Back in February, our previous leader Sky got the ball rolling a project to see if people could put together a competitive baseball team on a limited budget. It was based off a draft that ESPN ran. Two league were created, teams were drafted and then the wait began. There was no trading throughout the season, so the team you draft you were stuck with.
I sponsored the Pat Burrell league. I kept a spreadsheet for the participants to enter their team totals, but each team was to keep track of their own player's total. I have sent out quite a few reminders, as I am sure the league can testify to, so everyone has had a chance to update their numbers by now. As of right today, I have the WAR totals for each team, but not the PA (limit 6500) and IP (1500) for 5 teams. With that being said, the winner of the Pat Burrell league is:
viktor06
Here are the final results:
| Name | Total WAR | Total WAR plus Replacement Wins (48.6) |
| viktor06 | 64.7 | 113.3 |
| oldjacket | 57.4 | 106.0 |
| NYRoyal | 52.0 | 100.6 |
| TucsonRoyal | 50.0 | 98.6 |
| Jason Collette | 47.0 | 95.6 |
| Daniel Berlyn | 43.4 | 92.0 |
| acblue | 29.5 | 78.1 |
| vivaelpujols | 67.3 | 115.9 |
| Markakis and Wieters 4 Life | 48.6 | 97.2 |
| philkid3 | 43.4 | 92.0 |
| Marc Normandin | 42.2 | 90.8 |
| MatthewA | 35.6 | 84.2 |
As a whole I am amazed at the amount of WAR only 12 teams were able to accumulate. As a league, we totaled up for 581 WAR, while spending 720 million, or 1.24 million per WAR. I thought I was doing pretty good by getting 50 WAR, but viktor06 and viva crushed me. Well congrats again to viktor06.
How did my strategy play out:
I aimed to get the max PA with good players and no PA for the rest of my players. I figured 10 players with 650 PA would put me at the PA limit. So for each picked, I reference Ron Shandler's fantasy guide that rates the player's health and tried to take only players with an A rating. I decided to then only aim for 12 full time position players (some players would still get hurt) and the rest of the players should see no playing time. That stategy played out great as I ended up with 6480 AB.
With pitchers I wanted to also go for a few healthy studs. We were limited to 1000 starting innings, so I aimed for 6 starters to go 200 innings, account for 1 starter going down. The rest of the pitchers I went with the best available pen guys. All went pretty decent here except, by the time in the draft I got around to getting a pen, most decent players were taken.
Possible changes for next year.
$50 million dollar limit - The win total were extremely high and taking away $120 million should remove 100 WAR from the draft. Maybe even take it down to $45 million.
Total IP to 1500 - There was no good way to keep track of the WAR between the two, so just have a total for IP
Thanks again to all the participate and can't wait to do it again.