Belated congrats, rburgh. Your team beat mine like a drum during the regular season and playoffs, even though my team won the division in our 24 team league. I knew your team was hot and I was hoping to avoid them during the semis.
I'm not so sure that this team getting a ring was as much of an aberration as others seem to think. As you said in league mail:
At virtually all caps, there is a negative correlation between pitching budget and wins. Apparently, he did not notice that, when he started Koufax and Gooden against me in games 1 and 2 of our playoff series, he had $20 million in starting pitching riding the pine and providing no assistance toward the immediate objective of winning the current game while my team had $2.53 million in SP riding the bench and therefore more of my budget devoted to winning the current game.
Many of us have had teams that surprise us and get a ring. Despite the shaky starting pitching, there are some easily quantifiable reasons for your team's success:
1. They played in a smallball lefty park (Forbes '65) which helped limit your opponents' offense;
2. The money saved on starting pitching left more money for hitting and they were second in the league in hitting, while finishing a surprising 16th in pitching, due largely to having a pair of relievers who cost about $10 mil.
3. Even though you had budget starting pitchers, you had six of them, so you could play matchups to a certain extent.
4. Not only was your team second in hitting (runs scored), but they led the league in OBP by a wide margin and finished 2nd in batting average. As we saw with your team, that's a good recipe for success, high BA and high OBP.
5. There was great D up the middle, with 1s at 2B, SS, CF ( and a big arm), plus a big arm in RF.
6. The hitting was diluted by the 24 team league. Your SP would have struggled more in a 12 team league.
Great job putting together the near perfect team to compensate for the poor starting pitching. It's certainly fun to win with teams like that.