Finals RecapThanks to JuicedJC’s consistently great job as commissioner, this year’s Tournament had the most ever participants. As a result, this became the first Mystery Tournament with a semifinals following the usual 4-season tournament. The semifinals used the freshly issued 2000s set in two 12-team leagues. The semi-final points were added to the 4-season points to determine the 12 teams in the Finals. One of the last teams to qualify for the semi-finals was 3-time Tournament Champ Moodywoody and I was hoping that he would tear up the semi-finals to reach the Finals, but the semi-finals competition was too tough. I think the semi-finals changed 2 or 3 spots in the Finals; but none of these 2 or 3 teams reached the Finals playoffs.
The Finals included 4 of the top 5 ranked players according to the Commissioner’s Top 10 Pre-Tournament Ranking, missing only top-ranked Moodywoody. Also making the finals league was 2016 champ Lee300 and honorable mention mburatti. Relative newcomers gritch and FAaron came into the Finals ranked 2nd and 3rd in points.
The Finals teams voted for the 60s and a live draft. This year’s finals was the first year in which a live draft was used to fully draft each team. I feel the live draft is pretty awesome, and perhaps it could be worked in as an option in future tournaments, and perhaps not limited to just the finals. As is traditional, the Tournament point rankings were used to set the draft order. I had the first pick but was concerned that Mays used too much cap space, so I offered the 1st pick for trade and also offered Mays for trade after I made him the top pick. As usual, there was zero interest in a trade (more on that later).
The early rounds of the live draft were exciting. Following Willie Mays were the great Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron. Then JimmyC took a gamble on Mickey Mantle in the 1st and Maris in the 2nd ; Jimmy’s all-or-nothing gamble did not pay out as Maris was on his worst year and Mantle on his 2nd -to-worst year. Given the league’s tough competition and limited free agent options in the 60s, and despite making 27 free agent moves, JimmyC was not able to recover. On the other hand, Lee300 made early cuts of his first two picks (Joe Horlen and Cepeda) and his team finished with a league-best 99 wins. To my way of thinking, hallerose had the best start of the draft with McCovey and Eddie Mathews with his first two picks. The full draft list is shown under the “Live Draft Log” tab, and I encourage anyone looking for good value 60s players to take a look at the players that the Finals’ managers considered the most valuable.
The Regular season did not have any close races for a playoff position. In the West, Lee’s team started out 19-2 at home in the Astrodome and maintained the league’s best winning % throughout the regular season (99-63). Also in the West, JimmyJames’ team wasn’t far behind and finished with the 2nd best record with 95 regular season wins. The very unusual thing about this year’s finals is that the West division was far better with 66 wins above .500 while the East finished -30 and the Central -36. After the first 40 games, hallerose was far back in the West but remarked that he was strangely happy with his team and felt it would finish top in runs scored (actual finish 2nd in runs scored), but the West was just too tough. In the Central, my team stayed in first wire-to-wire, starting out 10-2 and falling asymptotically to .500 over the course of the season (finishing 82-80). The East was the only division that saw real competition for a playoff spot with gritch pulling ahead of mburatti around midseason, but by game 100 it was clear that gritch would run away with the East.
Trading – rant time
The league saw exactly one trade – a preseason swap of Allison for Callison that made no difference to the results. During a normal season I figure most people aren’t paying close enough attention to make any trades; but in the Finals I expect people will at least consider trading. But nooooo. I tried numerous times to make trades, but I never got any interest whatsoever. To start the season, I offered to trade my #1 draft pick and later to try and trade Willie Mays during the draft. Not a single response. Well, Mays stayed on my team and ended up league MVP. During the season I offered quality players but I never even got a counter offer. There are many times when trades make sense for both teams. Before I offer a trade, the first thing I usually think about is – what would help the other team. Sometimes, I scan league rosters to look for weak areas, see who I can trade from my roster to improve the other team, and then think about what player I want from the other team. Around game 80, I sent a league wide email offering Seaver or Cuellar (who were both doing great even though my home stadium allowed a medium amount of homers and, except for Mays, my fielding was mediocre) and explaining “My thinking is that I have 4 good SP* and 1 good SP, but for the playoffs I only need 3 good SP* plus one good SP. Therefore, it seems logical that another team might benefit more from an SP*.” I didn’t get any response. Seaver finished the season as the #1 rated starting pitcher. Since I needed cash, I cut Cuellar, he turned out (not surprisingly) to be ’66 in which he had a 2.22 ERA and a 1.08 WHIP. There are 11 other teams that would have been improved by adding Seaver or Cuellar. People will make a zillion wasteful free agent moves before they consider a trade. UGH! Around game 90, I offered Seaver, Clete Boyer (a “1” rated 3rd baseman who was hitting well), and Kasko (at the time he was leading the league in avg. v righties) for Killebrew (who was massively underperforming with a BA under .200), Lew Burdette (who was doing terribly) and total scrub Joe Koppe. I planned to cut Burdette and Koppe but it would have been helpful to the other team to take those two losers. Killebrew was underperforming but he was also playing in a ballpark that favored lefties and was being misused in the lineup and was, of course, a big liability at 3rd. So, to the other team, the net would have been replacing a bad starter with the league’s best starter, significantly improved defense and better batting average for the loss of a star slugger who was not producing and didn’t match the park. To this day I am certain that trade would have helped the other team, but of course it was turned down. To sum it up, I offered the best player (Mays) and great pitchers who were pitching great (Seaver and Cuellar) and got zero interest.
Team-by-Team Analysis – my own idiosyncratic take
JimmyJames came into the draft with a clear strategy that worked out beautifully – with the 6th overall pick he took the only “1” rated shortstop in the 60s set – light-hitting Luis Aparicio. He followed this up with picking up a host of great fielders including Ken Boyer, Rocky Colavito, Felipe Alou, Bill Richardson and Norm Cash. He then picked some good relievers. So, he spent most of his cash on great fielders with some pop and quality relievers. What about starting pitching? He loaded his team with economical, good value starting pitchers in the 2-3 mil range – pitchers like Al McBean in Round 11. Then he takes the first stadium off the Board – home run stadium Fenway Park in Round 13 of the 26 round draft. I think this was brilliant strategy – great fielding to reduce the number of base runners and picking a home run park so starting pitchers will tend to get knocked out early (de-emphasizing the weakest phase of his team) and more games will be decided by relievers (on whom he spent relatively more). The strategy worked out very well, and it didn’t hurt to have some good luck as well with 3 of his 4 top picks Aparicio, Boyer and Felipe Alou having their best years. Also, early in the season, Lee cut Tony Conigliaro AFTER an injury reveal of a good year. JimmyJames snatched him up. The end result was a really great fielding team and the league leader in runs scored. But Jimmy made two minor mistakes; first sticking with ’64 Bill Richardson against lefties (rather than a platoon with ’62 Jose Pagan) and picking up reliever Tom Morgan just before the free agent deadline. I cut Morgan early in the season after he posted a 8.61 ERA in 8 outings. Tom Morgan has one really bad year on his card. I don’t know what JimmyJames was thinking to pick up Morgan (who was, in fact, on his worst card), but it turned out to be a harmless mistake – although Morgan gave up 11 hits in 3 and 2/3 innings in the playoffs, he didn’t make a difference in the outcome of any playoff games.
jugslavin was very busy with real work and didn’t have much time for the draft or free agent moves. Difficult to compete in the Finals under these circumstances.
In contrast to jugslavin, Rigged Splits seemed to spend a little too much time tinkering with his roster. After a rough start, he made a lot of moves to try to get back into it, and then kept making moves all the way to the end. After 53 free agent moves, his team ended up with a 60 mil roster value. The move I liked best was picking up Mantle. Mantle’s ’66 year is injury prone but is a good enough year to carry a team when healthy. But Mantle got cut too.
FAaron drafted a team that looked good on paper with solid pitching and lots of sluggers. Playing in Atlanta stadium, the team finished 2nd in runs scored but last in pitching. Frank’s brother, Hank, underperformed but that was balanced out by Bobby Bonds who posted a very nice .917 OPS. With only 9 free agent moves there wasn’t much effort to weed out bad years. The bad fortune of playing in the West division meant that this good team couldn’t compete for the playoffs.
mburatti’s team lead the East for the first half of the season before being overtaken by gritch. mburatti’s top two draft picks were Clemente and Pinson. Pinson was on his best year and finished batting .340 and was the team’s best player. Clemente turned out to be his worst card (’63) and got cut after game 63. I think this was a mistake. At that point in the season, cutting Clemente is a 1 mil hit to the salary cap and even his worst year is pretty good. His best offensive player was catcher Jack Hiatt who finished with 98 RBI but was a defensive liability allowing a league-leading 49 stolen bases. I figure if you’ve got Clemente in right, it’s better to get a decent catcher and let the opposing team try to beat you moving only one base at a time.
JimmyC’s Tourneyzillas started off with real bad luck as top pick Mantle was on his 2nd worst year and Maris was on his worst year. Maris’ worst year is really bad. But I feel if you draft Mantle and get his second worst year (’66), you should stick with him. He’s injury prone but in Yankee Stadium he is still great. Anyway, with some good moves JimmyC climbed back into contention in the weak Central division with a 7-game mid-season win streak, but didn’t get a big win streak in the stretch.
pushpin drafted Killebrew in the first round but then switched to drafting power hitting lefties – Yaz, Oliva, and Monday and picked lefty-hitting paradise Candlestick Park. The team also featured several lefty starters and all righties in the bullpen. This Lefty-righty switch used to be pretty effective but since platooning got fixed, I don’t think this strategy works very well any more. pushpin did not get lucky and never really challenged for a playoff spot but did finish 2nd in the Central.
hallerose did what he always does. He filled his lineups with players that can hit lots of ballpark homers and drafted a homer stadium (Tiger Stadium). He had a great draft getting McCovey and Mathews in the first 2 rounds. If I got McCovey and Mathews, I would draft Candlestick in an early round but hallerose always selects a stadium where both righties and lefties can hit it out. His home run totals included McCovey (59), Billy Williams (37), Dietz (33), Mathews (33), Wynn (28), Tommy Harper (21 – can you believe it?), and Jerry Lynch (21). Wynn had an early season injury showing it was ’65 and not his great 69 season. I probably would have cut Wynn at that point because of his poor fielding. But hallerose cares nothing about poor fielding in the outfield. Early in the season, I cut Lynch and hallerose picked him up and started him in left field. He’s a 4(+2)e14 and his fielding numbers were a disastrous 9 outs in 34 X chances. Although hallerose has a better winning % than me, I can’t accept that Lynch ’63 is a rational choice as an everyday fielder. Which brings to mind the 2020 tournament finals. In the 2020 tournament I was in a lefty-biased stadium (Shea) and hallerose was of course in Fulton County. His team could not hit lefty pitching and he was going to face teams in the playoffs with plenty of lefty pitching. Because he needed to get better against lefties, I offered to trade ’70 Hank Aaron for ’75 Reggie. ’75 Reggie can’t hit lefties so he was platooned with Tom Grieve (Grieve is a “4” rated right fielder). hallerose turned down the offer on the ground that it wouldn’t help him against lefties. Grieve is better in right than Aaron? If he loved Grieve that much he could have DHed him. Hank Aaron was a 2(-2) right fielder. Well, I lost the semi-finals against Moodywoody and hallerose lost his semifinals against pushpin losing 3 games to 2 with all three loses coming against lefties (Carlton and Guidry). Had we made the trade, we both probably would have prevailed in the semi-finals and met in the world series. But I’ve forgotten all about that episode, and it doesn’t bother me at all.
gritch had a great team and it’s pretty surprising he didn’t win the world series. His team featured MVP-runner up Frank Robinson, ’64 Powell who kills righties, and Drysdale on his best year. Good or great years up and down the lineup. The one thing I don’t understand is steals. Five steals for the entire season. Why not at least let your team avoid a few double plays?
franky (my team) prepared for the live draft by looking at the other managers 60s teams from leg 1 of the tournament to see which players would be most sought after. In an autodraft I would try for several elite players, but in the live draft I knew all the elite players would be gone by the 24th pick. So, I picked the best player, Mays, even though he took up 17% of my salary cap. During the season I made 27 moves, so my final roster was a lot different than my starting roster. Basically, my team ended up with Willie Mays, great starting pitching, and a bunch of role players. 3 key role players on their best years were cuts from other teams: Etchebarren, Moran, and Berra (who had an injury reveal for his best year). I don’t get why people cut players after an injury reveal of their best year but the same thing happened twice in last year’s finals. There is a really fun podcast at
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s ... k4EAMt1Qy0 . The podcast features a round table discussion of the Finals live draft and a second discussion at midseason. In the midseason podcast, there was complete agreement that my team had no chance to win. I prefer coming in under the radar, but I think the podcast did not understand my team. Before midseason I had a big lead in my division and I was already preparing for the playoffs. I figured hallerose wasn’t going to make the playoffs, so I had little use for lefty pitching. I cut Cuellar to pick up some role players. Then a funny thing happened – I started losing. My team lost 12 of 13 series (Seaver had a stretch of 7 starts where he went 1-4 with a 1.65 ERA). I might have panicked but then I remembered the 60s leg of regular tournament where Falcon’s team had a midseason losing streak of 17 straight but then, without roster changes, went on to win his division and the world series. But I did pick up lefty specialist O’Dell to face the two teams in my division that couldn’t hit lefties. By the end of the season I had a really good idea of the years of all my players, and my opponents players, and I used that knowledge to set lineups for the playoffs.
Lee finished with 99 wins in regular season wins despite playing in the toughest division. His home stadium was the Dome and his lineup lead off with Maury Wills on his best year and Nellie Fox (BA .314, OBP .396) on his best year. Then batting cleanup was Bill Melton on his best year which is also a great fit for the Astrodome. Put a lot of money into pitching with Bunning, Niekro, Siebert, Perranoski, Watt, and Mikkelsen. Really good team.
The playoffsIn the first round my team faced Lee’s team. Lee had the league’s best record but I had been planning and hoping for this match-up. My team was well suited for the Astrodome with great starting pitching, great defensive catching (Battey gave up only 6 steals all season), and hitting for average (#1 in the league). The key moment was in the 9th inning of Game 3. Lee’s team entered the 9th down 2 runs. Here’s the play-by-play:
SUBSTITUTION at P: Bob Miller (R) (role: RH Specialist)
SUBSTITUTION at PH: Jim Northrup (L)
0 J.Northrup 4 Walk b-1 F9
SUBSTITUTION at P: Steve Hamilton (L) (role: LH Specialist)
0 1 J.Cunningham 4 Walk 1-2 b-1 F9
SUBSTITUTION at P: Dick Selma (R) (role: RH Specialist)
0 12 D.Demeter 4 Walk 2-3 1-2 b-1 F9
SUBSTITUTION at P: Billy O'Dell (L) (role: LH Specialist)
0 123 T.McCarver 1 Ground Out 3-H 2-3 1-2 b-0 F9
1 23 J.Hall 3 Strike Out b-0 F9
SUBSTITUTION at PH: Andre Rodgers (R) (role: PH vs. L)
SUBSTITUTION at P: Johnny Klippstein (R)
SUBSTITUTION at PH: Dick Brown (R)
2 23 D.Brown 5 Strike Out
HAL gets a lot of grief for bad decisions but here he managed my bullpen perfectly. O’Dell was on my roster only to use against my division rivals and prevent an epic choke down the stretch. He had no use in the playoffs, so I set him as a lefty specialist and this was his only playoff appearance. One out and down one run with a runner at 3rd, Jimmy Hall has the key at bat. Hall is normally platooned with Northrup, but Northrup was used earlier in the inning and Hall was on a year where he hits homers against lefties; so there was no way HAL is going to pinch hit for a player that hits homers. The problem is that O’Dell strikes out a lot of lefties and Hall strikes out a lot against lefties. So, the best move would have been to pinch hit with a righty and at least get the ball in play. Hall strikes out and the rest is history.
Also during the series, Lee’s clean-up hitter, Bill Melton, gets injured and misses three games. In deciding Game 5, Lee throws in the towel allowing Melton’s automatic replacement, ’58 Danny O’Connell, to bat clean-up. There is no circumstance where O’Connell should bat clean-up and ’58 is a particularly terrible year against lefties. I asked Lee about this and he said that in retrospect he should have substituted in ’62 Andre Rodgers (who happened to be hitting .432 v lefties in the regular season). I’m being pretty critical here but Lee is one of the best and most successful managers so he can take it.
Meanwhile, in the other playoffs, JimmyJames came back from down 3 games to 1 but lost in game 7. The good thing from my perspective is that gritch’s outstanding leadoff hitter, Gene Woodling (.426 obp) was injured for the first 6 games of the world series. I don’t know how people feel about this, but to fully take advantage of this injury, I set my starters so my only lefty would pitch Game 7, and thus keep Woodling out of the lineup for the whole series. What can I say? I’m a big fan of Tonya Harding.
gritch’s team was really well designed and the injury to Woodling might not hurt much because his replacement was ace fielder Bill Virdon (putting a 1(-2) in CF to replace a 3(-1) and replacing a 4(+1) in LF with 3(-1)). So, although team obp went down, team fielding improved massively. Again, gritch made a lazy error just letting his lineup ride with poor obp ’63 Virdon leading off. gritch’s team was better than mine but had a couple weaknesses. Since gritch never steals, I could substitute Berra for Battey and take advantage of his pitching that fared worse against lefties. Also, his lineup was slightly worse against righties and had only two lefties (although one was the devastating Boog Powell), so 6R Dick Selma had a great matchup and he pitched 7 scoreless innings in a Game 4 win. This was followed up by back-to-back complete game gems by Seaver and Stottlmyre to close out the series. Once again, a team with great pitching won the Tournament Finals.
I managed the hell out of the playoffs and my team used 10 different lineups in the 11 games. The rational part of my brain knows that winning in the playoffs is mostly luck, but it feels better when I manage a lot and end up winning.
Since it’s almost time for another Mystery Tournament, here are my
Top 10 Pre-Tournament Rankings for 2022honorable mention – ths2110 former tournament champ and always around the top of the standings. Rigged Splits – has made the last two Tournament Finals, plays with gusto. Also jomboy and AdamKatz.
10. JuicedJC – although we’ve never had a commissioner make the Finals, this should be the year. With the changes in format to allow each league commissioner the power to kick out players that don’t belong, it might be possible to forego the individual invitations and be less burdensome to be commissioner. And having Juiced make the Finals would be the right thing to happen. (Please come back?)
9. mburatti – solid player that is always ends up in or near the finals.
8. franky35 – he’s due for a bad year. He always seems to luck into a good team, but this year it probably won’t happen. If he’s in your league, best to ignore his team and adjust your roster to match up with the teams more likely to challenge for playoffs.
7. sphilipp – consistently has good or very good teams with excellent managing; certainly a threat in any playoff situation.
6. JimmyC – a long time excellent manager, is a lock to finish in the top 13 of the Tournament. Overdue for a championship title.
5. Lee300 – former tournament champ. Had the best record in this year’s Finals. Puts together a solid lineup from top-to-bottom plus very good pitching.
4. gritch - a new player with a ferocious winning %. He’ll end up a mystery season with good or great players at every position. With a little more experience, could be the best in the game. If he’s your in his division, consider going for the wild card.
3. pushpin – 2-time Tournament champ, puts an emphasis on top pitching. If he’s got Guidry, he seems certain to win his third championship.
2. Moodywoody – Slipping from the top spot, the GOAT and 3-time Tournament champ seems to coast through the qualifying rounds and steps on the gas in the Finals league. Can make a lot of moves and leave the competition in the dust.
1. hallerose – the best player. Just plain scary to play against. Highest win %. He’s in the Finals every-single-year. Will this be the year he will overcome his stubborn allegiance to poor fielding in right and left field and, whether by design or chance, have decent fielding in the outfield? Either way, hallerose is the player most likely to win it all in 2022.
Mon Aug 16, 2021 1:50 pm