Catherine Trammell - Contributing Reporter
Q: Tell us about foolsgold79. What is he like? What does he do in his spare time when not obsessing over your rosters?
A: I obsess over the Seattle Mariners roster, and curse Jerry Dipoto when he commits to JP Crawford at SS long term. I also enjoy travel and horror movies and work in the non-profit space.Q: You have a long history in WIS, including 6 World Series Championships. What do you like most about this game? What intrigued you about joining the league, besides beating the commish in another league?
A: So I took a good long time off from WIS, pre-pandemic. I've been playing for a long time, and find that it is a nice, almost meditative way to spend an hour here or there. I've played some of the other games on WIS, but HBD is by far my favorite, largely because of roster construction. I enjoy building rosters through trades and the occasional free agent splash. When I have just one team I tend to over focus on the roster and tinker away. Having a second team is a nice way to divide that attention and I was very impressed with the owner base, and just overall how it appears to be run. Having a stable world on HBD is so important these days with incredibly long wait times on rollover.
EDITOR NOTE: Big thanks to the Commish and all the Owners in this league.
Q: What is your favorite part about building a franchise? Do you try to make a lot of trades? Would you rather build through the draft or IFA? Or just buy a team like Steinbrenner used to do?
A: Historically I've been a trade guy, and still am. It's my default roster construction method and is especially fun in season one of taking over a team. I've built in the draft and IFA in the past, but I'm not extremely patient in waiting for prospects to mature and tend to trade them before they have gone through the minors, in exchange for closer to ML talent. I don't love running huge payrolls, but I also just want to win championships, and if I need to, so be it.
Q: Of your current roster, who do you like most? Promise they will never read these articles? What about prospects? Who are you looking forward to the ML team in the next couple of seasons?
A: So I tend to like guys I acquire more than guys that were on the roster before I took over. So I've already sent a bunch of guys away in trade, and at this point, I'm intrigued by my catcher combo (Calderon and Ontiveros). Both call a good game and have some good offensive upside. As for prospects, SP Jeremy Choice, who I just acquired in a pending trade, is my current favorite, and my focus is building out the pitching in my overall system (though I'm a sucker for dingers). Also, give me a high power, great defense SS (with otherwise shitty offensive ratings) any day.
Q: What are your goals for the upcoming season? Are you looking to push for the playoffs? Or do you expect to rebuild for a couple of seasons?
A: So i started thinking about a rebuild, but it's more of a rebuild on the fly. I think right now I probably have a .500 ML team, but I'm pretty sure my system will look a fair amount different at the beginning of next season. So maybe I sneak in with a wild card bid, but would guess I probably just miss out.
Q: Since you've only been in the league for a few days, this may be tough to answer but what has been your favorite aspect(s) of Cobbfather so far?
A: The Discord connection is fun, and I'm just overall impressed with the level of experience in the league. Should be fun.
Q: What advice would you give a new owner in Cobbfather? Besides making sure to ignore most conversations with the Commissioner?
A: Prospects are great, but hedge on probability when it comes down to it.
Q: Any final thoughts going into the Season?
A: I'm happy to be here in Cobbfather and am anxious to continue to work on this club. Also, Go Mariners!