Champs: Who is your highest priced offensive player?

I made an observation (that I'll get around to telling you about eventually) regarding offensive output for this card set (2014).

In the meantime, I surveyed the last 25 Champs teams among my $80 mil leagues and discovered the highest priced offensive player averaged $7.92. So, it appears, if you are spending salary on any guy more than say, Justin Turner, you are swimming against the current.

Why do you think that is?

I don't play a lot of $80, but in the 3 I checked the highest salary offensive players on champ team were Brantley, Rizzo and Cano.

I made an observation (that I'll get around to telling you about eventually) regarding offensive output for this card set (2014).

In the meantime, I surveyed the last 25 Champs teams among my $80 mil leagues and discovered the highest priced offensive player averaged $7.92. So, it appears, if you are spending salary on any guy more than say, Justin Turner, you are swimming against the current.

Why do you think that is?

I'll turn that around and ask what the highest priced pitcher averaged.

Two things
1. It is hard to score runs with this card set
2. A lineup is like a chain, spend too much on any one link and you'll have more weak links which cause the "chain" to break down

Two things
1. It is hard to score runs with this card set
2. A lineup is like a chain, spend too much on any one link and you'll have more weak links which cause the "chain" to break down

This set is lacking in value hitters who can be used to start. Tough to go cheap in CF and 3B for example. On the other side, the high priced hitters include a lot of 2B and 1B where good usable lower priced options are available.

Scumby:

Regarding pitchers, no reading ahead! Let's kick around Chapter 1 for a bit and see where it goes first...great observation about the hitters!

Steve:

1. I agree.
2. I agree (but there's more meat on this bone still...)

A quick take on the actual highest priced players from my leagues: only Rizzo, Rendon and Pollock had multiple appearances on a Champs team. The others appeared only once (i.e., no tendency to go with any particular position or player).

Why is is so much more difficult to win with Trout, McCutchen, Tulo, Stanton, Brantley, Bautista....?

My own opinion is that the top 4 players (Trout, McClutchen, Tulowitski, and especially Stanton) are great deals this year. Stanton for one stands as one of the best buy in my rating system, even in neutral stadium. Brantley is another good buy if your team plays in a small-ball stadium.

After that, there are very few players in my opinion who are good buys in neutral stadium among the 7.5M-9M range. Some are good values in specific stadiums (Harrison in small-ball, Bautista in a homerun stadium with 30% of lhp, to give a few example). The good buys come rather in the sub-7M.

The only team I had without any of top 10M+ players is currently playing under .500.

Otherwise, I always had the chance to have at least one of these five players in my Tour teams, and I believe this explains in part my success in the Tour (currently in first pick, but likely to be eliminated in the semi-finals).

I even had a team with three of them (McClutche, Tulowitski, and Stanton), in a 60M team--that's 33M, more than 50%, nothing short!! And it went 96-66

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1402659

. A lineup is like a chain, spend too much on any one link and you'll have more weak links which cause the "chain" to break down

I kinda disagree with this. I think that you can produce more runs if you concentrate your best offensive weapons in the top 4 spots and spend disproportionally on those spots, at the cost of having very weak players in the bottom spots of the lineup, rather than spend equally on all spots.

First, because of synergy---I believe there is a greater chance to spread runners and leave them on-base if you have an equilibrated lineup.

Second, because the first four spots have more at-bats than the last four spots. To illustrate, let's say you have 40 at-bats in a given game. If your lineup is composed of 4 above average players and weak players, you end up with 20 at-bats from your star players---50% of at-bats even though only 44% of your players are above average.

Third, by spending on an expensive star, I believe you have a greater access to the better bargains in a set. For example, by spending on Trout, I could go for S.Rodriguez (only 2.38M), a real bargain for right-handed stadium, and then settle for a cheap platoon of Chavez and Espinosa (with Rodriguez moving from second base to third base). If I don't get Trout and select, say Ozuna, I might be "forced" to spend more money on a second baseman who is not nearly as fit for my stadium as Rodriguez.

Correction: I also had a team that went 98-64 without any of the top 5 players, but I did have Harrison at 8.43M, and it was a team with four-five platoons...and it was very lucky (all kinds of stats that were in my favor --homerun rolls, looking at the pitcher's card more ofthen when pitching, etc)

Other 80M teams were

Team with Bradley: 98-64
Team with Tulowitski and Trout: 103-59

Marc:

Your ratings in the other thread you started directly led to my insights. I was surprised the ratings weren't discussed more over there.

However, what works for Manager A doesn't necessarily translate into success for Manager B. The outlier in my 25 Champs teams was Jeep using McCutchen and Brantley on one team. Outside of that...

Trout was 0-25.
Tulo was 0-25.
Stanton was 0-25.
Bautista was 0-25.

The list goes on and on.

When you survey unique managers, and the result is so alarmingly consistent, there has to be insight there. I think it relates directly to salaries and/or ratings. I can spit it out, I just want to coax the conversation along a little bit first...