WAR Budget Draft tips

Anyone have tips for the WAR Budget drafts? I always go into them thinking my teams are going to be decent and they are almost always awful. Any tips appreciated!

For Baseball - a couple of quick tips from my experience:
-Prioritize a good defense in the middle. You want at least +1 DWAR SS, 2B, and CF. They get the most action and can rob the most hits. It's okay if your SS or 2B isn't an elite hitter. You can save WAR and have them be 8-9 Hitters so they don't get too many at bats anyways.
- Focus on WHIP for Pitching. Anything under 1.00 is decent. Don't go by ERA. They only require 100IP, so you may be able to find a good pitcher with less WAR if they are barely over 100IP or 30IP for reliever.
- Try to have your top 5 hitters be really good OPS. 1.000 or higher is ideal. Spend WAR here if you have to. Have high speed/avg bat first.
- Change the ballpark to fit your team's strengths. If you have 9 RHB, make your ballpark Big Advantage R, Big Disadvantage L. If you have no HR hitters but lots of speed do Big Disadvantage R/L. If you have lots of HR hitters do Big Advantage R/L, etc.

Everything mentioned above is exactly right. Go for highest OPS you can get at every position (look for those half-season studs to save WAR), but prioritize DWAR up the middle. If your franchise doesn't have a huge difference maker at catcher, I'll just add a cheap guy that has a + arm. Pitching, go for low WHIP and/or low H/9. One additional thing I do is get 1 or 2 RP's that can be changed to SP to save WAR, but then spend a little extra on the bullpen. Bullpen arms are going to pitch in upward of 100 games where starters only play in 30ish. But don't go too nuts on the bullpen. Only your top 3 priority bullpen guys are going to approach 100 innings, so no need to get 5 2 WAR bullpen guys. You can finish off the bullpen with a few 1 WAR guys, and they won't hurt you too much in the 30-50 innings they appears.

I'm starting to think about my first war draft, but don't know much about them .

how much do you get to spend in one of these kind of drafts?

Then I can start looking at Wars versus player cost. IE: Mauer has a WAR of 55

Newbie here, thanks for your wisdom

@sgtpeppr1964 - You get 85 WAR as a budget. It would be per season for a player rather than for their career. If you wanted Joe Mauer's best year, it would cost around 8 WAR and you would have 77 WAR left. Usually it's a mix of high WAR position players and pitchers and some budget guys that are still serviceable. It's always interesting whether to use the budget more for offense or defense or a mix of both. I've found all three strategies to be successful with the right players. That's part of the fun, you get to completely make your team however you want to!

Everyone has an 85 WAR budget. And your only purchasing 1 season of a player. So not Mauer's career 55 WAR, but say his 2009 season (7.8 WAR). So it's all about balance. Like a salary cap/auction fantasy baseball league. I've done Yankees builds where I go Stars and Scrubs (get those 10+ WAR seasons from Ruth, Mantle and Gehrig, and then piece together the rest). Or you can try to get really good 4-6 WAR seasons at every position. The diamonds in the rough are seasons where an SP or Hitter got just over the minimum innings/AB thresholds (100 IP and 300 AB's) and the ratios were really good (the best example I can think of with that is Elton 'Ice Box' Chamberlain with the Cardinals; a career 1.39 WHIP, but in 1888, he threw 112 innings with a 0.79 WHIP, 4.9 H/9; ace level production for 3.4 WAR). It takes some time constructing the teams (lots of scrolling through players looking at WHIP's, Slugging %, DWAR), but it can be tons of fun. My advice is start with an easier franchise (Astros- lots of good options in pitching and hitting, not 140 years of history to sort through), get comfortable, then branch out.

Thanks for answering and giving me a few tips. Twins all the way baby!

Just took us all down!

https://www.pennantchase.com/league..