Earlier, I wrote about using the Strat-O-Matic Baseball Online: All-Time Records to help with player selection.  Studying the team records section (Team 80) can help in determining what makes a successful team.

First, take a look at the Most Wins section.  Looks like you might need to go extreme when deciding on a park to play.  Two teams chose hitter parks and three teams went for pitcher parks.

You probably can’t really determine what makes a winning team by going through these other categories.  The leaders under Team Errors – Fewest, however, showed quite a bit of success.  These teams averaged 88 wins.

Defense

Looking back in the Most Wins section, it looks like you must have at least 3 or 4 starting 1′s in your lineups.  These record holding teams averaged 4.5 starting ’1′ position players.  A team called The Wrong Stuff 441 had 8 1′s in their starting lineup!

All teams have a ’1′ at second base.  This is no surprise as there appears to be plenty ’1′s in the player set.  At short stop, however, there’s only 10 players with a ’1′ range so you will see more 2′s being used at shortstop.  The bottom line is that you need good defense up the middle.  No 3′s or 4′s.

Hitting

In outfield, you will see that Frank Robinson was used a couple times.  It’s quite a solid card.  He hits for power, has good OBP, has speed.

Tony Gwynn, Tris Speaker, and Bobby Bonds also appear on at least 2 teams.

Pitching

These top $80 million dollar salary teams averaged about 24M for their pitching staffs.

Of the 6 teams, there were only 5 pitchers over $5M.  3 out of the 6 teams didn’t have a pitcher over 5M.  Using a staff with pitchers who can pitch on 3 days rest is the way to go.  John Clarkson was picked up twice as well as Fred Norman.

It looks like the key to winning is to not spend much on relief pitching.  Of the 6 teams, there’s not one relief pitcher over 4M.  I see Ron Perranoski appearing a couple times.  Firpo Marberry had success a couple times.