Benchwarmer Baseball

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pioneer98
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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

Post by pioneer98 »

This is the lineup of the team that won their league:
Lineup:
1 Matt Joyce OF
2 Domingo Santana OF
3 Jose Abreu 1B
4 Justin Upton OF
5 Luis Valbuena DH
6 Mike Moustakas 3B
7 Yangervis Solarte SS
8 Salvador Perez C
9 Starlin Castro 2B

Bench:
Steven Pearce
Freddy Galvis
Guillermo Heredia
Johan Camargo
Drew Butera

Rotation:
Max Scherzer
Jose Quintana
Luke Weaver
Dallas Keuchel
Clayton Richard

Spot starters:
Ty Blach
Jason Vargas

Bullpen:
Brad Hand
Drew Steckenrider
Blake Parker
George Kontos
Jacob Barnes

They only use games from the 2nd half for the playoffs. That's why Weaver is #3 in the rotation, and why Valbuena is batting 5th (.866 OPS in the 2nd half). There are 14 more roster spots not shown - 4 spots to stash any player and 10 "minor league" spots for players with a salary below 250K (this is basically minor leaguers, rookies, or guys without many MLB games in prior seasons).

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pioneer98
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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

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My one team that made that Benchwarmer Bash lost in the first round 4 games to 2.

The salaries for next year are out, and there is a trading period. After that you have to cut your roster to 28 players, and you get your salary cap money. My one team with the gigantic pile of prospects is going to have to trade some of them. Too many prospects to carry them all and still keep some of my good players already at the MLB level. Another team has the opposite problem - not enough cheap players and a bunch of very high salaries. That team will have to unload at least 1 really good MLB player due to salary (most likely Corey Seager). The other 5 teams are in pretty decent shape to roll back most of their roster while trying to make some smaller improvements. And 3 of those 5 won their division, another was over .500 so that makes sense.

The 1 of those 5 that was below .500 is in trouble if Longoria and Trumbo are going to be 20 HR guys going forward. They also had Odor and Schwarber who both sucked for much of last season. Conforto was hurt half the season. They did snag Marcus Semien as a free agent (someone cut due to injury). If Semien and Conforto are healthy all season, that will help, but I don't know if I can count on a rebound from all those guys. Probably due for a shake up.

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pioneer98
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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

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These are some trades I made this offseason. This first one was kind of painful:
1. Lewis Brinson, Vince Velasquez and Jesse Winker for Michael Conforto. Brinson could be a beast. And I'm selling low on Velasquez. Winker was basically a throw-in. I do get 2 cheap years of Conforto though.

2. Addison Russell and Walker Buehler for Wil Myers. Salaries for all 3 were already paid for. This one was easier to swallow. Russell is redundant on this team because I have Andrelton Simmons and Alex Bregman that can play SS. And Buehler is looking like a relief pitcher so his prospect value is a bit less. Myers will DH, and he's also insurance in case Miguel Cabrera sucks again.

3. Ozzie Albies for Trevor Bauer and other team pays for 20% of Bauer's contract.

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pioneer98
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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

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Here are some fairly big trades that were made:
1. I gave up Rougned Odor, Nick Williams and Tyler Mahle for Robinson Cano, Avisail Garcia and Jeff Hoffman. Basically, I don't even know if I'll keep Avisail or Hoffman. I may just cut them because I have better and cheaper options. So I viewed this trade as basically Rougned Odor and Nick Williams for Cano, and taking on Cano's contract. Which seems pretty fair. I was going to cut Tyler Mahle anyway.

2. I did get Verlander. I gave up Yoan Moncada and Zack Godley, and took on Verlander's much bigger contract.

3. I got Carlos Carrasco for Luke Weaver and Alex Cobb, and basically took on a lot more contract dollars.

4. I also gave Mike Folynewicz for Freddie Freeman and basically paid both their contracts.

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pioneer98
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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

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I finally went through a draft where a league was started from scratch. Before this I had always just taken over existing teams that were abandoned by a previous owner. The draft is very odd, but I like it. Everyone is given the salary cap to spend. For the first round, you pick up to 40 players that you want. But you have to pick at least 1 for each position, and you have to stay within the cap. You can rank the players in the order you want to take them. If you were the only team to try to pick a certain player in this round, you are automatically awarded that player. If more than 1 team tried to pick a player, it goes to tiebreakers. You can spend up to $5M of your cap money on "bids". Meaning if you really want Mike Trout, you can make him your #1 pick and also bid, say $1M. If another team also had him ranked #1, but only bid $500K, then you get him. The second tiebreaker is who has spent the least amount of money so far.

I went through two drafts. The first one I went for a handful of star players but then went after a bunch of "value" players who should outperform their salaries. This strategy did not work well. I got a couple of the stars I wanted, but did not get many of these "value" picks, because everyone wanted them. I only got like 10 of the 40 players I picked in this first round, because I did not have many unique picks and I only won a few tiebreakers. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc rounds are a more traditional draft, picking in order of whoever spent the least amount of money. So this team may still end up OK because there were still a lot of star players left. But most mid-level and value players were gone. So this team has more stars but not much depth.

The 2nd draft, instead of going after so many "value" picks, I instead basically looked at a couple first place teams from last year, and tried to build a roster that was very similar to them. This gave me a much more even mixture of stars, mid-level players, and value players. I got 22 of the 40 players I picked in that first round, because I had a ton more unique picks. So this team ended up with a lot more depth. Since I had so many fewer holes to fill, I could target specific needs in rounds 2 and beyond. And again, in those rounds there are still good (but high cost) players available. I think this team will be better than that first one but who knows.

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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

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I had a team with a big cash crunch and solved it this way: I traded a contract-extended Mitch Haniger and Trevor Bauer (salary=about $5 mil) for Jake DeGrom and Franklin Barreto. DeGrom was also contract extended and "free", and Barreto is still making close to the minimum. So I got DeGrom, Barreto, and shed Bauer's $5 million salary. Losing Haniger was tough, but I had more depth in OF so I could live with it. Barreto is cheap infield depth. Now I have that extra $5 mil to fill in areas where I had no depth. This team now has DeGrom, Kluber, Carrasco and Hendricks at the front of the rotation. I have Justus Sheffield, Corbin Burnes, John Gant, and Carson Fulmer battling for the #5 spot.

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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

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Two teams swimming in cash made consolidation trades. One team got Gerrit Cole and $2 million for Brandon Nimmo, John Gant, Joey Bart and Heliot Ramos. This team now has an ace and still has gobs of money to spend.

Another team got Luis Severino for Jeremy Jeffress, Marwin Gonzalez and Stephen Gonsalves.

I have found it's very hard to win in this league unless you have an ace pitcher or two. And people are generally more willing to part with a high dollar pitcher than a high dollar batter, just because of depth. Most teams have a collection of pitchers, and everyone will just move up a slot in the rotation if one is traded. But most teams may only have one big bat at 3B or 1B, with a big dropoff after that one guy.

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pioneer98
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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

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This game has like an MVP race, and batting order does come into play. For example, RBI's count more for #3 and #4 batters, and runs count more for #1 and #2 hitters. I have a team that has had Paul DeJong batting 3rd for most of the season, and he's #2 in the MVP race behind Cody Bellinger.

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TheoSqua
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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

Post by TheoSqua »

Is it similar to Baseball Mogul? I've spent more time playing that in my life than I care to admit.

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pioneer98
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Re: Benchwarmer Baseball

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TheoSqua wrote:
February 14 20, 3:06 pm
Is it similar to Baseball Mogul? I've spent more time playing that in my life than I care to admit.
I am not sure I haven't played that one.

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