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[...], especially in terms of tailoring a team to its league.

...something I failed to do in a current league...

I'm surely no Hall of Famer, and my approach changes season to season. I learn something new about playing the game every season, and I like trying new strategies and especially new players. From that perspective, I offer the following, meant for lower-cap leagues, as hard lessons I think I've learned, from closely watching my own teams but also others:

• Read the league, especially your division, and stay flexible. Any approach you might go into a season with must remain fungible.
  
• Transactions. Don't be afraid to make them during the season. Sometimes that's the only way, especially if your opponents do or if a long injury shelves a key hitter. However you must keep your emotions in check and not get carried away, because in-season drops/adds always weaken you in some other way. But even waiting till around Game 124 and absorbing the 20% haircut in order to add a sudden, high-impact bat, custom-selected to murder your opponents during the final intradivisional showdown, is a tactical maneuver that can vault you to the post-season
• There's no hard and fast guideline for Hitting:Pitching cost ratio. It depends entirely on your league. I will say that if you go deep in pitching and your $12.67m Pete Alexander gets roughed up -- and he will from time to time -- you will feel much worse than if you emphasize hitting and your $2.24m Howie Pollet is shelled. And sometimes Pollet pitches a SHO, which makes you feel like a prophet. Sometimes you budget according to how much you can tolerate your emotions being toyed with.
  
• Make damn sure your higher priced bats' injury ratings are at least green crooked 1s. (I think that bears repeating.)
  
• Good defense matters up the middle (C-SS-2B-CF) and much less so elsewhere. 2's are fine; 1's are overpriced. Take the big bats at 3B-1B-LF-RF and suffer the D
  
• Your best arm should be in CF, not RF. (More plays to CF than any other.)
  
• Your catcher's arm and T rating are very important, even in a league with few pure base stealers. Even '62 Johnny Edwards' -1 arm and a pitcher with an average to good hold rating can encourage Matt Williams to try to steal, with the game on the line...and if he makes it, you'll need a new laptop, tablet, or phone. If he doesn't make it, you'll still know you have a problem behind the plate
  
• Do not overpay for SP. You will have locked up value unnecessarily. At $80m, a $7m pitcher is a luxury. Keep all SP within $1m-$2m of one another. In general, SP are there to play catch with the catcher, exploit batters' weaknesses, and keep your offense in the game -- that's all
  
• Five-man rotations can win. Three even-ish *SP and two slanted non-*SP (or even 3!) can allow you to stream the slanties against certain teams in certain ballparks. Often deadly effective. I personally hate "4 aces" and a $.50m batting practice SP.
  
• Do not overpay for RP, but also do not underpay. Hal ignores about every setting for RP, except Role. Let Hal assign roles. Don't even set a Closer. If you have budgeted properly, you won't have a "closer" anyway. At $80m, aim for a ~$8m-$10m bullpen. A $4m RP is a luxury; $5+ is a misallocation. Keep all your RP within $1m of one another
  
• Platoons can be wildly successful but pricy. With a heavy platoon lineup, you will always have a good deal of "money not on the field" and bad injury risks. I hate facing '90 Mariano Duncan and '80 Jose Cardenal teams. You know the ones. So unrealistic, so boring, and so unimaginative. But they are often winners.
  
• That said, there is no sicker platoon than $5.55m '68 Gates Brown/$3.21m '89 Andres Galarraga at 1B. Less than $9m in cost (do-able even at $80m) and easily worth $11m-$13m+ in production, no matter where you play.
  
• Even slight slants matter a lot over 162 games. Read your league, and slant your lineup and SP accordingly. The goal is not to be Even-ly balanced. It's to be balanced against your opponents and the ballparks you play them in, whichever way they slant.