Champs: Who is your highest priced offensive player?

Probably something for a new thread but I've found the opposite of Freeman. I haven't been able to win with a power team but have had good success with a pitchers park and doubles hitters.

J-Pav, I have a team now in Camden that's almost identical to a team I had win 100 games. The difference is that instead of Rizzo, I went with Kershaw, so my highest price hitter is Kemp. I'll be interested in seeing whether Kershaw replaces Rizzo's value or not. We're only nine games in, so I can't say yet.

I was swept in the finals with these high priced players (90-72):

Puig
Adam Jones
Altuve
Turner
Rendon

3 of the 5 over the amount stated, Puig under performed. Jones and Altuve did well. Altuve and Turner were 1-2 in average. Altuve led league in hits, was 2nd to Dyson in SB's and had a 45 game hitting streak.

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1411134

I was swept in the finals with these high priced players (90-72):

Puig
Adam Jones
Altuve
Turner
Rendon

3 of the 5 over the amount stated, Puig under performed. Jones and Altuve did well. Altuve and Turner were 1-2 in average. Altuve led league in hits, was 2nd to Dyson in SB's and had a 45 game hitting streak.

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1411134

The team that swept me had Harrison, Ortiz and Ozuna as top 3 in Great American.

For what is worth:

Trout and A.Cabrera (who is a good value, but not the greatest):
pricetag: 12M + 3.39M =15.39M
value (NERP): 105.7 + 42.9 = 148.6
WARP (win above replacement player): roughly 11.2

C.Gomez and Cano (who are not among the worst values in my opinion, you can find worst)
pricetag: 8.88M + 8.28M = 17.16M
value (NERP): 76.3 + 71.8 = 148.1
WARP (win above replacement player): roughly 11.1
Same value as above, but costing 2M more (a huge impact around 3 fewer wins per season)

Put another way, there did not seem to be a huge differential between guys at the top and some guys who cost much less.

Value: the worth of something in terms of the amount of other things for which it can be exchanged or in terms of some medium of exchange.

I want to take a second to look at the dictionary definition of value posted above.

If you use a Strat-O ratings guide, Joe the Jet's ratings, Marc's ratings, Fangraphs, ESPN, any number of good resources, you have plenty of tools at your disposal to ferret out "value" from the SOM salary price structure. When we say guys are overpriced or underpriced on the boards, this is what we are usually referring to. The goal of course is to buy players who are actually "on sale". That's a good thing, and the better managers are likely better at finding those bargains.

The names offered up as the best offensive values are names I totally agree with. But if you ask me who is the best offensive value, I say it's "the $0.50 card."

If your $10.00 guy scores 100 runs, you paid ten cents a run. If your $0.50 guy scores 30 runs, you paid a penny and a half for a run. You get a third of the run production for five percent of the price. To me, that is more meaningful in discussing "value" than whether or not a card is 96% or actually only 93% underpriced according to his salary.

Way back when, having only then recently discovered espn.go and with entirely too much time on my hands, I decided to create a salary price to RC27 ratio. It was semi-successful, in that I uncovered quite a few $7-8 guys who were better buys than $9 guys. That's good! At least is was until I came across a $0.50 Juan Pierre, whose ratio was at ludicrous speed. Then I did more $0.50 guys and realized that when viewed through this prism (SOM salary to RC27), they were all tremendous values.

Can you win with 14 offensive players that cost $7 mil? Of course you can't. But putting a calculator to it, you also can't argue that there's not a ton of "value" there (especially leaning on your $73 mil pitching staff! )

The goal of the manager isn't to buy value. Like the Moneyball quote says, the goal is to buy wins. To buy wins, you have to buy runs.

How many?

Down, down, down from year's past, this year Champs teams average only 664 runs scored. We are now winning 4-3 instead of 5-4 (which is an incredible difference when you think about it).

The "average" team is usually hovering around 600 runs.

So to get 600 runs, I just need 60 runs times nine positions (and five bench guys getting 12 runs each). This is where things get a lot more interesting...

When you free your brain up from "How should I list Players A, B and C (who everybody else also wants) on my draft card?" to "How do I get 60 runs from each position?" you see the game in an entirely different light.

If a $0.50 guy gets you 30 runs, and a $1.00 guy gets you 40 runs, and a $1.50 guy gets you 50 runs, who cares if the $4.00 to $12.00 guys all can get you 80-90 runs?? (And that's no guarantee by the way - plenty of managers don't break 600 runs with $50+ mil in salary).

I can't even begin to express the amount of frustration I feel as I look at the batting stats and see Edge's Moss or geekor's Turner putting up the same stats as Trout (more or less, sans defense, etc etc) for a third of the price.

Why is it harder to win with Trout? If I can coax 60 runs out of a $3 guy, then Trout needs to score 240 runs to be equally valuable to the $3 guy. And the top guys aren't scoring 240 runs. I think you can win with Trout as long as you did everything else right first (ie, pitching, defense and low dollar batters).

Anyway, this is getting too long now. But the questions I'm currently asking myself are "How little can I spend to buy 600 runs?" followed up by "What pieces do I need to add to get to 660 (Champs avg)?"

If this team holds up (stay back there, Jim!), the 600 run floor might be in the $2.18 mildo range:

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1414764

So far averaging 4 runs per game and exactly a middle of the pack 6th in league offense. How much more fun the game is when you're trying to win with Roberto Perez and Ender Inciarte rather than watch Mr. Ten Mill go .230/.320/.410!!

(Thx Jim, thx Jimmer, thx Stoney! Hat tip to freeman, who very often seems to be on the same wavelengths as I am!)

Marc, you snuck in just before I posted. I'm sure we'll be discussing more...!

That's funny. Someone started this thread by ASKING for us to post our most expensive players on our championship teams. That's what this thread was supposed to be about. But I am told that this will not prove anything and to stay on topic... You guys are funny.

Zach Walters ab270 r57 h71 2b-10 3b-0 hr-45 rbi 87 bb17
best deal ever!!

I actually like the theory that was originally posed, even though it has already been proven false and the sample sized used was tiny. Most of the time I do NOT buy players over 8 million bucks. But I happen to like Brantley and McCutcheon in this set. I played two 2014 teams, both went to the championship, both had players over 10 million and neither league was an auto league.