[findinghomer]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Forget worrying about home runs and pull hitters. Build a team like the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals. Pitching, speed, fielding, and contact hitting. Work on manufacturing runs, stealing bases, and using your pitching and fielding to turn your ballpark into an advantage.

You should always focus on pitching first. Get the best starting rotation you can and worry about offense a bit later. I often spend the first couple of draft picks on getting great starters and then start alternating between field players and pitching, depending on the talent available and how the AI GMs are drafting. Hopefully you can get a respectable bullpen too. Just make sure that your pitchers have a high ground ball percentage. You can get away with a bit less talent overall if your pitchers can keep the ball down and you can play defense.

Get the best center fielder you can with huge range, great defense, and a great arm. Get a shortstop and second baseman who have the same qualities and can turn the double play. If you can, make sure these three players have good speed and can steal bases. If they can bunt for hit and/or sacrifice bunt, that's good too. But the most important thing is their defense and their ability to contribute at least halfway decent offense.

You still want to get a couple of players with power and gap hitting ability, but it's more important to make sure that your power hitters are balanced players. Make sure they can play defense and can actually run the bases. Don't waste time on slow power hitters with mediocre fielding. That will hurt you in that ballpark.

Overall, you want players who can make good contact and can avoid strikeouts, because you'll need to keep rallies alive and won't be able to rely on the home run.

It may sound like it's asking for a lot, but I've always been able to build teams like this through an inaugural draft, especially in historical leagues.

are you really charlie hough?