2017 Finals Vote for CAP/DH/Draft Order

Petro: I am much less sad about you not taking the 1k bet I offered you. Pedro, Speaker, and Cobb. That would have been a big ouch for me.

The problem I am having is that I can't figure out what kind of teams Lab and Halle are going for. During the first round I thought we could have up to 6 lefty park teams. So I aborted my preferred draft card which was a lefty park. Now the following managers are likely eliminated from going big lefty boppers: Petro (definitely not going lefty with Speaker and Cobb), Don (definitely not going lefty with righty boppers Mondesi and Henderson), JB (likely not going lefty with FThomas), BD (likely not going lefty with Gibson), Socio (likely not going lefty with Kiner), Sox (definitely not going lefty with Wagner and Thompson, TMFW (likely not going lefty with Lajoie although Lajoie works well anywhere).

Possible lefty parks: Andy probably isn't going lefty park but Davis fits anywhere. No idea what MJ is going for since I have no idea what a Beckert is. So ignoring me, there could be just 2 lefty bopper parks, depending on how Lab and Halle break. I myself have had Bonds on many small park teams and love him in that setting. Same with Vaughan.

Anyway, that is the reason I drafted Morgan 2nd round. Far too early for him, but I figured I could still make a push for a lefty park team if all the pieces fall for me in the next couple rounds.

Bernie will probably go lefty even with Gibson, especially if he gets Daniels. I'm sure his first two picks were his absolute dream picks. He is much more dangerous than his draft position suggests. Anyone who underestimates him does so at their extreme peril. Otherwise, it is pretty much up in the air for now.

I think the situation may clarify itself by the time your next pick rolls around.

I'm still a little confused on the park selection. Let me know when you figure out where I should be playing.

Don must be going ape dee dape that Dahlen went pick before him.

I am just as confused as to what you're going for. If I were drafting a lefty park bopper team, I could easily put Ashburn and Dahlen on it and be thrilled. If I were drafting small ball I would be thrilled with Bonds on the team. Initially I thought you were going something like Dunn '20 / 16-6-10-1. Now I think it is even odds between Dunn '20 and Forbes '65 / 18-8-1-1. Selfishly, I am hoping it is the latter.

Lab is drafting well. The proof of this is that his team is still completely flexible in terms of direction.

My last two picks were unfortunately like a road map of my intentions. But Cobb and Speaker made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

Your strategy is always telegraphed. The Petro motto is "Just Jet it and forget it." That was Luckyman's strategy too and it served him very well. Last year he made playoffs for both Barnstormers and 2016 Tour. I buy the Jet ratings just to see what 4 of you will heavily target. I am shocked that King Kelly hasn't gone off the board yet. Even more shocked is that you drafted a CF that wasn't Earle Combs.

Guys I love and Jet loves: Pedro, Speaker, Cobb.
Guys I dislike but Jet loves: King Kelly, Dahlen, to name a couple.
Things that blow my mind is how do so many people prefer the 1B Wagner to the SS Wagner? Same with Lajoie, how do so many prefer the biggest Lajoie vs. the 8.78m Lajoie, which is my personal favourite.

Well the other piece is that I am pretty much the only person I know who uses the 8.21 Lajoie. On paper it is much the lesser card but it performs well for me.

If I wanted to slavishly use Jet's ratings, I would have drafted Frank Chance first. In regular leagues he rarely gets drafted but he seems to be a mainstay in the BS finals. Combs is practically a platoon guy and since I wanted a substandard defensive rf, I needed Speaker for CF. Don's drafting the past few years appears to very much be informed by Jet's ratings although Bruce Foster and PBTR I think are the guys that relied on those ratings as Gospel. Marc uses his WAR ratings, I'd be surprised if he used the Jet's ratings. I think his are more accurate but I also believe that there is not one absolute metric that yields ultimate strat truth.

Joe the Jets ratings are useful, better certainly than Diamond Dope, but nothing substitutes for experience and knowing what works. Oddly, you probably are the only person with more of that than me given your endless simulations. I laughed and laughed at Rosie's post in the recent finals about your team moving from 55% to 80% as a result of post waiver moves. He had no clue that those were not mathematical estimates but the actual results of god alone knows how many simulations you ran. But your greatest weakness is that you tend to think in absolute terms in a relativistic game. Lab's zinger from this morning at you works precisely because of that tendency.

And all my simulations and all our analysis are for nothing anyway. In an 80m DH league, Sutter, Murrary, Wilhelm, and Pedro are the 4 clear best and all others are a step down.

In a 100m DH league, the differential between players is minimal, it all comes down to who you get stuck with in your division. It is very rare that something happens like the barnstormers finals two years ago, where there were 55% LHSP and I got to draft a bunch of lefty killers and win 105 games. I almost drafted all 0.5m this draft to prove a point.

I mean Halle is running with 100% LHSP. He being in my division vs. outside my division makes much more difference compared to something teeny tiny like whether I get Delahanty or Rickey Henderson (who I wanted more, thanks Don).

Don's rolling the dice big time with injuries. If these guys stay healthy he'll be a force to be reckoned with.

We both have in common wanting to leave as little as possible to chance. This is the only live draft that I participate in that doesn't allow you to know who you are really drafting against. But it is what it is.