they all came out about the same in ERC# and WHIP#. So was it better to reduce the homers or maximize the strikeouts?

When I started this writeup, I was set to go with an all-deadball staff in spite of myself. But the more I looked at things, I decided that the higher K staff would be the best option because they stand to keep a few hundred more balls out of play rather than prevent an extra 80-100 homers. That feels like the biggest advantage because A) the stadiums reward balls in play and B) I have a few defenders with higher error rates. But if we get crushed by homers, I will have regrets.

I also tried a few offensive approaches, including one that heavily emphasized triples just to see how that might look. I attempted to have decent defense up the middle, put the ball in play fairly well with doubles and triples potential, and have some team speed, too. I wound up with a mish-mash. Half the lineup strikes out a lot, a few guys have speed in the mid-70s and up, and the team AVG# is .281. Like I said, when you’re spending $36M, you have to make compromises.

The biggest bats are 1985 Kirk Gibson (.871 OPS#), 2015 Kris Bryant (.857), 1893 Roger Connor (.850), 1919 Ken Williams (.854) and 2020 Anthony Santander (.879). Up the middle I have 2021 Whit Merrifield (.702), 2019 Miguel Rojas (.690) and 2007 Jason Varitek (.762).

5640 PA, .281/.356/.453, 144 HR, 131-73 SB-CS, $36.5M
1433 IP, 3.21 ERA, .248 OAV, 1.16 WHIP, 0.78 HR/9, $33.5M

80M: Chicks Dig Speedy Switch-Hitters

I built this team with the Round 1 version, and I actually focused slightly more on this version because it needed to fit the tighter cap and I felt like there’s less wiggle room if you use a player who is hard to fit. My 140M team did pretty well, so I hope that’s a good omen. I’m pretty sure the first player I locked in on was Willie McGee, because I’d seen some comment on the boards about his 1990 season being great at 80M. And I knew I could use his 1985 on the 140M. It all kind of grew from there.

My ace will be 1907 Ed Walsh with his 454 IP. I’m not actually sure I’ve used this Walsh, and obviously he’s not as good as the 08 or 10 versions. Still, a 2.39 ERC# and 1.10 WHIP# is pretty good for this level, and he won’t give up homers. 2013 Cliff Lee (2.50, 1.05) and likely a tandem of 1928 Carl Hubbell (2.59, 1.08) and 1926 Pete Alexander (2.53, 1.07) will fill out the rotation.

The bullpen features 2010 Koji Uehara (2.17, 0.96), 2001 Jeff Zimmerman (2.06, 0.89), 1991 Dennis Eckersley (2.11, 0.91) and 2017 Sean Doolittle (1.88, 1.01).

The lineup includes five switch-hitters: 1894 Roger Connor (.899 OPS#), 1990 McGee (.795), 1989 Tim Raines (.831), 1926 Frankie Frisch (.756), and 1979 Ozzie Smith (.523). Yeah, Ozzie is only there for his glove. Rounding out the lineup are 1915 Joe Jackson (.862), 2013 Buster Posey (.826) and 1981 George Brett (.855). Posey is the only hitter with double-digit homers, so we will play in AT&T Park for additional assistance to the pitchers who aren’t named Walsh in minimizing the long ball. The overall team speed is pretty good with Raines and McGee leading the way, and the defense is solid up the middle at least.

5449 PA, .290/.358/.417, 58 HR, 178-99 SB-CS, $40.3M
1360 IP, 2.48 ERA, .225 OAV, 1.02 WHIP, 0.58 HR/9, $39.6M


100M: Fear of Normalization

Our division drafted from 1914, 1930, 1999 and 2015. It’s a good mix of eras and we created decent depth at key positions. I had the last season pick and struggled to find the right balance. Did we need more deadball pitching? More choices from a modern year? I felt ultimately that we’d need a bit more offense to throw at the deadball arms, and 1930 had a nice combination of options at all the key defensive positions. It added nothing to the pitching, really, but 1914 and 2015 provided enough for four rosters, I felt.

Here’s my round-by-round (written as we picked, for, you know, that valuable mindset insight):
1.1 - 2015 Clayton Kershaw (1.69 ERC#, 0.91 WHIP#) - Of the “Big 3” from that season, Kershaw has the most value and he’s also one of the few good lefties available to us. I was tempted to take Claude Hendrix’s 381 innings but felt I had to grab Kershaw now.
2.3 - 1914 Claude Hendrix (1.72, 0.96) - Surprisingly, he fell to me anyway. The other owners went for good value with a little worse performance and kept their salaries low. I basically punted on salary and overspent a bit on my top two pitchers. But I feel pretty good about what I can do if I get this team into the postseason now.
3.4 - 1930 Frankie Frisch (.876 OPS#) - Frisch is one of my favorite sim 2B, and he brings a switch bat with good contact and solid glove. It’s not his best year or anything, nor one with much speed, but he’s the right price for this cap.
4.4 - 1930 Earl Averill (.909) - His 2.55 RF is a little lower than I like in CF, but he’s got close to a .400 OBP# with 80 speed and comes in at under $5.5M. If I can spend a little more elsewhere later and make him a corner OF, all the better.
5.3 - 1914 Frank Baker (.859) - I’m trying to average around $6M per position player and build a solid, deep lineup that isn’t homer-reliant and plays good defense. This $6.3M Baker has a B/B+ glove, hits for a decent average and gets on base.
6.4 - 2015 Tony Watson (1.94, 0.99) - I was set to take SS Xander Bogaerts here, but discodemo grabbed him the pick before. I’ll get a SS later. For now, I’ll grab one of the only decent affordable lefty relievers.
7.3 - 2015 Brad Ziegler (1.76, 0.99) - I need some RP who aren’t going to break the bank, because I overspent a bit on the top two SP
8.3 - 1930 Earle Combs (.914) - He’s under $6M with good AVG, OBP and speed to man one of the corner OF spots and lead off.
9.3 - 1914 Al Mamaux (2.15, 1.09) - A good value swingman with 67 IP.
10.2 - 2015 Marcus Stroman (2.17, 1.00) - His 27 innings aren’t as important as that they’re very good for the money.
11.1 - 1930 Harry Heilmann (.943) - I could use a good righty bat to balance things out, and he’s got great range at 1B (where there are few decent affordable options that aren’t HR dependent) or OF if I need him there.
12.1 - 1914 Fritz Coumbe (2.25, 1.10) - 66 swingman innings from the left side. Trying to figure out what I’ll left for my last SP and most expensive bat by filling other pieces first.
13.1 - 2015 Elvis Andrus (.658) - I wanted to save some salary at SS and still get great defense. I won’t get much from him offensively, but he has 82 speed and hit 34 doubles at least.
14.1 - 2015 Jared Eickhoff (2.42, 1.07) - Trying to keep adding usable innings while staying within budget.
15.1 - 1999 Rick Aguilera (2.19, 0.94) - He’s a little less effective than I’d like for a late-inning guy, but my budget math says this is what I can afford if I’m going to make this work.
16.1 - 2015 Mark Melancon (1.84, 0.96) - I felt like I needed a third pretty good late-inning arm and will spend a bit more here than I’d like to. It means my SP3 won’t be quite as good if I’m going to keep my pitching under $50M as desired. But Melancon, Watson and Ziegler are a solid combo.
17.1 - 1999 David Segui (.853) - To back Heilmann up at 1B
18.1 - 1914 Benny Kauff (.996) - Finally settled on the final key lineup piece, a speedy high OBP guy to lead off.
19.1 - 1999 Sal Fasano (.851) - After toysboys took Ben Petrick, the other sub-1M backup catcher who can hit, I figured I should grab Fasano now. My starter will wait a round.
20.1 - 1999 Mike Piazza (.905) - He can be the guy on the team who hits homers occasionally. A full-time catcher for under $5M who hit .300 with 40 homers seems like a good choice even if we face a lot of deadball arms.
21.1 - 1914 Doc Ayers (2.62, 1.09) - Not the SP3 I dreamed up when I started this draft, but he’s what I need and can afford at this point. His 280 IP get me up to 1393, so I’ll likely draft a mopup with what’s left over.
22.3 - 1914 Ken Nash (.754) - A cheap backup infielder
23.3 - 2015 Brandon Morrow (2.87, 1.12) - So I had enough left to go a tad cheaper on the remaining bench bats and get another pitcher who can be useful, albeit with just 33 innings.
24.4 - 2015 Oswaldo Arcia (.709) - Backup outfielder and pinch hitter
25.4 - 1930 Joe Kuhel (.746) - Another backup 1B to allow Heilmann to play some OF when necessary.

I’m pretty pleased with how this unfolded and like my team. I feel like everyone drafted smartly in our division and all the rosters are going to be pretty competitive. This might be the league with the smallest range of records.

I have four 1930 hitters in my starting lineup, so if they normalize even worse than the game says they should I might be in trouble. And Piazza could be rendered pretty useless by deadball starters, too. I expect about half the SP in the league to be deadball, so maybe I should have gone a different direction there.

I’ll put this team in South End Grounds because we hit a lot of singles and have some guys who hit triples pretty well. We just hit the cutoff, because it went out of use after 1914.

5512 PA, .323/.390/.501, 131 HR, 165-111 SB-CS, $49.9M
1426 IP, 2.09 ERA, .211 OAV, 0.97 WHIP, 0.36 HR/9, $50.1M

110M: Gonna Cry 96 Tears

I researched every available season at least twice to make sure I didn’t miss an option I’d really like. I’m looking forward to seeing how people went other directions because they didn’t have the same parameters as I looked for, though. My system was to look at pitching season by season and compare the available best arms with the Win% rankings to see whether there were the makings of a workable rotation and at least some type of bullpen. I didn’t go as far as checking the full roster of every Ugly team, where a few clone-worthy gems might have been hiding. Congrats if you went that far and made a great discovery.

I built 6-7 rosters and had three I liked the best: 1944, 1964 and 1996. There was also a 1998 offense that was really strong, too. What it came down to was looking at how much salary I had to waste on each roster to make it work, and all of them had some.

My 1944 roster (Cardinals-Red Sox-Dodgers) featured two Whit Wyatt clones in the rotation with Tex Hughson and Mort Cooper and a thin bullpen. Joe Cronin and Paul Waner clones join Stan Musial, Dixie Walker and Bob Walker for a pretty potent offense. But there’s a lot of wasted PA just to get to the cap. It’s a solid team though.

I really love the pitching and defense for 1964 (White Sox-Dodgers-Colt 45s). A Koufax clone joins his 64 version and Joe Horlen and Don Drysdale for a formidable rotation, with Hoyt Wilhelm and Eddie Fisher eating up the late innings. The gloves of Ron Hansen, Pete Ward, Willie Davis, a Jim Wynn clone, a Pete Runnels clone and Johnny Roseboro would almost certainly be the league’s best. But, yeah, you have to be able to hit. And they really just pale in comparison to my other rosters. I’d love to see if they could pull off a competitive showing, but I couldn’t risk it.

That left me with my 1996 combo of Braves-Marlins-Phillies, and (as I wrote a month ago when I built the roster and now can see proved more accurate than I expected) I’ll be shocked if there aren’t a few of these in the league. Spoiler alert: It’s most of the league. Though more owners went with the Giants as the Ugly team rather than the Phillies, fully 15 of the rosters are from 1996. Either a lot of us are on the right track … or maybe I should have gone with one of my other rosters. Not that I would have liked to see that 1964 team try to hit against these 1996 pitching staffs.

As will seem familiar to everyone soon enough, you get awesome SP from Kevin Brown (1.93, 0.94), Greg Maddux (2.14, 1.03), John Smoltz (2.09, 1.00) and (with the Phillies) Curt Schilling (2.49, 1.08), the four best from the whole season. And using 92 Schilling (2.01, 1.03) with one of my clones makes it even better. The bullpen isn’t deep, with short inning Rick Helling (1.13, 0.75) and Pedro Borbon (1.57, 0.91) boosted by Robb Nen (1.99, 1.06) plus a 2000 Nen clone (1.28, 0.81). I barely have any lefty innings.

The offense is a good blend with slug from Gary Sheffield (1.076), a 1998 Scott Rolen clone (.908), Chipper Jones (.909, playing SS with a barely adequate glove), Benito Santiago (.821) and Fred McGriff (.845). A 1990 Lenny Dykstra clone (.863) leads off, and there’s a productive platoon of Jim Eisenreich (.875) and Mark Whiten (.834) and a three-headed second base collection with good gloves and speed. There were lots of ways to put the offense together depending on your clone choice, and second base is particularly awkward. But I tinkered until I settled on this group.

I’m “only” carrying 6,153 PA so there’s waste but not as much as other seasons. The pitching staff should all get used at least, with 1,499 innings. The ballpark choices aren’t perfect fits here, but Fulton County is the closest match to my offense, with an emphasis on singles and homers. Joe Robbie and Veterans Stadium just don’t fit at all. I’ll have to hope my pitchers aren’t too scarred by the extra homers.

If I were starting these themes over now, I would probably have made this a $100M league and the draft $110M instead. I didn’t really know how either would play out exactly. But we all have the same rules and made them work for us.

6153 PA, .293/.384/.485, 218 HR, 148-55 SB-CS, $54.8M
1499 IP, 2.59 ERA, .217 OAV, 1.01 WHIP, 0.53 HR/9, $55.0M

120M: Is That a Tanana in My Bullpen?

I built one roster from each set of boxes to see which I liked better. I was pretty sure I’d go with Group 2 after building that roster, and as it played out that didn’t change. I think these groups of players proved that WAR and sim desirability aren’t quite the same thing. At least the groupings provided plenty of options for building rosters the way you prefer, that is so long as you don’t like a lot of lefty relievers on your staff. Those were in pretty short supply.

A: 1929 Rogers Hornsby (1.103 OPS#) - Fittingly my most expensive hitter, and he doesn’t have to play the field
B: 1998 Greg Maddux (1.92 ERC#, 0.97 WHIP#) - I couldn’t afford his two best seasons, but he will top my rotation
C: 2002 Pedro Martinez (1.85, 0.92) - Again, I couldn’t afford the two best seasons. Still pretty good.
D: 2020 Clayton Kershaw (1.80, 0.85) - It worked out better to use a slightly lower inning version of him in a tandem
E: 1928 Frankie Frisch (.799) - The usual great glove at 2B and a switch bat with decent speed for the bottom of the order
F: 1938 Johnny Mize (1.039) - Solid 1B bat with lots of doubles and triples
G: 1921 Goose Goslin (.704) - A 261K bench guy
H: 2005 Roy Halladay (2.14, 0.96) - A good tandem partner for Kershaw or long relief
I: 1916 Joe Jackson (.924) - Loads of doubles and triples and solid defense in a corner OF
J: 2018 Chris Sale (1.71, 0.88) - He’ll be part of another tandem to round out a 4-man (6-pitcher rotation)
K: 1973 Frank Tanana (2.23, 1.06) - This 27 innings are all I have for a lefty in the pen
L: 2010 Mariano Rivera (1.46, 0.84) - Part of the bullpen corps
M: 1935 Joe Medwick (.956) - Lots of doubles and triples and a solid corner OF glove here, too
N: 1898 Jimmy Collins (.873) - An A++ range guy at 3B and a good bat in the 5 or 6 hole
O: 1920 Dave Bancroft (.761) - An A++ range guy at SS and a switch hitter with decent speed, too. A little short on PA, though
P: 1972 Ted Simmons (.817) - Another switch bat, plus he doesn’t need a backup
Q: 1958 Bob Lemon - Mopup man
R: 1993 Devon White (.762) - Well, someone had to play CF without costing too much, and he’s got speed and hits a lot of doubles. The bottom half of the order will be all switch bats.
S: 1938 Dizzy Dean (1.88, 0.94) - A solid 80 innings of long relief
T: 2009 Omar Vizquel (.636) - He’ll spell Bancroft at SS
U: 1973 Steve Rogers (2.10, 1.08) - Will either be in a tandem or long relief
V: 1986 George Foster (.600) - 200K bench guy
W: 1933 Dolph Camilli (.686) - Another bench bat
X: 1946 Schoolboy Rowe (2.04, 0.98) - Can provide innings in a tandem or late in games as needed
Y: 1981 Rich Gossage (1.20, 0.79) - Joins Rivera as the late inning specialists

I like the balance of this team, strong defensively with decent speed, some pop but more focus on doubles and triples when facing what I assume will be a lot of deadball pitchers. I didn’t really take any decent pinch hitters, so the thin bench will just spell guys here and there. Aside from Hornsby, the rest of the lineup is largely in the $6-7M range so not really using anyone’s best season. I think there’s enough offense there.

The pitching staff only has two true relievers but everyone is good enough to be used in late innings if need be. I’m not exactly sure how the tandems will work out, but I’ll likely be shuffling guys in and out of the rotation all season. I figure Maddux and Pedro make all the starts they can, and the rest work into the gaps in between.

We’ll play in the Metrodome to boost the doubles and triples.

6405 PA, .320/.379/.503, 153 HR, 120-72 SB-CS, $62.7M
1451 IP, 2.13 ERA, .209 OAV, 0.97 WHIP, 0.51 HR/9, $57.2M

130M: Chain Link Offense

In the “now it can be told” category, one of the initial versions of this theme required that you use a more expensive player with each link in the chain. I tried a few iterations to see if I could make it work, and it just fell apart after about 7 or 8 players every time. This setup is much more manageable, though it’s still pretty tricky. I tried working forward and backward on a couple permutations and tended to hit a wall somewhere in the middle. I had to give up on some players I really wanted to use but just couldn’t get the hitter/pitcher thing to work out. Others just weren’t going to be able to make use of the full salary or would waste a bunch.

The roster that finally came together made me content enough not to try to make another one. While it’s certainly not the collection of players I would have chosen without all these restrictions, I think I wound up with a strong offense, so-so defense, so-so starting pitching and strong bullpen. Here’s how it builds:

1930 Babe Ruth (1.196 OPS#) - Homers are going to play in this league based on the available years, and this was the earliest Ruth I could make work and afford.
1934 Lefty Gomez (2.20 ERC#, 1.06 WHIP#) - I needed a pitcher to bridge to the next hitter I wanted, and Gomez is good but not really elite for this cap. I’m trying to remind myself that we all mostly started somewhere in the 20s or 30s and will likely have a couple pitchers who don’t quite measure up. If I could have found a lower inning guy who worked, I would have. I probably missed him, and having these innings set kept me from using a better SP later. I’m sure I’ll regret not working harder to find a cheaper pitcher here.
1937 Lou Gehrig (1.086) - If you’re starting with Ruth, why not use Gehrig and give the lineup a dangerous 1-2 punch?
1946 Red Ruffing (1.66, 0.98) - Here’s more what I wanted with the first pitcher spot, 65 solid innings.
1950 Yogi Berra (.888) - As long as we’re rolling with Yankees, let’s grab a catcher who doesn’t need a backup. I’ve got some nice lefty punch in this lineup.
1951 Tom Ferrick (2.26, 0.99) - This 44 innings as a Senator should work in long relief
1959 Eddie Yost (.873) - He isn’t my favorite 3B, with a solid but unspectacular bat and glove. Still, he walks a ton and made the bridge work. Can keep the lineup moving.
1962 Hank Aguirre (2.17, 1.05) - Like Gomez, he’s a lefty SP who isn’t quite as good as I’d pick at this cap. But he keeps the chain moving and hopefully won’t hurt me much.
1968 Rocky Colavito (.637) - I needed to get to the Dodgers, and this 462K scrub version gets me there.
1970 Bill Singer (2.31, 1.04) - He’s not great either but will do some spot starting and long relief
1971 Billy Grabarkewitz (.699) - A backup infielder who gets me to …
1972 Don Sutton (1.75, 0.95) - He’s the ace of the staff. I wish I had one more guy with his stats, though.
1976 Manny Mota (.728) - A useful pinch hitter, but I don’t really need one.
1977 Elias Sosa (1.69, 0.85) - A useful reliever
1980 Reggie Smith (.909) - Gives me a solid half season at an OF corner
1994 Steve Howe (1.34, 0.83) - Taking a large leap to get a good lefty bullpen piece
1999 Bernie Williams (.931) - Using his best season in CF
2008 Mariano Rivera (1.01, 0.66) - Many of his seasons would have worked, but fortunately I could fit one of his very best
2010 Robinson Cano (.902) - I get to use his best season at 2B with a sterling glove and plenty productive bat
2016 Mark Melancon (1.62, 0.91) - I didn’t remember that he spent any time in the Bronx, but he’s an excellent addition to my bullpen
2017 Bryce Harper (.989) - Just under 500 PA to platoon with Reggie Smith.
2018 Sean Doolittle (0.93, 0.62) - The bullpen keeps getting better
2021 Trea Turner (.904) - He’s not quite as good defensively as I’d like at SS, but I couldn’t find another way to make this chain work. He can hit and run, though.
2022 Tony Gonsolin (1.69, 0.91) - Just 130 innings, but a critical part of the rotation
2023 Mookie Betts (.973) - A great offensive season from the right side to balance out the lineup a bit.

We have to play in Yankee I, which is a pitchers’ park, but with a pretty loaded offense I think we’ll be able to put runs on the board anyway as every lineup spot had 20 homers-plus. Come to think of it, my starters will really appreciate the help. This is probably a 90-loss team anyway. I don’t think this rotation measures up well enough.

6710 PA, .321/.417/.553, 303 HR, 95-48 SB-CS, $71.7M
1455 IP, 2.15 ERA, .215 OAV, 0.96 WHIP, 0.54 HR/9, $57.9M

Still surprised that I made it this far, looking forward to playing things out. Thanks again to the organizers who helped put this all together.

WISC70 – Tap the Rockies

First of all, big shouts to whoever came up with this theme idea. You are crazy and I admire you. So when I looked at this theme at this cap I knew immediately like I’m sure many did that there were going to be places that you had to lean in, and places where you had to accept trade offs. I love building teams that hit home runs and figuring at this cap its going to be hard to get pitchers that limit home runs without sacrificing something else, so I decided to go for it. Wound up with 211 home runs headlined by 21 Max Muncy, 82 Bob Horner, and 77 Reggie Jackson all in the 30s. Only guy who will play regularly that really doesn’t is 21 Nicky Lopez and I know he’s a mainstay for a lot of people at this low cap. Didn’t look at range at all, did try and emphasize fielding so that whatever balls this team gets to (that stays in the park, more on that in a moment) they’ll catch

Took all thirteen slots for pitchers, I do have Tommy Milone and then two other sub 500k guys that while they aren’t mops, they also aren’t great. I have six guys that can start, I’ll probably shuttle in and out until I see who the sim likes. Then I have a couple big inning and a couple moderate inning relievers. Worked to minimize walks (successfully), OAV and K/9 where I could, and then completely ignored HR/9.

See what everyone else decides here before I settle on whether or not my plan looks like it’ll work or not -- Edit: Having looked at some innings counts, I'm either way short and am going to death spiral or I made some good bets.

5,362 PA, .272/.375/.475, 211 HR, B/D
1,413 IP, .239/1.07, 5.76 K/9, 1.56 BB/9, 1.06 HR/9

WISC80 – The Generic Versions

Its interesting looking back on this team having built it over three months ago now with the intent, really to maximize my chances at the $140 million Round 1 team without necessarily expecting that I’d get here, but yet, here I am. I think this team can do some things, good range in the outfield with 66 Yaz, 21 Carey, and 84 Lynn. At least B range at 2B, 3B, and SS in the infield, 09 Votto to get on base and 85 Fisk somewhere in the line up to hit home runs and drive guys in.

Pitching has 13 Mathewson and 05 Brown as bigger innings guys, then 43 Niggeling (full season version) and 90 Tudor as other guys who can start, bull pen guys are alright too.

No idea if this team is going to be good or not, but they won’t be a trainwreck (hopefully)

5,362 PA, .283/.367/.451, C/C+ (A lot of this is due to bench guys who still won’t play much)
1,303 IP, .226/1.03, 4.77 K/9, 1.79 BB/9, .42 HR/9

WISC100 – I ChooChooChoose 2022

All I’ll say about this team first is if its bad, its 100% my fault, first time I’d ever done a draft league and was curious as to how it would go, and other than missing on 2022 Max Scherzer I got everyone I wanted. I hope I did good,

As far as strategy, after some searching settled on 2022 as the year I wanted to take for our division mostly because I knew that I wanted modern pitching and that this year had enough to where I (conceivably) could have built an entire staff of just these guys. 1915, 1968, and 1996 gave me some other interesting stuff to work with that I set about trying to figure out. My pitching staff wound up with 9 of 12 guys from 2022, got six guys who can start, Verlander, Alcantara, McClanahan, Kershaw, and Rasmussen, plus 96 Maddux. Was going to go for Sandy as my second pick so was glad to get him much later. Bullpen has guys like 22 Minter, 22 Phillips, and 22 Andres Munoz. Stumbled into 22 DeGrom and said yes please. He’ll probably close.

Hitters don’t really hit home runs which isn’t always the direction that I go, but I got good fielding and guys whose numbers might not be great on paper since they come from 1915 and 1968 but hopefully normalize well. Took a LONG and unhappy look at 96 A-Rod when considering if I wanted or needed him and decided to take a pass. I like my guys. 68 Bench, Rose, and Reggie Smith, 15 Fred Luderus (who), Bobby Veach, and Honus, then 22 Andres Gimenez and Jose Ramirez.

Like I said, I don’t know, but I’m interested.

5,581 PA, .292/.357/.450, 114 HR (325 2B, 60 3B), B+/B
1,422 IP, .206/.94, 9.17 K/9, 1.73 BB/9, .67 HR/9

WISC110 – Pennsylvania + Seattle

Other than the draft (obviously) this was the last team that came together for me idea wise and really kind of happened per chance. I’ve been playing around quite a bit with building teams for other leagues using the early 90s Pirates teams as a basis so I knew that there might be something there, but the game was really trying to settle on on the other two teams – and that if I could find two other good teams that would let me figure out which Pirates team to use. Hit on the 92 Phillies because of the 92 Schilling and Daulton seasons, but found that there was definitely more there as far as hitters, and also had the ability to get another Schilling season to reinforce my pitching.

Then got lead to the 92 Mariners, the 92 Randy season isn’t awful (walks are really high) and then they had 92 Edgar which filled a need for me at 3B, and then (and this is a true story) as I was monkeying around with building this team I went for a walk outside and had an epiphany, Bret Boone is on this team, which allowed me to take his 01 Season (Steroids baby) and plug that in at second base to go along with two Randy clones to again help beef up my pitching.

Will this team be good? Maybe, I don’t know.

6,481 PA, .300/.378/.481 B-/B-
1,490 IP, .216/1.11, 8.47 K/9, 2.92 BB/9, .59 HR/9

WISC120 – WARriors Come Out to Play

Like many I’m sure, I built teams for both sides and considered both of them. Wound up going with column A in order to get access to Walter Johnson and Ed Walsh to take care of the majority of my innings. I’m going to run them in tandems with CC Sabathia with Johnson, and Cliff Lee with Walsh. I’m a little worried that the Cliff Lee might be short of innings (only 104) but I’ll follow and adjust if needs be, Walsh might eventually go on his own. Rest of the pitchers are obviously short inning guys. Candelaria and especially Buehrle are really just there to mop up, but even neither of them are awful.

After deciding on a row, there was no real cohesive plan for hitters other than to try and account for good fielding and not take (too many) useless plate appearances. Got a bunch of guys that I’m familiar with although in some cases not seasons that I’ve used. 81 Eddie is usually good for me, 28 Hartnett and 25 Max Carey. Hopeful for 07 Crawford to get me extra base hits and Eddie Stanky to lead off and get on base against leftys and bat 9th and hopefully turn the line up over against righties. The low PA Ryan Braun will be my DH, and then 1886 Jim O’Rourke will fill in at catcher, outfield (some) and DH.

I’ve fallen for this pitching strategy some in other themes, so again, hopeful

6,533 PA, .311/.390/.495, C+/B
1,495 IP, .208/.93, 6.91 K/9, 1.58 BB/9, .19 HR/9

WISC130 – Its A-Mize’ing

Once I kind of got my feet under me I had a lot of fun playing around with different chains for this theme. Wound up building four teams all the way out a Joe DiMaggio team (that I realized I screwed up on after building it and setting it aside), a 40 Johnny Mize team, a 54 Willie Mays team, before finally trying to see what I could do with a team that had 69 Reggie Jackson as an anchor. The first 18 or so guys in the Reggie chain were pretty easy but man I must have tried so many different ways to settle on a team that I liked with those last 7 or so picks, I even entered the team for a few days, but after a roster issue I pulled it and went with the Mize team instead, mostly because the offensively heavy Reggie team was in the Coliseum and I decided I wanted a team that played to its stadium better, so entered the Mize team

Starting with Mize got a big group from the 1940s Cardinals including 42 Musial, 47 Harry Walker, and 49 Enos Slaughter as hitter,s with 43 Pollett, 48 Brecheen, and 50 Jim Hearn (a Giants version) as pitchers. Got some 50s and 60s Orioles, some 70s Yankees, before chronologically ending up with 06 Jorge Posada as my chronological last guy.

Full chain looks like this 40 Mize - 41 Ira Hutchinson - 42 Musial - 43 Pollett - 47 Harry Walker - 48 Brecheen - 49 Slaughter - 50 Hearn - 53 Dark - 58 Wilhelm - 64 Brooks Robinson - 69 Dick Hall - 71 Rettenmund - 76 Grant Jackson - 77 Munson - 78 Guidry - 80 Randolph - 82 Gossage - 83 Mumphrey - 86 Scott - 90 Bill Doran - 95 Charlton - 00 Sojo - 05 Rivera - 06 Posada

Will be very interested to see how this team performs

6,800 PA, .315/.392/.494, B-/B
1,497 IP, .193/.94, 7.22 K/9, 2.34 BB/9, .40 HR/9

70M - Dummy's Crummies
I have used this name before for a low cap team starring William "Dummy" Hoy, and thought I would continue that tradition in WISC. It is very timely, because a couple weeks ago The Athletic published an article about an ongoing campaign to get Hoy into The Hall of Fame. Here it is, if you want to read. I believe it is not behind a paywall.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7610652/2026/09/20/deaf-mlb-dummy-hoy-hall-of-fame/?unlocked_article_code=1.ClE.7ddY.7olD3lycqDb0&source=emp_shared_article&smid=ta-ios-share

Nicknamed "Dummy" because he was deaf and did not speak (People were very compassionate in the late 1800s). He was 5'6" and one of the fastest players in baseball. He accumulated 2,048 hits and 596 stolen bases over a 14-season career, while playing stellar defense in CF. When he retired he was the all-time leader in GP, putouts, assists (still ranks 7th), and double plays (still ranks 3rd) in CF. Because he could not hear umpires shouting calls, Hoy and his coaches developed a system of visual hand signals (such as raising a right hand for a strike). This visual communication system revolutionized the sport and popularized the modern hand signals used by baseball umpires today.

The rest of the team is built with similar type players. Fast and rangey with no power to speak of. Mostly singles hitters who will steal some bases, I am playing towards the +3 1B in Coors instead of the homers. It's cheaper to fade power, and I need savings wherever I can find it at 70 mil in all Colorado league. The pitching staff keeps the ball in the park as much as possible with the limited funds and they don't walk anyone. The downside is that they have a .254 OAV, so plenty of balls in play for Dummy and friends to get after.

Biggest concern was what to do for innings. My round 1 70 mil team made the World Series with 1,302 nnings, but this is a whole different ball game. I settled on 1,463 here, but I have never played in a league like this, so who knows.

80M - Vowel Balls II
I actually have high hopes for this team because I tailored my original build more towards the 80 mil than the 140. Everyone I picked had a purpose on the 80 mil team and I'm hoping that pays off here. My 140 bench had Billy North, Dode Paskert, Taylor Douthit who are all key players on the 80 mil team. The "star" players like Solly Hofman, Max Carey, Babe Adams, Addie Joss, Pie Traynor were also picked because I like to use them at 80 mil.

I know how this goes. The team you have the highest hopes for will likely be the worst, but I did give this one a lot of thought. I even wrote a post about how I think that in future, we should consider having a 2-part theme like this in the same round. I think the real skill that should be rewarded is building both the teams at the same time, and some people who may have done this really well, didn't make round 2 at all. So you can be rewarded for going all in on the 140.

100M - Vivaldi Veterans
My seasons were 1903, 1909, 1981, 2024. I don't really have comments here other than that I had first pick and decided to wait to draft pitching. As a result, I ended up taking 1909 Christy Mathewson, who is way too expensive for 100 mil. Maybe I can get away with it, because it was a draft, but I have a lot of budget tied up there, so there will obviously be weaknesses elsewhere.

110M - The Prof, The Browns, & The Barrys
My write-up is in the other thread

120M - Daddy WAR-Box
I went with Group 2 and never even attempted a Group 1 team after I got finished.

A - Pete Alexander - I'm using the 33 IP version, Left a lot of great players out there to do this
B - Christy Mathewson - 411 IP SP.
C - Robin Roberts - 1965 RP is a player I love at all caps
D - Pete Rose - This was one of the last decisions and I went with the low PA 1984 Rose to help at DH
E - Harry Heilmann - Starting DH
F - John Smoltz - A 3rd starting pitcher where I am using a relief season
G - Don Sutton - Always use him at 120M if I can
H - Billy Hamilton - Used 1893 with 542 PA because I had some bench PA in the OF
I - Early Wynn - Relief option obviously. Has a super cheap season that's not great, but also not quite mop-up either
J - Mike Piazza - Actually using his worst season at 75 PA just to fill in for Ewing
K - Billy Herman - Starting 2B
L - Orel Hershiser - Just like Wynn, a super cheap season that's decent, but definitely not mop-up despite price
M - Vada Pinson - Starting OF
N - Jimmy Collins - Starting 3B
O - Dave Bancroft - Starting SS
P - Jacob Degrom - 2018 is another SP who I like to use at 120M
Q - Tommy Leach - 110 PA season that I can use in the OF or at 3B is needed
R - Buck Ewing - Starting C - Under 600 PA so I'll have to find rest
S - Edd Roush - I like to use 1920 at 1B, but he's useful in a few places
T - Lon Warneke - I don't like this one. I wanted to use the 115 IP Joss here, but I couldn't make it work. He's not that great either. This was going to be a weak spot no matter what
U - Matt Holliday - <400K
V - Corey Seager - SS platoon with Bancroft
W - Sad Sam Jones - Another sub-par bullpen arm. Definitely the weakness of this team
X - Schoolboy Rowe - 1946 is very useful as a long bullpen arm or spot starter. I have a 3 man rotation that includes DeGrom, so he will be needed to start. Or maybe a tandem
Y - Cy Seymour - My final starting OF

This team is ok, but I think I could have done better. I spent too much time on the next theme...

130M - Goose Pu
I tried a bunch of builds starting with players I used a lot from the early 1920s, but I immediately ran into problems, and just didn't like where the teams were headed. Mostly because I didn't want any starting pitchers from the first 40 years or so, and it was difficult to build early on, and not know if I would be able to get to pitchers I wanted.

I decided to try a different approach, which was to start with a pitcher I liked, on a team who was not at the end of the 1920-2025 range, and then work forwards and backwards at the same time. I tried this a few times, and finally had the team I wanted which started with 1996 Kevin Brown. Here's how I worked both ways from that point.


*Note that I also preferred working the chain backwards in term of finding players. As opposed to forwards where you are looking at current teammates, when you work backwards, you just look at all the teams your player was previously on, and search those specific teams.

I wanted to lock in another pitcher right away if I could, and there are few quality ones within a decade of Brown. One of which is Mike Scott. Looking through the Texas teams, the obvious link to get to the Astros was Nolan Ryan. 1991 Ryan was the only one I really liked, so I needed a 1992-1994 Ranger hitter to fill the gap. I decided on 1994 Ivan Rodriguez who is decent, but fills catcher early which I liked.

I then added 1991 Nolan Ryan (173 IP) who was on the Astros from 80-88. 1986 Mike Scott is the target, so I just needed a player on the Astros from 1987 - 1988. There was no one good, unfortunately, so I added 1987 Mark Bailey (233K) and 75 PA at catcher. Pudge is only 576 PA, so this works nicely if I'm not able to add another good catcher as I continue. I now have a really nice 1-2 with Brown and Scott and I'm hoping at this point that most people are working forwards from 1920 and have likely filled most of their rotation by the time they get to the 1990s, so this team might be unique if anything.

I honestly can't remember how or why I did my next step, but I recall not being interested in any hitters from the 96 Marlins, so I started looking for cheap bench players that could send me somewhere interesting. I somehow landed on 2001 Billy McMillon who was on the A's that had Isringhausen. I then added 2002 Jason Isringhausen, which is his best season. I decided this was the right path because now I had access to a bunch of Pujols options at various price points, so I plugged in 2005 Albert Pujols. There are a few reliever options on the Cards teams, but since I wasn't sure which Pujols I would end up using, I decided to go back to Mike Scott and continue working backwards. In hindsight, it was probably not the best starting strategy to use 2 chains on sub 300K players so early. I only have 13 total hitters and this is a DH league.

I decided on 1983 Jerry Mumphrey (167 PA) because a lot of these builds end up with a few OFs that are sub 700 PA and require a low PA platoon to fill in. He's also a good enough hitter to give me DH PA if needed. Mumphrey was also on a bunch of different teams in the early 80s and late 70s and I like options.

The best one was the Yankees who had the really good 1981 Goose Gossage. Modern teams are the best place to find relievers and I was running out of options already to get a stud bullpen arm. I saw there might be a path to 1978 Guidry here so I moved on.

I worked through a bunch of options to get to Guidry, but I realized I was wasting too much money and roster spots on scrubs since I already had McMillon and Bailey. I needed a usable player here, in fact all the rest of my hitters need to be starters I think. The winner was 1979 Oscar Gamble who can be part of a DH platoon at either 320 PA or 130 PA. I like options, but now every other hitter I take needs to be full-time except for an OF and a DH

I saw Gamble was on the 1972 Phillies, so I gave up on the Guidry quest for good, and added 1972 Steve Carlton, who I had a love/hate relationship with in the round 1 $110M league. This team has a 130M cap so I'm not expecting this to go well, but I moved on. I liked getting a bunch of innings here though. Leaves me the option of using 200K pitchers later to get the hitters I want.

I thought there would be more full-time options on the 1960's Cards, but I don't want to move back in time too far and I was happy to get 1967 Curt Flood to play CF. It's the best Flood and he has 566 PA, which now makes the Mumphrey pick look even better. I briefly toyed with ways to get 68 Gibson, but I think that's too many starters and I can't afford it. From there I had a few relief pitching options, but went with 1963 Bobby Shantz who played on a bunch of teams. The easy winner was the 1957-1958 Yankees and Mickey Mantle. I didn't think I could afford 57, but 1958 Mickey Mantle was the right price point. I settled on this real fast when I found a cheap link with 1957 Sal Maglie (28 IP) to the 1950's Giants. Maybe not a good idea to complete my OF without having a 2B,SS,3B, but I added 54 Mays to finish it off. This stayed for awhile, but after finishing my team, I had to go back and remove Mays and the mop-up reliever that led me to my next step.

I'm concerned about the infield here so I just started looking for quality infielders from this era. I found 1950 Eddie Stanky who had a .460 OBP and solid defense on the 1950 Giants at a reasonable price, so I decided to get here. Maglie still worked as the link, which is why I chose Mays to remove when I ran into problems.

Nice to fill 2B there, but SS and 3B are a concern. I thought I had a link that got me to 1937 Harlon Clift and then to Luke Appling, but that fell apart when I realized I had a teammate error. I could have used a crappy 1944 Whit Wyatt to link Stanky directly to Appling, but then I noticed I could also get to 1943 Bill Herman (3B) before that. From Herman I went to 1938 Dizzy Dean for a really nice 80 IP season. This is the moment I had to dump Mays, as I found a path to Appling, but I needed a 30's Cardinal, and 1937 Joe Medwick was by far the best option. From there I used a mop-up 1936 George Earnshaw to get to 1935 Luke Appling to complete all the positions. My original version had 1936 Appling, but I think this team is more balanced. I also had enough money to change Wyatt to a slightly better 1944 Fritz Ostermueller

I'm now only in need of a part-time DH on offense, and I'm pretty good in innings with 1,367 of decent pitchers and almost 100 IP of ****** ones. I can also go forward from Pujols or back from Appling. I had one option where I went from Pujols to Kiko Calero to Hanley Ramirez which was a perfect part-time season. But I was a bit over the cap and it's an impossible task to fix it at this point. I instead went backwards and used a cheap 1931 Garland Braxton to get to the Senators and 1928 Goose Goslin. My second Goose! With 556 PA, I then changed Gamble to the 128 PA version to complete the DH platoon. I also had the cap to upgrade to 2009 Albert Pujols

The downside of working backwards like this is that I didn't know my park until the final step. If it's Goslin, then Griffith stadium is minus for homers which doesn't help Mantle or Pujols who both hit 45+. It does make the Mays removal easier to handle and I think my pitchers need the help, and I want the ball to stay in the park for them because I actually have decent range on this team. The strength is the OBP with 6 players having OBP better than .435.

I like this team and it was very satisfying how it came together, but I have no idea what you other smart people did, so I have no predictions.

Lineup without scrubs:
C - 1994 Pudge Rodriguez
1B - 2009 Albert Pujols
2B - 1950 Eddie Stanky
3B - 1943 Billy Herman
SS - 1935 Luke Appling
OF - 1937 Joe Medwick
OF - 1958 Mickey Mantle
OF - 1967 Curt Flood / 1983 Jerry Mumphrey
DH - 1928 Goose Goslin / 1979 Oscar Gamble

SP - 1996 Kevin Brown
SP - 1986 Mike Scott
SP - 1972 Steve Carlton
SP/RP - 1991 Nolan Ryan
RP - 1938 Dizzy Dean
RP - 1957 Sal Maglie
RP - 1963 Bobby Shantz
RP - 1981 Goose Gossage
RP - 2002 Jason Isringhausen

Good luck to all!

70m - A Mile Isn't High Enough

Maybe 1492 innings isn't enough? When I built this team I thought it was, but there's always a chance I'm wrong. I definitely didn't want to have too few innings because then things can spiral quickly. If you have too many innings your team is just sort of low-key bad. I planned for 1500 IP and about $36mil on pitching, with a goal of also drafting high-range players that would really mean I was spending closer to $40mil on defense. Then I just looked at the guys who were available around $23k-$24 $/IP and picked the best guys by ERC. I was going Mile High and figured no one could spend that much on power so I didn't mind some homers - I was more focused on OAV. I also tried to be a little more tolerant of walks since low BB/high OAV guys might have trouble.

As expected, the pitchers in that price range were mostly unfamiliar. C'mon down, Elmer Jacobs and Gus Dorner, you're my 1 and 2 starters. Then we've got tandems with Hank Thormahlen/George Cunningham and Cole Hamels/Scott Garrelts. The tandem guys have more innings than needed but I expect they'll work in relief and we'll skip the 1-2 guys sometimes. I've got Ace Adams and his 149ip with 2.00 ip/g in the bullpen - I guess he gets to pitch every day. Plus a handful of other guys in the 45-90 IP range to fill in the gaps.

Wally Moon at 1B and Tommy Leach at 3B anchor the offense, with Fernando Vina and Buck Weaver up the middle. All have A+ range and shaky gloves. John Kerins is catching, I expect he'll be on a lot of teams. I tried to get some triples into the lineup to take advantage of Mile High. So the outfield is Mallex Smith, Mike Kreevich and Aaron Hicks. I also tried not to be too short on PAs - I drafted some truly terrible hitters like 2020 Hunter Pence (151 PAs of 100/162/235) to soak up the low leverage PAs.

80m - Heck of a Pay Cut

I will admit, I barely looked at this team when I entered it. I built it when I made the round 1 version, put it in the draft center and everything. It was like Christmas morning when I looked at the team and found what I had left myself under the tree. So what do we have? Incredible range on defense (Connor, Lajoie, Yount, Pendleton), outfield probably a little short on PAs (Speaker 629, Marte 526, Rickey 578, Delahanty 203) and a mostly modern 5-man rotation (Arrieta 157ip, Greinke 146, Kershaw 178, Bernhard 192, Trevor Rogers 133) with Ed Walsh (117ip) as an occasional swingman. I've got a 13-man pitching staff which leaves me a little light on bats, but Ohtani 2018 is one of my bullpen guys in this round. Might as well, since there's no DH.

I'm not convinced this team is any good - Izzy and his 2.44 ERC# is my "best" reliever - but I hope the defense keeps the games close and we can win some. But at least with 1294 IP, great range and Oakland Coliseum, we probably won't get tired.

100m - A Very Moderna Pitching Staff

All credit to my division mates here. jbohrman snagged 2020 for us, which was huge. RonTheGenius picked 1888, which was certainly a good contrast. I added 1906 to the mix since we really needed more pitching - 2020 has a good crew of SPs and obviously a ton of relievers, but the reliable starters dry up quickly. Plus 1906 is not a bad year for hitters, as far as deadball seasons go. DoctorCC came through with the clutch 2014 pick to make sure we had enough bench bats and hitters who actually owned a glove.

I went with 3 straight 2020 pitchers to start (Bieber, Plesac, Kershaw - who had the benefit of removing 2014 Kershaw from the board). Passing on Honus in round 1 was a mistake which Ron immediately punished me for, but otherwise most positions were well stocked with multiple guys where I was content to take whoever was left. I finally picked a hitter in Juan Soto and his .492 OBP# in round 4, then a couple more 2020 pitchers in Brad Keller and KH Kim. With most positions looking flat, I went with King Kelly (332/393/511 at C and Hub Collins (321/390/459) for CF, the 2 toughest positions left. I settled on Story and Cano up the middle, with Roger Connor 88 at 1B. Not his best season but c'mon, he's Roger Connor.

After that I had enough guys to build myself a "shadow" team and just see if I could get all the guys on it. Anthony Rendon (296/424/481) seemed the most indispensible from that roster. I had Marco Gonzalez down and he got picked, so I swapped him out with Kyle Hendricks. Pretty much just a RH version of Marco. After that I didn't lose anyone too crucial and ended up with a team I was pretty happy with. Naturally they'll probably lose 90 games. I expect my division will be really tough but I'm cautiously optimistic that all 4 teams will be strong outside the division.

Not surprisingly, nobody took Silver King or the $10mil Lajoie. I considered Nap a few times.

2020: Soto, Trevor Story, Rendon, Josh Harrison (platoon OF), Tim Locastro (platoon OF), Hendricks, Bieber, Kershaw, Plesac, Keller (all SP), KH Kim (swingman), Archie Bradley, Urquidy, Matzek (all setup), Riley Smith (closer)

2014: Robby Cano, Chris Gimenez (backup C, Logan Watkins (249k bench guy), Ryan Wheeler (203k bench guy), Zach Putnam, Shawn Tolleson (setup)

1888: Roger Connor, King Kelly, Hub Collins

1906: Sammy Strang (platoon OF)

110mil - Clubhouse Chemistry 1996

The season everyone discovered together. I started by looking at all the elite pitchers (200ip and <2.00 ERC#) from 36-99. Unsurprisingly, there were less than I'd like. I looked at which ones were on "bad" or "ugly" teams or could be potential twist candidates. Then I looked at those seasons for other teams that could be "good" or also fit into the right spot.There were about 10 or so seasons that looked reasonable. I did miss 1985 though.

Kevin Brown and the 96 Marlins jumped out right away. The Marlins also had Sheff and Nen and Helling. The 96 Braves had a Maddux/Smoltz duo and the Giants had the promise of many Barrys. There's a reason that so many owners took this season.

The other season that jumped out at me was 1964. The Dodgers were "bad" and had great Koufax/Drysdale seasons. Adding another elite Koufax would make their pitching unbeatable. I just couldn't figure out how to make it work. I tried them with the Colt 45s and Yankees - if only Joe Morgan had qualified! The best hitters I could add with twists were Jimmy Wynn (who I love, but can be hit and miss in the sim) and 2 Pete Runnels years at 1B/2B. Mantle and Ellie Howard were OK but the Wills/Aspromonte duo at 3B/SS was just too much. I even tried building a White Sox version (instead of the Yankees) with Horlen giving me a ridiculous foursome, but Pete Ward and Ron Hansen weren't doing it as major offensive contributors.

Then I looked at 1972 - Carlton and the Phillies being the world's most famous Ugly Team, but also Cleveland with Perry and the Dodgers with Sutton that year. But neither CLE nor LAD had enough offense to make it worthwhile. I had the Reds as my good team and the Royals as bad, but really no good twist candidates there either. Another year that had potential but I sure couldn't figure it out.

One I liked better was 1997. Pedro was on a "bad" Expos team and having 2 Pedros is a good start. The Mariners with Griffey and a solid Randy season (2.22 erc#) worked well but the best candidate for "ugly" was the Phillies. Schilling twisted gave me a good 5-man rotation of Pedro x2, Schilling x2 and Randy, none worse than 2.44 ERC#. The offense was OK but it wasn't the best years of A-Rod or Rolen and starting Mike Lansing and Rondell White really dragged down the overall slash line. I could have used the Braves to get Maddux instead of Randy but their offense wasn't quite as good and didn't fit that well either. Still, this team was solid all around and could have worked.

Next up was 1992. Seemed like a good candidate with double Madduxes and the Grace/Sandberg duo on the Cubs, but 1992 was short on other good pitchers. The best bet was the Braves with Glavine (2.80erc#) and Smoltz (2.93) and that seemed too shaky for the cap based on the other teams I'd put together so far. The Mariners were the Ugly team, but I couldn't really clone Randy unless I wanted to eat his 211ip of 3.73erc#.

Having exhausted the 90s, the other years I wanted to look at were 44 and 43. 1944 had the Dodgers as an Ugly team which was good because the only way to get good pitching was to twist Whit Wyatt 3 times. I had the Cards as Good and the Red Sox as Bad so I could get Joe Cronin to play short. Even with a top 3 of Galan/Musial/Dixie Walker, the 44 team was good but not great. I tried with CLE instead of BOS, and Boudreau instead of Cronin, but missing Tex Hughson meant the pitching was even shakier. The 1943 season was similar - STL/BOS/NYG, with 2 twisted Hubbells and a pricey Medwick hitting 3rd and Cronin hitting 4th. Less good years from Kurowski and Doerr lessened the appeal, though having great 100ish IP seasons from Pollet and Brecheen made them tempting.

After all that I compared all the teams, looked at them again, tweaked 1996 and submitted it ... because I am basic.

120m - WAR Puts You in a Box

I've never been very good at these boxes. I'm not sure why. Maybe something about the way I like to build teams is a little... shall I say, outside the box? At this cap there aren't that many players I like at SS or 3B, so I looked at which ones were in each group (Group 1 had Honus and Brett/Baker, Group 2 had Bancroft/Jennings and Jose Ramirez/Lave Cross, so either would be OK). So then I started looking at the SPs, and they were both pretty OK. Neither box had a lot in the way of relievers or bench players. Ultimately I did like the Group 2 SPs a little better with more of the modern guys (Kershaw, deGrom, Sale), plus Group 2 had the catnip of Roger Connor and Frankie Frisch.

The best way for me to make the bullpen work was to use some of the pricier boxes (in terms of talent) on starters who had good RP seasons. Hello Pete Alexander, Randy Johnson, Rick Reuschel and Early Wynn. Meet Rivera, Gossage, and Bender out here in the 'pen. I still had enough juice to get a starting rotation of deGrom 18, Kershaw '11 (not sure if I've ever used that season), Gooden '84, Sale '18 and Schoolboy Rowe '46. I've got the rangey defense of Connor, Frisch, Bancroft and Cross, with Buck Ewing behind the plate, plus Billy Hamilton, Ken Williams and a Goslin/Matt Holliday platoon in the outfield, and had enough cash left over to put Ohtani '23 at DH. Cheap-ish seasons from Pinson (716k), Fred Tenney (1.58m) and Vizquel (603k) are the only bench players.

130m - The George Harper 25

When I started building this team, I thought, well, the only player you really get to pick is the first one. So I started with a variety of Babe Ruth seasons and just got to work. But inevitably the almost complete lack of useful pitching in the middle years would bog things down. I finally plowed all the way through, got to the end with a team that started Ruth/Wilcy Moore/Gehrig, and of course Wilcy didn't play before 1927 so he wouldn't work. I tried keeping the core and readjusting but couldn't get the rotation right.

I tried Babe Adams too - if not one babe, why not another? But Babe really didn't have many good twist candidate teammates in those early years, even though I did like the Pirates in the 30s if you could get there.

So I decided to try a different approach. I looked up all the really good RP-type seasons from the 20s to the 60s (there were only about 15) and who they played for, and who they might pair with. The most interesting pitcher was '31 Bill Harris on the Pirates, who could give me Waner-Blanton-Arky and then a Bob Klinger ticket to the Red Sox and Ted Williams. Only thing was ... Harris pitched for the Reds in '23 and '24 and then vanished until 1931. But that's OK - I could use any '24 Red as my starting point. And now in paragraph 3 we finally know why my team is named after George Harper of all people.

From the Red Sox, Bill Henry gave us a magical jump to the Big Red Machine, then eventually to Kevin Brown, the Bonds-era Giants, and wrapping up with the Guardians and Jose Ramirez. If you squint, you can even imagine that Bonds and Jason Schmidt can pair together. You'd be wrong, though, and have to pull your team and re-do it. Fortunately, it was a relatively clean swap of Schmidt out/Kershaw in. Got my team legal and finally moved on before my brain collapsed. I lost Teddy Ballgame's platoon partner in the final swap, so George Harper and his 96 PA will actually play an important role. I just couldn't find anyone to swap him out with on the Reds that would have worked better.

Is Cy Blanton good enough to be a good pitcher at this cap, with Redland Field and a pretty OK defense behind him? Will my hitters be able to draw walks as well as they did in real life? If so, will anyone drive them in?

1 24 G Harper
2 31 Harris
3 34 Waner
4 35 Blanton
5 38 Arky
6 46 Klinger
7 54 TW
8 64 B Henry
9 69 Rose
10 72 Nolan
11 73 Morgan
12 76 Carroll
13 79 Downing
14 91N Ryan
15 93 Raffy
16 96 K Brown
17 97 Arias
18 98 Nen
19 00 Bonds
20 06 Nathan
21 09 Juan Castro dodgers
22 11 KERSHAW
23 18 AJ Ellis
24 20 Hand
25 JRam

CF Rose 728pa B+/B- 355/434/519
LF Waner 732pa B+/B- 352/427/533
RF Williams 554pa B/D+ 348/512/639 and
DH Bonds 607pa B+/D+ 304/433/665
1B Palmeiro 686pa A/B 293/367/541
SS Vaughan 702pa B/A 319/433/447
2B Morgan 698pa A/A- 294/410/497
C Downing 596pa C+/B/D+ 322/415/448
3B J-Ram 685pa A-/B 290/365/509

OF G Harper 96pa B+/C+ 260/389/307
3B Arias 112pa A/D- 247/350/289 ... also D/D- at SS
C Ellis 183pa A/A+/C+ 280/384/335
UT Juan Castro 121pa 279/310/327 ... D/D- 2B, A-/D- 3B, A/D- SS/OF


Sp1 Blanton 270ip 1.08whip 0.11/512hr .222oav# 2.14bb# 7.27ip/g 2.09erc#
Sp2 K Brown 233ip 0.94whip 0.31/319hr .220oav# 1.26bb# 7.28ip/g 1.93erc#
Sp3 N Ryan 173ip 1.01whip 0.62/138hr .173oav# 3.65bb# 6.41ip/g 1.94erc#
Sp4 Kershaw 233ip 0.98whip 0.58/156hr .212oav# 2.13bb# 7.07ip/g 2.04erc#
Sp5 G Nolan 186ip 1.01whip 0.66/110hr .234oav# 1.54bb# 7.04ip/g 2.37erc#

CLA Hand 59ip 0.77whip 0.0/9999hr .173oav# 1.57bb# 0.96ip/g 1.15erc#
SUA Bill Henry 52ip 0.83whip 0.35/217hr .175oav# 2.27bb# 1.41ip/g 1.45erc#
SUA Nathan 69ip 0.79whip 0.40/285hr .152oav# 2.13bb# 1.07ip/g 1.06erc#
SUA Bill Harris 33ip 0.97whip 0.0/9999hr .187oav# 2.77bb# 7.75ip/g 1.53erc#
SUA Nen 89ip 0.95whip 0.41/247hr .181oav# 2.48bb# 1.14ip/g 1.51erc#
SUB Clay Carroll 78ip 1.18whip 0.12/497hr .245oav# 2.83bb# 2.67ip/g 2.74erc#
SUB Bob Klinger 60ip 1.30whip 0.16/337hr .241oav# 3.76bb# 2.04ip/g 3.12erc#

I can’t be the only one that thought 1993 was a fun season for the 110 theme, can I? The ugly Mets cloning Gooden, Saberhagen and maybe Hojo or Coleman? Eddie Murray maybe? A lot of options. The bad Indians and a Lofton or Manny (200k in ‘93) clone? Joey Albert Belle? No one?

Also an interesting note to jfranco77’s 100M team, he did not draft a single pitcher with a real-life plate appearance. Can’t be totally uncommon with the DH now, but it’s something I’ve not seen accomplished here before.

Posted by jbohrman on 10/15/2026 5:15:00 PM (view original):
I can’t be the only one that thought 1993 was a fun season for the 110 theme, can I? The ugly Mets cloning Gooden, Saberhagen and maybe Hojo or Coleman? Eddie Murray maybe? A lot of options. The bad Indians and a Lofton or Manny (200k in ‘93) clone? Joey Albert Belle? No one?

Looked at them briefly. The requirement to use their actual season makes it hard. Sabes' 93 season isn't terrible but he's not an amazing twist guy either. Gooden is not great in '93 (209ip of 3.10erc#). Same with HoJo and Rickey on Toronto.

It's definitely a FUN year. If only the Mariners (82-80) had lost one more game.

$70m: Sunshine On My Shoulders
Coors Field
.277 AVG / .378 OBP / .370 SLG / 44 HR
1519 IP / .255 OAV / 1.07 WHIP / 0.60 HR/9

Team name: Denver!

The team: The offense prioritizes cheap OBP, with A++ range where I could get it: SS Buck Weaver, CF Ned Hanlon, and my favorite low-budget cookie, 1893 Roger Connor, at 1B.

After trying out a variety of pitching approaches, I decided to go all out on minimizing walks. In total my staff surrendered only 146 walks, or 0.92 per 9 innings. To get there, I paid less attention than usual to HR/9 in the hope that most teams couldn’t afford home run hitters.

$80m: U and II: The Legend Of Curly’s Gold
Shibe Park
.281 AVG / .359 OBP / .411 SLG / 92 HR
1375 IP / .233 OAV / 1.03 WHIP / 0.31 HR/9

Team name: I never actually saw City Slickers 2, but it seemed like an appropriate reference for this inferior, low-budget sequel to my round 1 team.

The team: I wish Babe Ruth played every day rather than platooning in left with Wilton Guerrero. Chief Zimmer, George Davis, and Benny Kauff drag down my OBP more than I’d like, and Mark Eichhorn’s 1.22 WHIP# is a bit ugly. But my $140m R1 team won 102 games, so hopefully these same guys can recreate some of that magic at a lower cap.

$100m: The Awful Dynne
Columbia Park
.308 AVG / .385 OBP / .482 SLG / 167 HR
1355 IP / .194 OAV / 0.93 WHIP / 0.33 HR/9

Team name: The Awful Dynne is a minor character from The Phantom Tollbooth. Dinelson Lamet’s non-2020 seasons weren’t quite awful, but drafting him first reminds me of how strange this game can be. I doubt many non-WIS playing baseball fans value the memory of the superstar performances of the abbreviated 2020 season.

Season draft: Since I chose last, I focused on filling gaps not covered by my division’s other 3 seasons. I was pretty shocked 2020 wasn’t drafted first, but thankful jbohrman grabbed it for our division. After ronthegenius selected 1888 and jfranco77 took 1906, I chose 2014 as a modern season with an increased player pool that addressed a scarcity of options at C, 2B, and long relief.

Team draft: I mostly stuck to a steady budget and strategy and got a lot of the players I really wanted. I drafted 2 relatively expensive players in Lamet and Freddie Freeman, compensating by going cheap with Tully Sparks and LF Raimel Tapia. (Who?) While I didn’t focus on power, I made sure at least a few players could hit homers (Freeman, Ozuna, Seager) to counteract the low ERC#/high HR/9 2020 pitchers in my division (Maeda, Bauer, Plesac, Kershaw). I’ve never played a draft league outside the WISC and normally I suck at them, but this time I’m cautiously optimistic.

$110m: Rolen In My 5.0
Veterans Stadium
.298 AVG / .383 OBP / .474 SLG / 201 HR
1444 IP / .216 OAV / 1.01 WHIP / 0.49 HR/9

Team name: …with my ragtop down so my hair can blow. Scott Rolen was also part of my all-time favorite baseball highlight: Endy Chavez’s home run robbery at Shea in G7 of the 2006 NLCS. Though let’s not discuss how that game ended, please and thank you.

The team: 1996 Smoltz/Maddux/Kevin Brown was too good to resist. Same logic 14 other owners used, I suppose. I wasn't too excited about this theme compared to the others and didn't spend very long on it. Maybe the Bonds-centric Giants teams will do better than my Phillies squad?

$120m: Tolstoy’s Original Title
Shibe Park
.329 AVG / .429 OBP / .481 SLG / 134 HR
1420 IP / .202 OAV / 0.91 WHIP / 0.30 HR/9

Team name: “Hey, you know what, I read the most unbelievable thing about Tolstoy the other day. Did you know the original title for War and Peace was War - What Is It Good For?” – Jerry Seinfeld

The team: The toughest part of this theme was how little relief pitching was available. I also had to choose the bench carefully to avoid wasting a bunch of salary in a DH league.

This team features the best hitters of my 6 R2 squads, and all 4 infielders offer A++ range. Pitching was more of a struggle, as I found only 7 of value: 6 starters (Mathewson, Alexander, deGrom, Sale, Kershaw, Pedro) and one solid reliever in 2003 John Smoltz. I rounded out my staff with mediocre sub-30 IP seasons from Tanana, Hershiser, and David Wells. But hey, my $100m R1 team did well with 7 pitchers and 2 mopups, so hopefully I can find similar success here.

$130m: Mad Dog and Yard Gnome
Shea Stadium
.315 AVG / .386 OBP / .522 SLG / 254 HR
1391 IP / .189 OAV / 0.89 WHIP / 0.52 HR/9

Team name: My first build featured a 3B duo of Bill “Mad Dog” Matlock and Justin “Yard Gnome” Turner. (Not his actual nickname, but during his long hair/long beard years he sure as heck looked like one.) That roster was rejected, as Turner wasn’t teammates with 2013 Kershaw, and my new third basemen are 2014 Juan Uribe and 1987 Dave Magadan. But I liked the original team name too much to change it.

The team: Fun build! Frustrating in the best way, as I kept thinking up combinations that didn’t work. I either forgot to alternate hitters and pitchers, or discovered I’d chosen 2 players who weren’t actual teammates during the relevant season.

My goal was to connect four starters: 1999 Pedro > 2002 Lowe > 2013 Kershaw > 2015 Greinke. I initially tried linking the Red Sox to the Dodgers using Manny’s ridiculous 2008 partial season, but that wasted salary and forced me to seek a DH platoon that never materialized. Fortunately, 2009 Mark Loretta came to the rescue (never thought I’d say that.)

I started in the middle and built outward, but here’s the chronological roster.

1987 Dave Magadan
1992 John Candelaria
1993 Mike Piazza
1999 Pedro Martinez
2000 Nomar Garciaparra
2002 Derek Lowe
2003 Manny Ramirez
2004 Ramiro Mendoza
2005 Johnny Damon
2006 Jonathan Papelbon
2009 Mark Loretta
2011 Matt Kemp
2013 Clayton Kershaw
2014 Juan Uribe
2015 Zack Greinke
2016 Carl Crawford
2017 Kenley Jansen
2019 Cody Bellinger
2020 Adam Kolarek
2021 Keibert Ruiz
2022 Tony Gonsolin
2023 Freddie Freeman
2024 Bryan Hudson
2025 Brice Turang

This team has exceptional pitching, decent hitting, and fields well apart from 216 PAs of poor 3B range from Magadan. I like their chances.

Going to have to go about this piecemeal.

70M Because We Got High
Mile High
5487 PA .282/.345/.447
1451 IP .237/1.12/0.16 HR per 9

Pitching felt clear enough to me--get a bunch of the discounted, low-power arms from 1905-1919, like Patterson 06, Sallee 18, Rusty Wright 18, and Bob Steele 18. My gut said that a lot of the park effects might not terribly inflate pitch counts, so I went relatively low with my 1451 innings.

Batters--I wanted relatively high average, some trustworthy power, and a couple of nice values who play good D. The key players are Ruth 25, Willie Horton 68, McCovey 67, Merrifield 21, John Anderson 1897, and one of my favorite cookies, Brendan Donovan 22. Really enjoyed the lineup build.

110M '96 Balco Enthusiasts
I posted some thoughts about this in the separate thread for 1996 teams.

120M Shall We Play a Game?
I generally name my teams something that sparks some joy for me. Not sure if anyone recognizes this quote, it's from the 1983 movie War Games.

After seeing how many owners chose column 2, it seems like I may have been lazy here. My logic for picking 1 is very basic: I can have Ruth and Walsh, let's see what happens with the rest of the roster. And I liked it a lot. Only issue was that I don't have a lot of pitchers on my team:
08 Walsh 495 IP
17 Cicotte 365
06 Doc White 236
08 Sabathia 131
21 Scherzer 68
05 Powell 30
15 Wainwright 28
(plus two scrubs 78 IP)
So I've got some juggling to do to keep these guys fresh.
1431 Total, and chose Riverfront to allow the power while squashing BA a bit, hoping to make my innings last longer.

Offense:
C Hartnett 30
1B Anson 87
2B T Turner 21
SS Ozzie Smith 85
3B Brett 77
OF Ruth 19, Berkman 01, Veach 19
DH Caruthers 87

All of us out here chaining players for a 100-year span and Doc just casually starts the chain in 1987

Posted by jfranco77 on 10/16/2026 12:49:00 PM (view original):
All of us out here chaining players for a 100-year span and Doc just casually starts the chain in 1987

Ha, I thought that was pretty funny too.

Select player seasons aside, I’m allergic to 1930-1979 in this game

$70m- Thin Air and Fat Eras
The round one home run theme was one of my favorites, ever. This one, not so much. I’ve truly never built a team in Coors or Mile High because I haven’t a clue how to do pitching there. At $70m, you can only do so much and the performance of typical cookies seems to be even more pronounced. With that…Hitting: 21 Merrifield, 17 Marwin G, 98 Tony Fernandez and 56 Wally Moon fit the bill. After that I decided to fill out the rest of the order with doubles dudes including Baby Doll Jacobson ??, because I was sure everyone would choose deadball pitchers. I changed to 1894 Bill Lange at the last moment because although he’s righty, .328/.405 with speed should do well at Coors. Pitching. No idea. I ended up with 1,474 innings…based on my first 2 games, that won’t be enough. I focused on getting the lowest #OAV/ #HR guys I could squeeze in $35mil. I’m not confident. I have a feeling I’ll be rolling out a lot of dudes under 85%!

$80m- The Redheaded Stepchildren
I went all out in round 1 which worked (100+ wins), probably without enough consideration for round 2. Besides Whit Merrifield, who I purposely rostered in round 1, for round 2, most of the remainder of these guys I wouldn’t typically use in an $80m league, especially against the 23 best WIS players in the world! I do like how my pitching turned out with 07 Walsh, 17 Nehf and a solid bullpen. I won’t be scoring many runs though.

$100m 1924 Slugger on Draft. 1908, 1924, 1987, 2021
I picked last and chose 1924 because overall hitting was the biggest gap left by the other leagues. I’m betting the three others in our draft thanked me under their breaths! All of my hitters are from 1924 except 2021 Juan Soto whose batting .000 after two games and my closer 1924 Babe Adams. I couldn’t get to this draft fast enough to choose my all time favorite WIS sim pitcher .08 Ed Walsh! He’s like two aces in one which opens other options. Besides that, I didn’t really have a draft strategy. I do remember really wanting 1987 Tony Fernandez but he was taken before I had a chance. Instead, I punted SS to the end and am platooning 24 Dave Bancroft and 87 Jose Uribe. They’ll be fine. I’m interested in seeing how my four 2021 very low IP relievers perform, because I typically shy away from those types. I like this team, which is weird because I’m not crazy about drafts.

$110m ’96 Philly Brave Fish
I’m pasting this here instead of the other thread because I’m lazy. I did my initial search strategy (its proprietary:) and only 1996 passed muster. I did briefly look at other years but nothing came close. I also very briefly looked at the ’96 Giants but 260IP Schilling, ’93 Jefferies and ’04 Rolen were too good to pass up. I also love 2002 Luis Castillo at 2^nd which made me feel better about not cloning Kevin Brown. I’m sure I’ll be kicking myself when Schilling gives up his 52^nd home run, 30 of those by Barry Bonds.

$120m What is it Good For
I toyed with several titles with “idiot” in it that I found hilarious, but not everyone shares my sense of humor. Somehow this build took me longer than any other. I couldn’t find a combination I liked and still haven’t found a combination I like. 1908 Ed Walsh, of course. Relief was a struggle but several of these legendary starters had good to great low inning seasons, Scherzer, Ruffing, Blue, Leonard. I don’t like my lineup at $120m, it’s average fielding, average hitting, average everything. I didn’t draft a DH but instead will rely on 9 guys with 50 to 161 PAs to do that job. I’m sure that’ll go well.

$130 Bobo Newsom to the Rescue
This was my favorite build. It was so difficult. I had at least 5 great chains that I was ready to submit and noticed mistakes. I was dead set on getting 1920s hitters and 2000s pitching. My biggest issue was getting from the 1920s to the 1960s. Enter the legendary Bobo Newsom, teammate of 1930 Babe Herman (.393/.455). Bobo then went on to play 23 more seasons where in 1953 he was teammates with Elmer Valo and I was on my way! Bobo Newsom’s career was ridiculous. I had never heard of him before but spent at least an hour on his baseball reference page (I recommend it). He led the league in losses four times, but also had three 20 win seasons and was an all star four times. He also had multiple stints with several teams. Anyway check him out.
What else. Ah 1968 Bob Gibson. I’ve never used him. He’s woefully overpriced, but when you can’t put a chain together that get’s beyond $120m in a $130 theme, he’s a luxury you can afford. I was shocked to see four other owners also have him! I do have quite a bit of wasted salary. I had to draft 150 innings or about $2mil on mopup pitchers including Bobo, but that isn’t too bad at 130. Hopefully I won’t need to use them though I did consider starting Bobo Newsom in game 1 (1.76whip)!
What else. The 1980s Cardinals. Love ‘em. Mr. Gibson got me to Ozzie, Tom Herr, Ted Simmons, 81 Andy Rincon etc. John Tuder’s 1990 teammate Bernard Gilkey then shot me to the 2000s where I connected ’02 Pedro to everyone’s best friend, the 2010+ Dodgers (Kershaw, Hong Chih Kuo etc.) which got me to 2000 Kenta Maeda who helped alleviate my biggest weakness, 1b….I didn’t have one. Enter 2023 Luis Arraez (.354), typically known for his skills at 2b but logged just enough time at 1^st to fill my last spot. Amen.

WISC 2025 Write-Up:

70M: The Stoner’s Mile High Cookies

Analysis: Of all the themes on this round, this one felt like it would build pretty quickly, once you answered some key questions. The main one being: How many PA and IP do you want to roster? Despite this being my third time doing this tourney, my experience with different salary caps and theme variety is really low. I rank last or next to last in games played, wins, and championships In SimLeague Baseball amongst the 24 round two owners. So, a $70 Million Coors theme/Mile High was way out of my comfort zone, having never used a team here before. I’ve found some success rostering about 1275 innings at this cap but knew I would need more here. The park factors were both around 1.4ish, but I figured a straight multiple felt far too excessive (~1750 innings). I figured I would settle for 1400 innings to build in that extra cushion. Looking at the pitch counts of games so far and the number of innings drafted by the league as a whole, I fear I might be far too light on usable innings. As far as offense goes, I tried to prioritize getting value and using some low cap cookies. Familiar names such as ’21 Whit Merrifield, ’16 J-Ram, ’16 Zobrist, ’17 Cravath, ’90 Bonilla, ’96 Connor and ’04 Vizquel should provide enough variety on offense to take proper advantage of mile high stadium. On the offensive side, I think I should be pretty competitive. I’ll likely be playing guys with a deep royal blue stamina after a while, but on a per PA basis, they should hold up as well as most in the league. The pitching is where I’m more concerned about my likely lack of volume. I’m hoping we can start fast and take advantage of likely having better pitching than most of the league on a per inning basis (A 4-5 start suggests I might not). I know the lack of innings is going to catch up with me, so I’ll likely have to get creative with inning management to avoid going down a death spiral, something I haven’t had to navigate before. If I need to burn a couple of guys later, I’ll do it. I suppose it’s better to win a couple games 9-7 and lose another 45-5 than to just lose three games 15-7. I’m not confident I’ll be able to pull this off

Also- Not a stoner, just thought the name would play well in this league.

Confidence Level: D+

80M: The Beta-bet

Analysis: It felt like there were two types of builds for this team in round one: Those who had their round two team in mind, and those who didn’t. I was weirdly somewhere in the middle. I made the second round last year but felt like that was far from a guarantee to happen again. That meant I needed to maximize my success in round one and focus the majority of my effort there. Did it work? Not really, I was roughly .500 and missed the playoffs in that league. Is that paying dividends for round two? Also no, I’m off to a 1-8 start. I do think I’ll reasonably turn the ship around though. ’20 Adams, ’73 Sutton, ’19 Toney and ’03 Bernhard/’06 Patterson tandem should provide solid results from the rotation. The bullpen is mostly mix and match of guys who had great seasons I prioritized in round one that wouldn’t punish me too much in round two. Jury’s out on that one. The offense is disjointed but should hit plenty of HRs and stay relevant. You can’t go too wrong with Rogers Hornsby, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Chipper Jones, and Harmon Killebrew in your lineup, right?

Confidence Level: C- (The 1-8 start really tanks this grade, but probably C+ going in)

100M: Putting Stock in Bonds

Analysis: As far as picking a year goes, I was hoping to provide some balance to whatever years were selected before me, with my year ideally coming from a different era than had been selected prior. With 1915 and 2022 off the board, I was given a wide range to work with. 1915 had a plethora of starting options that were reasonable for the cap and 2022 provided a nice balance with enough bullpen arms to keep everyone in the division happy. My goal was to prioritize cap friendly offensive players while still adding a few rotation options to help the pile. I ended up picking 1996, which my division mates seemed to be happy with. I won’t go into what 1996 specifically offered, considering almost all of you researched that year intensely for the 110M G/B/U. Go figure I would pick 1996 here, but not in that league. I thought the wrinkle of having the lowest cumulative salary was neat, and I was looking to take advantage of it… Before taking $14.7M ’15 Walter Johnson with my first pick. I couldn’t pass him up with how perfect and productive he would be at this cap. At that point, I knew I was destined to pick last moving forward and did so with every meaningful pick left in the draft. I went after the expensive stars first since salary management was out the window. I got most of the players I want, with a few painful exceptions (1915 Gavvy Cravath) and ended up pretty happy with the final result.

I ended up going pretty heavy with 1915 on the pitching side and 1996 on the hitting side:

1B- ’96 Jeff Bagwell
CF- ’96 Barry Bonds
LF- ’68 Carl Yastrzemski
2B- ’15 Larry Doyle
RF- ’96 Manny Ramirez
3B- ’96 Jeff Cirillo
SS- ’96 Omar Vizquel
C- ’22 JT Realmuto

Rotation:
’15 Walter Johnson
’15 Eddie Plank
’15 Joe Benz
’22 Scherzer/’22 Gonsolin

Confidence Level: B

110M: ’92 Pirates/Cubs/Mariners

Analysis: I figured the key to this team would be looking for teams that qualified under “Ugly”, who had usable clones that could help bolster the roster. I figured most of them would come from the pitching side, but was open to wherever that journey took me. After a lengthy and mostly fruitless research session of scouring the standings for usable ugly teams, my two favorites were the ’67 A’s and the ’92 Mariners. Catfish Hunter had multiple excellent seasons that could be cloned and Sal Bando and Reggie Jackson added some offensive options, but I just could make the puzzle pieces of 1967 fit properly. 1992 was a much cleaner fit. It hurt having to swallow the salary and innings of ’92 Randy Johnson, but getting to clone him 3 times (his top two starting seasons and his great relief season) was too much to pass up. I figured I would likely clone a Griffey season, but the offense came together well enough from the other teams, where I shockingly didn’t have to. As far as useful players go, the ’92 Mariners offered Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr, Edgar Martinez, and Omar Vizquel. The “Bad” Cubs had a great Maddux season, and he ended up being a no-brainer to clone, though not one of his two A+++ seasons. Adding Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace, and Dennis Rasmussen made for a great addition. From there, it came down to choosing between the “Good” Brewers and Pirates. The Brewers and the bullpen options and the Pirates provided some offensive spark. After splurging on thee Randy Johnsons and a Greg Maddux, I opted for the offense. Barry Bonds and Andy Van Slyke make for high end lineup options and Zane Smith is useful out of the ‘pen. I think the rotation should be above average, the defense should be near-elite, the offense should be average, and the bullpen is the major weak point. Can we beat the FIFTEEN 1996 teams? Yeah, probably a few of them statistically. A couple of these Davids have to have something for the Goliaths.

Confidence Level: B+

120M: Plotting Tactics in the WAR Room

Analysis: Admittedly, this was the last team I built and I was a little time-strapped. I gave a brief skim to the two groupings and felt more comfortable with the options of Group B. There were some starters that I knew had great bullpen-worthy seasons in there, and I just couldn’t pass up taking advantage of ’24 Shohei Ohtani. It was difficult to take advantage of every dollar, but we ended up with something that I felt comfortable with after a quick build and some edits.

• ’60 Ted Williams (Platoon LF)
• ‘97 Greg Maddux (Rotation)
• ’91 Ken Griffey Jr (CF)
• ’15 Clayton Kershaw (Rotation)
• ’13 Derek Jeter (Scrub)
• ’03 Smoltz (Bullpen)
• ’20 Freddie Freeman (1B)
• ’50 Jackie Robinson (2B)
• ’41 Early Wynn (Bullpen)
• ’17 Jose Ramirez (3B)
• ’24 Shohei Ohtani (DH)
• ’99 Mariano Rivera (Bullpen)
• ’47 Joe Medwick (Platoon LF)
• ’34 Burleigh Grimes (Bullpen)
• ’13 Mark Teixeira (Scrub)
• ’22 Jacob deGrom (Bullpen)
• ’10 Chief Bender (Rotation)
• ’25 Heinie Groh (Scrub)
• ’38 Dizzy Dean (Bullpen)
• ’06 Omar Vizquel (SS)
• ’67 Bill Freehan (Ca)
• ’07 Steve Finley (Scrub)
• ’23 Ken Williams (CF)
• ’48 Harry Brecheen (Rotation)
• ’81 Rich Gossage (Bullpen)

Confidence Level: C+

130M: The Chain Gang

Analysis: What a really fun, but absolutely brutal build. I tried starting from the beginning and finally got somewhere with the early years Yankees, with Ruth, Gehrig, Strinweiss, Dimaggio, and Mantle forming an elite offensive core, with little pitching to speak of. The problem was that I had a hard time moving forward navigating the middle years. I put that aside and decided to try again moving backwards with 2024 Ohtani. Shoutout to a few of you that successfully did that because I just couldn’t make it work without excessive waste. Since I was already all over the place, I decided to try something in the middle years and see if I could find some connections later to tie everything together. I fell in love with he Dodgers of the ‘60s and ‘70s, since you had a pitching buffet that featured many great Koufax seasons, ’72 Sutton and ’64 Drysdale. Apparently, some guy named Bill Skowron played for the 1963 Dodgers and the 1959 Yankees and I was off and running. With most of the pieces on my team comfortably filled after taking advantage of the Yankees and Dodgers, I just needed a few key cogs to get the machine rolling. The problem was, I didn’t like anyone I could connect the ’72 Dodgers to. After timeless research, I found a way where I could waste a little money and use Bill Buckner and a decent Roger Clemens season to go from 1972 to 2006. It’s a bit of team hodge podge from there, but this era had exactly what I needed to finish what the roster was lacking. Here’s the full chain:

1930- Babe Ruth
1932- Hank Johnson
1937- Lou Gehrig
1943- Spud Chandler
1945- Snuffy Strinweiss
1946- Red Ruffing
1948- Joe Dimaggio
1955- Ed Lopat
1958- Mickey Mantle
1959- Bobby Shantz
1963- Bill Skowron
1966- Sandy Koufax
1970- Wes Parker
1972 Don Sutton
1987- Bill Buckner
2006- Roger Clemens
2009- Brad Ausmus
2010- Hong-Chih Kuo
2013- Russell Martin
2016- Mark Melancon
2019- Anthony Rendon
2020- Tanner Rainey
2021- Trea Turner
2024- Dennis Santana
2025- Leody Tavares (What an anticlimactic ending)

Confidence Level: B-

Thanks to all who helped put this tournament together and best of luck to all!