The Big Post for 2016

That's quite a load of very good teams!

I hate knowing I'm going to be dragging this out over a couple more weeks, and recognize the payoff won't likely be worth the wait to many readers.

Having said that, your teams seem to have won in a fashion somewhat different than how I'm currently seeing things. That just goes to show (for the umpteenth million time) that there are no absolutes in this game. Teams win for many, many different reasons.

I am curious to see what your conclusions are. There is never one way to win--the game would get boring if that were true--but general trends are nice to know.

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1433610.

This was my best team this year. I think that Citizen's Bank provided the greatest starting advantage among the ballparks. Saw a lot of winning teams draft it, which allows you to maximize RHB power/lousy defense bargains in the set like Sano, Gimenez. Even an underdrafted guy like Valencia rakes in that park on the relative cheap.


While I agree with Geekor's assessment that guys like Arrieta and Keuchel are great values, I agree further with JPAV that it's hard to count on getting a stud 4 man rotation in the draft, and it provides for less flexibility if you don't get all the guys you want. It's a high risk high reward draft strategy. So I tried to work with 5 mans, with relative success.

That's an excellent $100 mil team - do you have anything in the standard $80 mil format?

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1432072.

Sure Jpav. Here's an 83 win team that should have been at 90 wins by run differential, and that went on to win a title. Some aspects of this team that my other winning teams shared:

An all righty (or nearly all righty) 5 man rotation with no * pitchers, effective relief performances from the back end cheap relievers, and certain "bargain" (IMO) hitters like Kipnis and Sano (although Kipnis actually sucked on this team).

Went for stud 4 man... failed in draft (well got 1/4), still won a title

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1439241

Nice recovery!

I'll tell you the thing I like most about these last two teams is, for the most part, these are the kinds of teams you can draft from the leftovers in the FA pool.

I've been doing a lot of Harper, Trout and Goldschmidtting lately, but there's nothing I enjoy more about the game than winning with the players that nobody else wants. And the more of a misfit they happen to be, the more I want them on my team.

I'll be honest, I went for the Lefty Petco team (as that worked well the last 2 years) early, but failed.. miserably. I haven't seen those teams win in leagues I've been in. So I noticed my team with better SP did better, so I tried to max it once, it worked, then again, it worked again, then again (theme league) it worked. So keep trying, but, as I said, hard to do now.

I will say, there is always different ways that work, I just stick to what I'm comfortable with.

But with SP being a bit OP in this year, it would near impossible to do in vet leagues at this point. Last live draft, they all go early now.

Need to find a counter that works.

Help is on the way! Stay tuned.