2018 BS Finals "Discussion" Thread

I agree that most pitchers are largely interchangable. BUT, that does not mean that the ones who are fairly unique aren't just as scarce, or scarcer, as the top value guys at any given position. Thus I believe that marcpelletier was right to draft Pineiro second overall two years ago. The non-interchangeable pitchers are fewer at 80M relative to 100M as the player pool shrinks at the cheap end of the spectrum, so Pineiro, given how underpriced he is, is a great top pick at 80M.

But Halle. In Event 2, you put together a +200 run differential 101 win team with not one single hitter that is a top 3 round pick. You could argue your batters are completely replaceable. I consider Appling the best value small ball batter on your roster, and he is a 3rd rounder at best. Maybe King Kelly or Gehringer in the 5th round.

On the contrary, I would argue you'd lose 5 expected wins from that team if you had to replace Sutter, Duren, and Pineiro with the next best pitchers on your 40 pitcher list. In addition, Heredia/Sutton are the best spot starters around, aside from Rueter who equals those two. In terms of plain old ERA for the price, Pineiro / Duren / Sutter are eye popping off the charts. There are a lot of pretty good pitchers, but no one competes with those three. Henry pretty good, Donald pretty good, Klipper pretty good (in certain leagues). But the step between Pineiro/Duren/Sutter and next best replacements is staggering (at least by my metrics).

Now, I agree, maybe you'd have an 89 Win Expected Value (without Pineiro / Duren / Sutter) instead of 94 Expected Wins with them, but in 30% of leagues an 89 Expected Value team misses playoffs (range around 89 wins is essentially 82-96), and almost never does a 94 Expected Value win team miss playoffs. I hate building an 89 EV win team and know that (bad) random luck will make me miss playoffs 30% of the time even though my EV is highest in the league. In my opinion, that is what makes Pineiro / Duren studs. I just hate SN because they are so hard to get because everyone wants them. Sadly, I am leaning toward drafting an SN with the 3rd overall pick. No DH really screws me because big SN like Pedro are useless too. Every expensive starter is rendered useless in No DH. And the value of Pineiro and Duren are again, for lack of better descriptor, eye popping.

You keep posting Cristiano. I hope you're successful in convincing them all to use their high picks on cheap starters heavily tilted to one side

With the size of the player pool, every hitter is fungible in a sense too. My list at every position is a lot longer than 1 player. However, I expect my top 3-4 at almost every position to be gone by the middle of the live draft, so I don't want to be shut out at too many positions. Just like most of my list of the top 10-15 starting pitchers will largely be gone by the middle of the live draft. What are your priorities on team building, and where do we each prefer to scramble to put something less than ideal on the field. Somehow I won 93 games in last years' finals live drafting zero starting pitchers. Cristano, you put together a 96 win team drafting starting pitching early, and scrambling very well elsewhere.

dj: true, i do post partly for a purpose. i either want to draft 1 of pineiro or duren or guarantee that petro doesn't land both on the swing around. as long as they both don't end up on the same team, that is a huge win for everyone.

dj: i have been doing testing using some middle star pitchers like you did on your 106 win team from event 2 but i am not having much success with it. it is hard to classify a 106 win team as mostly luck, but i haven't been able to reproduce your effort.

halle: agreed, your starting pitching was a** last year. but you did get 300ip out of sutter and 200ip out of wagner, and those guys have ERAs similar to any one of my 4 Aces. for 80m, i would much rather draft the best pitching and scramble for the hitting, since it is easy to fill 80m of payroll on pretty good hitters. but probably all of the top 12 managers are pretty similar in skill, at least the ones that are here year in and year out, so maybe everyone's expected value will be around 81 wins.

overall i feel confident in my abilities to dominate a 100m cap. but 80m is a lot tougher, at least with this crowd. i'd be much happier if the pushover managers like luckyman were in this year's finals.

Several points. Cristano is a very good lobbyist, seeking to influence the competition for his own purposes. I'm glad he admitted his reason for posting about Pineiro and Duren. He did a great job last year on catcher's arms. I should have literally run away with that league without people loading up on catcher's arms. Many might still have, but I am pretty sure fewer of the also rans would have without his influence. So it goes.

But one has to read between the lines. Like any good disinformation, the majority of what Cristano posts is accurate, even insightful. But the element of misdirection is rarely lacking. One example: in last years finals thread he posted about Honus Wagner, if I recall, and how he has little use for his 6.55 million card, vastly preferring the 7.98 card. And yet, arguably the best player on his 80M team in event 2 this team was... the 6.55M Honus Wagner!

Dj's team in event 2 was very retro, employing the precise small ball, low cap starters that I often used back in 2006-2008. I think that there are better choices now but it worked very well indeed.

Hallerose did as well as he did last year primarily because he loaded up on OBP guys, which is his signature for small ball teams. The pitching was pretty shaky, even with Sutter and Wagner. Sutter was great but Wagner performed as he usually does, much worse than my expectations. But I also should add, that I've used every one of his pitchers many times over the years, except Kison who I've only employed a handful of times. It also didn't hurt that he was in the weakest division, with two teams deep in the red on run differential. I think of all the managers in this show, he is the easiest, for me at least, to "read" whereas Lab is more difficult for me -at least when it comes to predicting draft picks. No implication that one is better than the other, Karpov and Fischer were fairly easy to understand as well, Kasparov much more difficult.

Cristiano - there was a lot of luck involved. One of the other teams in my division was seized by SOM (and eventually Moose) for dumping players. I went 21-3 against that team, so I probably got another 5 wins or so over what I would have done against a normal bad team. Hallerose's team was probably better than mine. I did take him out in the finals, but of course that's mostly luck.

It's all the rage to use a staff of no star starters now and I did this pretty successfully at the 60M cap. I know there are many that are great values. However, I'm not convinced that guys like Heredia, Sutton, and even Klippstein can be used effectively in a league of 12 accomplished managers who know how to build teams to guard against heavily leaning pitchers. I'm also reminded of Earl Weaver's dictum "It's easier to find 4 good starting pitchers than 5."

I just rechecked my $60M team and remembered Grover Lowdermilk went 21-1 for me - he won 21 straight before losing his last game. How long do you think you'd need to simulate to get that result?

https://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1486891

Heredia, Sutton and Klippstein are good values with the current state of strat. However I wonder there effectiveness without the aid of 'Super Relievers'. I despise the super reliever problem (but don't hold it against managers for using).
My friend mjruth convinced me to try BarnStormers this year and I am glad I did, I had previously lost most of my interest in the game and no longer studied new cards. The one thing I did do was seek out theme leagues and sometimes just tried a theme with myself.
So I have to thank BarnStormers and the challenge it presented for getting me excited again.
I do look forward to seeing everyone's 'strategy'.

jet: what is barnStormers?