Just poring over my final stats:
I finished in 3rd with 108 points (56 hitting, 52 pitching); I finished in the top 4 in 5 of 6 hitting categories (7th in HR); came in 9th in two pitching categories (SV and QS). The counter on the side said I made 20 moves, but I think that's separate from my 10 trades. Regardless, I didn't make a lot of moves, but–in trading a lot–I generally tried to make higher impact moves.
HLA had six top-50 hitters on the final roster: Mookie (3rd overall player), Goldie (5), Xander (33), Hanley (36, great bounce-back year for him), Beltre (40, one of my favorite players), and . . . Carlos Santana (57, drafted him in the 19th round!); I had Dustin Pedroia, Christian Yelich, and Miggy (technically) on my team also (they finished 43rd, 50th, and 11th, respectively).
I had five top-50 pitchers at the end: Kershaw (7th overall, though I only had him for a few starts at the end), Scherzer (14), Andrew Miller (15), Cody Allen (86), and Tony Watson (100); I also had Jose Fernandez (44th,
), Dellin Betances (63), and Roberto Osuna (71) for a lot of the year.
I did pretty well in the hitting rates (2nd in AVG, 4th in OBP) in spite of giving 534 at-bats to Jason Heyward and Prince Fielder (went 115/534=.215 AVG when I started them, combined for 16 HR + SB). I've gone back and forth about whether or not I held onto them too long. I mean, I *did* because they never turned it around, but J-Up also had a terrible start to the season and ended up looking pretty okay for me (.252/.322, 29 HR, 7 SB when I started him). I weirdly came in 2nd in RBI's, but 7th in HR. I was never able to turn HR around after a slow start. I had 7 players hit over 20 HR (Odor, Xander, Mookie, Beltre, Santana, Hanley, J-Up), but I also got an underwhelming number from Prince, Heyward, and Goldie (hit 10 in the 2nd half, though he also stole 22 bases on my team!).
Pitching-wise, things didn't start very well for me. Scherzer and Fernandez got off to lousy starts. I grabbed Vince Velasquez off of waivers after his 16 K CG against SD at the beginning of the year and traded him for Chris Archer and Drew Smyly. Archer was okay, but not as good as I'd hoped; Smyly was dreadful (posted an 8.03 ERA, 1.72 WHIP) and gave up a ton of homers. This was right around when I made my most ill-fated trade Stephen Vogt + Danny Salazar for Prince Fielder and Garrett Richards. Vogt ended up having an acceptable year, Salazar was very good, Prince was hurt/bad until he retired, and Garrett Richards suffered a season-ending injury in his 2nd start for my team. (Upon trading Vogt, I employed Gomes, Grandal, Castro, and Montero behind the dish and they collectively hit .120 with 5 HR; Russell Martin was a god-send for me in the latter half).
I did poorly in SV and QS. Part of my hole in SVs was because the Cubs never generated any of them for Hector Rondon. Osuna was my only player to break 20; I regretfully traded him around the deadline thinking I had done enough to pull myself out of the hole in getting Watson and Ottavino and that I actually had a *surplus*. I feel stupid typing that now. I can chalk up SVs to bad luck and bad decisions, but I'm not overly upset about QSs. The types of starters that I value just don't do well in that stat. Most of my rotation was populated by younger starters (on innings/pitch limits) who get a lot of K's (drives up pitch counts) and who do better in FIP than ERA (with the expectation that their real results will approach their hypothetical ones). So it was VERY costly every time that Scherzer and Fernandez missed a QS for me. Likewise, that philosophy led to me giving a lot of chances to Smyly, Archer, VV, Odorizzi, Robbie Ray, etc. I'm just never going to have a rotation made up of low-K innings-eaters like John Lackey and Marco Estrada (and there aren't enough Scherzers and Bumgarners to go around).
I did take a hit in ERA and WHIP at the end by trying to catch up in QS's, which–in hindsight–I was better off avoiding. Iwakuma, Ray, Waino, and Wacha all hurt more than they helped. My best path to winning would have probably been to just accept the hit in QSs, go harder for SVs, and just try to coast on my leads in HD, ERA, WHIP, and Ks.
That said, I had a pretty good season. I had a really excellent draft (J-Hey at 56, Rodon at 137 were really my only bad top-15 picks), I made more good trades than bad, and had a shot to win it at the end (though it was an outside shot). I woke up in 2nd yesterday, so I'm disappointed falling to 3rd knowing that, but I also could have easily fallen to 4th.
So it goes, I guess.