Admit it Cristano, you've been waiting since the last championship finished to see what I will do.
The last two months just terrified you that we would have an 80M no dh draft and I might get both Pineiro and Duren with my corner picks.
I had prepared for 80M the last few months, but prepared for 100M the preceding six months. The 4 Aces strategy is quite reliable at 100M dh, mostly for wins in the low to mid 90's. I've been using it a lot recently just testing things out. It is certainly an option, but the direction I head in is still draft dependent i.e. the rest of the first round picks. For my 100M experiments, I played in bomber parks which proved a very effective antidote to the Four Aces strategy. It is just unfortunate that we don't know our division opponents in advance. Still shocked that folks don't demand that, but whatever.
Your initial choice of Pedro suggests no 4 Aces for you this year. I imagine that your post today is an attempt to dissuade me from taking Pineiro and Duren, mostly because they would be the perfect complement to your first round pick. Thing is that the 4 Aces got a lot of play in the three semifinal lotteries that just finished. So I do expect some of those guys to trot it out in the finals. Certainly Ford in the first round suggests that team is headed in that direction, although Big Train would have been a far better choice.
I honestly haven't decided what I will do with my first two picks. It occurs to me that you are probably correct that we won't have too many bomber teams or Minute Maid type teams, which frees up a lot of talent if one goes that way and should result in a leisurely ability to grab some excellent values that no one else will benefit from. I'm normally partial to small ball but if guys are going for the Aces strategy, there are better options. I've also experimented with parks like Connie Mack '57, a quasi hybrid of small ball and Minute Maid and done very well.
Of course getting people to actually make their picks in anything approaching a timely manner appears to be an issue once again, even in the first round. Perhaps Mesquiton is too busy giving another interview to Wolfman Shapiro to bother making a timely pick. As Bruce Foster did, he gave one a few years ago where he was lauded as being one of the foremost Strat /ATG experts. I guess we should be honored to be in the same draft with him. I so hope that I can be competitive what that famous ATG legend.