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Moscow Mules

TonyGin&Juice

Sucking off Lawn Guy Land hobos.
Billy-corgan.jpg

Whenever I hear OSick187 talking this is who I imagine is behind the microphone.
 

Soonerfan09

Well-Known Member
Just finished the video @osick87 . Thanks a ton. I've gotten quite a bit of help from the guys in the league, which I really appreciate, so thank you all.

One question I have so far, when I'm cleaning out my A team, should I just start releasing guys now, or just wait until the end of the season and not resign them?
 

Travis7401

Douglass Tagg
Community Liaison
I would wait until you go through your AA and AAA teams first, since it might be worth promoting some players (I usually look mid season) at which point it might open an additional spot where you need a body.

I try to keep 27-28 players in AAA and AA to find the balance between a little extra depth in case of injury and getting everyone proper playing time. Then I try to keep about 28-30 players in A but not all of them will get much playing time, a few of them are just fringe guys who are there as filler bodies as injuries stack up through the season.
 

Soonerfan09

Well-Known Member
Does every league at every level use a DH? Basically, do I ever have to worry about setting a lineup VS LHP/RHP without DH?
 

Travis7401

Douglass Tagg
Community Liaison
Does every league at every level use a DH? Basically, do I ever have to worry about setting a lineup VS LHP/RHP without DH?

For lower level DH spots, I often just throw in a player who I still care about developing, but already has a solid positional rating but I still want to get them a good number of plate appearances so their bat develops. If I don't have extra players I care about at a certain level, I"ll also use the DH spot to add a veteran leader with good intangibles, especially if that player is a franchise hero for Doh. WACO THANKS YOU DERMOTT MCHESHI!
 

Travis7401

Douglass Tagg
Community Liaison
I watched @osick87's vidya and I think he did a great job breaking down your team and I agree with his suggested roster moves for this year. I figured I'd expand on some of his advice with a little bit more general roster building theory of mine and show how I would break down your current team using my BTT tool, which I will email to you today.

Part 1 - Using a wage scale to keep ur finances in order while building a roster.

My overall roster building approach, and the approach I recommend to others, is to try and reach the playoffs every year with the most cost efficient base roster I can manage while also increasing my budget in general, maximizing the amount of money I have available between the budget and my payroll so that I can spend a lot of money in IFA and spend big in FA on short term luxury deals. To that end, I have a fairly strict wage scale that I try to adhere to based on how I view the player's importance to the team. In order to stay within that wage scale, it is really important that I develop most of my players within my own system. If a player is demanding more than my wage scale, I hope to replace them in house and then attempt to trade them for value before I'm faced with a difficult decision to let them walk in free agency and have to scramble for a replacement. For my free agent "luxury" players on short term contracts, I basically expect to pay double my wage scale for those players, since that is the nature of free agency. For these luxury contracts I only have 1 guaranteed year and then 1 or 2 team option years so that I can bail on that salary if the player doesn't work out. I think this approach, especially toward free agency, leaves me with less dead money and bad contracts than most teams. I don't mind paying a luxury free agent player a huge salary, but I always want it to be a short term deal because free agent contracts are inherently inefficient to start with and a lot of the players are older so signing them long term is a huge risk.

BTT WAGE SCALE - keeping 30 players or less on salary is ideal, but depth/injury cause certain players to be called up short term and then kept on the payroll so you might pay as many as 35. I based the wage scale on a playoff built team and a maximum allowable payroll of about $150M for a team with a budget of $175M dollars, and leaving enough money for development and scouting and having some available for trades ($25M buffer is a good minimum cushion between budget/payroll). Any extra savings should be spent on IFA or short term luxury free agent signings designed to help you win more games and drive fan interest up (to keep your budget up). Most teams (including myself) have a budget of less than $175M, so adjust accordingly.

#1 and #2 type Pitchers and Elite position players (3+ WAR) < 15M/year (<30M if via FA). Approx 5 players max (approx 75 million max)
#3-4 type starting pitchers, reliable starting position players (2 WAR), and elite relief pitchers < 5M/year (<10M if via FA). Approx 8 players max (approx 40 million max)
#5-#6 Starting pitchers, marginal starters (1 WAR), platoon starters, and normal relief pitchers < 2M/year (<4M if via FA). Approx 10 players max (approx 20 million max)
Bench Players/Subs/Talismanic Players etc < 1M/year (should not need to sign these players via FA, but they are often available and easy to sign for cheap if you need them) (approx 15 million max)


You can see my current salary list at the link here (approx 34 players on salary right now:
http://utopia.allsimbaseball9.com//game/lgreports/teams/team_6_player_salary_report.html

I currently only have two "Luxury" free agent players on the roster. Jamie Robles was an "elite" player and is in the last year of a 2 year contract is making $20M. He played really well for me last season, so I kept him under his option but now he's really struggling and I'm glad that his contract will be finished at the end of the year. Samuel Seguin was a stop gap "back of the rotation" pitcher that I signed to give me some good service while a few of my younger pitchers developed. He is in his second year of a luxury "back end of rotation pitcher" contract for $10M and I think he's performed well. Still, I'm glad his contract is up because I've got cheaper young pitchers who should be able to provide that same level of service going forward.

I have 3 players in the normal "elite" contract level and they are Paul Lee, Julio Manuel, and Isam Nazih. Lee is on a long term contract making $12.5M/year and I think he's been performing like a top of the rotation pitcher. Julio Manuel hasn't really lived up to his elite status, due to injuries and MS, but he's still played pretty well and he's on a $7.5M average contract which is closer to the "solid starter" salary anyway, so I'm not too upset. Isam Nazih is still under team control so his salary is really nice and low at $5.8M average, his next contract might be difficult to keep under $15M/year and I will have a difficult decision.

I have 4 players in the 2-5M/year range and they are all meeting expectations

I have 5 players in the 1-2M/year range. 3 of them are meeting expectations and the other 2 will be gone at the end of the season.

I have 20 players in the <1M year range. I don't have much in the way of expectations for these players, other than provide depth or some intangible benefit to the team. I'm carrying a few more of these minimum players than I'd like at the current time, but that's mostly due to calling up some 4th outfield types that haven't really worked out. there are about 5-10 of these guys that will be released at the end of the season and will be replaced by newer young players.


I know that is pretty spergy and not all that helpful for you right now since your team is more comprised of 35 shitheads, but you can at least see that some of your shitheads are making too much money according to my wage scale, given their performance/role on the team. The good news is that you don't have any terrible long term contracts, so your rebuild should be a pretty blank slate and you can start building a very cost effective winning team!
 
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Travis7401

Douglass Tagg
Community Liaison
PART 2 - Building a Roster for 90+ wins

In the WBL, a team entirely filled with "replacement level" players should win 46 games according to my statistical analysis. Now "replacement level" is a bit of a fuzzy concept because it can be surprisingly hard to find "replacement" level players at certain positions (because other teams might stockpile them). But basically if you built a 35 player roster of major league minimum salary players you should still be able to win 46 games at a cost of about $17 Million. This means the team @Bdub has "built" for you is playing replacement level baseball for $34M payroll. Your current inefficiency between payroll and performance is about $17M. Now a playoff team is typically going to win 90+ games a season and I've already mentioned the max $150M player payroll for a top end perennial contender like Helsingborg who has a lot of established players. Now you can certainly build a playoff roster for less than $150M, as there are plenty of teams who have made the playoffs with young rosters making $80M or less.

So lets figure out how to get from 46 wins to go from replacement level to get to playoff level of 90 wins (44 win difference) with ur roster of 30-35 players (only 25 can be on the WBL roster obviously, but you will want some depth in case of injury...).

With batters, the WAR statistic actually correlates pretty darn well to win totals, and most 90 win teams have batter WAR totals between 20 and 30, depending on how much their pitching contributes. With pitchers, the WAR statistic is inaccurate and should probably not be used. A pitching staff that ranks #1,2nd,3rd in their league is likely contributing up to 20-30 wins, most of the time the teams with the #1 through#3 pitching staffs make the playoffs, as long as their batting isn't horrible.. A pitching staff between in the middle of their league (4,5,6) is probably contributing between 10-20 wins. These teams are hit or miss for the playoffs unless they have truly superior position players. A pitching staff rated between 7th and 9th in your league is likely contributing between 0-10 wins, and it is nearly impossible for these teams to make the playofffs even with a ton of offense.

So in short, a truly elite pitching staff needs as little as 15-25 Wars from position players to make the 90 win mark. A middle of the road pitching staff needs almost 25-35 wars contributed from the position players. A Loathsome pitching staff makes it virtually impossible to make the playoffs unless your team is generating 35+ Wars based on position players, which is a TON. So my preferred team build is to have an elite pitching staff that should finish between 1st and 2nd in the league and then find 20+ WARS from my position players. My park factors played into this decision for me, but there are other teams that try to win most of their WARS through offense, so there are many ways to skin this cat.

Your current version of the Moscow MULES has a better pitching staff than I expected, but they are under performing because of your defense and their depression/anger. They are still going to be toward the bottom of the league, but I'd say they could be capable of up to 10 WARS won if they were in a good mood. Your position players, based on my BTT WAR CALCULATION TOOL are predicted to account for about 3.5 WARS. Thus if your team was not depressed and angry, you could expect to win up to 60 games with your current roster. Obviously they are not in a good mood and are therefore performing more poorly than their ratings suggest, so they'll be shooting for that 50 win mark.

In part 3 I will discuss your pitching situation and where they fit according to my build standards (not as bad as expected!) and show where I'd have certain players on the wage scale and which ones project to be helpful to your roster moving forward.

In part 4 I will discuss your position players and show you how I use my BTT WAR PREDICTION CALCULATOR to optimize lineups and predict WARS WON. This portion of your team was actually worse than I expected, but the good news is that there are lots of very easy improvements you can make in the offseason that won't cost you any money at all.
 

Soonerfan09

Well-Known Member
A pitching staff that ranks #1,2nd,3rd in their league is likely contributing up to 20-30 wins.
So in short, a truly elite pitching staff needs as little as 15-25 Wars from position players to make the 90 win mark.

I don't understand how this works. Where do the other 35 wins come from?

Thanks for all the tips. I'm really enjoying seeing the different ways everyone would go about this rebuild. A lot of similarities, a few differences, and a ton of help.
 

TonyGin&Juice

Sucking off Lawn Guy Land hobos.
All ball busting of Travis aside, he's right that having a good pitching staff (specifically starters) is where it's at. AS far as the wins differences go think of it this way - if you don't give up a ton of run (good pitching) you don't need as much offense to win.
 

Yankee151

Hot Girl Summer
Offense and other pitchers. E.G. The 2015 Yankees had about 38 WARS WON as a team last year, and finished with 87 wins. Ends up with ~84 pupported WARS WON but it isn't a perfect calculation
 

Travis7401

Douglass Tagg
Community Liaison
I don't understand how this works. Where do the other 35 wins come from?

Thanks for all the tips. I'm really enjoying seeing the different ways everyone would go about this rebuild. A lot of similarities, a few differences, and a ton of help.


46 Wins come from hypothetical replacement players (lets use 45 for round number).


If your pitching staff provides 30 wins above "replacement level" then your batters need to provide about 15 wins above "replacement level"

45+30+15 = 90

I usually plan on 25 wins from my pitching staff and 20 wins from my position players

45 (replacement) + 25 (pitching) + 20 (position) = 90
 

TonyGin&Juice

Sucking off Lawn Guy Land hobos.
And WAR has defensive and offensive components, so you can use it to determine where your players could be optimized. Or you could be like me, and play a guy who has a 2.6 offensive WAR in the outfield and give him sub 1 WARs every year!

This is a really good point. I have two guys on my WBL (Niek Ploeg and Fernando Zacorias) who have positive WARs but wouldn't if I played them in the field. Having one or two guys that can hit but can't field worth a damn won't doom you but an entire team of them will. The "star ratings" also change significantly if you alter a guy's position.
 

Travis7401

Douglass Tagg
Community Liaison
My BTT WAR CALCULATOR breaks down WAR by each category (Base, Position, Bat, Base Running, Defense). I'll get to that in Part 4.
 
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