The Secret Formula: Theory in Action: Update - CHAMPS!

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1103604

I went with a McCutchen-Trout-Cabrera concept team early on. Who would think you could ever get those three on one team!? Scored 855 runs. That's 100 more than necessary. Low dollar pitching gave up 836 (in Turner, even). That's about 200 too many. It's pretty hard to win anything doing that. So I stopped!

Thx for posting your draft. Getting your first seven must've been pretty surprising, but it's nice when it works out like that. Unfortunately only one net run isn't going to get things done, as I found out as well.

This brings things back to the draft.

Rowdy,

Getting exactly what you want probably means getting all 25 picks! What do you think is the answer to your question,
"Is the first waiver pick worth missing six of your first ten?"

Or anybody else as well...

My own feeling is that, whatever you managed to do in the auto-draft, and then in the waiver draft - take a look after the waiver and frenzy, and see what your divisional rivals teams look like. Without necessarily giving up home ballpark advantages, I like to remodel my team during the preseason, to take advantage of whatever the divisional rivals might be doing. So if they have lineups with 6 RHB, I like to have R balanced pitchers, usually RHP. If they have lineups that feast on RHP, then I'll maybe drop 1 or 2 of my RHP and add some LHP. Same thing with batters. Fine tuning your lineup/pitchers to what your rivals are doing can add a few wins per season, IMO.

(By the way, I have my own theories about the auto-draft, which have worked well for me - drafting based on relative scarcity. But my main point is in the previous paragraph).

I haven't really tried the secret formula, yet, J-Pav, but it really fascinates me. I will try it sometime in the next month or 2. In terms of the logic behind it, I think it probably involves taking maximum advantage of the hitting at the top of the batting order - especially since the top 1/2 usually gets 1 extra plate appearance in most games. So, you get more bang for your buck with some higher $ guys at the top of the order, and therefore maximize run production per $ spent.

The hitting seems straight forward to me. I'm interested but less clear on how the formula maximizes value for pitchers. Could it be that merging my "matchup" theory with the "secret formula" might be a nice combination? Interesting stuff!

Thanks again, J-Pav!

Geoff,

Just for clarification, the salary structure of 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 isn't intended to be the batting order. Rather, it's just the player salaries listed from high to low. You can bat them in whatever order you prefer. For whatever reason, $50 mil on offense (the $45 mil listed above plus $5 mil extra for platoons and subs), $20 mil on SPs and $10 mil on RPs seems to be a sort of an ideal mixture. This is likely because the pitcher cards have a 38% (30/80) influence on the outcomes and the hitter cards (plus their defense) influence about 62% (50/80) of the outcomes.

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1103604
Rowdy,

Getting exactly what you want probably means getting all 25 picks! What do you think is the answer to your question,
"Is the first waiver pick worth missing six of your first ten?"

Or anybody else as well...

I've only played four leagues, and in all four I more or less pursued the same strategy. It looks like I'll end up with four .500 teams. Still, I can see how the top waiver pick has value in a 12-team league. In the last two leagues, I did not get the player I wanted with my top waiver pick.

Drafting has been a good news / bad news thing for me. The good news is that I did very well in my third and fourth drafts. I think I came away with the 9th and 10th waiver picks. I got most of the players I wanted,--in part because . . . wait for it . . . no one else wanted them. Carlos Quentin, come on down. Still, I think I have figured out how to order your players so that you get more of the ones you want. It basically involves anticipating what players everyone else will want. The bad news is that I drafted my teams, executed my plans, etc., and it's not yet totally clear to me why these are .500 teams. I can guess but I have a lot to learn.

I got most of the players I wanted,--in part because . . . wait for it . . . no one else wanted them. Carlos Quentin, come on down.

Now we're getting somewhere...

The question I want to ask the community is this: I missed six of my top ten picks in the autodraft. Was this an unfortunate autodraft poorly constructed, or did the wily veteran use guile and creativity to game the autodraft to get exactly what he wanted?

I think you were overly optimistic in expecting to get some of the players listed. I probably have played more LH parks than anyone, and of your first five picks the only one I would say you listed high enough to reasonably expect to get was Hamilton at #1. It is also not a big surprise to miss Hamilton at #1. If I were to slot the other guys, I would say Moss is also a #1, Fielder probably no lower than #2, Snyder I would list anywhere from #3 to #6, as there always seems to be one or two guys that will list him high and I think Walker just went in round three or four in a vet laden live draft I was in. To me, I would say you had a much, much better chance on missing on those five than getting them.

One thing that would be cool is if this site kept a running tabulation of how individual players fared in all the leagues run each year. So you could have a running tab on the collective winning percentage of Moss' teams for example, or number of times drafted, or number of playoff teams, or number of champions that he played on.

Nasty,

Here's a website for any obsessors: http://startournaments.com/

On the left go to APS, Drafts & Eligible Players. All the stats for those of us with OCD are in there. Now, it is geared for face to face play and the players are without salary considerations. And, Moss isn't in there, as his card is ineligible for the league (OMG, how can the league even function!?! )

Luckyman turned me onto this site many years ago and it's always good for generating ideas and testing out players that I might not otherwise try.

Jerry,

I agree with you for the most part.

Here is something to consider:

These are two Progressive Championship teams:

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1105555
http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1111578

This is a Progressive team I just drafted.

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1116775

How do you think this team stacks up compared to my TSF team and the two Champs teams? Any and all opinions are welcome.

I like your drafted team. Would be nice to have another solid LH bat vs LH pitching, but that's not always possible in this set, especially if the draft goes bad. I've also found you can overpower the LH pitching with guys that hit LH well, and you have quite a few. You must have the magic touch with Freddy Freeman. I can never get him to do anything.

Here comes the punch line ...

My first two teams were standard, best practices type autodrafts with all the usual handwringing, wailing and gnashing of teeth. How I managed to win rings with performances like Travis "Two and Sixteen" Blackley is beyond me.

Then I started reading the posts about how everything is wrong with the SOM autodraft and how unfair it all is that you can't get the guys you want. HAL's replacement picks are inadequate. The draft should serpentine. You should have three deep proxy picks. The draft should be like the one at joeblow'sbaseball.com.

So here's what I did. I drafted the 11 pitchers ranked by worst WHIPs priced at 0.50. Then I drafted the 14 fifty-cent hitters ranked by worst OPS. I got all of them ! Then, I sat out the waiver process. Then, I waited until just before the season started and drafted my full team from the FA pool. I did this three separate times with neutral and pitcher friendly type ballparks. The results have been beyond surprising.

But surely this wouldn't work with a LH specialty park like Progressive ?? My fourth attempt is the one from my previous post. EVERY player on that team was picked from the FA pool after every other manager completed their autodraft and waivers. I did get a little lucky that there wasn't like four other Progressive teams. However, I wouldn't have wasted a credit trying if I didn't see from the other three attempts that it looked like it would be pretty doable. I was actually looking forward to trying out some new guys for a change. Instead, I probably drafted my strongest Progressive team to date (of course, we'll have to see what HAL says - peace be upon him).

So, to bring this full circle. I would have loved getting Hamilton, Moss, Fielder and/or Snider with Headley, Zobrist and/or Laroche. But the truth is I really didn't care because there is a gigantic number of options which all lead to the same place.